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homepage | Mukanda overview page | Mukanda Part I
In the case of the shift towards patrilineal
succession, we are fortunate that the oral-historical data
provide us with the details that allow us to perceive the
specific, concrete political strategies through which such major
changes in the socio-political structure tend to realize
themselves.
From the account in Likota lya Bankoya, Shamamano emerges
as a great warrior and resourceful adventurer, and also as a
usurper, who only under the protection of Lewanika managed to
revive the Kahare name to which he was related not as a
sister’s son, but only as a daughter’s son, i.e. outside the
ordinary line of dynastic succession. A century of chief’s rule
by members of Shamamano’s patri-segment, in a general context
of the Lozi indigenous administration and the colonial and
post-colonial state favouring patrilineal succession, has created
such an image of self-evident legitimacy for the current Kahare
line that oral traditions dwelling on the irregularity of
Shamamano’s accession are completely suppressed at the Kahare
court today. However, there is in Kahare’s area and among urban
migrants hailing from there a noticeable undercurrent of
traditions in which this legitimacy is challenged, and rival
claims to the Kahare kingship are entertained.
When Shamamano built his lukena in the same general area
where his sons and grandson have since held the Kahare kingship,
he did not enter a virgin territory, but one which for at least a
century had been under Nkoya rule. Mwene Kabazi lived on the
Njonjolo, at Litoya lya Mbuma. His younger sister, one of his
successors, Mwene Manenga, had her lukena at the Lwashanza
less than ten kilometres away. Mwene Mulimba, whose title
(perhaps through perpetual kinship?) is claimed to go back to a
son of Mwene Manenga,[1] was and is considered
the owner of the local land, even though his name appears in
table 1 as one of those Myene who saw their status
annihilated under the impact of the Barotse indigenous
administration and the colonial state.[2] Other Myene
encountered by the Kahare group when settling there were
named as Kabimba, Shikandabole and Shikwasha[3] —
but:
‘Mulimba is the greatest headman here of all,
directly under Mwene Kahare. He gave us this land. Without him we
could not live here.’[4]
At Mwene Kahare’s court Mwene Mulimba,
even though an unremunerated village headman — with only his
royal bell to prove a more glorious past — is treated with the
greatest deference. None the less, it stands to reason that the
Mulimba title has for many decades been the rallying focus of
rival claims to the Kahare kingship.
The most detailed information on Shamamano’s contentious
succession was however not volunteered by an incumbent of the
Mulimba title, but by an urban informant whose very strategic
genealogical po-sition will be clear from diagram 2: his father
married both in the Shamamano and in the Kambotwe family:
Diagram 2. Reconstruction of the
genealogical relationship between Shamamano and Kambotwe.[5]
‘Kambotwe (a predecessor of Shipungu) was the
original owner of the Kahare name. All regalia had been taken by
Kambotwe from Mongu to Kasempa:[6] ngongi, ngoma
ntambwe, shibanga, mpunga (eland tail), and mpande.
These regalia did not originate in Mongu but from somewhere else,
where he stayed first.[7]
Kambotwe[8]
gave the Kahare name, and the regalia, to Shamamano, because in
his own family he could not find a successor.[9] After
Shamamano’s death Kambotwe asked the name back, but in vain:
the Europeans did not allow Kambotwe to take the name of Kahare.
After the death of Timuna, Kabangu wanted the Kahare name back,
but the elders declined.’[10]
This reading allows us to look with
different eyes at the praise-name with which Timuna acceded to
the Kahare kingship:
‘Ami Timuna
Mwana mutanda na mpande
Ba Timuna ba Nyengo’:
‘I am Timuna
The son who dons the mpande
Timuna son of Nyengo.’[11]
The son: in other words he has
managed to claim the mpande (i.e. the kingship), even
though he is only a son, and not a sister’s son, — not
even (as his father had been at least), a daughter’s son.
The above version of Shamamano’s usurpation is widely accepted
in the Kahare area. Even our informant Katambula, who as Mwene
Shamamano’s daughter cannot quite afford to subscribe to this
reading, at the same time admits that Shamamano received the
Kahare name from the Nkonze clan, which is the clan owning the
Mulimba title; in her view, Mulimba was in collusion with the
representative induna Simuliankumba when the latter — after
allegedly killing Timuna’s predecessor Mpelembe by sorcery —
tried to oust Timuna and convert the Kahare kingship into an
exalted induna-ship for himself.[12]
In the course of a formal group interview with the Kahare Royal
Council another informant, distantly related to Kabangu and from
1975-1980 the incumbent of the Mulimba title which has been the
rallying focus for the political faction contesting the Shamamano
line in the Kahare kingship, did not confirm Mr Mangowa’s
reading but instead claimed — as some sort of compromise —
the existence of a third royal title on a par with Mutondo and
Kahare: that of Kambotwe.[13]
The same group discussion, a day later, failed to throw any light
on the place of Kambotwe, and Shakalongo for that matter, in
relation to the Mutondo and Kahare kingships.[14]
Headman Mulimba’s public interpretation may be understandably
diplomatic but it is far from helpful: at this stage in the
argument we are in a position to interpret this view as a
projection of the colonial survival of the kingships of Mutondo
and Kahare back into a past where there was a proliferation of
royal titles. However, in private he completely confirmed Mr
Mangowa’s interpretation of Shamamano’s succession:
‘Kambotwe came just after Lipepo. Kambotwe
introduced Mukanda, for his father, a Mukwetunga, was from
Lunda.
The Kambotwe
who was in competition over the Kahare name was a different
Kambotwe, he lived in the time of Shamamano. But that Kambotwe
did not get the Kahare name back because in Lealui he was told:
‘‘Kingship is to be inherited in the male line now.’’ ’[15]
If this throws some new historical light on
the current owners of the Kahare title, what about the relations
between Kahare and Mutondo, and the history of circumcision in
the area?
In the preceding section we have looked at
oral traditions which because of their anti-establishment, not to
say underground character deserve to be taken seriously as
possible glimpses of historical truth, such as may have been
censored out of official versions which are effectively attuned
to the neo-traditional political status quo in Kaoma
district. Amazingly, in two instances the Kahare title was
associated with the original introduction of crucial elements in
the political culture of central western Zambia: the total
package of regalia, and Mukanda.
It is time we return once more to the political issue of
rivalry and seniority underlying the moiety-like political
structure of the Nkoya community in Kaoma district today, before
we return, in the next chapter, to the text of Likota lya
Bankoya and seek to penetrate its symbolic deep structure.
There is reason to believe that Mutondo’s qualified seniority
only goes back to the greater success of the Mutondo state in
Nkoya in the nineteenth century as compared to the decline of the
Kahare state before its being revived by Mwene Shamamano Kahare
at the end of that century. As a royal title and a dynasty,
Mutondo seems primarily a local product of Kaoma district, from
the first quarter of the nineteenth century. It is quite likely
that Kahare is in fact the older, more established and senior
title, whose history goes back to Mbwela settlement on the Upper
Zambezi if not to Musumba itself.
For prior to the dynastic migration to Nkoya there is only very
unconvincing evidence concerning the Mutondo title, whereas the
Upper Zambezi and Lunda connotations of the Kahare title are
somewhat more substantial. Schecter (1980a) mentions a Kahare
cave in the old Mbwela region; he finds passing references to the
names of both Kahare and Mutondo in Upper Zambezi traditions,[16] but most likely this is a projection on the part
of contemporary informants, in an attempt to render more
substance to traditions on Mbwela and Nkoya groups: they
certainly know — as many other Zambians these days — that the
Nkoya in Kaoma district have Kahare and Mutondo as their
principal chiefs.
The oral source[17] on Kambotwe as
quoted above is not the only one in which ‘Kahare’ is claimed
to have made and distributed the first xylophone, which does have
strong Lunda connotations. The praise-name of the first incumbent
of the Kahare title is:
‘Kahare kamulema njimba
Bale mangoma zizinge
Katapishila bantu nimwabo’:
‘Kahare Who Made the Xylophone
And Many Drums
To Share with all the People.’[18]
Brown (1984), whose musicological research in the 1970s
concentrated on the Mutondo lukena, offers various
traditions connected with the origin of the royal orchestra among
the Nkoya. A recurrent theme there is that the first royal
musical instruments were created not by humans but by spirits.
Significantly, the royal orchestra of Mutondo is claimed by these
traditions to have perhaps a supernatural, but at the same time a
strictly local origin in the land of Nkoya: allegedly it was
invented by spirits in a lake near Shinkisha Mate’s capital
(Brown 1984: 130-150) — a charter-like ideology clearly meant
to cater for
‘...the need of the Mutondo dynasty to
establish an exclusive claim to the Nkoya royal xylophone and
drum ensemble, a primary symbol of political power. Claiming that
the ensemble was a gift from the spirits eliminated any need to
acknowledge the possession of the ensemble (and through it,
political power) by anyone outside the Mutondo dynasty.’ (Brown
1984: 147)
The most likely outside claimant in this
context would be the Kahare kingship!
Moreover, Kahare is much more than Mutondo associated with the
mythical Mwene Kapeshi, and hence not only with Musumban
traditions of Kaposh, the mythical tower into heaven, but also
with the origin of tribal heterogeneity and even with human (or
at least Bantu-speakers’s) presence in South Central
Africa. Some Kahare subjects claim, as we have seen, the Kapeshi
link explicitly as an indication that, historically speaking, not
Mutondo but Kahare should be the senior Nkoya chief.[19]
This would seem to mean that, contrary to Mutondo, the Kahare
title was already in existence at the time of the original
dynastic migration from Musumba. But what then to make of those
traditions which attribute the later separation between Kahare
and Mutondo to disagreement concerning Mukanda?
Admittedly, the traditions on this point are highly
contradictory. Likota lya Bankoya, and the
ethnographic fact that Mukanda is associated with the
Mutondo kinship and with the Nkoya in the narrower sense but
rejected by the Mashasha, would indicate that the Kahare kingship
resolutely rejected Mukanda, whereas the Mutondo kingship
after initial rejection was more effectively subjected to a
process of re-Lunda-ization including reintroduction of Mukanda
under Munangisha. There is a neutral source which merely
states that Mukanda was a bone of contention between the
two titles without specifying which side was taken by either of
them.[20] And again, there is
the Kambotwe tradition:
‘Kambotwe came just after Lipepo. Kambotwe
introduced Mukanda, for his father, a Mukwetunga, was from
Lunda.’[21]
The puzzle may be solved once we realize
that the latter-day separation and juxtaposition of the kingships
of Kahare and Mutondo, and the political convenience to deny any
genealogical relationship between the two kingships, does not at
all preclude that the kingships were actually related in the
past, perhaps not in terms of genealogical links (which is
largely a political idiom anyway) but at least in terms of having
a joint political origin. It may be highly significant that in a
context of legitimacy or usurpation of the Kahare title, Kambotwe
is relegated to a figure like Lipepo who according to Likota
lya Bankoya and other Mutondo-orientated sources is clearly
situated in the Mutondo tradition.
What we are witnessing in the process of Nkoya state formation is
the creation of a political culture, offering powerful symbols by
means of which aspiring polities can both legitimate themselves
internally and define themselves vis-a-vis each other. As far as
external definition is concerned (and for argument’s sake still
concentrating on two Nkoya royal titles out of the far greater
number to which Nkoya royal titles proliferated) two phases can
be clearly distinguished: self-definition of the proto-Nkoya
out-migrants vis-a-vis the Musumban state; and differentiation
between Kahare and Mutondo.
The Humbu war, in which Mwaat Yaamv’s loyal subjects attacked
the Nkoya Myene because the latter refused to perform Mukanda
— and by this stance declared their independence from
Musumban overlordship, strongly suggests that initially
acceptance or rejection of Mukanda was, among the
proto-Nkoya, the decisive element in their political
self-definition vis-a-vis the Musumban state.[22]
As cleavages developed within the newly broken-away proto-Nkoya
group, an internal contest over regalia came to supersede the
external contest of Mukanda. Mukanda lost its
central position as a boundary marker, and an inconsistent
process of re-Lunda-ization, difficult to allocate to either
dynastic line but in the nineteenth century increasingly situated
on the Mutondo side, once more found employ for this institution
— even to the extent of it becoming an internal boundary
marker, not between Nkoya and Musumba, but between Kahare and
Mutondo.
More important meanwhile was the struggle over the regalia. Here
the forced invention, on the Mutondo side, of an independence
charter founded on the claim of a local but supernatural origin
contrasts so beautifully with the proud declaration of personal
invention and distribution in the praise-name of the first
Kahare, that the conclusion is inescapable: the Mutondo line
broke away from a senior group associated with the Kahare
kingship, and in the process evolved its own regalia as well as
accompanying myths to assert its independence from that older
stock.
Such an interpretation, finally, would also explain the names
of the two kingships. The name Kahare comes from the verb ku
hala: ‘to uproot’, ‘to dig up a wild tuber called shihala’.[23] Since reference is made to a wild tuber,
the name cannot have the connotation, found with other early Myene,
of the introduction of new crops. Instead, the name carries an
association with the early phase of proto-Nkoya economy, when
reliance on gathering wild forest and aquatic products may have
been more important than agriculture. And particularly, the image
of uprooting befits the emigration from Musumba. One can well
imagine the first Kahare creating the title by adopting a
hypothetical praise-name like:
‘I am Kahale
The Uprooted One...’
The image of the Mutondo tree is the opposite: the kingship has
taken root and has grown to be a proud and beautiful tree. Its
origin from Mwaat Yaamv can be admitted, but it is no longer a
dominant theme. This is clear in the historical praises (denoted
by the verb ku tanganisha) that habitually accompany a
public performance of Mutondo’s royal orchestra:[24]
‘Etu Baka Mwene Mutondo
Mutondo Mwana Manenga
Mutondo wa Mpululwila
Mutondo waluba nceshelo
Etu Baka Kashina ka Luhamba
Hano nibo ba Nkoya Nawiko’:
‘We are the people of Mwene Mutondo
Mutondo the Daughter of Manenga
With Branches only at the Top
Without any Scars from fallen-off Branches
We are the people of Kashina son of Luhamba
Here are, in other words, the Nkoya Nawiko’.
Some among the audience may accompany this
praise by shouting
‘Tufumako ku Mwantiyavwa’
‘We have come from Mwaat Yaamv’
but this is not part of the formalized
praise proper, and is often omitted.
With Mutondo we have arrived at a later phase of Nkoya state
formation, with other, more pressing concerns than some remote
origin in a distant land: Mutondo’s praise-name, with its
imagery of branches and blemishes, revolves on dynastic purity
and intra-group rivalry[25] — the typical
problems of an established state elite.
With their incorporation in the Luyana state
(including the latter’s temporary occupants, the Kololo from
what today is South Africa) as from c. 1860, the Nkoya states
began to function within a politico-cultural environment in which
Mukanda was on the one had protected by law, but on the other was
considered exotic, ridiculous, and utterly un-Lozi.[26] In fact, Mukanda had already been practised
among the Mbunda, an important ethnic group in Bulozi — i.e.
the Luyana territory — from at least the beginning of the 19th
century.
The last princes of the Mutondo dynasty to be circumcised died
shortly after World War II.
In recent decades, at the national level in urban situations, the
Nkoya, while emphasizing their political distinctness from the
Lozi, have attempted to pose as culturally very closely related
to the Lozi — hoping thus to trade their despised status as
Nkoya for the much greater prestige of the Lozi, and freeing
themselves from humiliation by the Lozi themselves. It is for
instance significant that successful Nkoya politicians at the
district, regional and national level often have a mixed
Nkoya-Lozi ancestry. Even though the two languages are very
little related, passing as Lozi is one of the strategies employed
by Nkoya in town when involved in upward social mobility. But
such a cultural rapprochement vis-a-vis the Lozi could
scarcely be combined with an insistence on circumcision.
As from the 1910s, and up to today, Bulozi, and especially the
land of the Nkoya, has been inundated by Angolan immigrants
(identifying as members of such ethnic groups as Luvale, Chokwe,
and Luchazi) who do practise Mukanda. The opposition between
Nkoya and immigrants, based not on historical considerations but
on the presentday, and increasingly grim, competition for land,
game, fish, school succes, informal distribution circuits, and
modern political power at the regional level.
A unique case of the colonial authorities supporting local
political aspirations in the face of Lozi claims of overlordship
occurred in Balovale district, which took its name after the
Luvale people. After a careful and extensive consideration of the
historical record this district was allowed to secede from
Barotseland in 1940 and attain an administrative status similar
to other districts in Northern Rhodesia.[27] Mankoya
district continued to sigh under what was felt to be Lozi
oppression, and what is more, at the same time as preparations
were made for the Balovale secession, the colonial state allowed
the Lozi presence in Mankoya to be stepped up dramatically by the
creation, in 1937, of a new Lozi royal establishment, five
kilometres from the Mankoya boma. The court was to be called
Naliele, in reminiscence of the splendid capital near the flood
plain which was visited by Livingstone in the middle of the
nineteenth century (Livingstone 1971). Naliele was to function as
an appeal court and as the seat of the Mankoya Native Treasury,
and was to be headed by a very senior member of the Lozi royal
family (the Litunga’s son), with a higher subsidy from Lealui
than any Nkoya Mwene, with more remunerated court personnel than
any Nkoya chief, with judicial powers exceeding those of any
Nkoya chief, and occupying a prominent position in a fixed
structure of Lozi positional succession, only a few steps removed
from the Litunga-ship. The colonial authorities were in favour of
this arrangement, not only because the Litunga’s overlordship
over Barotse was taken for granted, and the equivalent of the
Balovale secession could not be allowed to be repeated in the
Mankoya case, but also because the need for an appeal court that
could oversee the fragmented and segmentary judicial structure
prevailing in Mankoya at the time was deeply felt.[28]
This new form of Lozi presence, with the unmitigated backing from
the colonial state, was a source of great humiliation and
resentment among the people of Mankoya district, which
precipitated major conflicts between particularly the Mutondo lukena
milieu and the Litunga’s court at Lealui; in this
connexion, Nkoya popular resentment would attribute the sudden
death of Mwene Mutondo Kanyinca in 1941 to Lozi foul play; his
successor Mwene Mutondo Muchayila, defying Lozi overlordship, was
dethroned in 1947 and sent into exile for ten years, only to be
reinstated when his successor Kalapukila died in 1981.
Muchayila’s intransigent stance against Lozi arrogance and
particularly against the Lozi chief of Naliele, was greatly
influenced by the Balovale secession from Barotseland in 1940,
and particularly[29] by Muchayila’s
friendship with the Luchazi chief Samuzimu, who must have had
many contacts in Balovale. The latter had his headquarters in the
northern part of Mankoya district but soon was to cross into
Kasempa district — which brought him, too, outside Barotseland
but against the high price that his subjects did not follow him.[30]
Thus the Luvale succeeded where the Nkoya failed, and
humilitation at the hands of the Lozi would continue to form the
main, negative basis of Nkoya identity until the 1980s. Nkoya
modern political emancipation was very much a process of trial
and error, where one rallying cry and mobilization platform was
easily exchanged for another, as long as it appeared to provide
the means to by-pass the Lozi blockage to effective Nkoya
representation in modern politics. The political career of Mr J.
Kalaluka is very instructive in this respect. Before Independence
(1964), he sought access to political leadership in the
urban-based ‘Mankoya and Bantu Fighting Fund’ (1961) and by
standing as a candidate for the ‘Mankoya Front’ in 1963. In
the general elections of 1964 he stood as a candidate for
Michello’s party, the People’s Democratic Party (cf. Mulford
1967: 311 and passim) and in the general elections of 1968
for African National Congress (ANC), then the main opposition
party on the Zambian scene. Not being successful in any of these
attempts, he retired for a while from active politics to be a
national-level manager of a major petroleum company, only to find
his ambitions of lifting the Nkoya and himself to the level of
national representation fulfilled in the 1973 general elections.
Then the spirit of reconciliation extended by the then unique
party UNIP to former ANC partisans allowed him to stand and (in
the face of the narrow ethnic claims of his Luvale and Mbunda
contesters) win on a UNIP ticket as the candidate for part of
Kaoma district. After a brilliant ministerial career, the ethnic
rallying of Luvale and Luchazi in Kaoma district caused him to
lose his parliamentary seat, and ministerial post, in the 1988
general elections.[31] At the regional
level, therefore, the Luvale gradually took the place of the Lozi
as the main political enemies in the modern context.
These processes reinforced, and now totally so, the historical
trait of partial rejection of Mukanda among the Nkoya. Today the
latter turn out to have adopted all the negative stereotypes
concerning Mukanda, and circumcision in general, which are found
everywhere in Zambia except in the extreme north-west. Today
Mukanda as an institution with which Nkoya identify as Nkoya, has
completely disappeared from Nkoya life — one only knows it as
an alien institution which ethnic strangers from Angola stage in
nearby villages; their Nkoya neighbours do enjoy the public
sections of Mukanda as spectators. It is with disbelief that the
Nkoya treat the information that their own ancestors practised
Mukanda only two or three centuries ago. As a result, it is
impossible to glean, from the Nkoya sources, information on the
internal historical evolution of Mukanda itself — however rich
those sources are in other respects.
In the colonial and post-colonial context, the ethnic stereotypes
(which produce a veritable social stigmatization of the
circumcising groups, and often render them ineligible for
marriage with the non-circumcising) have been linked to the fact
that the circumcising groups have provided the bulk of sanitation
workers for the urban sewage systems, and as a result have
attained a social status of symbolic pollution somewhat
comparable to that of untouchables in the South Asian context.
In this context it was not surprising that the increasing ethnic
articulation of the Nkoya among other things expressed itself in
an exaggerated juxtaposition vis-a-vis the Luvale, Chokwe and
Luchazi. From a partly shared custom, in the course of half a
century circumcision became an indicator of ethnic distance.
Diagram 3 offers a graphic summary of the
evolution of the Mukanda institution as a boundary marker of
cultural and political oppositions in western Zambia:
|
Diagram 3. The evolution of Mukanda as a
political and cultural boundary marker in western Zambia,
18th-20th centuries
The dialectical conjuncture of a religious institution in the
context of the formation and transformation of states shows us
that, in fact, it is possible, and useful, to study the religious
history of precolonial Africa. Such study may illuminate
ideological and political dilemmas in the historical societies
under study, and bring out the caleidoscopic and protean nature
of politico-religious identities, forms of consciousness and
organizations.
At the same time we have to admit that a study like ours is only
partial and defective, since (for absence of sources on this
point) the Mukanda complex is not in itself historicized, is not
traced in the evolution of its forms and its internal
contradictions, but is rather treated as an independent and
unchangeable datum which is simply introduced into a series of
different socio-political situations. But this criticism at the
same time suggests a project for further historical research.
Anonymous [J.M. Shimunika],
n.d. (a), Muhumpu wa byambo bya mwaka - Nkoya, s.l. [Luampa,
Mankoya]: s.n. [South African General Mission], photocopy
in author’s collection.
Apthorpe, R.J., 1960,
‘Mythical African political structures, Northern Rhodesia’,
in: A. Dubb, (ed.), Myth in modern Africa, Lusaka:
Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, 14th Conference Proceedings, pp.
18-37.
Brelsford, W.V., 1965, The
tribes of Zambia, Lusaka: Government Printer, second edition.
Brown, E.D., 1984, ‘Drums
of life: Royal music and social life in Western Zambia’, Ph.D.
thesis, University of Washington, School of Music; University
Microfilms, Ann Arbor.
Burton, Sir R.F., 1873,
The lands of Cazembe: Lacerda’s journey to Cazembe in 1798,
translated and annotated by Cpt. R.F. Burton, also Journey of the
Pombeiros P.J. Baptista and Amaro Jose, across Africa from Angola
to Tette on the Zambezi, translated by B.A. Beadle, and A resume
of the journey of M.M. Monteiro and Gamitto by Dr. C.T. Beke,
Royal Geographical Society, London: John Murray.
Bustin, E., 1975, Lunda
under Belgian rule: The politics of ethnicity, Cambridge
(Mass.)/London: Harvard University Press.
Capello, H., & R. Ivens,
1886, De Angola a contra-costa: Descripcao de uma viagem
atravez do continente Africano comprehendendo narrativas
diversas, aventuras e importantes descobertas entre as quaes
figuram a des origens do Lualaba, caminho entre as duas costas,
visita as terras da Garanganja, Katanga e ao curso do Luapula,
bem como a descida do Zambeze, do Choa oa Oceano, Lisbon:
Imprensa Nacional, 2 vols.
Caplan, G., 1970, The
elites of Barotseland 1878-1969, London: Hurst.
Chipela, Cuthbert, 1974,
‘Mwangana Samuzimu Mweningambo of Luchazi: Senior Chief
Samuzimu Mweningambo of the Luchazi people’, in: Jaeger 1974,
appendix dated ‘Kasempa, June 1976 [sic]’, 4
unnumbered pages.
Chiwale, J.C., 1962, Royal
praises and praisenames of the Lunda Kazembe of Northern Rhodesia,
Lusaka: Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, Communication no. 25.
Clay, G.C.R., 1945, History
of the Mankoya district, Livingstone: Rhodes-Livingstone
Institute, Communication no. 4, ‘re-roneod’ [sic]
1955.
Colson, E., 1967, Marriage
and the family among the Plateau Tonga of Northern Rhodesia,
Manchester: Manchester University Press, reprint of the 1958
edition.
Corbeil, J.J., 1982, Mbusa:
Sacred emblems of the Bemba, London/Mbala: Ethnographical
Publishers/Moto Moto Museum.
de Craemer, W., J. Vansina
& R. Fox, 1976, ‘Religious movments in Central Africa’, Comparative
Studies in Society and History, 18: 458-475.
de Heusch, L., 1978, ‘Les
camps de circoncision en Afrique noire’, paper presented at the
Conference on Iron-working Bantu-speaking peoples of Southern
Africa before 1800, Leiden: University of Leiden and African
Studies Centre.
Derricourt, R.M., & R.J.
Papstein, 1977, ‘Lukolwe and the Mbwela of North-Western
Zambia’, Azania, 11: 169-175.
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Appendix 1. List of oral
sources
In the course of
participatory research since 1972 numerous informants contributed
information and insights on numerous more or less informal
occasions. This constitutes the indispensable background for my
analysis of Nkoya history and ethnicity, and a ground for my
life-long indebtedness. Meanwhile, the list below identifies
those formal oral-historical interviews to which specific
references are made in this book.
[1] Headman Mwene
Kabimba
Njonjolo, Kaoma district
October 22, 1973
village headman; member of
the Kahare royal family; one of the most senior members of the
Mwene Kahare Royal Court; president of the traditional
neighbourhood court in Njonjolo
[2] Mr Edward
Kahare
Lusaka
March 21, 1973; September 30,
1977
son of Mwene Kahare Timuna
and half-brother of Chief Mwene Kahare Kabambi; self-employed and
living in Lusaka
[3] Chief Mwene
Kahare Kabambi
Litoya Royal Establishment,
Njonjolo, Kaoma district
October 9, 1973; November 19,
1973; November 21, 1973; October 11, 1977
One of the two royal Nkoya
chiefs in Kaoma district; member of the House of Chiefs in the
1970s; UNIP trustee since Independence; nominated member of the
Kaoma Rural Council; born 1921, army sergeant and boma messenger
until called to act in the place of his diseased father Mwene
Kahare Timuna in 1952, and after his father’s death in 1954
succeeded to the throne in 1955
[4] Mr J.
Kalaluka, MP
Kaoma
October 26, 1977
Member of Parliament for
Kaoma since 1973, after a complex political career; at the time
of the interview a junior Minister, later a senior Cabinet
Minister, lost his parliamentary seat and Cabinet position in
1988; formerly director with a major petroleum company; father
Lozi; mother’s mother is a half-sister of Mwene Kahare Timuna;
grew up at the Litoya Royal Establishment
[5] Rev. Kambita
and Mr Davison Kawanga
Lusaka
October 5, 1977
Rev. Kambita is a Nkoya
pastor with the Evangelical Church of Zambia; for Mr Kawanga see
below
[6] Mrs Katambula
Lusaka
October 8, 1977
daughter of Mwene Kahare
Shamamano; lady in her mid-70s, living in Lusaka in the house of
her daughter, who is the mother of Mr Kalaluka MP
[7] Mr Davison
Kawanga
Lusaka
October 1, 1977; October 8,
1977; October 21, 1977; October 22, 1977;
senior medical assistant and
UNIP local-level politician in Lusaka; grew up at the head-waters
of the Luampa river, mother from Mukotoka village, Njonjolo
[8] Headman
Kikambo
Kikambo village, Njonjolo,
Kaoma district
September 22, 1973
a village headman
[9] Chief Litia
Naliele Royal Establishment,
Kaoma district
October 26, 1977
The major Lozi chief in Kaoma
district; son of the late Litunga Mbikusita Lewanika; holds a
B.Sc. in agricultural science; after the time of the interview he
became a member of the House of Chiefs
[10] Mr D. Makiyi and
Mr Davison Kawanga
Lusaka
October 8, 1977
Mr Makiyi, born 1950, is a
civil servant and author of a manuscript Nkoya history in
English; for Mr Kawanga see above
[11] Mr Simon Mangowa
Lusaka
July 24, 1973
Nkoya elder residing in
Lusaka; stepson of Mwene Shamamano Kahare’s daughter
[13] Mr Miyengo
Kaoma
August 9, 1978
District Secretary Kaoma, of
non-Nkoya background
[14] Headman Mpelama
Makandawuko
Mpelama village, Njonjolo,
Kaoma district
December 6, 1973
a village headman
[16] Headman Ntaniela
Mulimba
Mulimba village, Kazo, Kaoma
district
October 16, 1977
village headman; recognized
as the original owner of the local land, and hence senior headman
under Mwene Kahare; had held the Mulimba title since 1974
[17] Mr H.H. Mwene
Lusaka
September 30, 1977; October
1, 1977
Examinations Officer,
Ministry of Education, Lusaka; former diplomat; from Lukulu
district
[18] Group interview
Mwene Kahare Royal Council
Litoya Royal Establishment,
Njonjolo, Kaoma district
October 13, 1977, continued
October 14, 1977
Mwene Kahare, Mwanashihemi
and all senior headmen of the Njonjolo and Kazo valleys present
[19] Group Interview
Mwene Mutondo Royal Council
Shikombwe Royal
Establishment, Kaoma District
October 18, 1977, continued
October 19 and 20, 1977
most senior headmen present
but not Mwene Mutondo Kalapukila, who on October 20, 1977 granted
the researcher a formal audience in the presence of all senior
headmen
[20] Group interview
with Nkoya elders
Matero, Lusaka
October 1, 1977
main informants Messrs
Mulowa, Namenda, Likishi and Mankishi: Nkoya elders now residing
in Lusaka
[22] Rev. J.M.
Shimunika
Luampa, Kaoma district
October 21, 1977
continued October 22, 1977;
Nkoya pastor, formerly teacher, and son-in-law of Mwene Mutondo
Kanyinca
[23] Court Justice
Yawisha
Yawisha village, Njonjolo,
Kaoma district
September 22, 1973; October
13, 1973
village headman; assessor of
the Shimano Local Court, Kaoma district; one of the most senior
members of the Mwene Kahare Royal Court
[25] Mwe Kapeshi
Shipungu village, Kabanga,
Kaoma district
July 13, 1989
born c. 1885, locally reputed
to be closely related to or even identical to, Kapeshi ka
Munungampanda
Add diagram 1
[1] Oral
source [18] 14.10.1977.
[2] Oral
source [19] 20.10.1977.
[3] Oral
source [3] 9.10.1973; these are to this day the names of headmen
and villages on the south bank of the Njonjolo river, near Mwene
Timuna’s grave.
[4] Oral
source [23] 13.10.1973.
[5] Compiled
from various sources, primarily oral source [11].
[6] This
is in line with the journey of Shihoka Nalinanga and his
sister’s son Kahare from the Zambezi valley to the Lunga river,
as related in Likota lya Bankoya, which suggests that Kambotwe
Kahare might be the same personage as Shihoka’s sister’s son.
[7] No
more explicit information was given. It is possible that the
Upper Zambezi or the Zambezi/Congo watershed is meant, and that
the present tradition is subject to the same collective amnesia
or self-imposed censorship as all other Nkoya reminiscences of
that location.
[8] As
usual, the tradition speaks indiscriminately of the royal title
irrespective of the various incumbents it must have had over
time.
[9] Which
fits in with the upheaval in the Kahare line in the final episode
at Kayimbu, and during the flight south.
[10]
Oral source [11], confirmed by oral source [14]. Kabangu’s son
Muchati was Mwene Mulimba in the 1960s and early 1970s.
[11]
Oral source [1].
[12]
Oral source [6].
[13]
Oral source [18] 13.10.1977.
[14]
Oral source [18] 14.10.1977.
[15]
Oral source [16] 16.10.1977. Emphasis added.
[16]
He claims that the Mbwela characters Nsanganyi, Mutondu [Mutondo]
and Kahari [Kahare] are known to virtually every informant
(Schecter 1980a: 272), but no further specific mention is made of
either Mutondo or Kahare, with the exception of the Kahare cave.
[17]
Oral source [11].
[18]
Oral source [3] 19.11.1973. Oral source [1] gives the same
interpretation but only the first line of the praise-name.
According to [3], the Kahare in question would have been Libinda,
son [sic] of Shihoka.
[19]
Oral source [7] 22.10.1977.
[20]
Oral source [10].
[21]
Oral source [16] 16.10.1977.
[22]
Elsewhere (van Binsbergen 1991: 259f) I discuss, but ultimately
reject, an alternative interpretation of the female dimension in
Nkoya kingship: assuming a far greater significance of the
institution of perpetual kinship than is borne out by the
evidence from central western Zambia would allow us to interpret
the early Lady Myene simply as the one, symbolically female, half
of a pair that has been distorted in the process of tradition:
the ‘female’, relatively autochthonous Mbwela element which
did not, as some other Mbwela, pursue the option of partial local
assimilation to the Lunda and Luvale immigrants but moved away to
Kaoma district, while the ‘male’, invading, dominant element
remained on the Upper Zambezi in the form of dynastic titles
among the contemporary Lunda and Luvale. I do not include the
argument here because, although evidently relating to the Luvale
connexion in Nkoya history, it does not have a speacific bearing
on the question of Mukanda.
[23]
Oral source [17] 30.9.1977.
[24]
From the manuscript by Davison Kawanga, ‘Nkoya songs as taped
by Wim van Binsbergen: translations and notes’, 112 pp.; cf.
the praise-names of Mwene Mutondo Shinkisha in Likota lya Bankoya
(26: 1f).
[25]
As particularly manifest in the geographical dispersal yet — at
least partially — continued allegiance of the Momba and
Kabulwebulwe titles vis-a-vis the Mutondo title.
[26]
Cf. Gluckman 1949. Holub (1879: 56) claims that he has not heard
of circumcision in the Lozi empire. However, in Sesheke he
witnessed makishi dances (Holub 1879: 64f), whose performance and
symbolism is inseparable from Mukanda; according to Holub, women
were excluded from the performances, and the elaborate costumes
belonged to king Sipopa himself who had lived at Lukwakwa as
Munangisha’s senior kinsman.
[27]
Cf. Papstein 1978 and references cited there.
[28]
Gervase Clay, letter to the present author, dated: 31.1.1975. The
episode is treated at great length in Shimunika’s Muhumpu;
further [18] 14.10.1977, [19] 19.10.1977; the resentment of
Kapupa’s position is a recurrent theme in these sources.
[29]
Oral source [13].
[30]
Cf. Chipela 1974 [1976], according to whom Chief Samuzimu resided
for seven years in the northern part of the then Mankoya
district.
[31]
Oral sources [4]; [7] 8.10.1977; author’s field-notes.
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