Kin-Keeping and Self-Making: Themes Emerging from Interviews with Intergenerational Families in Mbombela, Mpumalanga, South Africa

The questions of African personhood and ubuntu remain points of interest in social science research as efforts to center African knowledges and being continues to grow in scholarship. One iteration of this effort is that of making sense of these conceptually and theoretically through mapping the lived experiences of individuals within African families. Black middle-class families in South Africa offer space in which to explore ubuntu and personhood as they relate to kin-keeping and self-making in contemporary South Africa.

This paper considers themes from semi-structured interviews with 15 families in a small South African town. Looking into family obligations, expectations and intergenerational relationships, preliminary extracted themes indicate that personhood and ubuntu are negotiated and materialise differently across generations within Middle-class families. Moreover, there is indication that when it comes to family, decision-making is not isolated from considerations over kin-making and kin-keeping, as well as the making-of-the-self.

In understanding the ways in which personhood and ubuntu materialise in contemporary black families, a richer narration of what it means and looks like to be black middle-class is offered. Furthermore, how we think about family obligations and kin-relations, and the ties that sustain family bonds is illuminated.