Immoral Accumulation in Venda

Immoral Accumulation and the Human Economy of Death in Venda

• This chapter provides an ethnographic analysis of how impoverished rural South Africans engage with economic processes associated with funerals.
• Rumors about people who profit financially from death speak to concerns about illegitimate accumulation amid economic insecurity and inequality.
• The rumors reveal concerns of an economic nature, and how funeral finances are gendered
• The chapter focuses on the role of elderly women in negotiating funeral payments and how language is mobilized as a tool.
• Ethnographic evidence was collected from intensive fieldwork (2005 to 2010) in the former homeland of Venda, building on an association with the region since 1995.
• The researcher worked as an English teacher, HIV/AIDS educator, musician, and social anthropologist.
• Tshivenda-speaking people (Muvenda – sing, Vhavenda – plural) constitute only 2.3% of the South African population (Lehohla 2003).
• Tshivenda is unusual and unintelligible in South Africa, part of the Niger-Congo linguistic cluster.
• The Venda region borders Zimbabwe and the Kruger National Park in the northeastern corner of the country, which is geographically remote .
• The region is stereotypically represented as mystical and secretive masters of the occult, reinforced by an increase in ritual murders (McNeill 2011), due to Venda being on the periphery of South Africa's centers of power and influence.
• The region shares socio-economic and political characteristics with other rural parts of South Africa and has undergone political and economic change since the demise of apartheid.
• In economic terms, there has been a dramatic fall in outgoing migrant laborers, a rise in unemployment, and a majority now depend on welfare or funding from international donors to NGOs.
• Venda's incorporation in 1994 into the Northern (later Limpopo) Province was preceded by political maneuvers that allowed traditional leaders to participate in post-apartheid governance.
• Post-apartheid South Africa has witnessed a reinvention of traditional leadership, with kings, chiefs, and headmen playing a central role in the political economy of the democratic era.
• Neoliberal economic policies coexist with welfare payments, which leads to life being experienced as contradictory and fragmented.

Economic Dimensions of Death

• The economic dimensions of death and dying have taken on significance.
• Death has been a concern of anthropologists in southern Africa for many years, relating the increase in mortality to the AIDS pandemic (Posel 2005; Niehaus 2007; McNeill 2009).
• Investigating the social dynamics of death requires more attention, as the subject is drenched in taboo
• Knowledge of death is openly expressed between trusted friends and family.
• Access to tight-knit networks involves long-term engagement and gatekeepers, but some information is withheld, and high-ranking male relatives who organize funeral arrangements are somewhat easier to access.
• Economic aspects do not attract much sustained scrutiny even though the social and metaphysical aspects of death continue to receive scholarly attention.
• Ethnographic analysis of funerals demands a consideration of economic issues embedded in changing social formations, but researching insurance schemes demanded a unconventional approach
• Venda's urban center around Thohoyandou is marked by the proliferation of funeral parlors that offer insurance schemes.
• Competition is high and the researcher was met with suspicion, that they wanted to undercut the competition for their own funeral business, but no one wanted to talk.
• The urban core of the death industry around Thohoyandou is largely dependent on collecting cash from the rural periphery.
• State welfare is one of the most reliable forms of income, such as pensions, disability grants and child support, these are distributed via cash vans that charge around villages on a monthly rotation.
• These armored vehicles are followed by mobile funeral insurers, who set up shop directly opposite the payout points, and jumping out to spy on any opposition and tracking down known clients who have defaulted their payments.
• Approaching insurance representatives in this context means researchers were either ignored or physically pushed away, and many of the insurers were allegedly acting as a cover for illegal loan sharks.
• The presence of researchers was viewed with suspicion.
• New tactics were employed, where several research assistants signed up for different funeral-insurance policies at rural pay points, collecting documentation and ethnographic information
• Preliminary evidence suggests that funeral insurers are involved in elaborate scams where elderly women (gogos) are duped out of their investments since insurers are insured themselves
• For example, one assistant's first installment (70 rand) was marked as 6,030 rand, with the assistant signing a month later on the 6,030 rand book under 'received' and then produced a new one indicating the 70 rand payment.
• More evidence is necessary to substantiate claims of fraud, but it signifies degree of mystification associated with the insurance industry due to expensive funerals
• Insurance is a big business, and people cannot afford to stage an impressive funeral without contributing a large amount for insurance

Rumours and Parlours

• The pervasive mechanism of economic accumulation and the sense of mystification behind it lead to demonizing those who make significant financial benefits from the death industry
• Frustrations are vented, and collective moral judgement is passed through these rumours
• There is a symbiotic relationship between life insurance schemes and the increase in funeral parlours.
• They are connected in terms of patterns of ownership, and upward social mobility is often along ethnic lines
• The significance of contemporary patterns of amassing wealth is in historically constituted conceptions of legitimate accumulation.
• Success used to be marked by owning a taxi, progressing to a fleet, then to a beer hall, with such a trajectory reached if the beer hall can support an adjoining butchery, general store, and taxis to take people to the area
• Rural landscapes have ventures of this type, passed from father to son.
• Success is likely to come from BEE appointments, or government tender, entrenching economic advantage
• Successful businessmen evoke notions of legitimacy, morality, and ‘old-fashioned’ hard work, defined in relation to BEE enrichment and those who have recently made millions through the funeral industry.
• One businessman said “I will not let my sons get into it"
• In Cape Town, Xhosa taxi owners became involved in the funeral business through their desire, and ability, to keep migrants moving between the city where they work and the rural areas where they bury their dead compared to the people in Venda considering starting up a funeral parlour is an immoral act
• Successful businessmen told half-truths in answering this question
• Some recent funeral parlors in the area have been opened by local Venda men, with the start-up capital coming from government tenders and BEE.
• These business ventures have been a target for persecution through rumour and gossip, and some businessmen will not branch out into the funeral industry in their own backyard
• The first rumour, recorded in 2004–2005, centered on a poison known as 'seven days’.
• The name is self-explanatory a victim died seven days after consuming the poison.
• Competing theories were in circulation during the seven-days scare, with mourners attending funerals organized by the Venda-owned parlor being poisoned by undercover agents.
• The second rumour began to circulate in or around 2009 and remains common, spread in Thohoyandou and the Tshivhase district of Venda.
• Concerns around identifying an unidentified man known only by a Hummer
• The Hummer driver, who speaks only Tshivenda, patrols streets of Louis Trichardt, Thohoyandou and Giyani until he convinces a Tshivenda-speaking woman to get into his vehicle.
• Once inside, she discovers that the millionaire is wearing a nappy instead of underpants, with an abnormal manhood, and wakes to thousands of rand in cash and a note from the Hummer driver
• The note states that the money is to purchase a fresh human liver from a ritual murderer, which must be used to feed maggots the Hummer driver deposited inside her vagina.
• At the time, the only two individuals in the area with Hummers were the joint owners of a Venda-run mortuary.
• Owners of Venda-run mortuaries are involved in attempts to kill or otherwise intimately maim innocent Venda people
• Instead of sperm, the Hummer driver deposited maggots in the humour that have to feed on human liver
• The woman is faced with a choice get involved with ritual murder or face a slow and painful death
• The symbolic resonance here with HIV is striking – sex the source of life has morphed into a potential cause of death.
• The human liver that may save her is to be bought with cash, evoking BEE accumulation that is perceived to be illegitimate by those excluded from it.
• The symbolism captures and serves as a means of negotiating frustrations, expressing discontent with neoliberal economic policies implemented by the ANC government that enrich a few whilst the majority continue to struggle, and the masses feel entitled to the spoils.
• Similar repercussions of economic activity perceived to be illegitimate are found throughout sub-Saharan Africa, such as “419 men’ in Nigeria being woven into rumours of ritual killings
• Daniel Jordan Smith (2001) has described that email scammers accumulate rapid wealth through illegal means, the illegality is problematic, but their failure to distribute their money through kinship networks which leads to demonizing by the poor majority as ritual killers.
• Funeral parlours in the region were, until around 1990, exclusively run by white Afrikaans-speaking undertaker who blended into white elite
• The role of the undertaker has been that of an outsider, and with the incorporation of the previous homeland into the new South Africa, it was 'outsiders' who established businesses to manage and profit from death
• Because they made revenue, served to reinforce their immoral nature as outsiders
• Venda men, who do venture into the funeral industry, are thought of as parasites, killing and eating their own- people: spreading poison at funerals to ensure the continuation of their businesses.
• Possible explanations for allegations and rumours relates to physical handling and preparing the corpse
• Informal entrepreneurs, who construct tombstones and coffins, are making an honest living, commonplace throughout Venda but have escaped victimization
• Lacking knowledge about death means more unlikely to have been involved in its cause

Organising and Paying for a Funeral

• At sunrise in a winter 2007, the author joined the crowd of mourners going up the path on the way to the graveyard for Randani

• Like most graveyards is high on a hillside and accessible only by roads that have forced local undertakers into the precautionary measure of purchasing fleets of four-by-four hearses

• Standing near the grave site included his family, neighbours, ex-lovers, drinking buddies, members of the taxi association, and a scattering of relatives from Gazankulu.

• After the short service which involved a family feud, a representative of the undertakers gave a sales pitch from Mudzunga Funerals with special offers on luxury caskets and marble tombstones, and a man with a clipboard signing people up for funeral insurance- which would receive a discount on your first three months payments

• Another salesman atop an empty beer crate - addressed the departing crowd with family plans to include up to six children low premiums and instant cash payments to help them prepare from Dembe Funeral Directors

• Three representatives of local funeral insurers or undertakers were marketing policies, distributing leaflets and offering transport where no one was perturbed for their presence, with best deals discussed amongst themselves

• All of this lead to the description of men profiting from the funeral industry, leading into the issue of cost, what is involved and where the money comes from

• Regardless of how their ownership is perceived, where/how do parlours actually make their money

• There are activities that must be organized and paid for in the run-up to a decent and dignified funeral

• Depending on insurance coverage defined by the monthly premium rate and how long this has been maintained some or all of the duties is covered as cash payout

• One of the most time-consuming responsibilities is selection of and payment for tombstone, costing between 4,000 and 40,000 rand in 2009, the smaller independent tombstone makers are scattered around Venda

• Need to source coffin also, ranging from plywood box or luxury coffin

• Many people design, maufacture and self coffins from workshops, one such group is the Murunwa Luxury and Budget Coffins, consisting of four carpenters who the author use to be and English teacher for

• VTT graduates struggled to Find Employment, decided to establish COFFIN Business after reading an article in The Sowetan newspaper, lots of people who need coffins, lots of them interview by MT

• Murunwa wasn't making as much as the owner had hoped, due to high materials cost as unable to purchase raw materials in bulk

• Most trades came from the Thohoyandous and Louis Trichard Municipality morgues, every two-three months unclaimed corpses are laid to rest in municipal graveyards and bought from Murumwa for 200 rand apiece Besides a coffin the guests must be seated in a tent, meaning the tent and chairs are the first things to be organized, for royalty (Vhakololo) takes place at sunsets. for commeners (Vhasiwana) at sunrise

• Also neighbours gather for a prayer service (thabeloni) with the hire of chairs and tent organized at a community level

• Another major expense is food such that the jealousy, suspicions and witchcraft emerge because eating is fundamentally connected with trust Only witches eat alone

• Because eating at a funeral is connected with Economic insecurity often organized and partially subsidized by female social clubs

• Expenses organized before take place writing, typing printing such as a programme

• The gravedigger has been the most recent transition-Until the gravedigger's jobs shame to all intent

• Recently becomes minor celebrities lauded as 'tireless servants'

• This dramatic shifts from hyenas to celebrities and rapid inclusion the market

• To notify Radio announcements must be made paid around 300Rand

• Employment Unions or workers assistance funeral funds

• The Community is a Source of assistance civic Association

• Once the funeral insurance pay only partially assist burial with benefits from monthly

• Elderly women mostly occupied income from the welfare payouts

• In the 60’s the “ oldies” used terms when South Africa was a member of the British Commonwealth.

Conclusion

• Where the men make decisions as is normal, the council is convenes
• Not all cash from a money payout isn’t used for a funeral
• Feminization Finance long term negotiations
• The ultimate’s is in Venda
• Outline in humen economy death in post apartheid
• Death and Aids are certain