ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the Ntsimane family’s development through five generations from a rural village of Matlwang in South Africa to an urban location of Ikageng in the town of Potchefstroom. The Ntsimane family’s use of traditions and rituals enhanced its resilience in the face of the South African Apartheid government’s general onslaught on Black people’s development. In order to subdue the resistance of Black people especially against land dispossessions, the minority government targeted Black families first by forcefully removing them from fertile ancestral lands and then squeezing them into tiny township houses irrespective of the size of the family.
The tracing of the family’s reactions seeks to determine how each generation used and modified the traditions and rituals for its survival. This chapter looks at traditions and rituals that bound the family together after settling in Ikageng and how such rituals were modified or abandoned after the democratic elections that ushered in better economic conditions for Black people. Finally, this chapter appraises the newly introduced Kopano-ya-losika tradition of annual family gatherings to see to what extent it serves to create new memories and how it cements the family across generations scattered far beyond the confines of the Ikageng township.
