Gender, Dress and Self-Empowerment: Women and Burial Societies in Botswana

Abstract

[One measure of relative poverty, humiliation and indignity among Batswana is wearing tattered clothes (makatana). Literally, a dress (seaparo) means to adorn oneself. Particular kinds of clothes have multiple meanings and authorise and legitimise participation of certain social groups in given situations in society. This paper focuses on specific ways in which women in local institutions known as burial societies (diswaeti in everyday Tswana discourse), ceremonially and ritualistically empower themselves through an event known as kapeso – to be garbed, enrobed or dressed. Empowerment embodies a sense of competence, mastery, strength, and ability to effect change. The event incorporates biblical knowledge associated with Christian religious ceremonies of dedication or devotion and Tswana funeral ritual symbols. Given the extraordinary context of the AIDS crisis in Botswana, taking up specific intervention roles of providing emergency financial relief to households in distress demands some sort of public authentication. Women in burial societies adopt a particular dress code as ritual object of social power to perform gendered social roles that closely conform to status obligations to self, family, kin, community and society. Their dress code enables them to dramatise social action (that is, the ability to understand what they do and to use that understanding as part of their performance) in ways that redefine gender relations, practices of spirituality across denominational affiliation and Tswana humanism (botho).]