The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
SOMETIMES what appears on the surface to be a social or cultural measure, such as social stigma attending to cross-cultural marriages, essentially turns out to be engineered to meet economic ends. Where cattle played a significant role in the economic sector, every effort was made to ensure they did not find their way out of the community and sometimes clans and lineages.
The unique preferred cousin marriages practiced by the Babirwa of Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe are a case in point. A man’s son married his sister’s daughter. These preferential marriages were calculated to keep cattle within related peoples — ‘le tsoa le sakeng lea le sakeng.’
The Babirwa were not the only ethnic group that was alive to this social arrangement with economic implications. Socially guided marriages among the Ndebele were, in actual fact, geared towards keeping wealth within a particular social group in the broader heterogeneous Ndebele societal context. Nguni cattle were meant to remain within Nguni members. Marriage was one social arrangement or institution that saw cattle exchange hands between men. A young man’s father parted with amalobolo cattle and gave them to the father of his son’s wife.
Imagine then that a girl’s father were non-Nguni, cattle would have migrated from Nguni ownership to non-Nguni ownership.
There has been some confusion regarding the reason behind payment of amalobolo cattle. The confusion, actually ignorant mischief, has been peddled by people with dangerously little grounding in matters of African Thought. Unarmed with relevant facts, in particular the cosmological underpinnings of amalobolo, they launch vicious and venomous attacks on a subject they are least qualified to express opinion on.
As I have often said, traditional Africans were obsessed with the pervasive idea of fertility or continuity of their lineages. This is an idea that has found expression in several spheres: visual arts (decorative motifs), performances, in particular dance routines/choreography, language and oral traditions, inter alia. Where a community was exogamous there was need to find wives from outside the lineage to help extend the blood line of that particular lineage.
Men alone or men with their sisters could not effect the idea of continuity, due to laws of incest. Getting a wife to come and extend their lineage was a privilege and honour for which they were more than happy to “pay.” What was paid for was not the wife per se, but her capacity to conceive children who belonged to the family that paid amalobolo for them. If this is not done the children belong to the wife’s people.
It is when such issues are understood that we avoid making spurious and unfounded conclusions on an important institution which may have been abused in recent times. Abuse or no abuse its original basis and merits need to be fully appreciated. We may cite the case of Prince Lobengula Khumalo whose accession of the throne was vehemently opposed by some sections of Ndebele society. The basis for that spirited attack on Prince Lobengula Khumalo was the perceived lower social class of her mother Fulatha Tshabalala. The purer Nguni elements, abeNtungwa for example, would not countenance their being ruled over by the son of a Swazi woman. To them Embo Nguni and Thonga Nguni were inferior. In essence, what Prince Lobengula Khumalo’s accession would have done was to economically empower his maternal relations. The social costs attending to that ethnically inspired opposition to the rise of Prince Lobengula Khumalo are well known.
Those that wield political power will manipulate economic empowerment of those loyal to them. Political power is never an end in itself, but a means to one. It protects and avails economic interests to the elite group. Contestations relating to which wife will produce an heir should be seen against this economic backdrop. It is an issue in which economic interests are winners.
What is apparent these days are rumbling undercurrents of discontent and disaffection occasioned by failure to adhere to the pre-colonial rules of chiefly succession. Following the demise of the Ndebele State in 1893 there has been no central political authority that concerned itself with enforcing adherence or leading debates on adapting the chiefly succession rules to current ideas and perceptions on the institution of chief and its related succession procedures. There were rumblings relating to the succession issues within the Bidi chieftainship in Matobo District. The discontents stemmed from the fact that the late chief Joseph Ndiweni’s mother was a Dube, a non-Nguni woman whose son should not have ascended the Bidi Ndiweni chieftainship.
The issue here is about lack of clarity regarding chiefly succession. Did the demise of the erstwhile Ndebele State signal throwing overboard of known, tried and tested chiefly succession rules? Have new chiefly succession rules been promulgated or not? As long as such questions are not eloquently and adequately answered, so long shall discontent haunt the institution of chief each time succession is to take place. When chiefs such as Khayisa Ndiweni, Mabhikwa Khumalo, Simon Sigola and Mzimuni Masuku played the role of referee in contested successions, they did so not because they were a constitutionally created body legally empowered to deal with such matters. They were an ad hoc body of senior and influential Ndebele chiefs.
That generation of senior elderly Ndebele chiefs who were fairly steeped in traditional chiefly rules of succession has come and gone. The average age of incumbent Ndebele chiefs today has declined considerably. That decline has been accompanied by reduced competencies in the comprehension and knowledge of traditional matters. Some are not even au feit with the history of origins and lineages of their own chieftaincies. Chiefs, for them to be justifiably considered custodians of culture; they have to walk the talk.
Of late there is however, a move to amend the Traditional Leaders Act. At this stage it is imperative that consultative workshops be conducted within the milieu of particular cultures with disparate ideas on the institution of chief and attending succession rules. Succession is undoubtedly the hottest issue within the institution of chief these days, largely because of the perks that accrue to the incumbent chief.
Inherited economic empowerment is inevitably contested. Amendments to the Act are thus a welcome move for more reasons than one. It is better late than never.
Certainly, succession rules have to be dealt with so that raging fires of succession are doused. Chief Dumezweni Ndiweni, son of Siqalaba kaNyangazonke, chief of eZinaleni/eZisongweni had his son Goriya disqualified on the grounds that his mother, MaNcube, was non-Nguni and probably that she had had a child by another man before getting married to Chief Dumezweni Ndiweni. As pointed out before, there are several chiefs whose mothers are non-Nguni. Their being chiefs today requires formalisation. Burning desires among some aspirants will be starved of oxygen.
A good example is found within the Mabhikwa Khumalo chieftainship in Lupane District where Chief Mabhikwa Khumalo married quite a number of Mabhena wives and only much later married a MaMkhwananzi. His successor emerged from one of his Mabhena wives. This would not have happened during the reign of King Mzilikazi Khumalo, more so if MaMkhwananzi was Gagisa, uMpande yamadoda.
Succession rules then forbade Mabhena women from having their sons qualify as chiefs.
