The Drums of Affliction

A Study of Religious Processes Among the Ndembu of Zambia

V. W. Turner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429941696
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

In this study of the Ndembu of Zambia, ritual is examined under two aspects: as a regulator of social relations over time and as a system of symbols. Social life is thereby given direction and meaning. An extended case-study of a series of ritual performances in the life of a single village community is analysed in order to estimate the effects of participation in these symbolic events on its component groups and personalities.

VII

NKANG’A: PART ONE

INTRODUCTION

IN the foregoing analysis of the complex extended-case history of Kamahasanyi and his kin, affines, neighbours and fellow citizens, stress was laid on the organizational principles of matriliny and virilocal marriage. These principles are regarded as possessing the highest possible legitimacy, in the sense that they are positively evaluated, and accepted as valid and binding by all Ndembu. They are axioms of action in a wide variety of situations—domestic, local, kinship-dominated, economic, jural, political and recreational. What we have to enquire into in the present chapter is the principle or source of their validity.

This leads us into the major watershed division between rituals of affliction and life-crisis rituals. While the former are ad hoc and unpredictable in their origin and represent responses to unprecedented events, the latter accompany the passage of an individual, or a set of similarly circumstanced individuals, from one social status to another. It is on such occasions of life-crisis, when fairly elaborate rites de passage are performed, that the legitimacy of certain crucial principles of Ndembu society is most fully and publicly endorsed. In the rituals of affliction we see these principles under challenge; in the life-crisis rituals we see them being renewed and replenished.

The importance that matriliny, virilocality, seniority, masculinity, femininity, affinity, village solidarity and other principles quite clearly held for Kamahasanyi, Jim, Kachimba, and the rest can only be fully understood after we have closely examined the symbolism and role structure of an important life-crisis ritual. Among such rituals the attainment of adult status by a woman is of the utmost significance in a matrilineal society. I propose, therefore, to make a close examination of the Ndembu girl’s puberty ritual, known as Nkang’a, in order to give us some understanding of the emotional power of matriliny, and the concrete symbols in which this principle is expressed. Such an understanding will make more fully intelligible many of the relationships between persons and between ideas that we encountered in the Kamahasanyi case. It will also help us to understand the emotional impact on personalities and groups of breaches of matrilineal norms.

In making this study of Nkang’a our point of departure will no longer be the historical event, the breach of custom; on the contrary it will be the customary form of the ritual. The maintenance of the performance of this form has long been considered indispensable to the maintenance of the image of the Ndembu as a distinctive people. Thus in Ihamba we went from the particular to the general form; in Nkang’a we proceed from the general form to particular instances.

My wife and I attended a dozen performances of Nkang’a during our two periods of field-work. These took place in residential units of every type and size, from chief’s capital villages to small ‘farms’ of four to six huts. We saw both the first and third phases, and my wife visited many novices in their seclusion huts and talked with the women who were training them. In addition I collected some numerical data about other performances I was unable to visit, and about women who gave me their ritual histories. Such data included the interrelations between the main participants, amounts of bridewealth and who gave and received it, and the like. No ritual of affliction is performed nearly as frequently as Nkang’a. The extreme accessibility of Nkang’a made it possible to establish to some extent what was normative and invariant, and the degree of variance. My own impression was that there was less variation in the ritual details than in other kinds of ritual, probably because it was performed frequently and publicly.

A prominent feature that distinguishes it from the puberty rituals of most Central African peoples is that it is regularly performed before the first onset of the menses.¹ Its main biological referent is the development of the breasts, and not menstruation. In Ndembu ritual idiom Nkang’a is a ‘white’, not a ‘red’ ritual, and, furthermore, a ritual of ‘milk’, rather than ‘blood’. This is demonstrated also in the symbolism. It is when a girl’s breasts are beginning to ripen that her parents think of ‘passing her through’ Nkang’a. Until fairly recently Nkang’a continued into the marriage ritual; its last episodes overlapped with the beginning of marriage. This meant that girls tended to marry rather earlier than in tribes where puberty rites followed first menstruation. Betrothal, as in many other Central African tribes, often took place early, when the girl was seven or eight. But she did not live with her husband until she had passed Nkang’a, although he might visit her frequently, and even have intercrural intercourse with her. But if he made her pregnant before Nkang’a, her parents could take legal action against him and obtain substantial damages. On the other hand, no severe supernatural penalty was believed to be incurred by a woman who married without having undergone Nkang’a. Among the Nyakyusa, for example, it was said than an uninitiated woman would become mad, contract diseases, or remain infertile, if she slept with her husband before undergoing her puberty rites. I knew several women, most of them brought up as orphans by missionaries, who had not undergone Nkang’a. They were said to ‘feel ashamed’ because of this, but all were married and had at least one child. They were said to be ‘not fully Lunda’. Nkang’a is regarded as giving a girl a better chance of becoming fertile, but Ndembu recognize that it does not guarantee fertility. They say that the shades are pleased if a girl has Nkang’a, and may be angry if she has not passed through the rites, rendering her temporarily sterile. Yet the Ndembu recognize, in their practical way, that though some have not been initiated, they have still had children. Others again have undergone Nkang’a and have remained barren. This may be modern scepticism, but I have the impression that even in the past the Ndembu possessed an earthy common sense, regarding ritual (much as we regard medical treatment) as benefiting, but not ensuring, health.

Nkang’a brings to light a contradiction between fundamental principles of Ndembu social organization; the contradiction between matrilineal descent and virilocal marriage as determinants of residential affiliation. A young woman at puberty, who is at once the ‘growing tip of a matrilineage’, to paraphrase Professor Fortes, and the potential nucleus of a matricentric family living virilocally, is indeed a point of stress in the social structure, the ‘sorest point’ of all (see Fig. VI, p. 206). But both principles of social organization have, in fact, coexisted in Ndembu society from the remote past, and customs have been elaborated to mitigate and exclude their conflicts in many sectors of social life. A girl’s first marriage, however, brings out their open incompatibility. Now, whenever one finds the danger of manifest discrepancy between social processes, one tends to find ritualization. The paramount values of the society are symbolically asserted against the dividing tendencies inherent in its structure.

Nkang’a has three phases: (1) Kwing’ija, or ‘causing to enter’; (2) kunkunka, or seclusion in a grass hut (nkunka); and (3) kwidisha, or ‘bringing out’.

KWING’IJA: THE RITE OF SEPARATION

The first phase may conveniently be regarded as falling into fourteen successive episodes. Before Nkang’a begins, beer is taken to the local chief or sub-chief, as in the boys’ circumcision ritual, and his permission to hold the rites is obtained.

Episode One: The Exchange of Arrows

On the eve of kwing’ija proper, the bridegroom (kalemba) and the novice’s mother (nyakankang’a) exchange arrows. The bridegroom gives another arrow to the novice’s instructress (nkong’u), together with a calabash of beer. The instructress that night keeps the arrow in her sleeping quarters. Alternatively, the parents of the couple (who call one another reciprocally nkulanami) exchange arrows when the marriage has first been arranged. These arrows are used in the ritual.

The bridegroom’s arrow, called nsewu, stands for the bridewealth he will pay when his bride comes out of seclusion. This bridewealth is also called nsewu. In the symbolism of Ndembu ritual an arrow stands for masculinity, while the curved bow stands for femininity. The arrow is held in the right hand, which also stands for masculinity, while the bow is usually held in the left hand, which represents femininity. We shall meet with several instances of the bow-femininity equation during the seclusion phase of Nkang’a.

In passing over this arrow the bridegroom signifies to the instructress that he is empowered by the novice’s mother to ask her to prepare the girl ritually and physically for her new role as wife and mother.

Episode Two: Village Headman’s Invocation to the Ancestral Shades

Not long after sunset that night, the headman of the village at which the novice (kankang’a) is to be initiated goes to the village nyiyombu tree-shrines with the novice and her mother. The novice kneels with her open hands on the ground facing the shrines. The headman sits on a stool facing the shrines. He takes a tiny piece of cassava root, places it at the foot of a muyombu tree, and invokes the shades.¹ Here is a prayer I recorded at Mukanza Village:

‘Eyi Kahali Webala mukwashuku iwu muntu ashakami chachiwahi, bayi

‘O you Kahali Webala [a former headman of the village] help this person, that she may remain well, not

wakata nehi-chatama. Enu akishi twinki mbiji twendi chachiwahi

be ill—that is bad. O ye shades, give us meat that we may walk well

mwisang’a twani mbiji. Tunalembi tutiyi kuwaha. Iwu mwana

in the bush and find meat. We are contrite that we may be happy. This child

ashakami kunkunka watoha kanda wakediki wakosaku. Tunasakwili. Twinka mbiji mwani.’

may she stay fat in the seclusion hut, not come out thin. We offer thanks. Please give us meat.’

Indigenous Exegesis

In other villages we frequently heard the phrase: ‘Twinki mbiji yatunyama bayi mbiji yawantuku’, ‘Give us the meat of animals, not the meat of human beings.’ This means: ‘Protect the village from necrophagous sorcery and witchcraft.’ Ndembu believe that whenever many people are gathered together, sorcerers, witches, and their familiars mingle with them, ready to profit from quarrels and fights which activate their power to do harm.

One prayer I heard, asked for the specific protection of the shades against sorcerers who might want to kill the novice ‘to make nyalum...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• List of Plates
• List of Figures
• I. Introduction
• II. Divination and Its Symbolism
• III. The Morphology of Rituals of Affliction
• IV. Field Context and Social Drama
• V. The Social Setting of The Ritual Sequence [At Nswanamundong’u Village]
• VI. A Performance of Ihamba Analysed
• VII. Nkang’a: Part One
• VIII. Nkang’a: Part Two
• IX. Rituals and Social Processes
• Appendix A. Ndembu Concepts of ‘Shade’, ‘Shadow’, and ‘Ghost’
• Appendix B. Synopses of Some Performances of Ihamba
• Appendix C. Tables
• Bibliography
• Index