This report of the research study includes a literature review that describes the Zulu world view as well as the Zulu traditional beliefs, customs, rituals and practices. It also examines Western and traditional marriage counselling. The methodology chapter explains the type of research, the sampling, the tools used and the research process of data collection. Reflexivity is explored, and ethical issues are also clarified.
Limitations of the study are noted. The results chapter describes the data analysis using both thematic analysis as well as discourse analysis, and discusses the findings against the applicable literature. The final chapter draws conclusions from these results, looking at the recommendations within the parameters of the study.
Page | 21 1.10 Conclusion
This chapter has introduced the topic of this study. The background and context have been explained. The theoretical framework of social constructionism that underpins the whole study has been explored. The research questions that need to be answered in order to fulfil the aims and objectives have been clarified, and an overview of the research methods has been undertaken. Finally, the importance of this study into contemporary Zulu married life and the resulting implications for marriage counselling have been highlighted.
In the following chapter the underlying philosophy of Zulu life, which is called ubuntu, will be explored and the cultural rituals, beliefs and values that pertain to marriage will be described.
Page | 22 CHAPTER TWO
THE ZULU WORLD VIEW AND CULTURAL PRACTICES
This chapter will present a critical discussion of the literature of some of the Zulu philosophies or world views, values and cultural practices in order to understand what these are, the meaning and purpose that are ascribed to them, and how they influence marital and family lives.
One of the consequences of being brought up as a white person, resident in South Africa during the apartheid regime, was that knowledge of and contact with other race groups was very limited. Even today, it is possible for the different race groups to have very little experience of each other’s cultures. Over the years my contact with Zulu people was limited to informal socializing with colleagues, until my brother-in- law married a Zulu woman twenty years ago, and until I started running skills workshops for 4th year social workers. In both areas of my life, I started learning more about the Zulu culture from my sister-in-law and from my students. The impact of cultural differences on counselling became noticeable as many Zulu students at that time had commented that in their culture they were not allowed to verbalize their feelings, and so did not have the language to express empathy. I therefore researched and wrote a paper with a colleague on the use of empathy in social work counselling skills (Simpson and Haselau, 2006).
Therefore the purpose of this literature review was to gain knowledge about the traditional Zulu world view and philosophy and their cultural beliefs and practices about marriage and the family, as well as the critiques of these. For me this was important, as it links with my strong belief, as described in the previous chapter, that our social context influences the way we view, act and respond to the world. This knowledge could not only help when counselling Zulu couples, but helped guide my questions designing this research, the research interviews, and the process of analyzing and organizing the research results.
Page | 23 2.1 Culture, acculturation and enculturation
The concept of culture is abstract and depends on the context in which is it used. The following definitions of culture are helpful in providing a basic understanding of the concept and the ways in which it is used in this study, and then the concept is explored further.
The definition of culture according to the World English Dictionary is
“the total range of activities and ideas of a group of people with shared traditions, which are transmitted and reinforced by members of the group”. According to the
Oxford English Dictionary culture is defined as
“the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group”.
Culture may be defined as the vehicle in which values, principles, beliefs and behaviours are transmitted and manifested in organizations, communities and families through the use of language (Karsten and Illa, 2005).
Van Rooyen and Nqweni (2012:52) warn against assuming that everyone belonging to a particular culture will practice, believe and give meaning to it in an identical manner so they define culture “to refer to a set of subjective, uneven, complicated interactions between individuals and the manner in which they express their experiences. This means that although there may be commonly accepted narratives around specific aspects of existence, the individual may still incorporate these in idiosyncratic ways”.
Some cultures have colonized and oppressed others, and the concepts of the dominant culture are then imposed on people of the marginalized cultures. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the Apartheid regime resulted in white Western people oppressing and dominating people of colour. However, because society is interactive and reflexive, the marginalized culture will also influence the dominant culture. Akinyela (2002:34) therefore suggests that culture is “actually a complex of contentious and complimentary interactions between asymmetrical class, gender, religious, language, sexual and other social groups. Viewed from this perspective, culture is in a constant dialectical process of construction and reconstruction”: cultures change. Yoon, Chang, Kim, Clawson, Cleary, Hansen, Bruner, Chan and Gomes (2013:13) defined two
Page | 24 processes that occur in such situations: acculturation is the cultural socialization of a person from a marginalized culture to the mainstream culture, whereas enculturation is the retention of, or cultural socialization to one’s culture of origin. These processes occur simultaneously in parallel. Berry (in Yoon et al 2013:16) described four possible strategies for acculturation:
a) Integration – the maintenance of the culture of origin and the acquisition of the new culture.
b) Assimilation – the acquisition of the new culture and the rejection of the culture of origin.
c) Separation – the maintenance of the culture of origin and the rejection of the new culture.
d) Marginalization – the rejection of both cultures.
When Yoon and his colleagues (2013) examined worldwide research relating to which strategies were constructive and which were destructive for individuals’ mental health, they found that integrating bicultural identities is easier in societies such as the present South Africa, that endorse cultural diversity, and that adopt multicultural policies, as opposed to culturally closed societies. They also found that the integration of two cultures may be less conflicting for identity, behaviours and knowledge, whereas integrating different cultural values may be difficult e.g. it may be difficult to integrate values of individualism and values of collectivism; and it may be difficult to integrate values of autonomy and of filial piety. Thus Yoon et al (2013) suggest that in order to assist clients to develop bicultural competency, external acculturation is important so that the individual learns the dominant culture’s language and behaviours in order to find employment and survive financially, and internal enculturation will give the person a sense of identity and belonging.