2.8 The importance and value of ntumbuluko in Tsonga consciousness
2.8.6 Some differences in the Christian practitioners' approach to ntumbuluko
It is interesting to analyse S. Chitlango and Machava, because they have many things in common. They are both from the same traditional area, both are in the same Assembly of God church and both are deacons in that church. For S. Chitlango ntumbuluko was life; its abolition or abandonment was suicide and its restoration by the government was a kind of resurrection to life. But, for Machava, ntumbuluko was good and helpful only as long as the gospel had not yet arrived. The coming of the gospel superseded ntumbuluko and replaced it. People must now be in Christ, in whom there is "divine Ntumbuluko". For him, ntumbuluko's importance and value dwell in the past. His rain-making story was told to prove that the power of the gospel is above that of ntumbuluko and that whatever ntumbuluko achieved could be better achieved through the power of the gospel. Unfortunately, however, in his understanding that power was limited only to rain-making; when it comes to death and sexuality, he went back to ntumbuluko as the life-saving and long life provider, which was the same view that S. Chitlango S was expressing when he challenged him, and which was the traditional view, as expressed by Ndzukule, on the value and importance of ntumbuluko in human life as viewed by the Tsongas.
Rev. Matsombe, head of the Union Baptist (IUB)69 denomination from 1974 to 1995, considered ntumbuluko to be darkness. For him, to follow ntumbuluko was to follow
"darkness". For him, widowhood rites are ku xanisa70 (torturing the widow). For him the ku vuyisa mufi, or the practice and ritual of bringing the dead home is a new but senseless practice. When his grandfather and father died there was no such practice; it
IUB stands for Igreja Uniao Baptista de Mocambique. It is the single biggest Protestant denomination in Mozambique and is the biggest Baptist denomination in Southern Africa (Johnstone 1993:395).
When I asked him to explain why he considers the widowhood rituals as torture, he told me that in his area, Chibuto, when they return from the burial the widow is forced to climb the roof of her house and to remove the central grass, called xitchungwa, in which she must sleep for the duration of xikuma.
For him, the woman is heart-broken and weak, and so to make her climb is brutal. Furthermore, when the ku tchinga ndzaka ritual is performed, all the male members of the family have sex with the widow in one night, one after the other. To him this is disgusting, torturing and unacceptable.
is a Mutchapi-related practice. The gospel is the light that must shine in the darkness of ntumbuluko, because Jesus Christ brought grace, light and truth. Therefore, the Christian agent must remove or transfer people from ntumbuluko to the gospel (Matsombe 2001).
After the interview, and his attack on and view of ntumbuluko as darkness, we started to have a normal conversation and then he launched an attack against us young pastors for allowing our wives to wear short skirts, short dresses and/or long but revealing dresses saying:
You make us see the upper legs and underwear of your wives - swa yila leswo hi ntumbuluko (this is against, or is not permissible according to, the laws of ntumbuluko). Only the husband can see those parts of the woman (wife)'
(Matsombe 2001, conversation)
We can see here a kind of contradiction. In the official interview he was so negative about ntumbuluko, to the point of saying that ntumbuluko does all the evil things and that ntumbuluko itself needs the light of the gospel. But, in his moral critique, he used ntumbuluko to sanction the moral basis and authority for his criticism. We can see that he gave ntumbuluko the function of establishing normative and moral standards.
Maybe, when he said that ntumbuluko itself needed the light of the gospel, he was reflecting what K. Bediako (1999:12) called the conversion and redemption of cultures.
Another example of a negative Christian practitioner's view, which also makes such exceptions in a somehow contradictory fashion, is that of Rev. Mangwele. He would like to see Christians not mixing the gospel with ntumbuluko. He asks a question:
If one is in the gospel, but people know him/her that is mixing, how will they abandon ntumbuluko? How can one have power to preach the gospel if there is mixing? You cannot have power to convert anyone, and God cannot hear your prayers, if you are mixing. I am starting to feel that I laboured for nothing; they are mixing ntumbuluko with the gospel.
(Mangwele 2001, interview)
However, he also contradicted himself by warning emphatically that, if one is married, one must fear ntumbuluko, especially when one's wife is in her period,
otherwise one will kill oneself. He also said that, if one lives in a certain land, one must follow the ntumbuluko laws and norms of that land. This is the same viewpoint as that of Ndzukule, one of my traditionalist informants, who gave an example by saying the ntumbuluko laws of "Chitlangoland," must be respected and obeyed by all who live in it, and never be dismissed as merely Chitlango or Xilotani laws, but regarded as territorial or national religious and civic laws. Mangwele made those warnings so as to protect men from the deadly effect of women's impurity and to keep the cosmic and ecological equilibrium of the land and to enjoy rain, fertility and productivity of the land, which are withheld if people start ku xakela tiko (abusing or polluting the land). My question is: could it be that those whom he accuses of mixing ntumbuluko with the gospel are also trying to do what he outlined here? It would be interesting to know what kind of judgement and differentiation he is making in saying that there are those who are mixing, while he wants everybody to observe the ntumbuluko laws of the land as well as those of purity and impurity which govern sexuality. This demonstrates profound ambiguity about the issue from a Christian perspective.
If we compare Mangwele with Machava, we begin to see a perception that God has no interest in sexuality. The power of the gospel does not penetrate sexuality, or is not powerful enough to have an effect on and to dominate the ntumbuluko on sexuality and fertility. So, under the dominion of ntumbuluko, sexuality becomes an area of life unclaimed for Christ. This is, again, the effect of the negative view on sex and sexuality. God is too holy, and sex too dirty, for the Tsongas. So God cannot be interested in or be brought into sexuality because it is sin, and one cannot involve God in sin. So, sexuality is another world which is disgusting and hated by God, a world without God, a world into which God cannot even look because it reminds him of
"The Fall"71. In this way sexuality becomes an open ground for other powers to inhabit and control. That is why ntumbuluko is the sole director and custodian of sexuality in Tsonga culture.
In the Tsonga popular understanding of sin, the fall of Adam and Eve was an act of adultery between a wife and husband. God did not design humans to have sex, he would have provided a way of multiplying die humanity without sexual intercourse, but Adam and Eve broke the divine plan and that is why there is xirotha to try cleaning and minimizing the evil dirty nature of marriage, especially sexual intercourse (Ndzukule 2001).
Dule (2001), one of the Methodist informants, associated the importance and value of ntumbuluko with what was happening in his area in relation to the Mapude cult discussed earlier. Mapude gave information which provided the necessary guidance and warning to permit the survival of the Mukambi-Feha people in a harsh and hostile environment. He said that, although there were many things that Christians had abandoned, there were certain things that they continued to do, giving the example of the ritual after the death of a person with tuberculosis. He indicated that in his area and his church in such a situation, after the church ceremony the family call a medium to prepare a protective medicine for them in a snail shell, into which all will spit. The medium or diviner will then take the shell away, hoping that the misfortune is in this way taken away from the family.
But, when I asked Dule to advise us young ministers, he started by saying:
Today I was solving a problem of my daughter-in-law, who is a widow. I could not find a solution. When my son died, I wanted to find out what her condition would be, but the boys [his younger sons] stopped me saying: "she is our wife, it is not up to you to know that". However, today there is noise; she is bringing men to sleep with her at home and when we were trying to solve the problem, she told me: "I cannot stay three years without finding a man [meaning having sex]". The boys are furious and saying to her: "you are bringing men here?!" And she says, "I cannot stay three years without having a man". But, in the old days, people stayed that long because we gave them laws [laws of ntumbuluko].
(Dule 2001, interview)
Here Dule is speaking of the widowhood rituals and ritual sex and remarriage, which took place between six months and two years after the death of a husband. Here ntumbuluko, or laws, functioned as the normative, moral guardian and the widow's restorer to normal life and sexuality after the death of her spouse. His young son did not know that and did not allow their father to guide them. In this story he is showing that:
1) young people marginalize old people
2) there are certain life events in which ntumbuluko is the only way to find guidance, and that the old people are the custodians of that way
3) without the old people young people cannot handle some life issues.
This serves as a warning for young ministers not to marginalize the old people because they will get nowhere if they act like his children did.
The other person to speak her view about the importance of ntumbuluko was Mrs.
Massango. She was very negative about ntumbuluko and very critical of those believers who mix Christian faith with ntumbuluko. She gave the example of her
illness and of how many people from her church, including leaders, came to her and persuaded her to seek help from mediums for her healing. These people believed that she was bewitched and that her neighbours had put magic rice and meat in her throat because they were jealous, because her children always sent her rice and meat. She refused to go to the medium, diviners or spiritists and prayed until her children came to take her to Maputo and to send her to hospital, where eventually she was made well.
But, when it comes to sexual morality, she said:
If a mother [wife] goes playing [adultery] with men, she brings poison at home. Her children and her husband will be sick. If a child is sick one must not play [have sex].
Although we lighten things, what is of ntumbuluko is of ntumbuluko. Christianity is there, but there are other things that work and are compatible or walk together or along with the law within Christian faith. The law [ntumbuluko] is what makes families strong or stable. If a mother despises [ntumbuluko] she spoils the family life... If a man plays [adultery] too much, she must not over-rebuke him or rebuke him too much... She must leave him alone, he will learn his lesson by himself.
When he returns [many Tsonga men leave their wives at home and live with adulterous women] she must only say: 'I told you!' she must not expel him from the home. If she expels him it is mhangu (disaster or curse) for herself.
(Massango 2001, interview)
She went on to say that a wife must rebuke her unfaithful husband only gently and that she must never be jealous and hateful to her husband, because wives have or uphold their husband's lives in their hands. Therefore, she must avoid being "light"
(losing dignity) and she must tie up or control her heart or emotions and hide the wufendze12 of the father (husband) of the house. She concluded by saying that even if the husband forgets his wife and does not give her money or beats her frequently, she must be patient. She must not scatter the family in her anger. She must be considerate and uphold her husband's life.
2 Wufendze is a term used to indicate a mess. If someone does not clean his home, does not put things in order, or cooks in unclean pots etc., that is called wufendze. It means "mess" or a state of uncleanness and dirt. Here it is used to mean moral mess and uncleanness or moral dirt, which adultery
is.
She views the sex ban, when a child is sick, as a part of ntumbuluko which must not be devalued and forsaken, but fully observed by Christians. She believes that ntumbuluko strengthens families, especially in their approach to unfaithfulness. The wife's unfaithfulness is poisonous, bringing sickness on the children and the husband.
It is very bad! But the unfaithfulness of the husband must not be rebuked, he must be left alone; he can only be gently rebuked if it is too much. The wife must hide it, not be jealous, and must love the husband without any hatred. She must take all the beatings and abandonment; just wait for him to learn a lesson and then come back home and then say "Honey, I told you!!!...".
This suggests that ntumbuluko distorts morality and suppresses women, suggesting also that it is an idea that favours men rather than women. It is important to note the use of the term "playing" to replace the other terms that are used for extra-marital sex.
The term becomes a psychological preparation for acceptance of the behaviour. It is also interesting that such a form of suppression of women was being enforced by someone who worked as the national president for the women's society of her denomination for many years, teaching other women and solving family matters, especially those related to unfaithfulness. We will come back to this when we discuss the influence of ntumbuluko in the Tsonga apprehension of the Christian faith, but for now it will be enough to say that the importance of ntumbuluko, to Mrs. Massango, lies in its providing health care and protection, moral control (for women) and family stability.
2.9 Discerning the influence of ntumbuluko in the Tsonga apprehension of