The Sunday News
Feature, Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
RAIN has been falling in various regions of Zimbabwe, fulfilling scientific meteorological and African traditional predictions that the country will receive a normal to above normal fall this season.
Traditional sky observers rely a great deal on weather observations by the Njelele Mwali Shrine in the Matopo Hills and other traditional religious centres elsewhere.
Subordinate shrines are at Manyangwa near Tjehanga Primary School in the Bulilima District, and in the southern spur of the Matopo Hills where we find the Dula Shrine.
The irony is, however, that the three shrines are all in the Matabeleland South Province, a region well known for its more or less rather regular droughts.
A relatively important shrine is at Togwa’s locality, a stone’s throw west of the Ramaquebana railway siding in northern Botswana.
There are other smaller centres at one or two localities in the Matabeleland North Province where some people originally domiciled in Matabeleland South were forcefully dumped by the Southern Rhodesian white settler regime between 1913 and 1960.
Black Zimbabwean traditionalists go to the nearest Mwali Shrine in September every year to pray for rain, and are advised ostensibly by a voice from a cave how many gourds of rain Mwali will give them that particular season.
The source of the human voice is invisible but the voice is said to be quite real, a phenomenon very much like that experienced by Moses in the Bible.
The cave is the holiest place of the Shrine (Holy of the Holies – Sanctum Sanctorum), and only the most senior intercessor enters into it to deposit whatever material gifts are brought by various worshippers.
The gifts range from beads, earthen ware utensils, traditional battle axes to cloth, especially black calico.
The cave is called ntolo in TjiKalanga, a word spelt the same as one meaning “long ago”, and another which means “a load”.
They differ in pronunciation, with the syllable “lo” in the religious “ntolo” being lower than the one meaning “load” but more or less sounding the same as that meaning “long ago”.
Mwali is originally a Venda and not a Kalanga deity. It was brought into the land of Kalangas by the Malaba people at a time when the Kalangas were ruled by their king, Madabhani, whose popular nickname was Tjibundule.
Those responsible for religious matters in the Malaba clan were senior members of the House of Lubimbi, one of the three sub-divisions of that originally Venda clan.
The other houses were that of Hhobhodo and that of Hhonyanya. The Hhobhodo House’s duty was to cure the clan, to protect the Malaba people against witches and wizards.
The word “hhobhodo” means “bags”, originally those made of leather as was the norm at that time. However, now it means bags of whatever material.
It was the Hhobhodo people whose milk porridge, isathiyane, seriously scalded some of King Mzilikazi’s warriors near where Mtshabezi Mission was later established. That is, however, another story for another day.
Hhonyana’s House was responsible for running the national affairs of the Malaba people, especially during their long journey from Vendaland, somewhere towards the mouth of the Bembe (Limpopo) River, where rain “would fall only when Mwali stretched his legs.”
Mwali was thus of extremely vital utility value to those people by giving them rain and protecting them against diseases.
It is unclear what language the Malaba people spoke initially, but it is quite possible that it was a TjiKalanga dialect as TjiKalanga was the proto or one of the proto Bantu languages in pre — historic times especially in several regions south of the Great lakes region.
Whatever their language, when a Mwali intercessor worshipped at a shrine, he or she would say:
Iye Mwali unkulu
Wakalunji gusiphume ngubo,
Gosimila phumo pasi
BaThobela, baMbedzi!
Imwi motana nti makafupatila,
Zebe dzaka kwakwatila,
Imwi mobhata thumo ngekubuhali,
Mukaloba nhu ngelupa.
Bankwakwa usiwome,
Unodliwa ngebana muhhihha,
Imwi Mwali unkulu,
Mbuluki wenjilikadzi nesiyan’wa.
BakaLubimbi,
Bakampani usina mhako,
Wakanotjidza sindi yanyala,
Bhabanyi wahongwe,
Ndawu yaThobela,
Ndawu yaMaseka,
BaMbedzi bakulu
Mwali unahhamu lin’ompela
Linomwiwa ngenjhaba dzose
BakaMwali unkulu
BaMbedzi bakulu.
Thobela!
Ndawu yaThobela,
Mbilu yaMaseka
Swimbwana yangu,
Mposela kule.
Inobona nezwikaTawana,
Njelela kule,
Inobuya bana bahuba
Ndawu yaThobela,
Imwi gumbo ivula
Motandabala ikabe mibvumbi.
(To be continued next Sunday)
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734328136 or through email. [email protected]
