Blood, ancestral spirits and witches: Rethinking descent in contemporary South Africa

In this article, I express profound scepticism about recent theories that de-emphasise the centrality of procreation and shared blood in the determination of kinship. These theorists posit that in many ethnographic situations the incarnation of spirits, the sharing of names, coming of age in the same house, and joint consumption of certain foods may be more important criteria. Contra these theorists I suggest that these are more likely to be complementary than alternative modes of relatedness. The challenge is to conceptualise their coexistence. Ethnographically, I explore how blood, spirits and names interweave in the social biography of the Monareng family in the South African Lowveld. I show that while kinship was modelled on an ideology of descent and shared blood, connections were also forged through the reincarnation of ancestors within children and through naming. These spiritual modes of relatedness reinforced the credentials of marginal kin to lineage membership. I also highlight the salience of witchcraft as the ‘dark side of kinship’. Whereas the invocation of ancestors connected individuals to lineages, the accusation of in-marrying wives of witchcraft disconnected people and led to the segmentation of lineages. My analysis concludes by reconceptualising the concepts of the lineage. In contemporary South Africa, as elsewhere, it is more appropriate to conceptualise the lineage as a line on a map of social relations than as a corporate grouping.