'The Courtship Dance': Performing 'Traditional Xhosa

Culture’. An Ethnography
By Stuart Hardman

Plate 1
Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................... 3
Objective ........................................................................................................................ 5
Method ........................................................................................................................... 5
Theoretical Orientation ................................................................................................ 13
Review ......................................................................................................................... 15
Dance Research in Africa ............................................................................................ 17
Methodological Problems with Dance Study .............................................................. 20
The Politics of Dance Studies ...................................................................................... 21
Performing Dance Fieldwork ...................................................................................... 22
Tradition ...................................................................................................................... 23
Improvisation ............................................................................................................... 24
Ethnography of The Courtship Dance ......................................................................... 26
Introduction to 'The Field'............................................................................................ 26
Prelude to the Dance .................................................................................................... 26
The Natives are Restless .............................................................................................. 30
―You Can Call Me Anytime, Day or Night‖ ............................................................... 32
Description of the Dance ............................................................................................. 32
Coexistance in South Africa ten years after Apartheid ............................................... 39
Spirit of Uhadi ............................................................................................................. 45
A Life History: ............................................................................................................. 48
The Importance of Dance for Thandeka ...................................................................... 51
Clan Identity ................................................................................................................ 51
Sex Before Marriage .................................................................................................... 56
Sharing of Gifts (the 'economy' of the dance) ............................................................. 60
Promoting Traditional Practices .................................................................................. 60
Thandeka's Personal Ambitions................................................................................... 61
Core Teachings ............................................................................................................ 61
The Courtship Dance ................................................................................................... 68
References: .................................................................................................................. 70
 1. Introduction
The Mafikizolo Dance Group is a 'Traditional Xhosa Dance' group consisting of six to
twelve year old Xhosa children of both sexes. Mrs Thandeka Budaza, their teacher,
drummer and choreographer, is a primary school teacher - and also a fully initiated
igqira (a healer/diviner in her native Xhosa culture). As such she brings a wealth of
knowledge of traditional Xhosa customs into the teaching and choreography of her
dances. Mrs Budaza and the members of the group are all residents of the Rhini
location. This is one of the black suburbs of Grahamstown, which is in the Eastern
Cape province of South Africa.

My ethnographic research has entailed attending and videotaping performances of the

dance, interviewing Mrs Budaza as well as referencing broader socio-cultural
processes within which I suggest 'The Courtship Dance' is constructed.

In this discussion I focus on one particular dance performed by the Mafikiizolo Dance
Group: 'The Courtship Dance.' This dance I suggest following my literature review,
which is oriented towards Practice theory (Bourdieu (1977;1990)) and Performance
theory (Drewal (1991)), is a construction of 'traditional Xhosa values' constituted in
the performance of the dance. 'The Courtship Dance' therefore is a dance
choreographed in the idiom of traditional Xhosa practices, as they are understood by
Mrs Budaza. My interpretation of The Courtship Dance is that it is an activity which
actively constructs a cultural ethic, in terms of behavioral ethics and bodily praxis,
which explicitly promotes sexual abstinence while still valuing courtship as a valuable
traditional custom.

The promotion of sexual abstinence can only be understood, I suggest, through

referencing the broader socio-cultural landscape. Such references include the
HIV/AIDS pandemic, teenage pregnancies, the so-called African Renaissance which
has links to the increasing interest in Indigenous Knowledge and the increasing threat
to the constitution of lifeworlds the increasing processes of Globalisation are having. It
seems that this dance is a reaction to domination in a global sense.

One of the most controversial issues is that of virginity testing. This is because in the
idiom of 'traditional Xhosa culture' it is a creative response to inculcating more
conservative sexual practices (in terms of abstinence), but it is also contrary to
constitutional rights set out for the rights of children within the South African Nation
State. As such virginity testing exposes the rifts between the old style dualisms
redolent of Enlightenment values and the rise of the nation state. These polemical
dualisms are the rural/migrant, male/female, traditional/modern, family/state,
rational/irrational etc.

My analytical stance has been influenced by courses I have completed this year. Penny
Bernard's Medical Anthropology course (especially Burkitt's (1999) embodiment
theory), Dr Aleksander Boskovic's Anthropological Theory course (especially Geertz's
(1973) 'Thick description'), Dr Robin Palmer's Anthropology of Tourism (especially
for influencing my initial interest the performance of Xhosa tradition for tourists), Dr
Chris De Wet's Anthropology of the Eastern Cape (especially McAllister's (2005) use
of Bourdieu's practice theory in his reanalysis the ritual change of the Xhosa ritual in
'Beasts to Beer Pots'), and Dr Dianne Thrams Ethnomusicology course (especially for
the focus upon field research methodology), with assistance from Dr Brett Piper.
Although I have focussed upon Drewals' review Performance theory to inform my
analysis I believe that all of the above influences have contributed to the analysis.
 2. Objective
The objective of this project is to explore the references to traditional Xhosa culture
made in the performance of The Courtship Dance of the Mafikizolo Dance Group. In
this fashion I hope to be able to explore some of the particularities of what it means to
be a bearer of Xhosa culture and postulate why this form of dancing is being practiced
and supported in this instance.

The Courtship Dance of the The Mafikizolo Dance group is self-consciously a

traditional Xhosa dance and the performance of this dance is a public expression of
their combined interpretation of the Xhosa courtship aesthetic. It shows boys and girls
the traditional Xhosa customs relating to sexual relationships. However it is more than
this, it a construction of the traditional based upon historical references which are
interpretively re-produced under different circumstances (that is in the present).

The objective has therefore been to offer a ―Thick description‖ of my interpretation of

some extraneous factors influencing the construction of the dance.

3. Method
Focusing on one particular performance, The Courtship Dance, I have made
contemporaneous fieldnotes (descriptive, introspective and analytical) and used video
recordings to record how performance practitioners and other participants practice,
perceive and experience ‗the dance.‘ Then after observing what they actually did in the
performance I recorded interviews with Thandeka about how the dance is interpreted.
These interviews moved from lose to more structured interviews. They were recorded,
transcribed and then analysed.
To situate the performances it has been necessary to contextualise these performances.
This will entailed describing some of the extraneous sociocultural themes linked to the
performances of these dances.

I have self consciously attempted to situate my research within the so called fourth
paradigm of ethnomusicology as discussed by Titon (1997). The first two paradigms
are from an era before the institutionalization of ethnomusicology (namely
Comparative Musicology and Musical Folk lore) and these will not be discussed here.

The third paradigm is derived from Ethnomusicology as it was instantiated as a

discipline with links to Anthropology starting in the 1950s. This emphasizes the native
point of view, distrust of nationalism, a focus on acculturation and change, a scholarly
discourse, and generally an increase in field data in accordance to Merriams (1964)
method which emphasizes ―ideas, behavior and sound‖ (Titon 1997: 91).

The fourth paradigm is, according to Titon (1997), an emergent paradigm situated
within the phenomenological or reflexive turn (in Anthropology) and is envisioned as
the study of ―people making and experiencing music‖ (Ibid: 92). It shows an increased
scepticism toward the 'culture of science' and the self-conscious adoption of many
aspects within critical theories; such as those born out of feminist and post-colonial
theory. This is because as he says,

―if we believe that knowledge is experiential and the intersubjective product of our
social interactions, then what we can know [about people making music] arises out of
relations with others, both in the field and as colleagues‖ (Ibid).
Ethnographic texts therefore become an invitation to the ―reader to share,
imaginatively, in the experiences [of the author, as] represented in the text‖(Ibid).

Therefore the author, as a person from the same discourse community as the reader,
interprets the experience of intersubjectivity in 'the field' (a position somewhere in
between the outsider and the insider) to outsiders. This repositions the field worker as
someone who is in search of subjective learning experiences and a self-conscious
writer of ethnographic works. The informant becomes the teacher to the field
researcher and therefore claims of objective knowledge can be dismissed on the
theoretical basis that any 'knowledge' gained is partial and subject to the individual
experiences of the field researcher. As a self conscious writer the ethnographer
discursively creates the textual effects which are then interpreted by the reader, this
also obviates reductionist claims of objectivity.

Rice (1997), following the literary turn generally in Anthropology, cryptically (or is it
reflexively?) shifts the focus onto how the process of becoming a field researcher is
tantamount to becoming an ethnomusicologist. Field research, he says, is an
ontological condition for becoming and ethnomusicologist (Ibid: 105). By shifting the
focus onto the 'ethnomusicologist's self,' he can describe 'the field,' according to the
first three paradigms discussed above, as a place of experiment where theories and
hypotheses are 'tested' (Ibid).

According to the intersubjective, or reflexive turn, field research becomes a place of

experience where the field researcher's ―self is transformed and reconfigured in the act
of understanding one's own or another culture‖ (Ibid). If, as Titon (1997) proposes, the
self is where the locus of understanding is (i.e. understanding is subjective), rather
than 'the method' (i.e. objectively explanatory knowledge), then, he argues, the
insider/outsider dichotomy is necessarily upset (from the field researcher's perspective
anyway). Ideally, in this new formulation then (where music is subjectively
experienced as part of a culture rather than as objectively produced sound) both the
researcher and the researched experience and learn together.

This is premised theoretically on Rice's (1997) introduction of phenomenological

hermeneutics, where understanding precedes explanation rather than being a product
of it (contrary to the Enlightenment tradition) (Ibid: 115). In this fashion the subject
becomes the particular 'self' he or she is because of particular encounters with the
world (Ibid). That world, being made up of symbols, means that it is, as he argues,
―cultural works... which give a self to the ego‖ (Ibid). It follows, then, that
―access to the inner experience of the Other is neither attainable nor sought after; one
is left to interpret symbols and symbolic behaviour in terms of the world or worlds
they potentially reference, an understanding that is finite, changeable, forced to
compete with other interpretations and limited to the expandable horizons of the
individual‖ (Ibid: 116).

In this formulation the field researcher seeks to understand the ―world suggested by
the musical sounds, performances and contexts... and not the inner experience of
people‖ (Ibid). Therefore the field researcher cannot claim objective knowledge of the
Other in a fixed or static fashion.

Eric Charry (2000) describes the insider/outsider problem in a local Mande (of West
Africa) idiom perfectly. He quotes a local saying: ―No matter how long a canoe stays
in the water it will never become a crocodile‖ (Charry 2000). The discussion directly
above corroborates this because it is no longer necessary to 'do' the impossible, that is
become an insider. All that is necessary is for the researcher to be able to reference and
understand the meaning frameworks of the 'insider' and then interpret them. The site of
the field researcher becomes that which is between the 'insider' and the 'outsider' –
when this intersubjectivity is achieved then understanding (which is subjective and
particular rather than objective and general) can flow across form one site of culture to
another.

Shelemay (1997) can therefore state that ―shared humanity makes fieldwork, above all
else, meaningful‖ (Shelemay 1997: 189). In her experience of field research among the
Syrian Jews in New York she was caught up in the processes and politics involved
with researching living musical traditions (Ibid: 197). In this process her
intersubjective relationships moved from scholarly/informant toward
collegial/personal, a move which entailed a shift from the ―management of cultural
capital ...[to] the negotiation of human relations in the field‖ (Ibid). Gaining
understanding through ―encountering a stream of individuals‖ rather than studying ―a
disembodied concept called 'culture' or a place called the 'field' transforms objective
notions of what insider/outsider means to subjective ones‖ (Ibid: 200).

Many of these issues have been relevant to my own research process here. For
example when I first started negotiating with Thandeka about conducting research on
her dance group she told me that she would ―tell me everything‖ (interview
03/05/2005). Here Thandeka, the informant, can be seen to be taking an objectivist
stance to knowledge production. In claiming that her knowledge will pass to me in
some objective fashion she was, I believe, placing me the researcher in a position to
appropriate her knowledge. The discussion above obviates this situation but I believe
it does not translate into the field as something that a researcher could necessarily
explain to informants.
This knowledge claim was drummed home at the end of our first interview when, as
agreed, we started a discussion about remuneration for Tankeka's time that she would
spend discussing her dance group with me. It culminated when she asked me for R
1000 per hour for her time. Naturally I was shocked at this outrageous request but I
was fortunate enough to have the presence of mind to calmly suggest that I could not
afford this. Subsequently I agreed to bring her some gifts of my own choosing instead
(which I will discuss in due course).

If however both Thandeka and I had come to an intersubjective understanding that I

wanted to write about my experiences of being who I am in the presence of her
understanding and interpretations of 'Xhosa culture', then I feel she would have been
less inclined to feel that I was going to take something (in the form of knowledge)
from her.

In this (subjective) process then Thandeka can assume authority and be the teacher and
I as the outsider, seeking subjective knowledge about my own experiences of being on
the field, can be the student. Clearly this would not remove the need for payment but it
would bring it in line with paying for other sorts of instruction.

In this situation I would be happy to pay my teacher as I do with all of my other

teachers. Neither Thandeka nor I would be able to claim that I have taken something
from her. Both Thandeka (as the Other) and I (as the field researcher) leave the
relationship with our own subjective experiences; I can write mine down and perhaps
publish them; and she can do the same or tell her friends and family about her own
experiences. Due to the nature of the relationship, one where I have chosen 'the field'
for my experience of field research, I have the responsibility to remunerate her in a
fashion which we both deem is fair. I am happy to engage in field research under these
premises; the only problem foresee is that this kind of existential philosophy mat not
translate well into the field research situation.

This was evident when Thandeka implied that I was there to get 90% for my research
project and get a good job in Johannesburg, as she said another research did. This
researcher was an Ethnomusicology honours student who conducted her research with
Thandeka a couple of years ago – she did get a good mark but not the job
unfortunately. Thankeka also reflected on another student with whom she had
'worked'. Thandeka said that she had used some her research to teach children her
dances abroad. According to Thandeka she had made money out of this.

So although Thandeka was very happy to share her knowledge, she was also wary of
being duped into giving away her knowledge for less than it was worth. Finding a
figure on what that knowledge is worth is dependent upon the paradigm one uses as to
what knowledge is and of course some form of knowledge of the so-called 'market' for
this knowledge, that is if such a market exists. This is how I interpreted Thandeka's
initial request for remuneration, being largely unaware of the value of her knowledge
she had every right to 'fish' and see what I thought it was worth; especially since I had
asked her to put forth the initial figure.

Another factor that should also be brought into consideration is that all 'donations' are
unselfconsciously presented as gifts for her ancestors. As she values her ancestors very
highly she accordingly has few qualms about asking for R 1000 per hour. Therefore I
am aware that many would take umbrage against such a request but under the
circumstances I have come to see it as a game played in which she could cover her
bases (as far as she does not know the true value of the information she is passing on
to me) and honour her ancestors through showing me, by asking the amount she did,
that they are very valuable. This became evident in that when I protested that I could
not afford the amount she requested she immediately said that I should pay as much as
I could afford – this places me in a position that I am receiving a favour from
Thandeka and her ancestors and so am indebted to her.

I decided to give Thandeka a gift that I had bought in a rural area in East London
while conducting research there. This was a very beautiful traditional Xhosa outfit
with many different types of beads. She was absolutely thrilled with the gift. In
addition I also gave her a Thandiswa Mazwai, Inguni music and a Madosini CDs. In
addition to this I recently went to visit her and she had recently performed a very
expensive ceremony for her late husband and so was very strapped for money – I
brought some chicken and cool drinks with me which was greatly appreciated.

My strategy of bringing gifts I feel allowed me to conduct the research in an ethical

manner and not be tied into a relationship that would become overly restricted by
financial obligations. I did feel that I had been somewhat unscrupulously 'othered' as
being a rich white male South African who is carrying the so-called 'white man‘s
burden.' However as I negotiated my relationship with Thandeka I feel that this
situation changed over time.

I also used the gifts that I brought in a very strategic fashion because they all opened
up avenues of investigation relevant to the research at hand. The traditional outfit and
all the music all referenced the current negotiation of Xhosa-ness in the current milieu.
In addition to this, I showed and discussed video recordings which I had made of
Thandek's group and other groups (a rural so-called 'Red Blanket' Xhosa homestead
and a rural school choir near to East London). These all opened up interesting lines of
questioning and allowed me to gauge Thandeka's response to and situate her own
performance group in relation to these other groups.

Lastly I wish to reflect upon how tied to my own discourse I had been when I first
started working with Thandeka. Being saturated with the Enlightenment ideals of
furthering the academes knowledge I at first found it very strange that I should have to
pay someone to talk to them when I was honestly trying to help them in any way that I
could, that is in spending a great deal of time listening and writing about them I would
be doing a service to them because I believe that ultimately I will be arguing that this
kind of dance activity is beneficial to the cultural diversity and integrity of South
African cultural production and should be supported by the community. From this
view it should not be made difficult for me to give to the community in a way that I
see fit, that is through scholarship. However I came to see that these were very specific
views not held by all to the same degree.

This brings to light the rift between the uniform self created under nationalistic values
and the more individual and particular ethic which is fostered by ancestor worship.
Negotiating these dilemmas in 'the field' exposes difficult questions indeed but ones
that are integral to the process of reflexively understanding the insider/outsider
dilemma.

4. Theoretical Orientation
Drewal (1991) highlights the importance of studying performance because, as she
argues, it raises ―fundamental issues about bodily praxis, human agency, temporality,
and discursive knowledge‖ and therefore ―calls into question conventional
understanding of tradition, repetition, mechanical reproduction, and ontological
definitions of social order and reality (Drewal 1991: 1). Studying performance
therefore
―privileges process, the temporally or [the] processually constructed nature
of human realities, and the agency of knowledgeable performers who have
embodied particular techniques and styles to accomplish it (Drewal 1989b;
Conquerwood 1989 in Drewal 1991: 1).

Dance, can, in this view, be interpreted as both a fundamental dimension of culture

itself and as well as a potent site for the production of knowledge about culture – it
therefore can allow people to construct their social world, and in doing so they may
either re-enforce, resist or subvert prevailing social orders (Drewal 1991: 2).

Following this line of thinking I hope that by studying the practical application of
embodied skills and knowledge through the medium of dance to open a small window
into the understanding of how a particular conception of ‗Xhosa culture‘ is being
deployed and constructed by and through the performance of the Mafikizolo Dance
Group.

In calling into question ‗traditional‘ understandings of tradition, repetition, mechanical

production, and ontological definitions of social order and reality, performance has
raised fundamental questions about praxis, human agency, temporality and discursive
knowledge (Ibid).

Broadly, then, according to my reading in the dance theory, dance is the application of
embodied skills and knowledge to the task of taking action for the purposes of ―the
enactment of the poetic function‖ as well as the authoritative display of
communicative competence in the social sphere and it is therefore a potent site for the
inculcation of doxic dispositions into the Habitus – invoking Bourdieu (1990;1977)
here (Ibid).
 5. Review
The study of performance has necessitated certain paradigm shifts in analytical
orientation. Drewal (1991) has summarized these as follows:
There has been a move from the analysis of structure to process, that is, from
view social reality in a spatialised, objectivist and distanced view, to a
temporal, participatory view which is understood as interactive with the
research process (Ibid).
There has also been a shift from the normative to the particular and historically
situated or time-centred site of analysis (Ibid).
In terms of agency, there has been a shift from the analysis of the collective to
the ―agency of named individuals in the continuous flow of social interactions‖
(Ibid).
Performance has lastly changed the notion of an ―objective social reality as
well as the notion that society and human beings are products‖ (Ibid). This is
because it has been recognized that performance is not only a production, but
rather both society and agents within society are performative, and are always
processurally under construction (Ibid).

Drewal (1991) argues, therefore, that dramaturgical metaphors such as ―social drama,
backstage/frontstage, and cueing‖ tends to remove performance from everyday life and
as such turns it into a metaphor of ‗life‘ (Ibid: 8). This line of theorizing has developed
out of a range of disciplines which since the 1940s has applied dramaturgical
paradigms and metaphors in theorizing human action (Ibid). Some of the most
influential metaphors include

―[Kenneth Burke‘s (1945)] rhetorical, performance-orientated that

 take stock of the effects of performances on audiences; Victor Turner's
models of social drama (1957) and ritual process (1969), which
employ his notions of liminality and communitas; Gregory Bateson's
work on metacommunication in performance and play (1958;1972);
Erving Goffman's dramaturgical model of the presentation of self in
everyday life, as well as his frame analysis which seeks to explain
how audiences recognise that a performance is in progress (1959;
1974); Milton Singer's concept of ―cultural performance‖ as an
encapsulation of a larger, umanageable whole (1972); and Clifford
Geertz's concepts of thick description, deep play and blurred genres
(1973; 1980)‖ (Ibid).

The work of more recent theorists like Pierre Bourdieu (1977; 1990), Michel de
Certeau (1984), and Anthony Giddens (1979; 1982; 1984) has cemented this new
theoretical approach, sometimes called action or practice theory, into individual bodies
(Ibid). Most notably is Bourdieu's notion of the Habitus.

Bourdieu‘s concept of Habitus is important because it recognises the dialectically

structured and structuring nature of individual subjectivities within culture and cultural
events (Bourdieu 1977: 85). The concept of Habitus is used in his analysis of social
identity and is a way of theorising how the self is produced through the subjective
experiences of a particular social environment. It is a way of analysing how social
relations become constituted within the self, but also how the self is constitutive of
social relations. The Habitus is manifest in styles of ―standing and moving, taking up
space, in ways of speaking (idioms, as well as accent), in styles of dress, and so on‖
(Ibid: 89). It is not, however, confined to the body since it also consists of a series of
dispositions, attitudes and tastes (Ibid).
Habitus also carries the concept of history – both personal history and social, or
collective, history (Ibid: 94). The emphasis on history can make the concept of
Habitus appear as the carrier of the solely prescriptive force on personal identity, a
means of more or less straightforward reproduction of individuals through socio-
environmental contextualisation. It is, however, important to note that Habitus is not
solely determining; it is also generative. Although reproduction across generations
does occur within this formulation, it is however the dynamic character of the social
world which resolves that it will not occur perfectly. Therefore a more or less identical
Habitus can generate widely different outcomes.

For Practice Theorists, ―cultural continuity is not best thought of as stasis, but as a
recursive process‖ (Christopher Wayerman 1986: 50). The recursive process is then
how performances are transformed. Therefore change in performance traditions may
be attributed to situations when performers are ―confronted with contradictions
generated by the unintended consequences of their actions or changes beyond their
control in the material and social world‖ (Ibid).

6. Dance Research in Africa

The study of performance in Africa was developed most notably by Victor Turner
(1982; 1985; 1986). Drewal (1991) argues that an Aristotelian view of tragedy,
conforming his agonistic model of ‗social drama,‘ has been central to his theorizing on
performance (Ibid: 10). According to this view

―social drama is processually structured action composed of four

phases:
 1. Breach of social relations,
2. crisis, when people position themselves as antagonists in
relation to one another,
3. redressive action to resolve the crisis,
4. either reintegration of the contending parties or schism‖ (Ibid).

The problem with this is that it still holds onto ―[t]he focus on metaphors as mental
constructs, ―the play of mind,‖ rather than the play of body, of which mind is an
integral part‖ (Ibid). Therefore it ―minimizes the agency of performers, their embodied
practices, and indeed the bodily basis of metaphoric imagination‖ (Ibid).

Furthermore if we only understand performance as entertainment, a diversion, cut off

from the political and economic environment which sustains it, and in which it
develops and transforms, we could then view it as ―socially insignificant, static and
impotent‖ (Ibid: 11).

Drewal (1991) argues that the constraints of academic disciplines, which are imposed
arbitrarily in a dissected and compartmentalised fashion onto of disparate media such
as dance, music, poetry etc, has created a false situation within academia in which the
focus on mental constructs of the mind within academia does not conform to
performance in Africa. Drewal (1991) argues, therefore, that performance in Africa
tends to be ―not only multivocal but multifocal‖ (Ibid: 12).

Therefore the textual approach to the analysis of performance, drawn from liteterary
theorists and folklorists' approaches, tends to constrain analysis within a ―limited
contextualisation‖ (Ibid). It therefore does not take into the capacity of performance
―to activate spheres beyond the confines of its own textuality, and be implicated in
social and political action‖ into consideration (Ibid).

Thus the textual approach maintains an objectivist vision of the world in which the
world is conceptualized as an exhibit, privileging space over time. This objectivist
epistemology holds, according to Mark Johnson (1987), that reality is constituted by
―objects that have properties and stand in various relationships independent of human
understanding‖ (Ibid). Therefore

―the politics of the objectivist paradigm is that it sets up an

unequal, unilinear power relationship. It does so by assuming that
acquiring knowledge of reality is a formal process of connecting
up, and drawing inferences from, literal concepts that represent
things in the object world, independent of human
understandings.‖(Ibid: 14).

In this understanding, then, knowledge in the form of cognition, according to this

paradigm, ―requires distancing to remove the subject's body (subjectivity) from the
object to be known‖ and therefore only ―the subject who has gained perspective
through distancing can achieve cognition‖ (Ibid). The power relationship is therefore
set up because the ―privilege of knowing reality is by default restricted to the
‗organizer of the view‘‖ (Ibid). Because the objectivist paradigm operates on the
condition of unequal, unidirectional power relations between the knower and the
known, it is at once sexist and ethnocentric, an issue well-known in both feminist and
sub-altern studies (Ibid).

In this fashion, Drewal (1991) argues that much research into performance in Africa
strongly reflects the materialist/objectivist bias –rendering performance as
 ―thinglike‘ by turning it into structures and sets of symbols as in
the case of ... graphic notation in the case of music …[i]n this
way, research reifies performance as a spatialised representation
for mental cognition alone, as if detached from the human bodies
that practice it‖ (Ibid).

The overall effect of these disciplinary boundaries, and the imbedded assumption that
performance is a bounded series of ‗things‘, that scholars have largely failed to
comprehend performance as ―heterological and heteroglossial, forming a web of
mulitple and simultaneous discursive practices‖ (Ibid: 16).

7. Methodological Problems with Dance Study

Of all the performance genres, dance is the least studied (Ibid: 25). The problem is that
dance in Africa proves virtually impossible to research from the objectivist/materialist
standpoint because it has not been successfully transformed into graphic notation and
it doesn't stand still for structural or symbolic analysis (Ibid).

For example labonotation was designed for western dance styles that are more
concerned with rendering clear, precise shapes in space (Ibid). This however does not
translate well for rendering African dance styles that are more concerned with subtle
weight transfers through time. It also presumes un-improvised, repeatable dances
(Ibid). Labonotation is best for notating uniform shapes and fixed choreography, but it
runs into problems with subtle weight shifts and improvisational dances (Ibid).

Video and film have made it possible to capture and study more effectively (Ibid).
 8. The Politics of Dance Studies
The philosophies derived from the theories of Descartes and Kant, according to
Johnson (1987), successfully engineered the mind/body split, taking the mind out of
the body, theoretically detaching all rationality and reason from embodied experience
(Ibid). Knowledge, according to this line of thought, is objective rather than
subjective, hence disembodied.

This, then, sets up the problem Dance, as the penultimate expression of the body in
movement for its own sake, has caused for (objectivist) social theorists in general.
This is because dance is linked to the subjective, the emotional, the sensual, and the
sexual and it therefore in terms of the Western Cartesian dualism inherent in the
production of knowledge, it falls conceptually into the domain of the female and the
black (Ibid). ―No wonder Africans, women and gay men,‖ says Drewal (1991), ―have
historically been identified with dancing more so than any other creative activity‖
(Ibid).

The position of dance research in the social sciences is an example of the objectivist
bias in social science research. In their attempt to legitimate the study of dance, Judith
Lynne Hanna (1979) and Anna Petereson Royce (1977), in addition the mind/body
split, have identified ―the Puritan [Protestant] ethic and the conversion of the body into
an instrument of capitalist production as contributing factors the lowly position of
dance in relation to other forms of human expression (Ibid).

Sarah von Fremd (1989) in ―The Politics of African Dance Research‖ argued that
while during the 1980s dance research in Africa interpreted the movement behaviour
of others in less stereotypical ways than before, ―it does not grapple with issues in its
own discourse‖(Ibid: 26). In her conclusions, von Fremd (1989) pointed out that, ―the
translation of dance field in anthropological language with an elaborate model for
gathering and categorizing dance 'texts' still has political implications when
Westerners attempt to read inner meanings of African cultures‖ (Ibid). She continued,
―a new conception of dance in culture is needed, and a recognition of how individual
performers use and interpret its various fluid and poetic forms‖ (Ibid).

Such a reconceptualisation, she argues,

―would help to challenge the embedded biases in the West's

dominant image of African dancing and resist the tendency to
account for African movement primarily in terms of what it says
about a particular population generally, which only fixes that
culture on the written page as a static social fact for an archive,
rather than a fixed text, it would create a fluid discourse creating
meanings depending on how the performers are situated and
how they negotiate their identities in specific settings‖ (Ibid).

9. Performing Dance Fieldwork

Like performance, field work is a method of producing knowledge (Ibid: 36). Indeed,
fieldwork is largely improvisational as well as interactive (Ibid). Therefore, Drewal
(1991) suggests, that in realigning the method of fieldwork with the subject, that is
moving toward temporal methodology, prioritizes the following three spheres of
research (Ibid). Namely, ―1) historical studies; 2) empirical studies of performances
and audiences 3) intertextual studies of the relationship between performance and
other cultural texts... and performances themselves‖ (Ibid).
This, then, highlights the need to ―situate performances and performance genres in the
ideas, values, and interpretive practices within a given society during a particular time
period‖ (Ibid). Furthermore, following Pierre Bourdieu (1977), one should also study
the ways that a ―performance gains or acquires value – and by extension power –
through reproduction, transformations, analyses, circulations, celebrations,
preservations and recordings‖ (Ibid: 36).

Therefore, Drewal (1991) argues that, ―[s]hifting from the normative to the particular
means focusing on how performance practitioners and other participants operate,
observing what they actually do in specific performances and then listening to what
they say they do, their intentionality.‖ Also, ―[s]hifting to the particular also means
distinguishing between specific performances situated in time and space from the
performance as an event encapsulating culture or an ideology‖ (Ibid). Therefore rather
than losing sight of structure, this temporally situated research rather highlights the
performances and thereby illuminates structuring properties all the more brilliantly
(Ibid: 37).

10. Tradition
Williams (1982: 182) pointed out that tradition involves desired continuities and
involves conscious choice making – it cannot therefore be seem merely as repletion
(Ibid). This is because an expression does not have the same value twice (Ibid).

Drewal (1991) argues rather that repetition, performance

―serves to represent (re-present) time concretely, providing a

continual temporal reference. It has a unifying potential, or
 rather it provides a common denominator for actions and events.
Its binding potential is what makes it particularly crucial to any
collective action. Repetition within performance may induce a
sense of stability and predictability‖ ([Moore and Myerhoff
1977: 17] cited in Ibid: 38)‖

In a discussion of Xhosa oral poetry tradition, Jeff Opland identified a processual

model of production in the flux over time. Thus, ―tradition in [a] differentiated and
dynamic view, is an aggregate of elements held together by a centripetal force
operating on the individual bearer of tradition, a force that conduces to conformity
with other bearers of tradition of the tradition. In the course of time the bearers of the
tradition might relinquish some elements in favour of new elements, with different
elements altering at different points in time; thus aspects of the tradition might change,
and the tradition would yet retain and identifiable character. [...] so that it could have
nothing in common with its existence in the first point of observation and yet by virtue
of continuities and changes still be the same tradition‖

11. Improvisation
An example the dichotomy between formalization and improvisation is intriguingly
evocative of Western capitalist distinctions between work (formalization) and play
(improvisation) (Ibid). This view, according to Drewal‘s (1991) experience of
performance in Africa, does not articulate very well were ―formalisation and
improvisation are part and parcel of a single performative process, not two discrete
processes occurring sequentially one after another‖ (Ibid). Therefore when
improvisation in performance is rhetorical play based upon formality itself, then the
sequential (Western) model again renders temporality as a spatial passage (Ibid). Thus
Drewal (1991) argues that because improvisation is generated in the moment of
production that therefore form is always in process and is sensitive to the politics of
the moment (Ibid).

―Broadly defined, improvisation is repetition with revision‖ ([Gates 1988: 63-64] cited
in Ibid). By improvisation I mean more specifically moment-to-moment manoeuvring
based on acquired in body techniques to achieve a particular effect and/or style of
performance (Ibid). In improvisation, each move is contingent on a previous move and
in some measure influences the one that follows (Ibid). Improvisation requires a
mastery of action and in-body codes (or behaviour to be re-behaved), together with the
skill to intervene in them and transform them (Ibid). Each performance, each time is
generated anew. Periodically repeated, unscripted performance – including most ritual,
music and dance in Africa – is improvisational. This kind of mastery distinguishes
from the merely competent one.

Just as each improvisation has a recognisable identity stylistically, it also has an

element of newness. The interelatedness of the drummers and the dancers establishes a
situation whereby individual performers can either support, reinforce or impede, or
even subvert other performers and thus commandeer an entire performance.

Since what performers do reflects their assessments of the moment, it would be naive
and reductionistic to think of their performances as a pre-formulated enactment or of
some authoritative past – or even as the reproduction of societies norms and
conventions (Ibid). Performance is not a rigid structure that performances adhere to
mindlessly out of some deep-seated desire for collective repetition in support of some
dominant social order (Ibid). If that were true then perhaps culture itself should itself
be defined as hegemonic (Ibid). As Drewal says:
 ―Whenever improvisation is a strategy, it places performance
squarely in the domain of play. It is indeed the improvising, that
engages people, drawing them into public action, constructing
their relationships, thereby generating multiple and simultaneous
discourses always surging between harmony and /disharmony,
order/disorder, integration/opposition, and so on‖(Ibid).

Ethnography of The Courtship Dance

12. Introduction to 'The Field'

Prelude to the Dance

I am attracted by the drumming; it floats up the hill on the hot summer air, drawing me
away from the throng of noisy and inquisitive scholars who dart to and fro around me.
The relentless driving beat of the Xhosa drum was metering out a lively but incessant
―Doku Doku…‖ The Xhosa drum is a double sided cow hide drum played with two
sturdy sticks. The Igqira (the Xhosa hraler/diviners) dance to this beat.

I had been ambling around the Rhodes University grounds looking for something to
see. It was vacation time for this usually busy little university campus which bustles
with colourful and disparate students from across the South Africa …the world.
Normally these are quiet times here; but now the annual Grahamstown Science
Festival is on.
Last year I had another of my ‗famous‘ near misses, I missed, only just missed,
hearing Jane Goodall‘s lecture and was still smarting at the lost opportunity which
presented itself on my doorstep. So this year I decided I would trundle into town to
find some intellectual stimulation. This annual near miss with famous speakers has
become a bit of a habit - maybe there was some or other famous scientist, I had
thought, that would make up for the ‗Jane Goodall fiasco‘ the previous year.

Having perused the thin catalogue of speakers I started to think instead, as I wondered
out of the administration building, rather of midday swims in dams with dark, cool
water and lazy afternoons under leafy groves - they have their charms too. This was
when I heard the drumming ―Doku, Doku…‖

I stroll down the immaculately paved red brick walkway toward the drumming, down,
away from the ostentatious new administration building, named quite
uncharacteristically, compared to the other buildings on the campus, ‗Eden Grove.‘
Most of the campus buildings seem to be named after some long deceased
administrator, commercial sponsor or else, less controversially, simply by its function
– the Law faculty, for example.

Eden Grove is a new building, built after South Africa‘s new dispensation in 1994,
which makes more allusions to being ‗modern‘ than anything else. With some jaunty
looking roofing additions, curved inner walls and plenty of glass, it is a little
reminiscent of the 1820 (British) Settlers Monument which sits solidly but
uncomfortably on the hill above the campus and the town. Eden Grove, for all its
pretension looks rather more like a big functional block of a building with a bit more
glass and some ‗mod-cons‘ thrown in for good measure. Compared to most of the
other Victorian and Georgian like buildings on the rest of the main campus, it is, well
at most, ‗modernish.‘

Down I go, strolling, being drawn by the drumming, away from the throng of wild
school children given the day off to clutter up the Eden Grove foyers and the local
museums with their gossiping and frolicking. Drawn, still by the drumming, I amble
down past Salisbury House, a male student‘s residence, and St Peter‘s building, which
houses the Goldfields centre for English; The institute for the study of English in
Africa; The Dictionary Unit for South African English; and The Rhodes University
Mathematics Education Project.

On the side large of this long red brick building with small windows and a big wooden
entrance doors with leaded windows, is a SOS button. On a large yellow and black
chevron board is a panic button. It‘s for girls to press and call the campus security unit
if they get into trouble - if they feel in any danger. It has a red light and a siren - it is
marked in three languages. The sign says: ―Help Nceda…Panic Alarm.‖ It has
instructions in English, then Afrikaans and finally in Xhosa. It is meant to be used, I
suppose, at night when the darkness brings with it the unknown, and the dangers that
lurk there. We all know what it is for – it‘s for women, for women to protect
themselves against men, some men. These ‗panic buttons‘ were installed across the
campus after a vociferous student outcry when a young student was brutally gang
raped one night after the Tri-Varsity Sports day celebrations the previous year. This
wasn‘t the first time this had happened here on campus.

As I amble on in the hot summer heat, toward the hope of some green leafy coolness
or another, a Jimnagine (a big grey floppy looking 'hawk like eagle' with a sharp
yellow talons, a raptors beak and penchant for stealing chicks from nests) slowly
glides and flaps, in its exaggerated fashion, over me towards another of the large and
exotic Monkey Puzzle trees which grace the Botanical gardens above me.

Down, down I go past the little Photographic studio where my brother used to have to
collect Nicky, his 'varsity girlfriend‘, at three in the morning. She would 'burn the
midnight oil' developing art photos to hand in to her art teacher, 'Obie'. I had first seen
Obie when I was an innocent page boy at my eldest cousins wedding. There he
showed a rather unique way of getting over his speech impediment while delivering
the best man's speech at the farm wedding. This involved getting 'well oiled', singing
the speech and then streaking around the marquee – the seventies? In 1994 Nicky
wouldn't walk home, fearing for her safety – not from Obie, who was probably
sleeping off a few 'dops' but from 'them,' the mysterious Other who was said to lurk in
the jacaranda lined streets at the dead of night. Thinking back, maybe it was safer than
it is now, but no self respecting boyfriend would let his sweetheart walk home alone at
night, not even in this quaint little Eastern Cape town.

On I go, wading through the familiar sights and distant memories, over the little bridge
that traverses the trickle that can't quite make up its mind if it is a storm drain or
stream. Towards the Rhodes Chapel, which I approach from the side, and out onto a
lovely, lush lawn, greening itself succulently under a pale blue African sky. This is
one of the most beautiful spots on this pretty little campus. It is flanked by the old
Divinities building, the Music department, the Law department and Cantebury house
which is a residence for girls - women. On the far side of this invitingly flat lawn,
dotted sporadically with Jacarandas, Oaks and Monkey Puzzle trees, I see a small
crowd gathered. And the source of the drumming - ―Doku, Doku…‖
The Natives are Restless
Today the drumming has attracted a small but enthusiastic audience. Some of them are
clapping and gesticulating their approval. It‘s a curious mix, in a curious place. It‘s a
microcosm of this strangely beautiful place. A place which, when I first arrived here
from KwaZulu Natal, seemed to be a quaint English village but for the wide streets
which once carried scores of twelve span Ox wagons and with more churches than
people it seemed.

I arrived at night, that first time, back in 1991, with my varsity buddy, 'Butto' (still the
only person I know who made up his own nickname), from Maritzburg Varsity. We
had I hitched hiked through a coup de gras in Umtata (the capital of the then
Bantustan called the Transkei), caught a 'black' cab in King Williams Town (which is
also strangely littered with churches), listened to Clarence Carter's legendary ―Live in
Johannesburg‖ album on a cassette tape in the warm furry seats of an old Chevy with
white wall tyres. The taxi driver nursed the old Chevy through the passes and over the
ridges, depositing us safely on the pavement outside the 'Vic' Hotel on New Street,
which is lined with diminutive Oak trees and quant English Settler cottages.

It was only the next afternoon that I realised that Grahamstown was not like most
other South African towns. In most South African towns the (black) 'township' is not
seen or heard. In Grahamstown, however, this was not the case. Although nowadays
most of the township is invisible, back then the township was smaller. It has grown
rapidly since then, sprawling over the plateau behind Makana‘s Kop, a rocky hillock,
sprouting tall Scotch Pines, which looks down on (white) Grahamstown. Makana‘s
Kop is named after the famous Xhosa leader who attacked Grahamstown with ten
thousand Xhosa warriors in the 1800s. The growth of the ‗township or ‗location‘
occurred after the draconian Apartheid pass laws were rescinded and poor farm
labourers moved to town seeking education, work and a better life. More recently with
the surge in international tourism this trend has intensified as the game farm industry
boomed. This has caste many rural people off the (farmers) land.

Earlier this year my parent‘s maid (domestic worker) invited me to a 48 hour

Apostolic Church choir vigil in Easter (I wasn‘t there for 48 hrs though!) where the
children crowded around me in the hall as I tried to sit, trying to not draw attention to
myself, stroked my arms because they ‗were so hairy,‘ some pretty young girls 'hit on
me.' Later on I found out that this was ‗because church is a good place to meet men,‘
and a ‗young mover and shaker‘ tried to entice me into business deals. People who
within the tree lined suburbs of Grahamstown seem demure and listless can become
electrifyingly invigorated in a ‗township‘ church gathering. South Africa is a crazy
place, ,so many people here wear many hats…here ethnicity and culture is somatised
into the very geography and so many people structure their day to day working
categories in racialistic terminology.

So there I stood, drenched in the past which had manifested itself for me in the present
– the church, the sweeping lawns, the English buildings. And the Science festival
which would inspire the youth, male and female, black and white alike, to become
rational technophiliacs, supremely employables. These scientists are touted from on
high, the government, the education authorities etc. to be lucky ones, the ones who
would drag this dry and divided country into a future, a future promising jobs… and
an escape from the ravages of poverty, a future which for all intents and purposes is
dangled like a carrot, tantalisingly out of reach for all but a very few – mostly for those
who have been previously advantaged.

There I stood among students, scholars, local 'whites' and local 'blacks' (Xhosas),
tourists from near and far. There I stood, a researcher looking for a project and before
me was a dance, a drum beat, children and their teacher driving the drum beat on
tirelessly while the dancers invigorated the audience with their sublime antics.

“You Can Call Me Anytime, Day or Night”

I found the dance with my ears, a butterfly catcher chasing the wind. Now there, I
could find it with my eyes too. The children ranged from about six to twelve. Their
outfits they were wearing were made of a sturdy material, the boys in shorts and the
girls in wrap around short skirts with bikini like bras. The outfits were orange with
black trim, some of the older girls were unselfconsciously but visibly outgrowing their
bikini tops and some of the younger ones were sprouting their young breasts.

I had arrived close to the end of an hour‘s performance. The children were hot and
sweating but not deterred by the heat. The final dance was the courtship dance. None
of the dances were announced. The boys lined up nearest me and the girls lined up on
the other side. One by one they paired of consecutively to do an individualised and
highly elaborate courtship dance.

After the dance I approached the dance teacher and drummer who introduced herself
as Thandeka Bhudaza in Xhosa. I greeted her back in my broken Xhosa and soon
moved onto English. She said she would love to talk to me about her children and that
I should call her any time day or night.

Description of the Dance

Dressed in their orange dance uniforms, fashioned out of calico like material. There
are six young lined up in front of six young boys who stand behind them. The dance is
not introduced to the audience. Thandeka simple meters out two powerful drum beats
on her double sided cow hide Xhosa drum which is made out of an old 50 gallon metal
drum. Thandeka stands to the right of the Group and controls the dance from there
through her drumming and gestures.

A young girl dance on the far right breaks the line and strides out in front of the rest of
the Mafikzolo Dance Group who stand with their arms stretched out in front of
themselves, their hands clasped together with interlocking fingers.

The young girl sings in Xhosa while doing an exaggerated prowl like walk and
gesticulating with her hands by pointing at her eyes and the audience (in other words
acting out what she is saying):
―Sibabonile la bafana besiza nendaba endlini”
“Sibabonile la bafana besiza nendaba endlini”
This means in English that ―We have seen the young men who have brought this
'news' into the house.‖
As she re-enters the line the whole group starts singing
―Hayayayah” [all]
―Eyo‖ [the girl on the far right]
―hayayayah‖ [all]
“Eyo‖ [the girl on the far right]
―hayayyaya” [all]
“Iyelele” [the girl on the far right]
three times while still standing in formatin. On the fourth time the Eyo is sung loudly
by one of the boys which signals that it is time to start dancing. Thandeka starts
beating the drum ―Dukduk - dukduk‖ while they all sing ―Hayayayah” and she pauses
during the ―Eyo‖ and ―Iyelele‖ (which is now sung by one of the boys).
As this happens the whole group starts dancing. They clap their hands to the beat of
the drum whilst kicking their right leg high into the air, first to the front then the right,
continuing in an anti-clockwise direction until they again kick out to the front. The
girls use an exaggerated and very high kick while the boys lift their right leg, bending
it at the knee in less extravagant fashion. This kick is performed whilst the beat pauses
and the lone boy singer sings ―Eyo!‖ In between this when everyone is singing
―Hayayayah” and clapping in unison with the four drum beats, they all stamp their
feet with exaggerated hip and shoulder movement (their hips swaying from side to
side while their shoulders rotate up and down). During these four movements,
coordinated with the beat, they all rotate 90 degrees into position for the next leg kick.

After having rotated through the full 360 degrees and having completed a final leg
kick towards the front of the stage they jump up in unison and fall into a low crouch
from which they rise up, their right arm extended and pointing, shouting ―Heey!‖

They pause in this position while Thandeka performs a slow drum roll and then
ceases.

At this point a boy on the back right-hand corner of the stage starts singing and moves
through the immobile dancers, their right arms raised, to the front of the stage where
the girls are lineup. He sings
Madoda Ndaza ndalhlekelwa intombi
Please men I have lost my girl (the right girl).

He walks through the girls, bumping them to make sure that they are firm and thereby
that they are virgins. This means that they are good girls and that their parents are
looking after them. This is because in Xhosa custom, according to Thandeka a sign of
virginity is that the girl has a taught and firm body and it must not be soft and flabby.
He looks up their skirts too for the same reason

Then the boy returns to his position and they all start singing
Ndiboniseni netombi yam, ndalahleka ulwa madoda
Please help me find my girl or I have lost the right girl,
Please help me look for her

Saza sathula tina bengasiqondi

eyoyo ma
Kuba Kunzima
We kept quite because the boys don't understand because the girls situation in the
home is difficult (because the parents are watching them).

[Boys]
A yo yo yo
Please come or make away with us [but the parents mustn't know].
[the girls look outside of the house].
[arms looking everywhere: looking with the arms]
[they go down: hiding from the parents so that the parents cannot find them when they
are together].
eyoyo
boys are happy and the girls are hiding

Thandeka starts up the drum playing the incessant ―Doku Doku‖ that the igqira dance
to as the dancers hold their arms up, elbows bent so that their fingers almost touch
under their chins. They stamp their feet in time with the drum, bringing their elbow
and shoulder down with the stamping foot in time with the drumming. In doing so they
rotate 90 degrees all the time singing. After stamping both feet they crouch down with
their arms thrust forward and raise themselves up while extending their arms like a
bull thrusting it horns into the air.

After completing the full 360 degree rotation the dancers in the front shuffle to the left
stamping only one leg now and continuing with the crouching maneuver which
incorporates the full arm thrust towards the front of them. They repeat the move by
moving to their right and then end by dropping to their haunches in unison as the
drumming ceases.

Thandeka then walks across the stage and starts singing. She sits on the far edge of the
stage and continues singing while the children join in and start clapping.

Siza mbongamgani
how are we going to praise the ancestors and the parents

Sambonmagani oyingonyama
we will thank them obeying the ancestors and parents
because they are being strong like a lions by have these traditions

The boys sing

Eyoyo
meaning that they are happy that they have found the proper girls
Thandkeka says that this is part of the lesson that they should respect their ancestors
and their parents for being so strict. This is because they are being taught a very good
lesson.

They continue to sing and start moving and dancing around the stage in a slow almost
sporadic fashion clapping along with Thandeka as she sings with them. Suddenly
Thandeka shouts
Aya!

The dances strike an individual pose and freeze. They start clicking a strong Xhosa
click (it ―q‖ click). The start stamping their feet out in front of themselves and move
back into formation. Thandeka starts up the drum for a bit while the girls stamp their
left foot and then their right foot before performing a pirouette of 360 degrees to face
the front again. Some of the boys do the pirouette while others stamp in time.

The drumming stops and they continue to stamp their feet while making space for the
finale of the courtship dance.

After the space has opened up in the front of the stage one boy and one girl approach
each other from either end of the stage. The girl dances extravagantly show herself and
her skills off. The boys look her up and down dancing to the beat. They do so for a
few seconds and then another couple enters the front of the stage.

Thandeka says that imaginatively this part of the dance is when the boys and girls are
alone, away from the protective eyes of their parents. The dance shows that they are
courting; showing themselves to be powerful but they do not touch or break the rules –
showing that they have learnt the lesson in that they respect their ancestors and their
parents. When they dance, as can be seen especially in the last dance they give each
other gifts to show their love for one another.

When I asked if the girl must display herself, Thandeka said no she must just dance in
way that she is sure of herself. The boy in turn will look her over head to toe to see if
she is strong and firm in their bodies. The boys also show that they are sure of
themselves and the arm movements often, she says, are linked to wealth in the form of
cattle. A man with cows has labola price. The last boy by giving her beads is showing
proof that he has cows and that he has found his love.

In this movement he reaches out and touches the girl‘s left hand side of her face,
moves his hand towards his chest as if to say that she is in his heart now. Thandeka
says that in her culture children are not supposed to kiss (at least not in front of other
people). Then he takes some white beads from his neck and gives them too her, all the
while smiling very sweetly.

The courtship gift is called umnyingo and is part of courtship – it implies that it is
good to have a love, to give gifts but there must be no sex. The symbolic importance
of the beads is that it is part of the traditional courtship ritual.
 Plate 2
Mafikizolo Dance Group members

13. Coexistance in South Africa ten years after Apartheid

A decade after its first democratic elections South Africa remains torn by unresolved
schisms born of the violent fantasies of "separate development":
(1) A pluralistic, multicultural administration governs alongside lower level state
functionaries forged in the old regime;
(2) inclusive democratic aspirations coexist with resurgent xenophobic chauvinism;
(3) neo-liberal fiscal programs;
(4) persistent economic crises, especially in terms of job losses for the poor;
(5) the HIV/AIDS pandemic; and
(6) deepening cultures of violence have all, if anything, exacerbated the staggering
disparities between the nation's non-white impoverished majority and the
wealthy elite (which now includes a small black cohort.)
(7) In this turbulent context, elite and popular institutions struggle over workable
definitions of art, craft, culture, and history.

Mark Auslander (2003), in a fashion reminiscent of by James Clifford, strolled

through Cape Town's Rose Art Museum in 2003 and rendered a riveting mosaic of
some of the contemporary issues in South Africa culture. The art exhibition was called
―Co-existence‖ and I would like to discuss it here briefly.

Auslander (2003) points to an underlying conundrum which is exposed by the

exhibition, that is, just what or who is "coexisting" in contemporary South Africa.
This, he says, was signalled by two large works visible from the museum's front
exterior.

On the right, Thembinkosi Goniwe's untitled twin blown-up portraits, from the
Returning the Gaze (2000) Cape Town billboard project, dominate the glass-enclosed
foyer. Here a white man and a black man (the artist himself), each wearing a "flesh"-
coloured band-aid on the left cheek, mirror one another. Auslander (2003) interprets
this as a depiction of ―the multiracial body politic [which] clearly bears past scars, but
the identical ruptures have different implications according to classifications of race
and historic privilege‖ (Ibid).
 Plate 3
Thembinkosi Goniwe's untitled from Returning the Gaze (2000)

Wandering deeper into the museum Auslander (2003) finds three significant pieces
within the third and final gallery depicting ―rituals of transition, embedded [in an]
unsteady tension between embodied landscapes and cartographic bodies‖ (Ibid). The
first one, Larva Suit (2001) is an elaborate cocoonlike wire sculpture by Walter
Oltmann, and is evidently modelled on the armour worn by early Portuguese explorers
on the Cape as well as the masquerade costumes of West and Central African secret
societies. The suit's former occupant has metamorphosed and flown off, leaving
behind an empty shell, perhaps waiting, like so much of South Africa's land, to be
repossessed and reoccupied by the displaced and the dispossessed.
 Plate 4
Larva Suit (2001) by Walter Oltmann

To the left of Larva Suit hangs Sandile Zulu's stunning wall-length installation,
Frontline Three with Centurion Model (1997). Twenty elegant assemblages of burned
grasses flank three thin cylinders, in a manner that evokes the annual burning of the
highveldt fields—a process that heralds rain, germination, and collective regeneration.
The burnished shapes seem to recall not only the land itself but also the principal
artifacts of rural Nguni life—shields and spears, throwing clubs and diviners'
firesticks, thatched roofs and snuff boxes, mortars and pestles. Auslander (2003) found
himself reminded of the practice in some Nguni-speaking societies of presenting a
newborn boy with a small carved throwing stick and a newborn girl with a pounding
stick. This performative act constitutes primal gender differentiation by imposing a
double task structure upon the landscape, assigning males to herd cattle across the
fields and females to process the land's produce within enclosed domestic space. In
this work, has the artist in effect brought together the gendered poles of the Nguni
social universe, delicately reconciling the normally opposed domains of pastoralism
and agriculture, bush and home, the living and the shades, male and female?

Plate 5
Sandile Zulu's Frontline Three with Centurion Model (1997)
Larva Suit and Frontline Three are grouped around Samson Mudzunga's Drum (1996),
potentially the most controversial object in Coexistence. Using similar transformations
of the sacred drums deployed in the Venda female initiation rite, Mudzunga has staged
elaborate innovative public spectacles, primarily for paying white audiences, in which
he climbs into the drum and then re-emerges, ostensibly "reborn." The performance
pieces are clever and skilful, and the objects are carved with grace and verve. Yet they
might be read as violent symbolic penetrations of normally sacrosanct female spaces
of social reproduction, assaults that are deeply troubling given the horrific recent
history of young male homicidal violence against accused female "witches" in
Vendaland - and given the fact that such attacks are often directly linked to young
male anxiety over senior women's perceived control over processes of biological and
social reproduction.

Plate 6
Samson Mudzunga's Drum (1996)
Since 1994, South Africa has occupied pride of place in the global cultural
imagination as a privileged celebratory site of postcolonial liberation and creativity -
in which much of humanity has vicariously co-participated. Through its subtle and
copious use of doubled imagery and transposed landscape-body figures, the
Coexistence exhibition suggests an equally important function for South African
cultural production: Taken together, these works hold up a complex mirror to
communities the world over, that may yet stimulate sustained local reflections upon
the persistent conundrums of our era—the enduring "coexistence" of wealth and
poverty, centres and margins, power and disenfranchisement, ritual and violence.

14. Spirit of Uhadi

Situating my research within the broader cultural currents of South Africa, but this
time narrowing in on Mrs Budza I wish also to discuss these here through the recent
phenomenonal success of Thandiswa Mazwai‘s album Zabalaza. This is because
Thandiswa Mazwai seems to herald a new or rather bourgeoning consciousness among
the youth of South Africa for appreciating ‗their own‘ cultural heritage. This is
particularly relevant to the research at hand because Mrs Budaza is herself a fan of
Thandiswa Mazwai's and I have bought and discussed Thandiswa Mazwai's music in
terms of the modern traditional as well as the rural urban dichotomies introduced
above.
 Plate 7
Thandiswa Mazwai

The picture of Ms Mazwai above - winner of South Africa‘s Best Female Artist and
Best African Contemporary Album (Zabalza) at the SA Music Awards 2005, shows
her in Xhosa traditional attire. Ms Mazwai‘s lyrics on Zabalza encourage young South
Africans to search for their roots through their ‗culture‘.Thandiswa Mazwai, formerly
of the hugely successful Bongo Muffin pioneer Kwaito band, prior to the release of
her award winning album Zabalza journeyed into the depths of rural Transkei to meet
and learn from the custodian of traditional Xhosa music, Madosini.

Zabalza means to dance as an act of protest. It was a term used during the political
struggle against Apartheid. The use of this term along with the lyrics, content and
preparation which Thandiswa Mazwai undertook for her award winning album
suggests a new meaning for this term. My interpretation is that it means ―go back to
your roots, you are African, search your culture and you will find sound morals and
strength to believe in who you are.‖

In my own, preliminary, research Westernisation, Urbanisation, Modernisation in

South Africa seem to be blamed by many of the older generation for a breakdown in
the moral fibre of the youth in South Africa. Thandiswa Mazwai seems to bridging
this gap and pointing to a broader recognition of African culture - this time though
from the side of the youth and not the elders. She is quickly becoming the Queen of
South African music and seems to be leading youth culture toward a revival of African
cultural heritage as can be seen in the preparation for her latest album where she

―embarked on a pilgrimage to her mothers home village in the Transkei, moving on to spend a
fortnight in Mkhankato, Madosini‘s village in the heart of rural Transkei. Here she was
exposed to the original sounds of Xhosa traditional melodies, and was introduced to the Uhadi,
a traditional Xhosa one-string harp. Over the two weeks, Madosini imparted cultural wisdoms,
explaining the philosophies inherent in the creation of Xhosa music – respect for others and
self, recognizing the spiritual realm as the true source of the music, and the key role of nature
in the creation of music‖ (www.music.org).

The video starts of in the melting pot of cultures that is Johannesburg and is a self
conscious search for her roots through seeking out her birthplace, Mqanduli.
Thandiswa's parents where rural people who were displaced to Johannesburg by the
struggle. She has a yearning to discover the original Xhosa lifestyle and believes that
the young people are going to be part of a cultural revolution in which they will go
back to their roots to discover who they are. They are not Puff Daddy she says, which
could be a glance at the hip hop inspired culture that swept across South Africa after
the '94 elections. Her album Zabalza is meant to be a traditional Xhosa album
combined with a world album.
Thandiswa says that she has no information of what it means to be a Xhosa and is
afraid that her African experience is a romanticised one.

Plate 8
Madosini

Madosini says that she is a woman of the past, as such she was taught about respect
and morals. She goes on to say that whenever she plays music she has sweet dreams. It
is her ancestors who have brought this music to her and music is a spiritual expression.
She sees modern urban culture as being disconnected from their original religion,
when she parts she gives the same handshake as she did when I saw her at Rhodes
University in Grahamstown.

15. A Life History:

Thandeka Budaza (1959-)
As I mentioned in the prelude ot the dance I met Thandeka during the Sci-Fest where
her Xhosa children‘s dance group performed on a hot day on the Rhodes University
Chapel lawns. I had already been to East London where I had been to a rural school
and homestead in Mooi Plaas, East London. I was looking for contacts for this Xhosa
children‘s dance project. When I saw the Mafikizolo courtship dance I saw the ideal
opportunity to focus this project upon the issue of virginity testing which I had been
made aware of by Mama Tofu (This can be seen in beginning of the video).

After meeting Thandeka I found out that she had worked with Dr Dianne Thram as a
field work consultant in her capacity as an igqira initaite. Dr Thram is my
ethnomusicology lecturer and supervisior for this project.

Thandeka‘s is a school teacher but her real passion is Xhosa culture and the
petrformance of trsaditional Xhosa dance. I had been told by Dr Thram that Thandeka
had undergone a miraculous recovery (circa 2001) from meningitis as part of process
of becoming an igqira (Xhosa healer diviner).

Thandeka, as an igqira, is very proud of her traditional background and has a very
strong belief in the power of her ancestors, she says – they saved her life when she had
meningitis. In recounting her miraculous recovery from meningitis she explained how
when she was hospitalised in Port Elizabeth that her two daughters thought she was
going to die. However one night she had a powerful dream. Her ancestors came to her
and told her that she was not sick. She described the experience:

―I was sleeping ..[in the hospital,] my grandmother came to me

and said: ―You are not sick, you don‘t have Meningitis, go and
do your amagqira thing, your isangoma thing, don‘t eat those
tablets and all those kinds of things because you are going to
die, and please go and look for a certain animal, ‗don‘t eat the
 meat just drink the soup of it, as it comes from the [ancestors,
drink it]….while it is hot, and you will be cured.‖

She describes her cure as ―very strange and amazing…[and now she doesn‘t] even
need tablets in [her] house.‖ She said that at the time when she stopped taking the
medication and left the hospital that her daughters thought she had gone mad. After
the her ancestors told her to stop taking the 'western medicine' and leave the hospital
she experienced an even greater respect for the ancestors and found the courage to
progress with the difficulties associated with training to become a fully initiated
igqira.

Thandeka‘s parents are both Xhosa people, however her paternal grandmother was
from Inkandla in Pietermaritzburg. She therefore does incorporate some of the Zulu
ancestral dances into her repetoir to honour these ancestors but however self-
consciously remains a ‗proper‘ Xhosa (because both of her parents were Xhosa).

Thandeka seems to have been raised largely by her maternal grandmother or at least
attributes much of her understanding of traditional Xhosa culture to her. During her
childhood she was ―very poor.‖ After leaving school in 1978 she entered a nurses
training college but had to leave because she became pregnant. She was later married
and after the birth of her second daughter she wanted to go back nursing. Her husband
was however not happy with her being away for night shifts. Thandeka explains this
by stating that in those days she was ―so beautiful‖ and so her husband wanted her
home. She says she thought of becoming an Advocate and her husband suggested she
should be a social worker. She and her husband settled on a primary school teacher.

Tragedy struck the Budaza when Mr Budaza died soon after a stomach cancer
operation. Thandeka has been a widow since before 1996 and in July this year she
completed a final ceremony, which involved slaughtering a cow, in consideration of
her late husband.

16. The Importance of Dance for Thandeka

In my extensive interviews with Thandeka one of the major themes which came out
was that the enjoyment of the experience of the dance was a key element for her. She
associates books and writing as part of 'western culture' and in her experience of being
a teacher, they are boring. To present a cultural dance which to a very large extent is to
learn a custom, is for Thandeka, and should be fun.

She says that the parents of the childern in the Mafikizolo dance group greatly enjoy
their children dancing and especially learning the traditional customs. Most these
parents are have become 'urbanised' fairly recently she says and therefore they
appreciate the value of 'the old customs' far more than some of the Xhosa people who
have been 'urbanised' for generations.

The group practices up to four days per week when they have a performance planned
on a weekend. On the occasion that I saw the group there were six boys and six girls
however Thandeka like to include all the children who want to participate. Therefore
trips or excursions include only those who have attended practice most of the
rehearsals.

17. Clan Identity

The learning of one's clan name is very important for Thandeka because of the
particular Xhosa exogamous practice of not marrying within the clan (incest taboo).
It is for her a disgrace not know your clan name if you are Xhosa because this can
result in the practice of incest (in terms of Xhosa tradition).

She therefore says that she teaches her dancers to know their clan name and
furthermore to dance not for themselves but for their ancestors. In this way the
knowing of one's clan name is a prerequisite to knowing one's ancestors. Therefore
Thandeka says: ―When you are on stage your ancestors change you, and people can
see when you are imitating... you are not supposed to do something that is not you.‖

This last statement clearly shows that in her estimation, for a Xhosa person, 'who they
are' in directly linked to the clan and therefore to the ancestors and there it is for this
reason that dancing for your clan and your ancestors is what is meant by being one's
self on stage.

This is part of the reason why Thandeka insists on using the traditional drum and
focuses upon inculcating traditional customs in her dance choreography. She made this
point very clear when she criticized another local Grahamstown performance and
dance group. She took umbrage with the style of performance of the Thathawena
Dance Group.

Talking of the second group, Thandeka said, ―They were beating a conga. That man is
imitating what I am doing. That is not the same, it cannot be the same – it‘s totally
different because – it‘s not bad – do you get my point.‖ Upon further questioning it
became evident that the gentleman responsible for the dance group was born and bred
in Grahamstown. He had attended University at Fort Hare (about 120 kilometres from
Grahamstown) and he had done courses in drama there. Thandeka clearly didn't like
the style of presentation. This was because there was far too much dialogue in the
peformanc and the children didn't tell the story through the dance. It was therefore far
more like a play in the western sense.

Furthermore it seemed to me to be based upon some form of social commentary of

modernity rather than an invocation of traditional Xhosa practices. That commentary
focused upon the social ills in township life. The protagonist in the play, the lead actor
is fathered by a rapist and her mother had died of AIDS. She says she was raped by
her uncle.

My interpretation of the message of the play is that it is not safe for children and that
child abusers should be castrated. The meta- text of the play is that children who are
abused should talk about it and then they will be free from the ills of child abuse and
be able to dance. The implicit framing of the ills in terms of the ―Bold and the
Beautiful‖ is I suppose meant as a side glance at the ills of modernization and
westernization. Therefore it is clear why Thandeka see this dance as totally different
to The Courtship Dance of the Mafikizolo dance group.

There are a number of reasons for this. To start with the songs and dialogue of play is
overtly English and the ills are said to come from a breakdown in the moral fibre of
the community. This can be seen in the rape, child abuse and ultimately murder. The
solution offered by the play is that there should be vigilante action taken against the
perpetrators (or perhaps they intend to change the constitution of the country).

In contradistinction to this the Courtship dance of the Mafikizolo Dance Group is

about social relationships between children. It is couched in gestures and songs that
are particular to the Xhosa culture. It is a lesson on how young boys and girls should
behave but most importantly it is a demonstration and not a lesson. As such it is at
once a practical demonstration and a construction of traditional values being
inculcated in the contemporary milieu.

For Thandeka, each and every dance has a meaning; it tells someone about a ceremony
or a certain custom. In the case of the Courtship Dance it could be said to be based
upon the intojane ritual where as can be seen in the video, Mama Tofu says that it is a
place where young boys and girls go to learn exactly what they can and can't do with
regards to sexual relations with the opposite sex.

For Thandeka one of the key elements of the dance is that according to Xhosa
performance tradition and custom people should be ―shown and not told‖. This
therefore highlights the problems she has with the staging of the other dance – that is it
tells people what to do instead of showing them. Thankdeka chastises this form of
dance as ―boring.‖

So in the Courtship dance the explosive thrust the girls do with their arms is supposed
to tell everyone how clean they are – meaning that they have not been touched by the
boys and are therefore virgins. Thandeka says: ―It is our own way of checking - it is a
way of looking at the little one – to make sure no-one is touching her, so that she is
protected until her parents get ilabola” (interview). She reiterated this by asserting
that: ―You can see, really, they are not afraid to do it because I have already taught
them the meaning of it. They will just shew! [meaning that they thrust their arms up
explosively] And that – don't touch me, but through the dance [as if to say] I am proud
– ya – don't come too close‖ (interview).

Of the other group she says:

 ―The other group is a little boring because they are telling you something.
They want to speak but according to our [Xhosa] culture, there were no
schools, no writing, we were doing everything through dance. So that is
why when you are choreographing a dance – the audience must learn out
of experiencing the dance what the meaning is – you mustn't tell a person
this dance means this and this and this, ...unless that particular person
come and asks you. But your action must tell [the audience wehat he
meaning is]. It is going to be a boring thing when you pause and say blah
blah blah, it must be interesting, you must be interesting, you must attract
people to your custom and show them your custom and tell them through
dance.

Thandeka often spoke about how traditionally, Xhosa people would communicate
through dance – that is through movement and actions, in some cases more than with
words. She said that ―in the old days people would talk to each other through dance.‖
She says that this can happen with her group today when they have been dancing
together for a long time, perhaps a year or so. She calls this particular form of
communication ―communication without words.‖

She explains that her group ―communicates on stage through dance and faces, without
words. They learn my face – if I say please put a smile on your face – I just look and
smile, while I am dancing I will keep my eyes on her while smiling.‖

Although Thandeka is a church goer, she says that it is really a Western thing and that
she really believes in the ancestors. She perceives her membership in the church, at
least when speaking to me, a relatively functional thing. She says that she has to be a
member of the church essentially for the purpose of building and maintaining a social
network (my terminology not hers). Therefore the church is there so that the children
don't suffer if she passes away and also because burial is very important in
contemporary Xhosa life – these very important functions would according to
Thandeka not be taken care of if one was not part of the church. To emphasise this
point she, on a separate occasions, reiterated this by telling a story about an occasion
when she had an argument with an overtly Christian teacher at her school who
criticised her for teaching the children about the ancestors instead of the Christian
God. Tahndeka responded by saying to this person that she had never spoken to God,
but she had spoken to her ancestors. Furthermore the ancestors were here (that is in the
life world of the Xhosa) according to Thandeka before the white man came. So she
sees Christianity as an essentially Western thing and therefore not really empowering
to Xhosa people like herself.

18. Sex Before Marriage

The Xhosa tradition stipulates that there should be no sex before marriage; this is a
strong feature of 'the message' of the dance. The dance teaches the boy to approach the
girl and the girl to 'push' him away. This was also evident in the cultural classes in
Xosa which I took as part of my Xhosa 1 language class at Rhodes University (2005).
The lecturer clearly stated that the lowest rank in Xhosa society (traditionally) is that
of the boy (inkhwenkwe). As an uninitiated man, the lecturer (Sisi Ntosh) said he is
regarded as a dog. That is they are foot loose and fancy free. Therefore it does not
really make sense to guard the chastity of the young boys because they are believed to
be very wild – that is in the traditional or imaginative sense – but not necessarily in
practice.

Traditional understanding of sexual relations is also very closely tied to the

understandings of the cattle kraal which is the symbolic home to the ancestors as well
as the cattle. The cattle are symbolic of wealth in rural Xhosa life because they are
very closely associated with dowry price (labola) which is paid to the father of the
bride by the bridegroom and his family. Young men traditionally had access to cattle
and therefore wives only through two sources. The first was through their fathers and
the second was through cattle raids on neighbouring clans or tribes.

Upon the advent of colonialism and capitalism there was a third avenue, which was
migrant labour and the cash economy. I am introducing these issues here because I
believe that it could be fairly closely associated with the sexual politics between the
young boys and girls as it is traditionally conceived. This is because in traditional life
the young boy was set the task of look after and herding the cattle belonging to his
father. If he was brave enough he would go out and raid cattle to get his own when the
time came. So symbolically he is imaginatively predisposed to search or seek out the
women and take them if he can. Although I do not intend this to be read too
reductionistically or crudely (perhaps it is somewhat like the pan-European myth of
the handsome prince who sets out to save the princess in distress) I do think that this
pastoral idiom does translate well when the courtship is overtly traditional in its
orientation. For example Clegg (2004) at the Ethnomusicology Conference at the
International Library for African Music (I.L.A.M.) spoke of the Zulu pastoral and
agricultural idioms as being directly incorporated into Zulu dance aesthetics too.

This is interesting here because I did question Thandeka about this notion of the
pastoral idiom of the women being represented as, and indeed reperesenting
themselves imaginatively, as 'cattle' (in the best possible way of course). She
confirmed this and said that indeed many of the arm movements of the dancers are
indeed symbolic of the cattle‘s' horns. Also there is a strong linkage between the
domestic sphere of women and the cattle in the Kraal. The man who is abusive of
women is also symbolically associated with breaking into the cattle kraal to steal the
cattle (imaginatively women). The women however are not seen as passive objects as
they can figuratively 'gouge any potential interloper'. Furthermore as they are central
to the existence of the homestead and associated with wealth (cattle) they should
according to traditional values be constantly watched over (as the cattle are watched
over by the young boys and men in the rural economy).

The metaphor of course does not stop there because the virtue of the girl is tied to the
virtue of the father and the ancestors. Women represent wealth and their protection is
integral to the traditional symbolic economy. I for example have attended shebeens in
Joza (the township) and have heard gentlemen discussing their daughter or relations
sexual virtue very animatedly. In the video Mama Tofu spells out the traditional line
when she says that any infringement upon the girls‘ virtue will be compensated by
livestock and further more the boy is also disgraced.

In modern times HIV/AIDS along with teenage pregnancy are also very important
reason for encouraging these traditional customs because sexual abstinence is
promoted as a means to avoid HIV/AIDS.

As an igqira Thandeka claims to be able to tell by certain bodily signs that a child has
been practicing in pre-marital sexual relations.

Thandeka speaks of way in which she can see if one of her dancers is being abused or
if they are having under-age or premarital sexual relations. She essentially only spoke
of checking if the girls were virgins. This is essentially premised upon firmness.
Thandeka spoke of when she was a girl, saying that her virtue was very closely
guarded by her grandparents. She told me that she would have to squat down before
them every single night and they would visually inspect her pubic area for any signs
that she had not only had penetrative sex but any kind of sexual interaction.

She says that in the old days parents guarded the girls of the family very closely. The
visual signs seem to structurally associate firmness with virginity and flabbiness or
softness with sexually promiscuous behaviour. I suppose this is comparable to much
of the slang and swear words associated with sexual promiscuity in the English
language. I am thinking of words like ―slapper‖ or ―loose women‖; although these
more accurately apply to their behaviour and not really their appearance.

Although Thandeka says that checking for virginity through penetration is a Zulu
custom, and to her knowledge penetration was banned by the law and so she would
not consider practicing it for fear of criminal charges. Instead she claims to be able to
see by looking at the breasts and the back of the legs of the girl if she is a virgin or not.
Thandeka's belief about penetration was clearly shown, as can be seen in the
introduction of the video where Mama Tofu clearly discusses penetrative virginity
testing, not to be universal amongst the Xhosa.

Thandeka says that when the children know who they are, that is they know their clan
name and understand about the ancestors, then they will be too proud of their bodies to
meddle with premarital sex. It is therefore learning about traditional Xhosa customs
that they can be free to love one another, having a boyfriend or girlfriend is very
strongly encouraged. However for children there are restrictions, they should love one
another and give each other gifts but they should not have sex because aside from
breaking with tradion, they would be at risk in terms of teenage pregnancy and
sexually transmitted diseases, of which HIV/AIDS is of the most serious concern.
So the bridging aphorism of the Mafikizolo Dance Group is Siya embo (We are going
home). This is a forthright statement of their intention to hold onto their traditional
customs and to live in the life world which is associated with the ancestors and the
clans – even in this increasingly globalised and western influenced world. Thandeka
says that ―before the white people came to this country...people were full of customs
and traditions ... it was 100% good.‖

19. Sharing of Gifts (the 'economy' of the dance)

Group cohesion and a sense of belong are an important feature of the dance group.
Part of the cultural practice of the group is to ―share everything.‖ Payments are
refashioned in this cultural practice to be as for a payment not for the self, but rather as
payment to and for the ancestors; because as she says ―everything is coming from the
ancestors.‖

20. Promoting Traditional Practices

Much of the Xhosa practices and customs are self-consciously contrasted with 'the
west'. For instance Thandeka says that there was no sickness in the old days [before
the encroachment of western traditions]. The oft stated pronouncement of ―you must
respect your culture‖ (presumably because it is yours) is often stated as a matter of
fact. Thandeka's recovery from meningitis through listening to her ancestors and
becoming an igqira is a central tenet of her call to go back to traditional ways. This
includes her practice of never taking 'western medicine.'
 21. Thandeka's Personal Ambitions
Thandeka is an ambitious person who does not particularly feel drawn to teaching –
she would rather be a full time dance teacher. This has lead to her not performing
without being paid. She however does share the meagre income that she has been able
to earn with the children and at this stage is interested in issues such as transportation
money, uniforms and not really income as such. She does however berate her financial
situation and is keen to supplement her income. Her attempts at getting sponsorship
for the group have all ended in failure so far. She is keen to tour with the group and
told me that they have toured overseas before (to Europe) but not with her because she
was ill at the time.

22. Core Teachings

According to Thandeka her core teachings are ―respect your culture, respect yourself
and love each other‖ - if these teachings are adhered to then ―no-one will be
powerless, everyone will be powerful.‖

When the children dance they must have their clan first in their mind. If they do then
they will be powerful. They must tell the ancestors that they are going to dance –
dancing is implicitly about communicating with their ancestors.

The children are also taught to trust, love, have and show affection (Thandeka has
nicknames for the children like ―chicken and pumpkin‖ which they love). In
incorporating ―mind, heart, body and soul‖ into the practice of the dance Thandeka
says that she can see when something wrong with one of ―her children‖ because as she
says: ―when there is a problem with one of them [the child] cannot dance‖ - she can
therefore tell something is wrong by looking at the body.

There are two primary kinds of ancestors; the people of the forest and the water spirits.
It is the forest spirits which Thandeka says ―give power to the dance.‖ She says that
―their power, their energy, their minds have a certain way of healing [which] is
different to [that of the 'west']‖. Another point of interest here is that Thandeka says
that when she or the children are dancing they have a combination of ―many people [in
themselves]‖ and that ―the ancestors are changing you while you are on the stage.‖
This being so she claims to be able to see when someone is imitating a dance instead
of embodying it. This seems to indicate that the dance is not an expression of an
intellectual and objectivist epistemology, as is held in the west, where knowldege is a
static 'thing' which can only be gained through separation form the subject. In this
sense the traditional dance escapes the Catresian dualism inherent in the construction
of knowledge because doing the dance is a constitution of the knowldege and not a
representation of an intellectual idea of it.

The background of the dance is then very important because the teachings of the
importance of clan identity are meant to undermine the experience Thandeka
associates with modernity and urbanisation, that is of being ―a floating human being.‖
She says she is telling people everything about what that has happened to black
children since they have lost their traditions. This she said when we spoke extensively
about Thandiswa Mazwai and her journey back toward tradition that the urban
experience of being a ―floating human being‖ is because ―they [i.e. Xhosa people]
don't know themselves, they don't even know their clan name, but if you ask them
about George Michael or Michael Jackson, Barry White...thats what [Thandiswa
Mazwai] is trying to say. She is just like me, she is full of joloza.‖ Joloza can be
glossed as the spirit of the ancestors.

The attributes the ill of modern life to the destruction of the traditional lifeworld with
its association to the shades. She said:

―To tell you the truth, blacks now have forgotten about their
ancestors – that is why so many bad things are happening –
during the oldendays, young girls were not treated badly –
because they were respecting the ancestors and the clan name –
their homes and their parents – but now they are being taken up
by the western culture – they don't even know themselves –
sometimes they sleep with their boyfriends, with the same clan –
which was not there before. That was called ―mbulo‖: incest.
[But t]hey don't know the western culture, they don't have a
background in it. I don't know why they are doing it.

It is evident that contrary to Thandiswa Mazwai who is wealthy and educated that
most of the parents of the children of the Mafikizolo Dance Group come from a poor
background and are mostly uneducated. Many of them have been brought up in the
rural areas and they are very they are very supportive of Thandeka's efforts in
inculcating traditional values. A direct correlation between Thandiswa Mazwai's
romantic quest for the shades and those espoused here in Grahamstown is not possible
however I do feel that they are both an expression of a reaction against domination.

This domination was originally in the against the Colonialist and Apartheid oppressive
regimes but has been rearticulated in the current milieu as a reaction against global
oppression of the North (Europe and America) over the South (the developing world).
It is couched in the currently fashionable idiom of indigenous knowledge – although it
is not necessarily a conscious representation of it. It is rather a construction derived
from the habitus in which the forces of domination are evident to the individuals in an
experiential lived fashion. Therefore it is from my vantage of analysis that it is a
bodily constitution of domination and not necessarily from the vantage of the subjects.

This is evident in that Thandeka asserts that when she dances on stage she says that it
is her ancestors who are dancing and that

―even the movement, the variants on the stage [are not

repeatable and she]... will be unable to repeat the dance, because
[she doesn't] know it [i.e. The dance]. My ancestors are dragging
me to do it – even when I smile it is different‖

She went on to say that, in her own words:

―I have hot a funny thing, if I am dancing on the stage...I can
dance for four hours without stopping because my ancestors are
pushing me, they are making me so energetic...In my immune I
don't feel tired. They give me power when I am on stage because
they want the audience to see what I have got.. they can give
you courage and health. When I am on stage I don't feel or think
about time, it‘s in me I don't even see time‖ [emphasis added].

The fact that she says she cannot even see time I believe points to one of the central
tenets of Western thought. That is that it privileges space over time. This can be seen
in the rise of science upon the instantiation of Enlightenment thinking in the west.
Here there was an overturning of the ontological grounds of being. That is opposed to
the earlier messianic realm where humans were part of the great chain of being;
humans became the centre of the order of being. This was premised upon the Cartesian
revolution where thought became understood as disembodied and knowledge therefore
became an objective thing. Contrary to this I see traditional Xhosa values as opposed
to this. This is because contrary to the linear time of modernity here time is cyclical.
This means that people are linked to their ancestors and to others and that therefore
relations are the ontological source of being in the world as opposed to the
disembodied ―ghost in the machine‖ which is a legacy of capitalist production and
scientific reductionist thinking.

I feel that in late modernity, with the emphasis on the power of the market and capital,
that labour has become increasingly dominated in the global economy as can be seen
by the global neo-liberal economic policies. In pre-enlightenment economies labour
led to the creation of wealth, now however it is increasingly capital which dominates.
In some ways I see this reconstruction of traditional values by inculcating them
through dance as a way to reconstitute a lifeworld which emphasises cyclical time and
shifts the order of being out of the scope of domination.

This is why, perhaps, Thandeka asserts that before the white man came that everything
was perfect.

Following this argument it is evident that the ontological grounding of the

performance in the idiom of being for the clan and the ancestors is an instantiation of
this lifeworld where time is cyclical and the self is reconstituted as being a non-central
locus of being (that is as opposed to the enlightenment tradition where innovation and
creativity is posited to arise form the genius or muse which is the spiritual essence of
the disembodied self.

In the video I have included a short segment in which the amaigqira dance at the
Albany Museum. I feel that this 'stamping dance' is a bodily medium for 'travelling in
time.' In this fashion the participants can imaginatively (from a western conception)
travel through time. This is based upon my own experiences of dancing when I am
able to experience a so called flow experience – that is when time ceases to be
experienced objectively.

Therefore Thandeka as being initiated into the igqira tradition is able to see if the
children are feeling it too. It is based upon her own experience of dancing and the
experience of time as not being an objective 'thing.' She says that she has the ability to
make her fellow dancers feel the same way as she does:

―I tell you with my eyes and my body – and my blood will go

straight to you without you knowing it, by looking at me you
will just catch it immediately, and absorb the heat from me.
My kids are like that, even if we are tired – when I say to them
lets go and dance, I will look at them and they will feel the
same

Thandeka says she has tried to teach teachers to teach the dance the way she does to
other teachers but says that they cannot get it, she doesn't know why but that you
shouldn't teach in the first place - you should rather be a dancer, love them, don't be
harsh or rude, however you must be strict and disciplined, they must know that you
love them and they must get that love. This points toward the intersubjective
experience of 'living in another lifeworld' where the ontological basis being is shifted
in terms of an experience of time and communication is intersubjectively embodied
rather than disembodied and objectified.

She reiterated this point when she insisted that one must remember that the children
have ancestors too. She said that the children often do the dance on their own way, this
is because their ancestors want them to do it that way. This is why, I feel, she does not
see herself as a conventional teacher. It is because the knowledge in the dance is built
up intersubjectively – it is the dancing of an attitude realised in an embodied fashion.
In highlighting the four things for the dance to go well: mind, heart, body and blood:
so the child must multi-dimensional and multi-focal construction of the dance she said
that to dance the children must be free, ―if they are free and comfortable they will do it
100%‖ but if they are chastised or criticised (in other words objectified) ―they won‘t
make it.‖ she went on to say:

―I don't say you are wrong – the children get discouraged [by
that]. I take my heart and give it to them. I change their hearts
to me...if you are one then you will feel it in its full force. So
its like that‖.

When they make a mistake she doesn't tell them stop but rather to do it in a confident
way so that no-one will know it‘s a mistake

When I asked her if she could teach white children she said that there is no difference
between a white child and a black child. If she is going to teach a white child she will
sleep and her ancestors will tell her what to do with that child, what kind of dance she
should teach. In a mixed group there must be a dance for each group, so that all can
have their ancestors accepted - then she said, there will be power. When she taught the
white child, she had a dream about a dance before she met him and the day she met
him she realised that this dance was meant for him. When Evan danced this dance she
said he was very powerful, more than the others.
The Courtship Dance
The dance shows, Thandeka said, that they know their background, they know the
meaning of the dance and why they have been doing it. It means they must love each
other but they must not have sex, they should respect each other.

Thandeka said that this was not about AIDS, it is about not having sex before
marriage, however it is important to have a boyfriend or girlfriend – they should love
each other, give each other gifts but no have sex. If you don't have a boyfriend or
girlfriend, she said, then they call you Ibhulu or istuman (derogatory terms).

She went on to say that sex is also dangerous and therefore when they link it to AIDS
they can see the dangers. In her days it was good to do this dance even before AIDS
because it was her culture. In those days they had the intonjane practice which taught
young girls how to behave with regard to sexual practices. Part of the old intojane
courtship ritual was that the youths would have to sleep in the forest together. Here the
girl was expected to push the boy away (―that pushy pushy thing‖).

The moral lesson of the dance is in part that children should be full of themselves as a
person, they should have confidence. Xhosa traditional dance as Thandeka knows it is
about showing yourself, how fit you are, how clean you are, how unique you are.

By looking at a person's ability you can tell if they are powerful. She reiterated that
opening your mouth you lose power, you should show strength through using your
body, being energetic - your body should say

―I am a virgin, you are not going to get me‖ and the dance must
be interesting and have meaning, you need to tell the people
 your custom through dance – even if the audience doesn't really
understand, the will feel it.

Thandeka has been teaching Xhosa dance to ‗her children‘ since 1996 and so is not
part of a fashionable return to Xhosa culture. However initial research suggests that
her philosophies show a close correlation to those represented above – she is a great
fan of Ms Mazwai‘s herself. If this trend, which can be seen through the acclaim for
Thandiswa Mazwai‘s recent music, continues, then the notions of what traditional
Xhosa culture really is will become all the more contested as the increasing
penetration of commercialisation occurs. Researching the presentation of ‗Xhosa
Culture‘ through the performances of the ‗Mafikizolo Dance Group‘ may shed light
upon this broader social phenomenon. That phenomenon can be glossed here as moral
regeneration through returning to the ways of the past. Ms Budaza describes the
meaning of her dance as ―siya enhla‖ (let‘s return to the past).

The Coutship Dance can be seen in this fashion to be at once a construction and a
constitution of an interpretation of a traditional way of being in the world which is also
liked to reaction to broader social processes of the domination and delegitimization
which tend to invalidate that life world.

The allusions to virginity are at once traditional inspired and instrumental in their
orientation as they address both current issues in society (HIV/AIDS and teenage
pregnancy). It is therefore impossible to determine if the locus of the inception of this
dance because it is by being traditional inspired by the shades and therefore beyond
the instrumental rational understanding upon which most western thought is premised
upon. On the other hand Thandeka herself acknowledges that she has no choice but to
live in the current world and so is also a self conscious and rational actor in terms of
the schemes and strategies she employs to instantiate her construction of the world,
constrained as she is by external realities which impinge on her choices.

Through the dance however she can construct a hybrid notion of what she conceives
her ideal world to be – this is then constituted in the dance. According to her
epistemology with regards to the grounds of knowledge production, as I have
interpreted them, it is fitting that this should be through an embodied expression in
which knowledge is intersubjective and this why it is important to ―show and not tell‖
the meaning of the dance. Showing here means, I believe, that knowledge is subjective
and embodied and therefore it is a waste of time to objectify the meaning because
knowledge cannot stand alone in the world but can only exist within the relations
between people (and the shades too).

References:

Books and Journal articles

Asad, T., (ed.) 1973. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. London: Ithaca Press.

Bank, L.J., 2002. Xhosa in town revisited: from urban anthropology to an

anthropology of urbanism. PhD Thesis: University of Cape Town.

Bourdieu, P., 1977a. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Bourdieu, P., 1990. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Clegg, J., 1982. An examination of the Umzansi dance style. ILAM: 4th Symposium
on Ethnomusicology.

Drewal, M., 1991. The State of Research on Performance in Africa. African Studies
Review, 34, 3, 1-64.

Geertz C., 1973. The Interpretation of Culture. NY: Basic Books.

McAllister, P., 1985. Beasts to Beer Pots: Migrant Labour and Ritual Change in
Willovale, Transkei. African Studies, 45, 4, 171-197.

Magubane, B., 1971. A Critical Look at Indices Used in the Study of Social Change in
Africa. Current Anthropology, 12, 4-5, 419-446.

Mayer, P., 1961. Townsmen or Tribesmen. Conservatism and the Process of

Urbanization in a South African City. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.

Titon, J. T., 1997. Knowing Fieldwork. [In Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives
for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology. Edited by Barz, G. F., & Cooley, T. J., pp. 87-
100. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.]

Rice, T., 1997. Toward a Mediation of Field Methods and Field Experience in
Ethnomusicology. [In Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in
Ethnomusicology. Barz, G. F., & Cooley, T. J., (eds.) pp. 101-120. New York &
Oxford: Oxford University Press.]

Shelemay, K. K., 1997. The Ethnomusicologist, Ethnographic Method, and the

Transmission of Tradition. [In Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork
in Ethnomusicology. Barz, G. F., & Cooley, T. J., (eds.) pp. 189- 204. New York &
Oxford: Oxford University Press.]

Shutz A., & Luckmann T., 1973. The Structures of the Life-World. (Trans.) Zaner
R.M., & Engelhardt T.) Evanston: Northwestern University Press, and London:
Heinemann.

Waterman, C., 1993. Juju' History: Toward a Theory of Sociomusical Practice. [In
Ethnomusicology and Modern Music History.

Blum, S., Bohlman, P., and Newman, D., (eds.) pp. 49-67. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.]

News Papers
Ngcobo L., 2005. Virginity testing: 'an African solution to a pressing African
problem.' Pietermaritzburg: The Witness, 10 October. [Cited in
<http://www.ifp.org.za/Releases/101005apr.htm> accessed 28/10/2005.]

Mthethwa B., & Khumalo S., 2005. Uproar as state moves to ban virginity testing:
Bill said to tamper with the heart of African tradition. Joahannesburg: The Sunday
Times, July 10. [Cited in
<http://www.aegis.com/news/suntimes/2005/ST050705.html> accessed 28/10/2005]

Internet sources
Web 1: <http://www.music.org.za/artist.asp?id=172> [accessed 06/06/2005]
Pictures
Plate 1: Dancers in Grahamstown‘s Church Square
<http://www.sacape.co.za/im_ecw_geo/grahamstown.jpg> [accessed 28/10/2005].

Plate 2: Mafikizolo Dance Group, Dr Thram, D., 2003.

Plate 3: Thembinkosi Goniwe's untitled from Returning the Gaze (2000)

<http://www.artthrob.co.za/00nov/images/goniwe01a.jpg> [accessed 28/10/2005]

Plate 4: Larva Suit (2001) by Walter Oltmann <

http://www.artthrob.co.za/01sept/images/oltmann02a.jpg> [accessed 28/10/2005]

Plate 5: Sandile Zulu's Frontline Three with Centurion Model (1997)

<http://www.artthrob.co.za/03nov/images/zulu01a.jpg>

Plate 6: Samson Mudzunga's Drum (1996)

<http://www.artthrob.co.za/04oct/images/mudzunga05a.jpg>

Plate 7: Thandiswa Mazwai <http://www.music.org.za/artist.asp?id=172> (footnote #

8) [accessed 28/10/2005]

Plate 8: Madosini <http://www.gatewayofafrica.com/artists/biography/196.html>

[accessed 28/10/2005]

Videos
The Spirit of Uhadi, 2004, (video recording) Mazwai, T., Groenewald L. (director)
Viewed on SABC 1, 22:00 (+- 1Hr) Monday, 16 February 2004.
Video recording 15/03/2005: Buleka Primary School, Cinstsa East. S., Hardman. 2
hrs.

Video recording 16/03/2005: Mama Tofu and Zinzi‘s homestead in Mooi Plaas. Stuart
Hardman. 1 ½ hrs.

Video recording 15/08/2005: Albany Museum, Grahamstown. Stuart Hardman. 2 ½

hrs.

Video recording: Appendix: Footage from the field. 2005. Stuart Hardman. 1 hr 20
minutes

Interviews

Interview: 03/05/2005, Thandeka Budaza, telephone, Grahamstown.

Interview: 05/05/2005, Thandeka Budaza‘s home, Rhini Location, Grahamstown.
Interview: 13/05/2005, Thandeka Budaza‘s home, Rhini Location, Grahamstown.
Interview 20/05/2005, Thandeka Budaza‘s home, Rhini Location, Grahamstown.
Interview 01/07/2005, Thandeka Budaza‘s home, Rhini Location, Grahamstown.
Interview 10/09/2005, Thandeka Budaza‘s home, Rhini Location, Grahamstown.
Interview 11/10/2005, Thandeka Budaza‘s home, Rhini Location, Grahamstown.

Additional Sources (not cited in the text)

Blacking J., 1983. Movement and Meaning: Dance in Social Anthropological
Perspective. Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research. 1, 1.

Blacking J., 1986. To Dance is Human: A theory of non-verbal communication; The

performer audience connection: emotion to metaphor in dance and society
Ethnomusicology, 30, 3, pp. 584-587.

Blacking J., & Howard K., 1991. John Blacking: An interview conducted and edited
by Keith Howard. Ethnomusicology, 35, 1, pp. 55-76.

Bovin M., 1988. Provocation Anthropology: Bartering Performance in Anthropology.

TDR, 32, 1, pp. 21-41

Coplan D., 1986. Performance, Self-Definition, and Social Experience in Oral Poetry
of Sotho Migrant Workers. African Studies Review, 29, 1, pp. 29-40.

Desmond J. C. 1997. Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance. Durham,

NC: Duke University Press.

Desmond J. C., 1994. Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies.
Cultural Critique, 26, pp. 33-63.

Drewel M. T. 1997. The politics of Cultural Performance. American Anthropologist,

New Series, 99, 2, pp. 416-417.

Eastman E. A., 1986. Nyimbo za Watoto: The Swahili Child's Worldview. Ethos, 14, 2,
pp. 144-173.
Elkin F., 1958. Socialisation and the Presentation of Self. Marriage and Family
Living, 20, 4, pp. 320- 325.

Farnell B., 1999. Moving Bodies, Acting Selves. Annual Review of Anthropology, 28,
pp. 341-373.

Graham L. R., 1994. Dialogic Dreams: Creative Selves Coming into Life in the Flow
of Time. American Ethnologist, 21, 4, pp. 723-745.

Hanna J. L., 1965. Africa's New Traditional Dance. Ethnomusicology, 9, 1, pp. 13-21.

Hanna J. L., 1983. Dance and the Child. Current Anthropology, 24, 2, pp. 222-224.

Hanna J. L., 1973. African Dance: Continuity and Change. Yearbook of the
International Folk Music Council, 5, pp. 165-174.

Hanna J. L., 1968. Field Research in African Dance: Opportunities and Continuities.
Ethnomusicologist, 12, 1, pp. 101-106.

Hanna J. L. 1979. Movements toward the Understanding of Humans through the Study
of Dance. Current Anthropology, 20, 2, pp. 313-339.

Hanna J. L. 1975. African Art in Motion: Icon and Act. ASA Review of Books, 1, pp.
5-9.
Hanna J. L., 1980. African Rhythm and African Sensibility. Aesthetics and Social
Action in African Musical Idioms. ASA Review of Books, 6, pp. 15-18.

Martin R. 1985. Dance as a Social Movement. Social Text. 12, pp. 54-70

Martin R., 1992. Dance Ethnography and the Limits of Representation. Social Text,
33, pp. 103-123.

McDonald B., 1996. The Idea of Tradition Examined in the Light of Two Australian
Musical Studies. Yearbook for traditional Music, 28, pp. 106-130.

Reed S. A., 1998. The Politics and Poetics of Dance. The Annual Review of
Anthropology, 27, pp. 503-532.

Royce A. P., 1977. The Anthropology of Dance. Bloomington: Indiana University

Press.

Sweet J. D., [Review Author] 1987. Society and the Dance. American Ethnologist, 14,
3.

Willis R. 1990. Some Spirits Heal, Others Only Dance: A Journey into Human
Selfhood in an African Village. Oxford: Berg.

Appendix 1

Field research video

The following video is made up of excerpts from my ethnographic research.

When I started my research in Easter 2005 I journeyed to Cinsta East just north of East
London. There I stayed with friends of mine who own one of the most successful
backpackers in South Africa. They cater almost exclusively for international travellers
and have a host of activities for their guests to partake in.

They are very involved with the local communities surrounding them. I went along
with them on two excursions. The first was to a local rural school they have been
supporting. This excerpt is at the end of the video.

The first except was filmed when I joined Anne Price, the owner of Buccaneers
Backpackers, to Mooiplaas. This is a rural area about fifty kilometres south of the
Transkei. The homestead is part of a tourist initiative and local craft centre. It is
however quite remote and Mama Tofu and Anne were meeting up again after a fairly
long period of not seeing each other. Anne was primarily interested in purchasing
traditional Xhosa craft for her backpackers and seeing if they could help out in the
future by possibly bringing some of their guests to the project some time in the future.

I regarded this as prospecting at the time because I was 'just along for the ride'. I did
ask if it was alright for me to film the meeting and they agreed warmly. I am aware
that I was framing the experience by filming it but it has since turned out to be useful
because I have not been able to return. Another reason I filmed so much of it was that
at the time I was thinking of integrating tourism into my research but have since then
narrowed my focus down significantly.
A. Mama Tofu talking about ‗Virginity Testing‘ and AIDS in Mooiplaas
00:00 to 08:07
The first scene was quite shocking for me, as you can here by my vocal expressions.
Incidentally this was the first time I interviewed with the camera in this fashion and so
tended to vocalize too much to my own liking, a lesson learnt. What I found out about
was 'virginity testing' among the Xhosa. These are he so called 'Red Blanket People'
who have reacted against colonialism and Apartheid by emphasising their Xhosa
customs and values. Further discussion is in the main text.

B. Purchasing Traditional Xhosa Regalia and Sampling the Xhosa Beer

(umqombhoti)
08:07 to 10:14
In this scene I purchase the outfit would later give to Thandeka as a gift and I also
sample some of the local Xhosa Beer.

C. Mama Tofu Talking About Children‘s Dances and Songs

10:14 to 12:35
Mama Tofu kindly discusses some of the traditional dances and songs.

D. Mama Tofu introduces the Sangoma or Igqira

12:35 to 13:59
This Igqira talked to us about her initiation and danced for us. Please note the beat
which is the same as the one used for the children‘s dance.

F. Zinzi's Children Dance

13:59 to 16:14
The children of the homestead show off their dances. Zinzi explains that they have
been modernised the boys dances as can be seen by the incorporation of breakdancing
and even poses from Wrestle Mania. I love the songs they sing.

G. Zinzi in the Kraal speaks about traditional values ('We are those People').
16:14 to 20:56
Zinzi here explains the fundamentals of the 'traditional' Xhosa belief system. She is an
amazing person and I think that this comes out beautifully here. Again please excuse
the quality and my commenting. Note also that she calls me Stututu which was my
―Zulu name‖ when I was a child. I told them about this earlier. I was given this name
because of my stutter.

H. Stick fighting dance done outside the Kraal

20:56 to 24:18
This TshoTSho stick fighting traditionally performed when young boys leave for the
circumcision ceremony. Note how much freer the boys are compared to the girls. Here
one can see how the domestic space is divided with the boys practicing their skills
extrovertly while girls remain close to the family and are watched by their parents to a
far greater degree.

I. A 'taste' of the Courtship Dance performed by the Mafikizolo Dance Group at

the Albany Museum (13/05/2005)
24:18 to 29:01
Note that the courtship dance usually comes at the end of an hour‘s performance. Here
they were struggling with the small stage. For a transcription of the vocal and a
description please see the text. The courtship dance only starts properly at 27:17, when
the girl on the left starts with: Sibabbonile abafana... Again please excuse the quality
as I was being jostled by the audience. The dance was cut short.
J. Igqira dancing at the Albany Museum
29:01 to 30:24
Here some local Igqira dance. Please note the similar dance beat to the last
performance. The young girl who joins them is a potential initiate (she has not yet
found a trainer), according to Thandeka, who works at the museum.

K. The Mothers (or OoMama) Sing and Dance

30:24 to 31:33
Dressed in traditional attire some mothers show off their talents.

L. A Mother Talks about Traditional Values with Regard to Childhood Gender

Relations.
31:33 to 36:01
Here Mrs Nobebe talks of the values she learnt in her childhood. She discusses how
virgins were identified by the firmness of their bodies and how back then children
were not 'caught up' in western culture. Accordingly they were free to expose their
breasts. She also discusses the protection of girls called umciwo. This is the giving of
gifts and is similar to the courtship dance and the intonjane ritual (Intonjane in my
translation means ‗the way things are‘ so it could be glossed as a ritual where children
are taught about sexual matters). Mrs Nobebe links girls chastity to being watched by
their parents and threat of the loss of labola (dowry cattle) which would be a disgrace
to the parents and the daughter. She talks about going back to the original Xhosa
culture specifically for the protection of children (especially girls).

M. Courtship Dance of the Mafikizolo Dance Group: Full Version

36:01 to 43:02
Please excuse the black and white footage. For a full description please see the main
text.

N. Thathawena Dancers
43:02 to 53:29
This is one of the 'rival' dance groups. Their dance teacher is also a school teacher.
Note how the theme of the dance is staged like a play. Furthermore the message of the
dance is more about society's ills rather than about the performance of an ethic. This is
a contemporary style and not couched in the traditional idiom. It is also in English and
not Xhosa.

O. A Local Government Official Talks About Coexistence and the History of the
Albany Museum
53:29 to 56:44
Please excuse the quality. This highlights some of the issues regarding coexistence
discussed in the body of text. Very interestingly note the trainee Igqira/Mbobgi (or
Xhosa Bard) style of spontaneous performance. I included this because I think it
shows some of the strains between traditional values and the modern values which are
being inculcated through the apparatus of the new Nation State.

P. The Buluka Farm School Concert.

56:44 to 1:10:20
This is the school concert which is performed by the scholars of the rural Buluka
School in Cintsa. The Buccaneers Backpackers take tourists to visit the school once a
week. At this performance they raised R 900. I have inserted this to show how culture
is presented to outsiders in other situations. The teachers are very involved and the
three German volunteers help at the school while staying at the backpackers. The
school has been helped enormously by foreign and local donations of time and money.
This was a two hour concert and I found it exhausting to sit through. Note the
interactive nature when the tourists tell the children of their origins.

I have included this here to show some of the potential avenues that the Mafikizolo
Dance Group could pursue in raising funds for their school.

Q. Easter Concert of the United Apostolic Church

1:10:20 to 1:18:47
This is some footage I took during the 2003 (48 hour) choir vigil over Easter week end
in Joza location, Grahamstown. I have included this here because I mention it briefly
during my descriptive passage where I portray Grahamstown. I also wanted to
introduce it because the movement of the women I think signifies some of the deeply
held cultural values related to pastoralism and the practice of Labola. Note how the
men 'surround' the women as if they are inside the kraal (of the cattle and the
ancestors) and how the women move their arms as if they were cattle.

Thandeka confirmed that to some extent this is the case with Xhosa dancing. Besides
this I think these are beautiful songs. Ngonyama (a lion) here represents strength as I
have also discussed in relation to the courtship dance. Incidentally I love the 'blues
lament at 1:15:12.

I have also included this here because I am struck by the freedom of expression as
opposed to the bodily comportment at the museum or at the school.