Public Oratory in Xhosa Ritual: Tradition and Change

Abstract

strong. Yet this tendency is in fact an innovation, which the values and ideals associated with establishing a homestead (as summarized in the above paragraph) tend to obscure. We know that the size and the composition of Xhosa homesteads have changed dramatically over the past 50-100 years. Formerly, young married men, far from establishing independent homesteads of their own, remained in their fathers' extended family homesteads for many years after marriage. In the late nineteenth century and earlier, homesteads consisted of from ten to 40 huts, under the control and authority of a single male head. Nowadays, the average number of huts per homestead is between two and three, and homesteads are frequently inhab? ited by only a nuclear family. The reasons for this change have been documented elsewhere (McAUister 1985); here I am concerned with the role that public oratory plays in facilitating, legitimizing, and reinforcing it. In Shixini, Transkei, the importance of establishing, maintaining and working for one's homestead is stressed in a variety of public, ritual situations, including male initiation, the rites associated with migrant labor, and beer drinks such as those for releasing a widow from mourning (McAUister 1986b). These ritual traditions have, as an integral part of each, an oral tradition through which the subject of the ritual (initiate, migrant, etc.) is addressed in a manner appropriate to the occasion (i.e., admonished, instructed, praised, etc). It is largely in this oratory and its associated ethnography (see SaviUe-Troike 1982) that the meaning ofthe event is made explicit to the Usteners. This article deals with the oratory associated with the establishment