UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND

Bagagesu/those of my home: migrancy, gender and ethnicity' Ethnicity has been an area in which scholars of southern Africa have shown a gradually increasing interest over the last couple of decades. This interest has sharpened over the last five or six years to become a major concern, with Vail's 1989 collection, and his comprehensive introduction, as something of a watershed. More recently still, the holding of two major South African-based conferences on the topic within the last two years suggests that it has become a virtual obsession in the region.2 Both southern Africanists * recent preoccupation with ethnicity, and their lack of concern with it in an earlier period, can be explained to some degree by reference to the influence of events in the broader socio-political arena. The prevalence of papers on the origins and current machinations of Zulu nationalism at both of the conferences mentioned above suggests that the divisive cultural politics of Natal have had more than a little to do with scholars' current interest in the topic of ethnicity in southern Africa. Similarly linked to political priorities and concerns has been the virtual ignoring of ethnicity as a topic in southern African studies during the period from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. Since apartheid was founded on the basis of ethnic differences reified by the state, scholars opposed to this policy were reluctant to lend weight to the notion that such differences were experienced as real by the social actors of their study. 1 This paper was previously presented at the JSAS conference, Paradigms lost, paradigms regained, in York in September 1994. My thanks to the singers of DitShweu t£a Malehogo and Maaparankwe: to Malet