Microsoft Word - PhD Thesis Final.pdf - University of Limpopo ...

addition to the communal identity creation – which has been the major focus
of this study – conclusion on the following identity markers will also be
arrived at: political, racial, religious, social, economic, educational, health,
age, gender, habitual, lingual and behavioural. In the whole text of this
study, these identity markers have been shown how they interplayed
themselves within the micro-context through to the macro-context levels,
and in this concluding chapter, their present situation will be observed and
assessed against all these contexts. In the whole study, identity creation in
the Makgabeng area has been traced as far back as the earliest occupation
of that area by the San in about the 16 th century up to today (2007).
The creation of communal identities in Makgabeng was a process which
took place over time. Today, the people in Makgabeng live in small
communal units which are conveniently referred to as villages. The villages
in that area are more than thirty in number (see map on
VILLAGES/COMMUNITIES AND FARMS), and new settlements continue to
mushroom as populations explode. As already explained in this study, the
communal nature of the communities in Makgabeng evolved, changed and
took different forms under various circumstances and contexts. The present
villages of Makgabeng reflect the demarcations of the farms which were
surveyed, fenced off, and sold towards the end of the 19 th century and the
beginning of the 20 th century by the successive White governments of South
Africa. The arrival of the Whites in the Makgabeng area completely changed
and disrupted the communal way in which polities, clans and families
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