Posted on May 10, 2010
Two main questions came out of my December 2009 exploratory blog on what family histories should mean: a) If one wants to trace one's history where/how does one begin? b) In tracing our routes and roots, how do we go back beyond three generations? These questions are distilled from Anne Joannides' and Dr. Sophia Asaviour Crocheron's responses to the blog. In addition to these questions for discussion, I have received requests for historical information on the Chunu and the Hlubi from people in Johannesburg and Pretoria. I have also followed the discussions of some groups on Facebook, learnt about projects that are collecting histories of kinship groups (clans) and chiefdoms/kingdoms in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and Limpopo, as well as followed activity on some genealogy websites. Furthermore, in conversations with historians in universities across the country, the Director of the Archival Platform, Jo-Anne Duggan and I have learnt that almost daily professional historians working on community histories get questions from people who want to know how to go about collecting and preserving the histories of their families. Archivists tell us that archival institutions hold countless documents that may contain information and clues. Jo-Anne and I have done all these exploratory forays and solicitations in order to work out what form the Archival Platform's family histories initiative might take. We are now ready to begin a process by which the questions I began with above and many more will be explored.

All of these responses to our initial feelers suggest that the participants on the Platform welcome an initiative in this area. We have given it the title One Land: Countless Histories - Ancestral Stories. South Africa is indeed one land mass whose inhabitants (and whose diaspora) have countless stories to tell and to discover about their families' pasts. The ancestral stories are the first type of stories on which the Platform is going to facilitate engagement between practitioners: individuals and families, and professional and grassroots organisations that are engaged in the practice of family history. These individuals and organisation may be collecting historical information through archival material and/or oral history, or may be using materials collected and made available by others for reasons of engaging with the past. Such engagements with the past could be for present purposes, such as claiming previously alienated rights or preserving certain legacies, or they could be about the past for the past's sake, that is, simply to know what happened. We aim to reach practitioners that include professional and non-professional researchers, archivists in archival institutions, bodies that fund cultural research, and people who listen to and discuss family, clan and other group histories on radio and on social networking sites. The aims of this engagement are to:

  • Bring to light the ways in which people across South Africa are engaging with their family pasts;
  • Provide a platform for interested professional and non-professional history practitioners to learn about the different approaches and methods adopted by a broad range of practitioners;
  • Find ways to enrich the practice of family history by offering space for practitioners to raise issues and work towards resolving the issues, and to share tips and strategies for finding out about the past; and
  • Create a vehicle for a broader range of practitioners to inform or participate more directly in debates on national heritage planning and institutional practice.

The Platform will do the above in two ways: through a series of face-to-face discussions to be held in each of South Africa's nine provinces in 2010 and 2011, and via an online platform in the form of a website where issues will be raised and discussed. Anybody will be able to raise for discussion issues that s/he encounters in dealing with family history. All participants will also be able to respond to other participants' posts. The face-to-face discussions will also be reported on the website in order for those who are unable to attend these meetings to keep abreast of, and participate in, the larger conversation.

Starting at the Beginning

What are we referring to when we talk about family histories or ancestral stories? For starters, what is a family? Any definition based on biological connection is clearly inadequate. This is if we consider that some among us consider people who are in no ways biologically linked to them their parents such as in the case of adopted children. Or in the case of extended African families, one's biological parents' siblings are considered one's mothers and fathers too. Moreover, any person of one's parents' age is referred to as one's father or mother. These modes of extending family are even built into some languages. And what is a family in the context of polygamous marriage arrangements or in gay and lesbian relationships? Other questions include: What is history? Who are our ancestors, in what ways do they matter and what stories can we tell about them? Are some stories told legitimate and others not? What are the criteria? How do we begin finding out about our ancestors?

A series of blogs in the coming months will get us going on exploring the questions above. These blogs will give us examples of ways in which family histories/ancestral stories are being recovered today. In the next blog in June I am going to explore some of the ways in which members of groups that regard themselves as families in an extended sense (in Nguni languages imindeni in the plural) are organising themselves and using oral narratives and poetry to tell their ancestral stories. In coming months you can expect blogs that discuss, amongst other things, ways in which community history projects have created space for individuals and families to reconstruct their pasts, and on how genealogical research works.

We invite you to share your experiences and thoughts by posting responses to the blogs: how have you gone about constructing your family tree or helping someone else do so? What do you think can be done to help you find information and by whom? What might a national discussion on family histories include? And of course, you, the participants, will come up with a whole lot more! We invite you to extend the invitation to participate in this discussion as widely as possible. We look forward to an exciting time.

Mbongiseni Buthelezi teaches in the English Department, University of Cape Town and will be working with the Archival Platform to implement One Land: Countless Histories - Ancestral Stories. Email {encode="Mbongiseni.Buthelezi@uct.ac.za" title="Mbongiseni.Buthelezi@uct.ac.za"}