When you attempt to wrap an entire nation up into a single frame of reference, you’re like the blind men and the elephant; all you’re getting is an ear or a trunk.  (Don’t know the story?  Google it.) If I think of all the wonderful people I know, they range from hard line traditionalists like my late friend, the ultra-charming Reuben Ndwandwe, to the exquisite Ntombi, most at home in designer dresses and contemporary beadwork.  How do I say that one is more true to his or her culture than the other?

And that, of course, opens the question:  what is your culture?  At what point is a skill, a craft, an area of knowledge considered true to your culture or not?  If I ask tourists what they would consider a good image of the Zulu culture, many would say ‘beadwork’.  No contest.  In our well-communicated world, images of Zulu beadwork are famous.  But it’s not indigenous – it’s an adopted craft.  Beads only became fairly freely available 150 to 200 years ago, when they were imported by traders from Jablonec in the then Czechoslovakia.  And the styles have changed hugely since then.

The point about when an adopted craft becomes ‘traditional’ was raised quite seriously in my mind when our entry for a young embroiderer was turned down by the Santa Fe Folk Art Festival on the grounds that ‘embroidery is not a traditional Zulu craft’.  Let’s put aside the fact that the next year they accepted a young Zulu embroiderer (it’s their right) and think about their reasoning.  About the same time that beads came into the country, there was an influx of missionaries, duly accompanied by well-meaning wives, eager to teach housewifely skills to the female converts.  They brought in blaudruck*, which has evolved into the acceptably traditional and fashionable ishweshwe* cloth.  They brought in sewing, knitting, crochet and, of course, fine sewing.  So, gee whizz, there they were, good Zulu women – doing embroidery.

So why is this not accepted as being part of the Zulu culture?  Is it because there are no tourism pictures in our minds of nubile young maidens strung with embroidered isigege* and umutsha* about their slender loins?  The fact that embroidery (and all the other skills) was not adopted by non-Christians and taken into their homes, but was taken up at that stage by the converts, who adopted a Western-style lifestyle, does not mean that it is not part of the Zulu culture today

The Commonwealth Foundation published an interesting book called “Culture First”, in which the principle was simple and straightforward – everything you are depends on where you come from.  Those are the shoulders you stand on, the influences that moulded you.  Some were great.  Some, like apartheid, were gruesome.  All of them, good or bad, are your history, your heritage – your culture.

As a person of a certain age growing up in my birthplace, South Africa, my cultural history is checkered.  As a child, all reading material came from Britain, we had a British monarch and my mother’s family came from British descent somewhere way back.  So we were sort of Xhosa-speaking British. Then in 1961 we became a republic and the Afrikaner hold on the country became strong and the influences insidious. So we learnt volkspele* and “Kom dans, Klaradyn”*.  And then in 1994, the miracle – democracy!  And now the most prevalent influences are pan-African and I’ve learnt to love isicathimiya*.  As a white-skinned African, I have absorbed all of these; they are intrinsically part of me.  If I offered any folk festival the Xhosa beadwork I learned to do as a child, would I be turned down because I come from Scots-German descent?  Must I offer up tartans and lederhosen?

I am really not asking this as sour grapes.  I want to know.  Cultures change.  Cultures, therefore ‘culture’, must change.  We live in a global village and are constantly exposed to it.  Is something only define as traditional/cultural when it has almost died out and there’s a mad scramble to save it?  Or when it’s of a certain age?

Deep in thought,
Viv

P.S.  I’m always astounded at people asking whether the family at a nearby cultural village wear beadwork all the time.  Get real!!!  As soon as you’re gone they whip into denims and tees as fast as they can.

The opinions expressed in this blog are personal to the writer and are not necessarily those of the Board of the Vukani Collection Trust.

 *Blaudruck –  indigo-dyed cloth
Ishweshwe -  the modern version of blaudruck. Also called ijalimane in the Eastern Cape
Isigege -  small apron
Umutsha -  belt
Volkspele – traditional dance
“Kom dans, Klaradyn” -  folk song
Isicathimiya -  close harmony singing with movement