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Knight and Priebatsch (1977) document that the walls had to be resurfaced seasonally, after the summer rains, due to the fragility of the natural pigments. This ritual endeavor, along with the beadwork production, provided two of the main traditional duties for the household's women. These familial activities, often practiced during the initiation process, allowed for the transfer of patterning strategies from mother to daughter, and from female in-laws to new Ndebele wives secured from other indigenous groups.In addition to conveying self-identity, personal prayers, values, and emotions, wall painting has become deeply ingrained in the family marriage tradition. Courtney-Clarke (1986) depicts the married women of the household as responsible for designing images for the outer gates, front and side walls, and sometimes even interior rooms. Preferring geometric forms even when they are representing realistic, natural, or manufactured items, Ndebele tend to abstract these images and re-create them as symbolic, repetitive icons.Even though overall Ndebele wall designs show increasing external influence, traveling today in the remote Nebo area of the Northern Province one can still see the traditional black soot lines, limestone whitewash, and red and dark red brown, now complemented by sky blue, deep blue, yellow-gold, green, and occasionally pink. Here, there exists a sense of fleeting authenticity.Sitting outside her front gate in Nebo, Mrs. Elisabeth Mahlangu's response to me concerning "change" is "Why?" She describes the chevron pattern on her wall as important to her family clan. For the 28 years of her marriage, mhlope (white) the overcomer, and mnyama (darkness) the balancer, have surrounded her and visually affirmed her and other family clan members. She stresses that her paints are powder and water, not the new paints in the can.Changes in Ndebele Art
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