The social displacement enforced by the South African Group Areas Act between
1954 and 1955 was understandably experienced as a destructive process with physical and
emotional consequences arising from various types of losses, separation and feelings of
helplessness. Although the forced removals affected all the people in the community - also in
later years and generations, it seems as if older people are affected the more as they still
remember the losses they experienced when they were removed from their homes and their
communities, when their heritage and their culture were displaced. The sense of belonging
being experienced by older people, who were subjected to these forceful removals, is
therefore unclear. In this study the sense of belonging is defined as the effective participation,
involvement, contribution and emersion of people when relating to their social, physical,
spiritual, emotional and cultural places. In this study older (aged 60 and above) Setswana
speaking residents of Ikageng, a community just outside Potchefstroom in the North West
Province, South Africa, who were also forcibly relocated from Kloppersville to Ikageng, 10
kilometers away from Kloppersville, were asked to identify places that are important to them
in Ikageng and to describe the meanings they attach to these places. In the research, no one
identified any places of importance in Ikageng, instead throughout the research they kept on
referring to their lives in Kloppersville, their former place of residence, the place where they
were forcibly removed from – giving purpose and direction to this study and leading to the
question: What are the experiences related to the sense of belonging of Setswana speaking older women who were forcibly relocated during Apartheid in South Africa? The older
persons’ experiences of their sense of belonging in the place where they were forcibly
relocated to must be understood in relation to the past.
A qualitative research approach was used and a narrative research design followed.
Two sets of data were gathered and are reported on in this article that focuses on the
narrations of 11 older Tswana people from the Day Care Centre for the Aged in Ikageng.
Narrative data collection and analysis, as well as a variety of qualitative research methods
and media, were used to collect data. These include: focus group discussions, the Mmogo–
MethodTM, videos, audio, photographs and observational notes. The thematic analysis of
textual data, narrative–oriented inquiry as well as visual data, established trustworthiness of
this research through crystallization.
By drawing on the deeper symbolic meaning derived through the use of the MmogomethodTM,
the study has revealed that the sense of belonging is a relational phenomenon that
cannot be understood in absence of the different relational environments. In an African
culture the relationship with the current environment resonates with the effects that historical
processes, structural abuses, discrimination, racism and devaluation had on individuals whose
lives have been uprooted. This study has shown that the older women have a micro–organic
relational sense of belonging to the place of relocation and not to the whole context and other
relational environments and that they revealed more sense of belonging towards the place
where they were relocated from. / Thesis (M.A. (Research Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NWUBOLOKA1/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/7360 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Kolobe, Patricia Stockie |
| Publisher | North-West University |
| Source Sets | North-West University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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