Harnessing the Ancestors

Mutuality, Uncertainty and Ritual Practice in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID2102985
AuthorsAndrew Ainslie (0000-0002-7549-7643, University of Reading, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume84
Issue4
Pages530-552
Publication date2014-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0001972014000448
OpenAlexW2073705228
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited40

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 theumzi(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

Cape · Economic growth · Economics · Opposition (politics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Poverty · Sociology · Xhosa · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Gender Studies · Law · South African History and Culture