Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T21:17:17.608Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

HARNESSING THE ANCESTORS: MUTUALITY, UNCERTAINTY AND RITUAL PRACTICE IN THE EASTERN CAPE PROVINCE, SOUTH AFRICA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2014

Andrew Ainslie
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, chronic economic uncertainty has seen social relations stretched to breaking point. Informants speak of a ‘war between men and women’. While grinding poverty, death in the shape of HIV/AIDS and suspicion stalk the land, and the project of building the umzi (homestead) falters, hope for the future and, with it, trust between people leach away. One response to such uncertainty is a turn to ritual. Through a nearly relentless schedule of ritual activity that invokes the ancestors and the Christian deity in various forms, Xhosa people attempt to shore up trust, secure ongoing investment in the rural homestead and sustain ties of reciprocity both among rural people and between them and their urban kin. It is also through the staging of these rituals that women, acting together and in support of each other, are increasingly assertive – often in the face of a violent rearguard opposition from men – in their efforts to exercise agency over the differentiated, fragmented and fragile social and economic relationships within their homesteads and across their villages.

Résumé

Dans la province sud-africaine de l'Eastern Cape, les tensions sociales sont au point de rupture, exacerbées par l'incertitude économique chronique. Les informateurs parlent de « guerre entre les hommes et les femmes ». Tandis que rôdent la misère noire, la mort par VIH/SIDA et le soupçon, et que vacille le projet de construction d'unités d'habitation umzi (homesteads), l'espoir pour l'avenir se perd, et avec lui la confiance entre les personnes. Face à cette incertitude, certains se tournent vers le rituel. À travers un programme quasi continu d'activités rituelles qui invoquent les ancêtres et la divinité chrétienne sous des formes diverses, les Xhosa tentent d’étayer la confiance, de sauvegarder l'investissement dans le homestead rural et d'entretenir les liens de réciprocité au sein des populations rurales et entre ces populations et leurs parents urbains. C'est également en mettant en œuvre ces rituels que les femmes, par la coopération et l'entraide, agissent avec une assurance croissante (souvent face à une opposition réactionnaire violente de la part des hommes) pour aider les relations économiques et sociales différenciées, fragmentées et fragiles au sein de leurs homesteads et dans leurs villages.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 84 , Issue 4 , November 2014 , pp. 530 - 552
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ainslie, A. (1998) ‘Managing natural resources in a rural settlement in Peddie District’. MSocSc thesis, Rhodes University, Grahamstown.Google Scholar
Ainslie, A. (1999) ‘When “community” is not enough: managing common property natural resources in rural South Africa’, Development Southern Africa 16 (3): 375–401.Google Scholar
Ainslie, A. (2005) ‘Farming cattle, cultivating relationships: cattle ownership and cultural politics in Peddie District, Eastern Cape’, Social Dynamics 31 (1): 129–56.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. (1986) ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value’ in Appadurai, A. (ed.), The Social Life of Things: commodities in cultural perspective. Cambridge and New York NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ashforth, A. (1998) ‘Witchcraft, violence and democracy in the New South Africa’, Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 2 (4): 505–32.Google Scholar
Bähre, E. (2011) ‘Liberation and redistribution: social grants, commercial insurance and religious riches in South Africa’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 53 (2): 371–92.Google Scholar
Bank, L. (2001) ‘Living together, moving apart: home-made agendas, identity politics and urban–rural linkages in the Eastern Cape, South Africa’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 19 (1): 129–47.Google Scholar
Bank, L. (2002) ‘Beyond red and school: gender, tradition and identity in the rural Eastern Cape’, Journal of Southern African Studies 28 (3): 631–49.Google Scholar
Bank, L. and Minkley, G. (2005) ‘Going nowhere slowly? Land, livelihoods and rural development in the Eastern Cape’, Social Dynamics 31 (1): 1–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bank, L. and Qambata, L. (1999) No Visible Means of Subsistence: rural livelihoods, gender and social change in Mooiplaas, Eastern Cape 1950–1998. Working Paper 34. Leiden: African Studies Centre.Google Scholar
Bell, C. (1997) Ritual: perspectives and dimensions. New York NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Boissevain, J. (1984) ‘Ritual escalation in Malta’ in Wolf, E. R. (ed.), Religion, Power and Protest in Local Communities: the northern shore of the Mediterranean. Berlin: Mouton.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. L. (1993) ‘Introduction’ in Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. L. (eds), Modernity and its Malcontents: ritual and power in postcolonial Africa. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. L. (1999) ‘Occult economies and the violence of abstraction: notes from the South African postcolony’, American Ethnologist 26 (2): 279–303.Google Scholar
Crain, M. M. (1998) ‘Reimagining identity, cultural production and locality under transnationalism: performances of San Juan in the Ecuadorean Andes’ in Hughes-Freeland, F. and Crain, M. M. (eds), Recasting Ritual: performance, media, identity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Daily Dispatch (2003) ‘Poor families spending a fortune on lavish funerals’. Daily Dispatch, 6 September.Google Scholar
Daily Dispatch (2007) ‘Peddie's hope against domestic violence.’ Daily Dispatch, 31 August.Google Scholar
De Wet, C. J. (1995) ‘Land tenure, economic differentiation and social interaction in a Ciskei settlement’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 13 (1): 57–74.Google Scholar
Du Toit, A. and Neves, D. (2014) ‘The government of poverty and the arts of survival: mobile and recombinant strategies at the margins of the South African economy’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 41 (5): 833–53Google Scholar
Dunkle, K., Jewkes, R., Nduna, M., Jama, P. N., Levin, J. B., Sikweyiya, Y. and Koss, M. P. (2007) ‘Transactional sex and economic exchange with partners among young South African men in the rural Eastern Cape: prevalence, predictors, and associations with gender-based violence’, Social Science and Medicine 65 (6): 1235–48.Google Scholar
Ferguson, J. (1992) ‘The cultural topography of wealth: commodity paths and the structure of property in rural Lesotho’, American Anthropologist 94 (1): 55–73.Google Scholar
Hammond-Tooke, W. D. (1985) ‘Who worships whom? Agnates and ancestors among Nguni’, African Studies 44: 47–64.Google Scholar
Hirst, M. (1997) ‘A river of metaphors: interpreting the Xhosa diviner's myth’ in McAllister, P. A. (ed.), Culture and the Commonplace. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.Google Scholar
Hughes-Freeland, F. and Crain, M. M.. (1998) ‘Introduction’ in Hughes-Freeland, F. and Crain, M. M. (eds), Recasting Ritual: performance, media, identity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hull, E. and James, D. (2012) ‘Introduction: popular economies in South Africa’, Africa 82 (1): 1–19.Google Scholar
James, D. (2012) ‘Money-go-round: personal economies of wealth, aspiration and indebtedness’, Africa 82 (1): 20–40.Google Scholar
Jones, S. J. W. (1996) ‘The matrifilial family: single motherhood, domestic organisation and kinship among Xhosa in a country township, South Africa’. PhD thesis, Cambridge University.Google Scholar
Kepe, T. (2010) ‘Secrets that kill: crisis, custodianship and responsibility in ritual male circumcision in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa’, Social Science and Medicine 70 (5): 729–35.Google Scholar
Lee, R. (2011) ‘Death “on the move”: funerals, entrepreneurs and the rural–urban nexus in South Africa’, Africa 81 (2): 226–47.Google Scholar
Mager, A. (1992) ‘The people get fenced: gender, rehabilitation and African nationalism in the Ciskei and Border Region, 1945–1955’, Journal of Southern African Studies 18 (4): 761–82.Google Scholar
Mager, A. (1998) ‘Youth organisations and the construction of masculine identities in the Ciskei and Transkei, 1945–1960’, Journal of Southern African Studies 24 (4): 653–68.Google Scholar
Mager, A. (1999) Gender and Making of a South African Bantustan. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Manona, C. W. (1999) De-agrarianisation and the Urbanisation of a Rural Economy: agrarian patterns in Melani village in the Eastern Cape. Working Paper 32. Leiden: African Studies Centre.Google Scholar
McAllister, P. A. (1980) ‘Work, homestead and the shades: the ritual interpretation of labour migration among the Gcaleka’ in Mayer, P. (ed.), Black Villagers in an Industrial Society: anthropological perspectives on labour migration in South Africa. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McAllister, P. A. (1997) ‘Ritual and social practice in the Transkei’ in McAllister, P. A. (ed.), Culture and the Commonplace. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.Google Scholar
McAllister, P. A. (2001) Building the Homestead: agriculture, labour and beer in South Africa's Transkei. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.Google Scholar
Moore, H. L. (1986) Space, Text and Gender: an anthropological study of the Marakwet of Kenya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Morrell, R. (2001) ‘The times of change: men and masculinity in South Africa’ in Morrell, R. (ed.), Changing Men in Southern Africa. Pietermaritzburg and London: University of Natal Press and Zed Books.Google Scholar
Mtuze, P. T. (2003) The Essence of Xhosa Spirituality and the Nuisance of Cultural Imperialism. Johannesburg: Vivlia.Google Scholar
Murray, C. (1981) Families Divided: the impact of migrant labour in Lesotho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ngwane, Z. (2003) ‘“Christmas time” and the struggles for the household in the countryside: rethinking the cultural geography of migrant labour in South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies 29 (3): 681–99.Google Scholar
Ngwenya, B. N. (2002) ‘Gender, dress and self-empowerment: women and burial societies in Botswana’, African Sociological Review 6 (2): 1–27.Google Scholar
Niehaus, I. (2001) Witchcraft, Power and Politics: exploring the occult in the South African Lowveld. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Niehaus, I. (2005) ‘Witches and zombies in the South African lowveld: discourse, accusations and subjective reality’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11 (2): 191–210.Google Scholar
Pauw, B. A. (1974) ‘The influence of Christianity’ in Hammond-Tooke, W. D. (ed.), The Bantu-speaking Peoples of Southern Africa. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Posel, D. and Marx, C. (2013) ‘Circular migration: a view from destination households in two urban informal settlements in South Africa’, Journal of Development Studies 49 (6): 819–31.Google Scholar
Sansom, B. (1981) ‘Cash down for brides’ in Krige, E. J. and Comaroff, J. L. (eds), Essays on African Marriage in Southern Africa. Cape Town and Johannesburg: Juta.Google Scholar
Seekings, J. (2011) ‘Poverty and inequality in South Africa, 1994–2007’ in Shapiro, I. and Tebeau, K. (eds), After Apartheid: reinventing South Africa. Charlottesville VA: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Shipton, P. (2007) The Nature of Entrustment: intimacy, exchange and the sacred in Africa. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Switzer, L. (1993) Power and Resistance in an African Society: the Ciskei Xhosa and the making of South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press.Google Scholar
White, H. (2011) ‘Beastly whiteness: animal kinds and the social imagination in South Africa’, Anthropology Southern Africa 34 (3&4): 104–13.Google Scholar
Wilson, M. (1978) ‘Ritual: resilience and obliteration’ in Argyle, J. and Preston-Whyte, E. (eds), Social System and Tradition in Southern Africa. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, M., Kaplan, S., Maki, T. and Walton, E. M. (1952) Social Structure: Keiskammahoek rural survey, volume III. Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter.Google Scholar