Child development through Ndebele taboos: Motivation to blend the indigenous and the exotic
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Date
2020-08-01
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Volume Title
Publisher
University of Zululand
Abstract
In the context of this paper, child development is upbringing, incorporating the care,
education and protection of children. The traditional Ndebele way of child
upbringing ensures that the child develops responsibly and especially out of
danger. This paper thus seeks to identify the gap between modernity and Ndebele
taboos and suggests possible solutions to address the gap and apply taboos in
modern societies such as urban settlements. The social, physical and
environmental regulatory institutions of the Ndebele people have always relied on
the supernatural for enforcement. This study seeks to demonstrate, using
interviews and focus group discussions, how traditional Ndebele taboos need to be
blended into the modern culture if they are to be relevant. The research is an
interpretivist descriptive survey of Nkayi rural and Nkayi urban centre (in
Zimbabwe) with the aim of getting parents and secondary school children’s views
on Ndebele taboos and child development. The study established that there are
some traditional concepts used in some Ndebele taboos which are no longer
popular and children do not know them. It also established that there are some
Ndebele taboos that have been overtaken by human rights discourses, while some
are no longer compatible with modern institutions such as formal schooling and
science. There are new taboos built to counter ills of modern society. The modern
environment has modern dangers and problems that require a re-visiting of
Ndebele taboos so that more modern taboos can be developed. The study
demonstrates that blending the indigenous and the exotic (cultures) in taboo
formulation and application ensures that today’s children benefit from taboos. The
blending of indigenous and exotic cultures has already occurred in society and
there is a need to align the modern culture to taboo tenets so that the taboos can
be fully utilised for child development. The blending involves changing some
metaphoric vehicles in some traditional Ndebele taboos to include concepts from
modern culture, and in some cases there is a need to ‘de-taboo’ for child
development. Conclusions of the study are important for policy makers in domains
of child development and care such as pedagogy, social work, children’s rights and
the family. The findings also imply connections between taboos and legal theories
on rights and these can be explored further
Description
Peer reviewed article published under Inkanyiso, Volume 12 Number 1, Aug 2020, p. 36 - 55
Keywords
Taboos,, child development, Ndebele people (Zimbabwe), modernity, indigenous, knowledge, Ndebele culture
Citation
Ndlovu, S., 2020. Child development through Ndebele taboos: Motivation to blend the indigenous and the exotic. Inkanyiso: Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 12(1), pp.36-55.