Week 7 HAS reading :
✓ General knowledge : 1961 RSA pulled out of the Commonwealth and made the rand its
national currency
o Funerals
o Economic discrimination
o Gendered finances
o Venda (Niger-Congo linguistic cluster) region
o Indep homeland during Apartheid
o Geographically - remote and boarders Zim and Kruger
o Sterotypes
▪ Mystical and highly secretive
▪ Extraordinary ability to invoke witchcraft (increase in
ritual murders in the area)
o Similar socio-economic and political characteristics as rural South Africa
▪ Decrease in the number of outgoing labourers has
catalysed the unemployment rate and has impoverished
many
• minority engage in crime
• Majority depend on welfare (pension,
disability grant, child support) handouts or
on funding from international donors to
NGOs (sent to rural areas via monthly
mobile cash vans)
o Later incorporated into, what is now known as, Limpopo (Northern
Province) under the first democratic AND-led gov (1994)
o Death
o Cause of death often discussed behind closed doors (among trusted
friends and family) due it being a taboo topic
o Insurance and funeral parlours - often link and create parlour that has its
own insurance scheme
▪ Leading to high competition between funeral businesses
o Many funeral insurers use that as a cover for illegal loan shark business
o Often ogogo are targeted and duped out of their investments
o Funerals are seen as a marker of class and status
▪ Many people cannot afford an impressive funeral unless a
large contribution from insurance is made - big business
Of Rumours and Parlours
o Success
o Widely known in Venda that a businessman's rise to success followed a
specific pattern
i. Owning taxis
ii. Owning a beer hall
iii. Beer hall supporting adjoining butchery and general store
next to the fleet of taxis
Thus constructing mini empires around a shop complex and then often passed
down from father to son
o Gradual accumulation brought social standing and rewarded a higher level of
kudos (old-fashioned route of hard work)
o BEE and funeral money is often looked down upon by those that follow the old-
fashioned route of success
, o In Venda, starting a funeral parlous is seen as an immoral act
o Rumour 1 (2004-2005) poison='seven days'
o A victim dies 7 days after consuming the poison
o Mourners attending funerals organised by Venda-owned parlours were
poisoned by undercover agents - who poisoned the food at the after-
burial feast
o Rumour 2 (2009 and remains) unidentified man in the Hummer
o An identified man who is known only by the car he drives HUMMER
o Speaks on Tshivenda patrols the streets of Louis Trichardt, Thohoyandou
and Giyani until he convinces a Tshivenda-speaking woman to enter his
luxury car
▪ Lady is then seduced and taken to an expensive hotel
▪ When she wakes up the next morning she finds an
envelope and note
• Envelope = thousands of rand
• Note = explaining to use the money to buy a
fresh liver from a ritual murderer to feed
the maggots inside her (deposited by the
Hummer driver)
o Symbolic resonance - HIV (before ARV rollout)
o Sex has been moulded into a potential cause of death
o Similarities between the rumours
o The owners of Venda-run mortuaries are involved in attempts to kill
innocent Venda people
o 1st central factor of strange allegations
o Until 1990, almost all funeral parlours were exclusively run by white
Afrikaans speaking peeps from Louis Trichardt
o 2nd possible explanation for the allegations and rumours
o Physical handling of death and knowledge of how to prepare a corpse
o Transmission of sexual illness
o Maintenance of sexual health is seen to be the responsibility of the
woman
Organizing and paying for a funeral
o Graveyards at the former homelands of Venda are on a hillside overlooking
surrounding villages and can only be access by following poorly maintained roads
o At the funeral
o A representative from a funeral insurer is often making sales pitches and
either showing off their funeral hosting skills or comparing it to that of
the funeral they are currently at. Many discounts are often voiced and
signup sheets and leaflets are all over the place
▪ Marketing policies
▪ Distributing leaflets
▪ Handing out brochures
▪ Offering free transport
o Cost of a funeral
o Decent and dignified funeral dep on level of insurance coverage
(monthly premium rate and length of time it was maintained)
o Most time-consuming responsibility is choosing and paying for a
tombstone (if not covered by insurer looking at between R4000 and R40
000)
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