The role of gender in Ndebele architecture

Gender roles in Ndebele home-making

From the 1940s onwards the settlement at Hartbeesfontein began to be visited increasingly by researchers, including Barrie Biermann, Constance Stuart-Larrabee, Dick Findlay, Alexis Preller and Prof AL Meiring who, together with architectural students from the University of Pretoria, conducted a survey of its architecture. Their subsequent home at KwaMsiza proved to be similarly popular among academics. Thus, barring a brief hiatus during the 1920s and 1930s, some aspects of their built environment, most particularly their wall decorations, have been particularly well documented.

Consequently the village of KwaMsiza is an important example of Ndebele architecture, for it not only does provides a strong and unbroken link to the built environment of the Ndebele during the nineteenth century, but also because it has retained its homogenous social make-up, being composed entirely of Ndzundza Ndebele families originating from the farm Hartbeesfontein.

The creation of a built environment in southern Africa's rural areas is not merely the provision of shelter: it represents an opportunity for the community to collaborate on a project, turning what is outwardly a social occasion into a display of solidarity between the larger group and the individual family unit. This process not only lays stress upon role-playing and the individual's perceived status in society, but it is used to reinforce a sense of self-identity through participation in group activities. Thus all members of the community are considered to have a role to play in the creation of an architecture. This is often predetermined by historical conditions which allocate tasks to various gender and age groups.

In a general sense, many of the heavier tasks such as the erection of walls, the construction of a timber roof frame and the creation of a grass thatch cover are considered by the Ndebele to be the work of men. Women will assist with some of this labour, such as the mixing of clay mortar, the preparation of thatch bundles and the manufacture of sun-dried bricks. Children will often assist their mothers in such work, as well as the manufacture of grass ropes and the gathering of materials like cow dung. The plastering of walls, the creation of homestead floor areas and any subsequent light maintenance of the structure however falls directly upon the women as the controllers of household space. This includes any subsequent application of decorative motifs to the walls. The men, on the other hand, will build and maintain those areas connected with cattle folds and male gatherings, these being considered to be "men's" spaces.

In more recent times, however, the absence of men from rural communities has forced the women into the position of having to fulfill many of the building tasks historically associated with men. This, effectively, has removed the latter from the processes of the built environment, thus reinforcing the role of women as controllers of "place" as well as "resources."

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