‘Cross-identification’: identity games and the performance of South Africanness by Ndebele-speaking migrants in Johannesburg

Abstract

Language’s centrality in how ‘amakwerekwere’ – those who babble – are constructed in South Africa, raises fascinating questions when attention is cast on Zimbabwean Ndebele-speaking migrants whose language is mutually intelligible with South Africa’s Nguni cluster. This article draws from the narratives of Ndebele-speaking migrants in three neighbourhoods of Johannesburg and discusses how they negotiate their ‘outsiderness’ through a process I term ‘cross-identification.’ Cross-identification refers to the appropriation of ‘Zuluness’ by Ndebele-speaking migrants when they are among interlocutors without the symbolic competence to distinguish the distinctions between ‘Ndebele’ and ‘Zulu’ varieties. On the other hand, they deploy linguistic and social absence when in the presence of interlocutors endowed with such a capacity and who can call their bluff. To conclude, I evaluate how migrants’ performativity – cross-identification – is potentially also imagined. I raise the question, if this is the case, of what this affords both the performers and audience who are complicit in this dramaturgy.

Keywords:

• Zimbabwe
• Ndebele
• migrant
• cross-identification
• performativity

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge Stellenbosch’s Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences for funding my PhD, out of which this journal article emerges. I would also like to acknowledge the Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship (SSRC) for providing me with fieldwork research funds.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Author’s full name removed for anonymity in review.

2. Author’s full name removed for anonymity in review.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Stellenbosch’s Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences; Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship (SSRC).