Online images and imaginings of home: the case of the QwaQwa Thaba di Mahlwa Facebook page

ABSTRACT

Migration, be it national or transnational, is often a disruptive and traumatising experience that brings with it loneliness and homesickness. This article investigates how migrants from QwaQwa in the Eastern Free State Province in South Africa (re)imagine and (re)visualize the homeland away from home through social networking. QwaQwa is a remote mountanous area located in the Eastern Free State Province of South Africa. Like most remote areas around the world, QwaQwa does not have many economic opportunities and its inhabitants migrate to bigger cities in search of greener pastures. In an attempt to deal with the homesickness and loneliness associated with migration, some migrants have taken to online platforms to imagine and reconstruct home away from home. This article is particualrly interested in examining the way migrants from QwaQwa (re)imagine and (re)present home through images and texts that they share on a social networking site named QwaQwa Thaba di Mahlwa. The findings show that members of the webpage imagine home in four ways: as a place of natural beauty untainted by forces of modernization, a place of reunion and fellowship with family and friends, a place of ritual and cultural practices and, lastly, a place of social harmony and fun.

KEYWORDS:

• Home
• images
• identity
• migrants
• qwaqwa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Biographical statement

Rodwell Makombe is a Senior lecturer in the Department of English at the University of the Free State, South Africa. He holds a PhD in Literature and Philosophy. His areas of research interest include postcolonial studies, literary representations of crime and violence and cultural studies.

Oliver Nyambi lectures in the Department of English at the University of the Free, South Africa. He is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in the English Department at Bayreuth University in Germany. His research interests lie in postcolonial crisis literature and cultures and onomastics.

Notes

¹ Tears of Joy, a song by an acapella group from Qwaqwa, which celebrates the beauty of the mountainous scenery of Qwaqwa, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r8QPfAjrc4

Tears of Joy, a song by an acapella group from Qwaqwa, which celebrates the beauty of the mountainous scenery of Qwaqwa, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r8QPfAjrc4

Additional information

Funding

This article was funded by the Afromontane Research Unit, University of the Free State

Notes on contributors

Rodwell Makombe

Rodwell Makombe is a Senior lecturer in the Department of English Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of the Free State, South Africa. His research focuses on  postcolonial literary studies, memetics and social media discourses.

Oliver Nyambi

Oliver Nyambi lectures in the Department of English Literary and Cultural studies at the University of the Free State. He works on literatures of crisis and onomastics in literature.