How njangui socio-cultural houses influence students’ collaboration towards boosting Africanism

ABSTRACT

One visible characteristic that Cameroonian immigrant students have brought to South Africa is njangui/ngumba house, which redefines social inter-relationships among South African and other African citizens who were previously unknown to them. A njangui is a traditional social gathering while a ngumba is a kind of sacred society often reserved for the elderly. However, njangui and the ngumba houses have morphed into a type of social meeting where people meet to discuss and solve personal or collective problems, whether emotional, social or economic and then dine and wine at the close of each meeting. This paper describes one njangui group, its purpose, process of selecting members and activities among a group of students within a South African University. I draw on concept of locality to explore the link between social mobility, language, business, and culture. In order to explain this traditional social gathering I used an ethnographic design. This allowed me to become part of the participants’ daily practices. One argument is that socio-cultural strength culminates in socio-economic relations. Therefore, I conclude that this kind of relation could influence the social cohesion of students which may extend to significant relationships.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigrant students
• social mobility
• language
• culture
• socio-economic relations
• njangui

Acknowledgments

A special thanks goes to my colleague Dr Miller for reading the first drafts of this paper, I would also like to thank all who participated in interviews and allowed me to examine their emails. All shortcomings are solely mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.