Mandela’s Funeral as Community Performance

Abstract

Some of the surviving theories and documentations which deal with rituals and ceremonial rites are often suggestive of rituals’ relationship with community performances. This article explores the complex traditional mourning and funeral rituals of the AmaXhosa people of South Africa, which took place during the funeral of Nelson Mandela as performances. The central issues raised in the article relate to cultural aesthetics and popular entertainment. Richard Schechner (2003) argues that western thinkers have too often split ritual from entertainment, privileging the former over the latter. It is generally asserted that ritual comes first, with entertainment arising later as a derivation or even deterioration of ritual. The purpose of this article therefore, is to examine the relationship between ritual and performance. In the paper, performance is defined as “happenings” and an avenue to “show off” certain aspects of the AmaXhosa culture relating to funeral rites. Using a descriptive narrative approach, the article provides an account of the national and global events that marked Mandela’s funeral as a performance. The paper examines both the profane and the sacred rituals as liminal performative genres. It concludes by arguing that ritual and entertainment as not in opposition or mutually exclusive, but in alliance with each other. The celebrations that accompanied Mandela’s funeral are viewed as instruments that have extended their frontiers to embrace “constructs of identity,” and “nationhood.”