EXPLICATION OF THE RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY 5.1.INTRODUCTION
5.8. DATA COLLECTION METHODS
171 RESEARCH PARTICIPANT 5: Mr Lucky Mazibuko
Mr Lucky Mazibuko is a man who had been involved in ukuthwala practice from Bergville community. He was 48 years old at the time of collecting data. He is a staunch traditionalist and a local Inyanga (herbalist). He has no formal education. His parents were farmers and he too had been a farmer from childhood. He combines farming with a full-time job as Inyanga. His topmost desire in life is to build a huge house in Bergville (Emangwaneni); he has land, but is not yet able to commence building due to financial constraints. He is the last born of his mother, who was the third of his father’s four wives.
His father had 15 children. His uncle, a famous former Inyanga in Bergville, brought him up. Mr Mazibuko married his only wife at the age of 31 years and is blessed with four children. He highlighted that only those men with difficulty in getting girlfriends thwala young women. He gave valuable insight into powerless men who thwala females. He does not associate himself with this group, as he did not get married this way. However, it is interesting to note that Mr Mazibuko was involved in assisting his brothers to thwala a number of women.
172 5.8.1. The life history methodology
Goodson and Sikes (2001) state that life histories are interested in the way people narrate their lives, and not in the way they should. Rosenthal (1993) maintains that life history and life story are always dialectically linked. The term ‘life story’ is commonly applied to the narrated story by the other, while ‘life history’ refers to the interpretative and presentational work of the researcher (Rosenthal, 1993, p.4). While Goodson and Sikes (2001) argue that there is a distinction between life histories and life stories, Roberts (2002) observes that such distinction is usually difficult to maintain in practise, where, for example, the researcher conducts interviews with participants. Atkinson (1998) defines a life story as the story a person chooses to tell about the life he or she has lived, told as completely and honestly as possible, what is remembered of it, and what the teller wants others to know of it, usually as a result of a guided interview by a researcher. Life history, on the other hand, as argued by Roberts (2002), is usually taken to refer to the collection, interpretation, and report writing of the ‘life’ (the lifehistory method) in terms of the story told, or as the construction of the individual’s past experience.
It is worth mentioning that my study is not basically lifehistory research, but life history methodology is one of the methods I employed in collecting data. Since the aim in the study of lives is to gain insight and understanding of individual life experiences, this method was used to elicit data on the interviewees’ life experiences within their socio- historical contexts. A major reason that influenced my inclusion of this methodology alongside other methods is because I wanted to understand to what extent the participants’ socialisation process has an impact on the cultural practice of ukuthwala in their communities from childhood, through teenagehood, to adulthood and to old age. In a way I was also interested in finding out what was (during childhood) and also is (now) perceived as important in their lives, and to understand what makes them happy / will make them happy / what they thought would make them happy for their entire lives.
173 Another reason is the fact that stories are uniquely and individually constructed, and that what individuals say about them is much more illuminating than several other research methods.
The life history methodology was used in gathering data from the male and female participants, focusing on their life experiences. I collected 30 life histories, from which I selected five as evidence. The analytical scheme proposed by Mandelbaum (1973) for analysis and interpretation of life history data was adopted for an in-depth analysis of the five selected life histories (three females, two males) out of those collected from the 30 adult participants in the study. This method offered the research participants chances to review aspects of their lives from childhood and to articulate their experiences in relation to the research themes.
The narrative interview method was employed to collect participants’ life histories. I also used oral narratives focused on past and present experiences pertaining to ukuthwala.
By bringing in interviewees’ narratives I want to demonstrate that by ‘talking about sex’
women and men also demystify the taboos about sex and sexuality. It is demystified because in talking about sex, the secrecy, silence and mysticism about sex is thereby also challenged. Equally so I want to demystify the taboos about the cultural practice of ukuthwala. The narratives also challenge conventional social science research methods, where in most cases there is a tendency by some researchers to speak on behalf of women (see, for example, Brayton, 1997; Bowles & Duelli-Klein, 1983; Mies, 1983). I do not speak on behalf of women. In my study I present the experiences and perceptions of both men and women regarding ukuthwala and the impact that the practice has on their lives.
This project investigates ukuthwala as it exists today among the Zulu-speaking people who live in some rural areas of KZN. Ukuthwala is an event at a certain place in a certain
174 time. Therefore the narrative interview is very appropriate for this study as it leaves the field completely open to the interviewee, simply asking participants to tell the story of the event being studied, which in this case is ukuthwala.
5.8.2. Self-reflexivity
Reay (1996, pp.59-60) describes reflexivity as a continual consideration of the ways in which the researcher’s social identity and values affect the data gathered and the picture of the social world produced. Reflexivity involves a process of self-consciousness, of researching one’s own position in the research process. My subjectivity as a researcher could not be avoided, as I equally record my personal life experiences and particularly my experiences with ukuthwala. My biography reveals the lens through which I view the world in relation to my research interest.
Feminist research welcomes emotion into the research process and as a research topic.
Personal involvement is therefore deemed necessary by feminist researchers because the researcher must and does identify with the women she is researching, and inevitable because she is part of what is being researched, that is, she is involved. This means reflexivity is essential. The researcher must constantly be aware of how her values, attitudes and perceptions are influencing the research process, from the formation of the research questions, through the data collection stage, to the ways in which the data are analysed and explained (Abbott & Wallace 1990, p.27).
Self-reflexivity forms a vital part of this study, as I equally record my emotions and feelings coupled with the reactions of the respondents to the questions posed to them.
My subjectivity as a researcher could not be avoided. It not only played a significant role in the conceptualisation of the study but during the data gathering process. Having grown up, been educated from pre-primary school until matriculation and even worked in the rural areas of KwaNgcolosi (one of this project’s sites), and with my mother’s experience
175 as a country woman and relating to my teenagehood, I recalled things that I am not proud of.
At the time when I was growing up, I did not understand some of the things that took place in my life and why and how they happened. I was completely ignorant about ukuthwala as I grew up in a mission station run by the American Board, a place that was completely dominated by Christians of different denominations at the time. However, when the research participants narrated their stories, I remembered vividly a friend of mine at a local high school whispering in my ears “asibaleke bafuna ukukuthwala.
Kunemoto yakwa… eqashiwe. Kuthiwa mina angikugade…” (Let us run away! They want to thwala you. There is a car organised to take you and that car is for…They said I must watch your moves….). Lord God knows, I did not know what she was talking about! All I did was to cooperate in the escape, as I sensed something dangerous was about to take place.
It was a long walk from my high school to my home. When my friend narrated the story to my mother, I had never seen my mother so angry as she was then. I only recall her utterances:“Lamabhinca, amaqaba afuna ukukuthwala?” (These barbarians, heathens, they want to thwala you?). Later my mother explained to me what they wanted to do to me. From then on I was completely watched / guarded.
I also recall quite a number of incidents where I do not know how I managed to escape those planned events of ukuthwala. At some stage my sister and my friend (during teenagehood) were paid to arrange that I be thwalwa’d; the arrangements never materialised. Hence I related very well to the respondents’ articulated feelings, and had a sense that their responses were resonating with my own feelings and experiences.
Reflexivity in this study meant that I had to acknowledge my knowledge and experiences, but equally engage with respondents’ stories. Sullivan (2002) notes that it is necessary
176 for a researcher to recognise the impact of language, theories and experiences that co- create a phenomenon that is studied. He argues that:
It is important that we continue to be reflexive and subjective in our research in ways that cannot easily be dismissed as biased and anecdotal. Research (needs to) draw, as it must, on our experiences as individuals who live and grow in one part of the global city of language, while recognising that we cannot live as individuals in every suburb (Sullivan, 2002).
The above warning was heeded during the data collection process, and subjectivity was also observed.
5.8.3. FGDs
FGDs are collectivist rather than individual data collection methods that bring the multivocality of participants’ perceptions and experiences to the research process (Madriz, 2000, p.836). FGDs allow the researcher to interact directly with research participants, thus providing opportunities for clarification of responses, follow-up questioning and probing of responses (Stewart & Shamsadani, 1990). The advantage of FGDs is that they are unique in giving more room for the voices of participants, and decrease the influence of the researcher on the interview.
In my study I started the data collection process with the FGDs. These provided me with opportunities to explore and gain more insight into the topic at hand. The FGDs were very useful, as some participants in them not only served as key informants in identifying women who had been thwalwa’d and men who had thwala’d women, but also made it possible for me to penetrate quite easily among identified possible research participants, as some of them in turn served as my research assistants in the communities.