2.8 The importance and value of ntumbuluko in Tsonga consciousness
2.8.4 The importance and value of ntumbuluko in the Christian practitioners' consciousness
Among the Christian practitioners there were two major approaches. Some people started their interview by being very negative about ntumbuluko but, during the interview, became positive about or even defenders of ntumbuluko in the same way as the traditionalists were. Some started positive, but then turned negative towards ntumbuluko. Yet others manifested a certain degree of contradiction, ambiguity and confusion.
Solomon Chitlango (2001) started by asking and answering his own question: 'what is the function of ntumbuluko"? It was for saving and protecting our lives, ensuring our well being and long living'. He believes that what his parents told him or his generation was for his generation's protection and he lamented that ntumbuluko is now gone and that all the norms are broken. As a result of that there is no more good health and longevity. 'All things called or said to be ntumbuluko were ntumbuluko of life. These things were there in order that our life goes on - although death was there' (Chitlango S 2001, interview). He added that ntumbuluko gave life to individuals and to the land or country including the people, the land and nature. He argued that when the government of Mozambique stopped65 tipangu66 there was no rain and that, when tipangu returned, rain started to fall until there was flooding in the year 200067. But S.
' What S. Chitlango is talking about here is what I described in chapter one, pages 35 to 36 of this thesis.
Chitlango was challenged about this by his fellow Assemblies of God deacon, who had a story of tipangu having failed to bring rain, whereas prayer and fasting by the Christians caused rain and good harvest at Xidoko in 1996/97. Even after that challenge, he went on to say:
Ntumbuluko made it possible for people to find life after doing things according to ntumbuluko. Ntumbuluko was the keeper or care-taker of our lives and we lived by following ntumbuluko. There was ntumbuluko of each family or household and each ' clan; but the most important was ntumbuluko of the whole country [community].
(Chitlango S 2001)
According to S. Chitlango there are also animals of the gods. If, in the Makasela forest68, anyone goes and extracts palm wine without following ntumbuluko, then elephants of the gods will come and destroy all the palm trees from which they are extracting the wine. These animals of the gods include monkeys, baboons, snakes, lions and others.
Machava (2001), the one who challenged S. Chitlango on tipangu and the rain- making issue, was one of those who had a critical approach to ntumbuluko. His
Tipangu is plural of Lipangu. It is a place of public religious activity in Tsonga culture. It existed in each community where there was a king or chief. It was that place where sacrifices and prayers, libations, presentation of seed, first fruits gifts and harvest presentation were done for the community.
67 A few years after independence in 1975, the country faced the most severe natural calamities. There were several successive droughts, resulting in severe and prolonged famine for more than a decade, and this intensified in the 1980s. As if natural calamities with many plagues (one of my cousins lost six children in two days) were not enough, civil war gripped the country brutally. For all these, the people blamed the government's assault on ntumbuluko. Interestingly enough, even Christians said that. As a part of the preparation for peace talks, the government changed the Constitution in 1990 and abandoned Marxism, giving freedom of religion. With this change the government restored traditional leadership and, through its Ministry of Culture, urged them to restore tipangu and to offer sacrifices and prayers for their community and the nation for rain, productivity and prosperity. Nowadays, project inauguration ceremonies are combined with libation and it is common to see the President pouring a libation in a community. Mediums and diviners are working under a government umbrella in the Associagao dos Medicos Tradicionais de Mozambique (AMETRAMO) now represented in all communities. Tipangu and diviners are now sponsored and protected by the government. This move was followed with good rain from 1992 to 2001. The climax of that was the 2000 floods. The people feel vindicated about what they were saying about the causes of the droughts of the 1980s. The President is reported to have said that it rained in 2000 because people to go to their tipangu and offered libations and sacrifices for rain making, called ku phahla pfiila. However this year, 2002, there is another severe drought in Mozambique in the whole of the Tsonga area, and it will be interesting to hear what their understanding and interpretation of it will be!
68 Makasela is the name of gods that Solomon was given and it stands as his surname. There is forest where Makasela lived and when he died and became god, he became god of that forest. Henceforth Makasela forest. The Makasela forest is a territory but, in other places, Makasela is my informant.
argument was that ntumbuluko had helped people in the past, before the arrival of the gospel. When the gospel arrived, people were taken out of ntumbuluko to be in Christ. He then validated his argument by saying that now, when there is a death, Christians are called to attend and conduct funerals without having to observe ntumbuluko rites:
Now the ntumbuluko that we are in is "ntumbuluko of Christ"....Ntumbuluko ' governed our grandparents with laws (swiyila); we must live in Christ. However, one must respect [ntumbuluko] so that one may not kill oneself. Respect death [follow the sex ban and cleansing ritual sex] in your home. You must know how you must live [behave] so that our days [life] may be long. Nevertheless, we must know between old ntumbuluko and the ntumbuluko of God which one has more power and is above the other.
(Machava 2001, interview)
After this Machava started to tell his story of a power encounter in Xidoko between ntumbuluko and the gospel over rain-making in 1996/97. That year it did not rain and the sowing season passed. Kings and chiefs argued that it was because of the lack of rain-making rituals. They were given all that they needed to offer sacrifices and they did offer them, but no rain fell. The community saw a disaster looming. Through divination, "rain-stoppers" were identified and were beaten up, and some rain-makers were also beaten up. But even this failed to release or make rain, so it did not rain. In this disparate and nasty situation the church intervened.
An Ethiopian AIC church leader stopped the beating of people and promised to pray for rain. He mobilized the local churches to join in this movement. Local authorities stopped arresting and beating people, and also the traditional authority was stopped from performing rain-making rituals. The churches fasted and came together to pray.
The above-mentioned leader wore trousers, shirt, jacket and tie all made of sacking.
He preached, and it started to rain while he was preaching. It rained heavily and continued to rain throughout the season and there was a very good harvest, to the point that the traditional leaders were concerned that ntumbuluko and their spiritual power and authority would be undermined, and they asked if the church was trying to abolish ntumbuluko.
2.8.5 The importance and value of ntumbuluko in the Bible translators'