ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by unpacking Ubuntu as capital – as a conceptual tool and cultural language that offers a located avenue to engage with the narratives of marriage and kinship. It discusses how black township women in same-sex relationships navigate the cultural terrain of customary marriage and kinship, all set in heteronormative traditions in township social spaces against the backdrop of Ubuntu, which is central to everyday encounters and experiences. Marriage is a powerful mechanism for social belonging, for the community’s acknowledgment of a binding relationship. The chapter draws on research carried out in 2014 as part of a doctoral study that relied on interviews, focus group material, as well as ethnographic observations from 31 townships both in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Despite the heterosexist and homophobic denunciations of traditional leaders, community members, and some political figures, black women in same-sex intimacies are making use of tradition to situate their queerness within established South African cultural contexts.
