Posted on February 14, 2011
"Ok?"Â I said, not at all sure what he meant. He went on to explain that his Scottish forebear - by the name of Caine - had married a Xhosa woman and that they had had many children, from one of whom he was descended. I realised that by calling me his cousin he was claiming kinship on the basis of our shared white ancestry.
A decade later, The Sunburnt Queen by Hazel Crampton (2004) and Caliban's Shore: The Wreck of the Grosvenor and the Strange Fate of Her Survivors by Steven Taylor (2005) were published, both of which spoke of Xhosa clans descended from European and Asian ancestors. Reading the books reminded me of my meeting with Siwela Caine and I became interested in the contemporary descendants of non-Xhosa entrants into the culture and whether or not their ancestry meant anything to them.
In 2009 my research assistant, Qaqambile Godlo, and I began research among amaMolo of Ngqeleni, mPondoland. Originally believed to have descended from Asian shipwreck survivors, clan members today claim European descent. More recently we started work among abeLungu at Xhora, descended from a shipwreck survivor by the name of Jekwa, also said to have been of European origin. Both these clans were founded three to four hundred years ago and their history has been documented by historians such as George McCall Theal in History of South Africa under the Administration of the Dutch East India Company (1652-1795) (1897), John Henderson Soga in The South-Eastern Bantu (1930) and in 'Gquma, Mdepa and the amaTshomane clan: a by-way of miscegenation in South Africa' by Percival Kirby (1954, African Studies 13(1):1-24). We have also worked with two smaller branches of abeLungu at Mqanduli and Tshani and amaSukwini who are believed to have Khoisan ancestry.
I was also interested in less well-known clans descended from more recent entrants into the culture over the past one to two hundred years when various men are reputed to have moved out of the Colony and into what was then known as the 'Native Territories'. Some were traders; others runaway slaves, deserters from the army, or renegades and adventurers of various kinds. Like the forefathers of abeLungu, some married Xhosa women and in some cases founded new clans. We were able to identify four such clans: amaHastoni believed by some to be descended from Adam Kok and amaDukuza, amaCaine and amaIrish; of European, Scotch and Irish descent respectively.
It is not possible to generalise across - or even within - clans when it comes to the role played by family history. Each has its own history which is more or less important to contemporary clan members and expressed in various ways. For some, their ancestry is a source of pride; for others less so and for a small minority of clan sections whose cultural identity is more coloured than Xhosa, it is part of their history but not necessarily significant.
However for the vast majority of the sample who live linguistically, culturally and racially as Xhosas despite having descended from non-Xhosa forebears, family history plays the same role as it does for their neighbours. Having married Xhosa women, entrants into the culture adopted the ways of their wives, including the ancestor religion in which each clan is believed to be under both the protection and potential censure of its own departed clan founders and other ancestors. The primary means by which these ancestors are acknowledged and appeased is through the performance of rituals and this is not only the case amongst purely Xhosa clans, but also in some if not all sections of the six clans in which I work.
The presence of ancestral spirits at rituals is evoked through ritual slaughter, specially brewed beer (mqombothi) and the recitation of izinqulo, also known as izithutho; praise poetry comprising the names of ancestors interleaved with phrases commemorating the attributes or characteristics of particular clan founders or the clan as a whole. By the act of reciting their clan praises (ukunqula), people both worship their ancestors and bring them into their presence. In this sense, family history is the means by which communication with the ancestors occurs and therefore constitutes a link between the family of the past and the family of the present; those who are no longer of this world and those who are. In addition, family history shows by practical example, the exact form and nature of ritual performance because it is by knowing which rituals their ancestors performed and exactly how they did so that people today know the ways of their particular clan which differ in minor details from those of others. (2)
Having been absorbed into Xhosa culture, clans descended from non-Xhosa forebears have adopted the cultural and ritual traditions of their neighbours. But they have not forgotten that the ancestors they revere came from a different culture and sometimes this is reflected in their rituals, such as for example the amaMolo who include the ritual sharing of bread, something not conventionally part of Xhosa traditional practice but symbolic of their European / Christian ancestral heritage.
Janet Hayward Kalis is lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Walter Sisulu University in Mthatha.
(1) It is unfortunately necessary to use the terms of racial segregation defined and entrenched by apartheid because this enforced separation has resulted in highly racialised notions of cultural identity. Although the 2010 Fifa world cup showed that this could temporarily be transcended, it could not entirely heal our fractured national identity. Although I use the terms, I believe that part of the value of my research lies in its illustration of their meaninglessness in a broader context in which cultural identity is not constrained by race.
(2) I am grateful to Qaqambile Godlo for his insight in this observation.