Along the stereotyping road: nineteenth and early twentieth centuries narratives of ukuhlonipha

Abstract In this paper, I ask how colonial and academic writings from the 19th and early 20th centuries are responsible for the gender-stereotyping and linguistic-stereotyping of ukuhlonipha, an avoidance-based custom of respect traditionally applied to in-laws among Nguni-speaking communities in Southern Africa. I engage in the historical recovery process by suggesting that the knowledge circulation from colonial-era South Africa to philological and anthropological theories of imperial-era Europe is evidence of a knowledge erasure about the custom of ukuhlonipha.