The transformation of shapes: relations between land, home, marriage and ancestors among modern-day Isizulu speakers in South Africa

Abstract

Today's Land Reform in South Africa is analyzed in terms of the meanings the land has for black people who speak isiZulu, as opposed to what white farmers consider to be models of failure. The houses, experienced throughout lives marked by exile and changes, are appreciated in their expression of conquest, through the history of the Kubheka family, contemplated by the South African land program, with a farm (previously white) to live. The shape of the houses is questioned here from Ingold's “perspective of the home”, when we pay attention to what people do in the houses where they live so that they consider them homes. In this sense, rituals that relate people, ancestors and houses, such as marriage, appear as imperatives to be performed. When dealing with the different forms that people and houses take in the changes of houses and ritual performances - which, in some way, when restoring people and houses to their original forms, reinvent the current forms -, we perceive creativity in the process of living and to transform houses into places considered fit for living, in terms of what people do, or want to do, and not what they should do according to the eyes of others.