Abstract

Many consider the beehive grass iqhugwana archetypically Zulu. With the shield and assegai it is iconic in the tourism culture of ‘the Zulu Kingdom’, representing the maintenance of an exotic ‘tradition’. I argue that this is not necessarily so, as historical material shows evidence for continual adaptation and evolution of this form. Using the more contemporary examples of the decorated buildings of Msinga, I suggest that the recent vernacular environment that has developed is a result of a post-global Africanisation, in an area that, due to its circumstances, may have missed out on the globalisation phenomenon completely.