Harnessing the ancestors: uncertainty and ritual practice in the Eastern Cape

In this chapter, I explore how rural and urban-based women and men – through their selective engagement with specific cultural norms – contest the spaces opened up by their shared desire to fund, prepare for and perform rituals. I demonstrate how people across Ngqushwa Municipality rhetorically and practically link ritual to the central cultural tropes that stress mutual support and reciprocity at two levels: (1) intrahomestead through ukwakh’umzi (to build the home) and (2) inter-homestead through masincedisane (let us help each other). I suggest that their activities and interactions during the consumption of traditional beer, brandy and the meat of ritually slaughtered animals are geared towards performing and contesting these two cultural scripts