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we?” The answers to these questions mean nothing without explicit or
implicit answers to the reciprocal questions, “who are you?” or “who is he?”
Through the names of their villages, totems, personal names and praise
poems (mentioned above) the Makgabeng communities are addressing all
these questions in order to express who they really are – their identities.
This is because in everyday situations, people’s identities are called into
question and established (or not). People are constantly faced with the
necessity of locating themselves in relation to others. Mulford and Salisbury
(1964) provide an empirical illustration of the way self-conceptions emerge
in response to these questions, and it was found that one’s social identity is
defined as a multiple product of attempts to locate oneself in the role system
– symbolically represented by asking and answering the question, “who I
am?”. When we discover ourselves, we may, as Paul Ricoeur once noted,
realise the possibility that there are just “others”, that we ourselves are an
“other” among “others” (Ricoer 1965). While the Makgabeng communities
express their identities through the names of their villages, totems, personal
names and praise poems, these identities need to be observed and be
validated by others. And what others express does not always mean that
others observe it in that way. Rehana Ebr.-Vally argues that “identities
formation is a two way dynamic process in which the presence of the other
is an essential component” 642 .
642 R. Ebr.-Vally , Kala Pani. Caste and Colour in South Africa, p. 28.
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