Ndebele

Special Occasions

Initiation

In Ndebele culture, the initiation rite, symbolising the transition from childhood to adulthood, plays an important role. Initiation schools for both boys and girls are held every four years. During the period of initiation, relatives and friends come from far and wide to join in the ceremonies and activities associated with initiation.

Boys are initiated as a group when they are about 18 years of age when a special regiment (indanga) is set up and led by a boy of high social rank. Each regiment has a distinguishing name. Among the Ndzundza tribe there is a cycle of 15 such regimental names, allocated successively, and among the Manala there is a cycle of 13 such names.

During initiation girls wear an array of colourful beaded hoops (called izigolwan) around their legs, arms, waist and neck. The girls are kept in isolation and are prepared and trained to become homemakers and matriarchs.

The coming-out ceremony marks the conclusion of the initiation school and the girls then wear stiff rectangular aprons (called amaphephetu),beaded in geometric and often three-dimensional patterns, to celebrate the event.

After initiation, these aprons are replaced by stiff, square ones, made from hardened leather and adorned with beadwork.

Courtship and marriage

Marriages were only concluded between members of different clans, that is between individuals who did not have the same clan name. However, a man could marry a woman from the same family as his paternal grandmother.

The prospective bride was kept secluded for two weeks before the wedding in a specially made structure in her parents’ house, to shield her from men’s eyes.

When the bride emerged from her seclusion, she was wrapped in a blanket and covered by an umbrella that was held for her by a younger girl who also attended to her other needs. On her marriage, the bride was given a marriage blanket, which she would, in time, adorn with beadwork, either added to the blanket’s outer surface or woven into the fabric.

After the wedding, the couple lived in the area belonging to the husband’s clan. Women retained the clan name of their fathers but children born of the marriage took their father’s clan name.

Belief System

In traditional Ndebele society it was believed that illnesses were caused by an external force such as a spell or curse that was put on an individual. The power of a traditional healer was measured by his or her ability to defeat this force. Cures were either effected by medicines or by throwing bones.

All traditional medicine men and women (izangoma) were mediums, able to contact ancestral spirits. Some present-day Ndebele still adhere to ancestral worship but many have subsequently become Christians and belong to the mainstream Christian churches or to one of the many local Africanised churches.