Pilgrimage to sacred sites in the Eastern Free State

[摘要] English: There are many pilgrimages and revered forms of travel in South Africa. However, no systematicanthropological studies have been conducted into these journeys. Filling this void, this is a multisiteethnographic study of pilgrimages to the sacred sites of the eastern Free State province.Following a qualitative methodology, the purpose of this combination inductive-deductive studywas to explore the pilgrimage phenomenon, describe pilgrimages to Mantsopa, Mautse andMotouleng, and explain the reasons pilgrims have for undertaking pilgrimages.Situated in the Mohokare (Caledon) River Valley, the sacred sites of the eastern Free State attractvisitation from a range of site users. Predominantly Sesotho-speaking, but also coming fromacross the country and neighbouring countries as well, groups of mostly Apostolic, ZCC, RomanCatholic and more recently Protestant congregants or lone journeyers travel to the sites, mainlyover weekends. Seeking to commune with the divine, pilgrims come to report and make prayerrequests. Important motives for their pilgrimages are to search for and solidify ancestorconnections, and to secure blessings. Further incentives comprise complying with the commissionand instruction to visit the sites, and the healing implications of these pilgrimages. Some visitorsto the sites make the trip but once, whereas other site users periodically return a number of timesa year and yet others reside permanently at the sites for years.The beautifully vibrant, colourful and complex pilgrimages to the sacred sites of the eastern FreeState call for a rethinking and broadening of the pilgrimage lens. The mainly Anglophone andWestern conception of classic pilgrimage is too narrow to accommodate the range and complexityof motivations, traditions, people and behaviours associated with pilgrimages to the sacred sitesof the eastern Free State. This heterogeneity further leads to jostling and vying for favour,clientele, narrative dominion and overall legitimisation among the pilgrim communities.Being journeys and places of substance required an acknowledgement of the significant role thatthe immaterial plays in all that is pilgrimage. This meant that culturalistic and hylomorphic modelsproved inadequate in capturing a more complete pilgrimage story. Instead, within a relationalepistemology and ontology, the entwinement, enmeshment, entanglement and entrapment of thematerial and immaterial, the animate and inanimate, the present and absent things, bring thesacred sites, the pilgrimages and the pilgrims into existence.

[发布机构] University of the Free State