Mutualism Despite Ostensible Difference: HuShamwari, Kuhanyisana, and Conviviality Between Shona Zimbabweans and Tsonga South Africans in Giyani, South Africa

Abstract

This ethnographic study explores forms of mutuality and conviviality between Shona migrants from Zimbabwe and Tsonga-speaking South Africans living in Giyani, South Africa. To analyse these forms of mutuality, we draw on Southern African concepts rather than more conventional development or migration theory. We explore ways in which the Shona concept of hushamwari (translated as “friendship”) and the commensurate xiTsonga category of kuhanyisana (“to help each other to live”) allow for conviviality. Employing the concept of hushamwari enables us to move beyond binaries of kinship versus friendship relations and examine the ways in which people create reciprocal friendships that are a little “like kin.” We argue that the cross-cutting forms of collective personhood that underlie both Shona and Tsonga ways of being make it possible to form social bonds across national lines, such that mutuality can be made between people even where the wider social context remains antagonistic to “foreigners.”