CULTURE: Harvest Festivals Still Vital in Southern Africa

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

MAPUTO, Mozambique, Mar 4 2002 (IPS) - The Swazis believe the welfare of their country and people depend on the successful outcome of their national pageant.

Mozambicans believe if the sacred beast central to their pageant does not cooperate, misfortune lies ahead in the year to come.

South African Zulus regret that their national pageant disappeared during days of colonial conquest, and they feel that as a people they will never be whole until they can bring it back.

As crucial as these pageants are to national identities, they are little understood by outsiders, and scant literature exists about them.

Known variously by the English translations “kingship pageant”, “harvest festival”, and “rite of the first fruits”, these national pageants celebrated by the ethnic group of Bantu people from the Xhosa of South Africa to the Tsongas of Mozambique have more similarities than differences.

They all occur from Christmas to the end of the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, coinciding with the first crops on which these agrarian people’s existence historically depended.

They are also supernatural pageants, relying on ancestral spirits, magic and ritual for success. And like all rituals, if they are not performed exactly, the ancestors may be offended, and the favour sought from them will not come.

“The emadloti (ancestral spirits) intercede on behalf of the living with the Almighty, whom we call umkhulumkhulu, ‘the greatest of the great’,” says Gogo Ndwandwe, a sangoma, or traditional healer with divination abilities that allow her to communicate with the ancestors to effect cures for her patients.

“The ancestors will see to it that good rains come, that the king will be made ‘straight’ (protected and given wisdom),” she says.

Crisis struck in Mozambique last month when a hippo central to the harvest festival failed to emerge from its pond. Had it done so, amid the people’s chanting and dancing performed to draw him out, it was believed that economic prosperity would be ensured this year.

The pageant, in Gwazamthini north of Maputo, drew people from the Inhambane, Gaza and Maputo provinces. Most were dressed in traditional attire. Also in attendance was Mozambique president Joaquim Chissano.

Some participants blamed the introduction of politics into the pageant for the hippo’s failure to emerge. “The ancestors were offended,” says Simeo Kapela of Maputo. “The ritual was supposed to be in their honour, but the politicians changed it to a war memorial.”

Mozambique’s ruling FRELIMO party scheduled the ritual for Feb 3 to coincide with the death of the party’s founder, Eduardo Mondlane, in Tanzania on that day. President Chissano spoke of the soldiers whose lives were lost during the country’s two-decade-long civil war.

Politics is at the heart of Swaziland’s sacred Incwala pageant, which is why members of pro-democracy groups tend to shun the “kingship pageant”, or Incwala. The nation petitions the ancestral spirits to bring good fortune to the country by empowering its leader, King Mswati.

The king’s older brother, Prince Sobandla Dlamini, sees the Incwala in a cultural rather than political context. “This is the high point of the year, when Swazis show our pride in who we are,” he says.

Thousands of warriors and royal family members in traditional attire assemble in a large branch cattle enclosure at Ludzidini royal residence, home of the Queen Mother, who by tradition safeguards sacred rainmaking medicines.

The month-long pageant begins when the king sends a party of priests on a trek to the Indian Ocean to collect sea water and sacred herbs used in the pageant, which culminates in the Big Incwala, a national holiday, shortly after the first full moon following the southern summer solstice.

For a month, the king goes into seclusion, preparing to lead his nation in ritualistic dancing and singing. At the climax of the pageant, witnessed only by the royal family’s inner circle, the king blesses the first fruits of the year’s harvest.

“In olden days, no Swazi was permitted to eat these fruits before the king passed the ancestors’ blessings onto them,” says Mandla Dube, a young warrior. Like other members of the traditional regiments, he is covered by a heavy ox-tail shawl, and carries a large cowhide shield.

Because of the sacred nature of the Swazis’ Incwala, and the devotion shown to ancestral spirits, Christian missionaries a century ago forbade their converts from attending.

But unlike virtually all other such kingship pageants during colonial times, the Swazis’ observation was never banned or altered by colonial authorities, in this case the British. Today’s pageant is much like the one performed 500 years ago by the first Swazi king, Dlamini I.

The AmaZulu, the Swazis’ sister ethnic group across the border in South Africa – a similar language and several customs are shared – did not fare as well under British rule. Partly because they did not cooperate militarily with the colonialists, unlike the Swazis, but went to war with them instead, with the loss of national sovereignty the result. With the royal house of the Zulu diminished, the nation’s Incwala also languished.

Today’s Zulu King Goodwill Zwelethini is attempting to reintroduce the Incwala, as he has revived the maidens’ reed dance done in homage to the royal family. A regular guest at the Swazis’ Incwala and reed dance, the Zulu king recognised the cultural value such pageants possess.

“Right now, these are fun events well attended by tourists visiting KwaZulu,” says tour guide Charles Mngomezulu of Durban, South Africa. “But it will take some time for people to take them seriously as sacred pageants. I think we have lost that reverence.”

But whether entertainment or devotional, the Incwalas of Southern Africa are going strong, with more attention given this year to their role in forging national identities than ever before.