2.9 Discerning the influence of ntumbuluko in the Tsonga apprehension of Christian faith
2.9.2 Ntumbuluko in the perception of impurity, holiness and sanctity
Rev. Mangwele, a senior retired minister of IUB says:
If a woman is in her days [menstruation] she is impure; she can not eat Supper [Holy Communion]. Besides that, if one speaks of fasting; humbling oneself; and of showing that the table we are approaching is big, the pastor did not go into his wife's house [sex abstinence]. We did not tell the congregation not to go to their houses, , but, they knew that was the condition to partake the Communion.
(Mangwele 2001, interview)
From this we see that sexual intercourse even within the boundaries of marriage and/or menstruation, causes impurity which prevents one from partaking of communion. One must not partake of the Holy Communion when one is menstruating or if one has had sex within the communion week. One should abstain from sex so as to be pure during that week; women should pray against their impurity (period) that week in order to qualify to the Lord's Supper. Another minister, from the United Methodist Church says:
The doctrine of the Lord's Supper until today, [and] those Christians that are mature put on Christ-likeness, teaches that if a woman is going to the Supper she must not be one who sees days [menstruation]. She must not be coming out from the house in which she met her husband [a term for sexual intercourse]. The Supper week is holy for men and women. They cannot approach the Supper if they are hot [sex makes one ritual Iy hot]. Even today, this is what they are taught. It is possible that some people are stubborn, but that is what the doctrine of our church says.
(Nhanombe 2001, interview).
Once again, we find that menstruation causes impurity and that women in such impurity have no access to the Table of the Lord. Such a condition, and having sex with one's spouse during the week prior to Holy Communion, cuts one off from the communion of believers or saints, with their Lord. Such people must be excluded in order to maintain the purity and holiness of the ritual. To be holy and sanctified one must abstain from sex. So, menstruation and sexual intercourse are an iniquity that God shuns. If a couple has sex God covers his face and runs away. If a woman is in her period God runs away from her. So, while God runs away from her, she is not permitted to approach God.
Using the above doctrine, Dule, a lay person in the same denomination as Nhanombe, criticized the increasing number of women in pastoral ministry in his denomination saying:
The yesterday and today's church are no longer the same. I see many female pastors;
they will now invade men... If one follows our laws of ntumbuluko and the Holy Scriptures, I do not believe that a woman is allowed to climb to the pulpit if she is running [menstruation]. I do not know if this is right, but I believe it is not right from both our culture and from the Jewish culture in the Bible. A woman must not climb , to the pulpit while she is running. She must not meet with other people, she is impure. But today a woman is pastor, a woman is superintendent and she is to serve me Supper, but she is running. My head is starting to burn. What we devalue is what takes our power away!
(Dule 2001, interview).
His criticism was not accepted by the two Methodist ministers that were there, including the one who said that it was their doctrine that women must not come to the Lord's Table during their periods. When we were on the way back, the two ministers said the following regarding Dule's remarks: 'Dule's remarks are of a lay person, and must not be taken seriously' (Nhanombe and Maswanganhe 2001, conversation).
But, in my opinion, Dule was asking a critical question about the Holy Communion doctrine of his denomination. He was merely highlighting the position in which that doctrine puts women, regardless of their obvious ordination and acceptance within the ministry. Surely, there is a contradiction here. The other thing that Dule did, by drawing from ntumbuluko the authority to make his critique, is to indicate that his denomination's doctrine of the Holy Communion is derived from and based on ntumbuluko.
This doctrine has some implications. It creates gender superiority and blood inferiority. Men become impure only through contact with women. They remain pure as long as they abstain from sexual contact with women. On the other hand menstruating women, whether they have sexual contact or not, cannot be pure. Once every month they become impure. They have an inherent "perpetual pollution"74.
This was an expression used by Dr. Philomena Mwaura in her lectures on new religious movements in Africa. She lectured in the first semester of 2000 for the MTh in the African Chritianity Programme in the University of Natal. With "perpetual pollution" she described the general bias on women in African cultures which as also reflected in the religious movements of both Christian and traditional or Islamic origin.
This ruling makes men the pure sex and women the impure, and thus inferior, sex.
With this attitude, discrimination against and dehumanization of women is inevitable.
So, one cannot blame Dule for what he said about female ministers, but one must blame the doctrine that reinforces ntumbuluko and keeps people in bondage, rather than liberating them. The church ordains women so as to follow the modern trend, but it has not done its job on the ground by changing conditions and structures that have been in place from time immemorial and which were instrumental In the marginalisation of women. And the result is that they are ordained, but, for Dule, they are still impure, and thus sometimes he will reject their Holy Communion and not listen their sermons. This is just a small example of what sometimes happens within denominations in Mozambique. Maybe people like Dule end up starting their own
"pure" churches, where women are kept in their "rightful" place.
What do I mean then by "blood inferiority"? The impurity of women in their periods, after delivery and after sex within the bonds of marriage, suggests some viewpoints.
It suggests that sex is bad, sinful and evil in any condition. This is the view in which sex is called khombo (misfortune) in Tsonga. The fact that God gave Adam a wife, that the Bible urges us to "marry and not burn with desires" (1 Co 7:9) and that the church encourages us to marry shows that sexual "sin" is allowable, no matter with whom one may have sex, for it is sin anywhere, but an allowable sin. It is ntumbuluko (a human duty) and it is Adam who started it. One is not accountable for it. On the other hand, the fact that the blood of menstruation is so powerful as to break the seal of purification that Jesus made through his own blood, making the woman impure, raises the question as to whether our purification was complete or whether the blood of Jesus was inferior and could not deal with Tsonga impurity. If Jesus' purification cannot stand above menstrual impurity, and if Jesus refuses access to his Table because of our impurity, his blood cannot purify and he fears for his own contamination. So, we must find someone else to provide purification for us and to come back to his Table clean.