The role of isiZulu communal notifications in sustaining the communityorientated lifestyle

Abstract

The dissemination of communal notifications across the proximally distant homesteads in a rural area is not an easy practice. Against this  backdrop, this study investigates the forms of communal notifications and their role in sustaining the community-orientated lifestyle  in an isiZulu-speaking rural community in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The study adopted a qualitative research method which  employed face-to-face interviews, in isiZulu, that involved 16 participants. The data revealed the prevalence of these forms of communal  notifications: social occasion-related notifications, death-related notifications, izimbizo (open meetings)-related notifications, notifications  instructing the community dwellers to clear footpaths, politics-related notifications, school meeting notifications, livestock  or pet immunisation notifications, and land tilling-related notifications. The study maintained that the custodians who pronounce these  notifications to the community employ strategies that aid their effective dissemination. Such strategies involve landscape usage, social  occasion platform usage, whistle or horn blowing, loud shouting and the sending of messengers. Importantly, the study established that  the communal notifications help inculcate the spirit of ubuntu or humanness among the community dwellers hence sustaining the  communityorientated lifestyle, which finds expression in isiZulu.