Sangoma: Divining The Stresses Of Rapid Industrialization In North Nguni Society

Far to the south, the Drakensberg range divides the interior plateaus from the coastal flatlands, in what is now South Africa, Swaziland, and Lesotho. The mountains also separate two major cultural historical groupings: the Nguni-speakers of the wetter, more tropical setting; the Sotho-Tswana on the drier, highland interior. Major sociocultural distinctions separate these groupings in a way that influences our subject. The Nguni-speakers, through the eighteenth century, lived in decentralized small homestead settlements of cultivators who also kept livestock. Their social and political organization was lineage-based. The Sotho-Tswana, by contrast, had larger town settlements, with strong centralized chiefdoms. Their cattle remained at outposts in the and regions to the west; their fields were arranged around the towns and cultivated seasonally. Social life and most public affairs were conducted in the towns, particularly in the chief's court, the kgotla .

At the beginning of the nineteenth century social and political up-heavals—known as the Mfecane—among the Nguni gave rise to the centralized states of the Zulu, Swazi, Ndebele, and Pedi, and those of

the diaspora groups to the north in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania. These states were not so deep-rooted as to offer the stable, courtlike context and type of public life that had evolved gradually among the Sotho-Tswana. Therefore, among the Nguni, ngoma as it is being studied in this book was the major way of dealing with adversity, misfortune, and sickness. It is largely among the Nguni-speaking societies of southern Africa that this story may be found.

However, the setting of ngoma in Southern Africa requires fuller contextualization than simply a contrasting of Nguni with Sotho-Tswana. The Mfecane was followed shortly by the incursion of Afrikaaner wagon trains into what is now the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The societies that had newly formed as states were engaged in battle and defeated; their proud citizens were reduced to servants of the Afrikaaners on their own lands. This was followed, late in the nineteenth century, by the discovery of gold and diamonds and the emergence of the major labor migration pattern that engulfed the entire subcontinent. Africans, deprived of their land, needed to work in the mines and farms of the white man to make a living.

Thus the story of ngoma in Southern Africa also needs to be situated in the context of a divided society, of broken homes, of labor camps and mines, and in the twentieth century, of the urban settlements and the townships. For these reasons the two Nguni-related sites that came to be of particular interest in this survey were the Manzini-Mbabane corridor in Swaziland, an industrializing, urbanizing setting in an independent country, and the townships surrounding Cape Town, where the various cultural threads of South African society come together in the context of apartheid rule. These two settings allow for comparison between several contrasting situations, both across the middle of the continent and in the region of Southern Africa.

Ngoma in Southern Africa is far more unitary in its institutional organization than what we have seen in Kinshasa and Dar es Salaam. It is not organized into several dozen functionally specific ngoma orders as among the Ndembu or the Sukuma. Nor is it as frequently, nor as extensively, used for entertainment. The unitary structure of ngoma in Southern Africa combines both divination and therapeutic network building.

The Mbabane-Manzini and Cape Town comparison permits us to see contrasts between a setting outside South Africa and one inside South Africa—within the framework of a single cultural-linguistic grouping,

the Nguni-speaking societies: Shangani, Thonga, Ndebele, Swazi, Zulu, Xhosa, and Pedi. One of the most startling contrasts in ngoma expression across this region is the shift, from south to north, of increasingly elaborate technique and demonstrative trance in divining-healing. Among the Xhosa, undramatic meditative and counseling techniques are used between healers and their clients. The spirits who are called on are usually ancestors, or vague evil or nature spirits. Among Zulu diviners, mechanistic bone-throwing techniques prevail. The Swazi, however, although the same holds true for a part of their work, have recourse regularly to far more demonstrative possession trance behavior as they are visited by a series of increasingly powerful and distant nature and alien spirits. The reasons for this marked contrast in ngoma within a single cultural-linguistic region will be addressed later in this chapter after the introduction of ethnographic material.

A Swazi College For Diviner-Healers

My major exposure to ngoma activities and institutions in the North Nguni setting came through several extended visits to the ngoma training college and clinic of Ida Mabuza of Betani, midway between the industrial center of Manzini and the capital of Mbabane.

Ida Mabuza had trained in the Tshopo area of Mozambique. She enjoyed royal patronage from King Sobhuza II to follow through on her therapeutic initiation. When she experienced kwetfwasa , the call from the ancestors to enter a life of ngoma, she was ill for five years before beginning her training, suffering from back pains and difficulty in walking, as well as other serious problems that included vomiting blood. As her illness progressed, she became solitary, hostile, and withdrawn. She had many dreams of people with sangoma-type hairdos. Her condition worsened, leading eventually to daytime visions, so that others and she herself feared she would become totally mad. When her condition became unbearable, her husband took necessary steps for her to be healed. As she began to train, the spirit literally "came out" in her dancing; a song was given to her by the spirit. Her family and healer realized she was possessed by a Thonga spirit; indeed the spirit had announced itself. In due course she, a Swazi, became the channel of Thonga, Zulu, and Shangani spirits. These spirits drive you about, she said, they possess (femba ) you, speak through you, particularly the Manzawe spirits. The Benguni spirits are the main ones behind the div-

ination with bones; they are mainly Zulu (victims of Swazi wars), although some are Thonga. Others give insight as well, including Thonga and Shangani spirits.

The main points here seem to be that these shades that aid in divining and heating are alien Nguni ancestors, and that they speak directly through the medicines and diviners. This is in contrast to most Zulu (and other) tangoma, who work with or in power of their own shades, and seemingly the Xhosa, who work similarly. Harriet Sibisi, who was with me and interpreted the interview, pointed out that Zulu tangoma would try to get rid of an alien spirit and try to bring in a person's own shade to inspire divination work. They would not work exclusively with alien spirits.

The contrasts between Zulu tangoma and Mabuza's approach seemed sufficiently pronounced that when I asked about the meanings of the term ngoma she noted that, although they accept the appellation sangoma, technically they call themselves takoza mediums, distinguishable by their red ochred and oiled dreadlocks, whereas tangoma wear their hair black with beads woven in them. According to Mabuza, the takoza have spirits speak directly through them, whereas the tangoma listen to spirits (or sometimes their ancestors or deceased grandparents) and use their own judgment. Thus the difference is in methodology. The takoza's spirit sees right into the cause of illness; for example, one may be limping today, but the cause is an ancient childhood injury. Tangoma are more skilled at reading the present, or they tend to restrict their work to present-day issues. The takoza, because they are mediums, get much more excited, said Mabuza, who sat there before us with great composure, looking very professorial through her glasses. The takoza combine mediumship (ukufemba ) with bone-throwing, or inspire their bone-throwing with mediumship from spirits directly. The tangoma learn divination from other tangoma. The tangoma figure out the problem and refer more readily to other types of practitioners.

One of Mabuza's twenty apprentices explained her own training and her introduction to the hierarchy of spirits. Novices learn many songs, both those taught by their teacher Mabuza, as well as their own, which they receive in visions and dreams from the amadloti (ancestor shades), the Manzawe spirits, and the Benguni "victims" of wars, killed by one's paternal forebears. These several spirit or shade categories were represented by the bead strings across the novices' shoulders (see fig. 4). White beads represented the Benguni autochthonous victims; the red, the Amanzawe (nature spirits); the mud-colored, the amadloti (lineal

Figure 4. 
Body and neck strings as used in ngoma to represent categories of
spirits. This example is from Swazi takoza mediums: (a) amadloti (lineal
ancestor shades), mud-colored beads; (b) Amanzawe (nature spirits), red
beads; (c) autochthonous Benguni victims of Swazi wars, white beads;
(d) Tinzunzu victims of drowning, white beads.

ancestor shades); another white string, Tinzunzu (victims of drowning). She had other necklaces and beads that had been donned at points in her training. The fuller bead bracelets and anklets indicated her completion of training.

Teaching and practice in this tradition, which combined the sangoma and takoza, appeared to consist of the two standard components, divining and singing rituals. The former mainly consisted of "throwing bones" (pengula ), the latter the singing-pronouncing of the affliction or announcement of spirits (ukufemba ) in which drums were used. Ma Mabuza had twelve tigomene drums for these ukufemba sessions (see plate 6), although not all were used at any one time. The drums, made of cowhide membranes on oil barrels, were huge and sonorous, recalling the sacred royal drums of the north Sotho, Venda, and Luvedo, or the

Luvedo tigomene initiation drums. Ida Mabuza's own patron spirit was a male iloti , which was why whenever a request was made, the apprentice who was our guide had to go ask "him" (through Mama Mabuza) for permission.

Mabuza, when asked about the prevalence of types of cases brought to her, noted that daily she has about ten clients. Even though she does not keep records, she noted the following types of issues brought to her in order of frequency. There are both "African" and "non-African" problems. She has both African and white clients. The most common African problem is vague pains and anxieties, explained by umbelelo or mego , harm or sorcery resulting from interpersonal tensions. The next most prevalent illness is amakubalo , resulting from broken social or moral precepts, such as illicit sex with a protected married woman. The first type of problem brings both men and women, the second mostly men. Further, there are many young people who come to her wishing to learn of their fates, seeking good fortune in job applications, exams, and love.

Whites' main concern, she said, is fear of poverty—that is, their inability to hold on to their money and property. They also come for help in promotions and other work-related matters. They come with illnesses not properly diagnosed in the hospital or not effectively treated, such as especially high blood pressure, whose root cause frequently can be traced to tensions or conflicts with domestic workers or subordinates who, they fear, have retaliated against them.

Mabuza told us of a case she had recently done that illustrates her approach. A white woman came in, accompanying someone else. Mabuza divined for her that she was involved in a struggle with her family. The woman did not believe it. Two weeks later she returned, acknowledging that, indeed, in their purchase of a farm, payments had been embezzled by another family member, and they had been doubly charged.

One day as we arrived we saw another car parked below the compound. It belonged to a well-dressed Swazi couple who had just emerged from one of the divination rooms and a consultation with Mabuza or an apprentice. Later, as we were waiting on a mat outside the rooms, another car drove up with a grandmotherly Swazi woman at the wheel. She had come for a consultation, either for herself or another family member. She waited on a mat beside us while one of the staff prepared to see her. Clients who do not have their own vehicles, or who cannot

walk or take public transportation, may call Betani by phone and be picked up in one of the center's vehicles. Since Betani is midway between the industrial center of Manzini and the capital, Mbabane, and not far from the royal Swazi capital, Mabuza's work is tied into the vibrant pulses at the center of Swazi society.

The narrow line between conventional clients and those who eventually become apprentices is articulated by the etiological category kwetfwasa , to be called by a spirit to enter the life of the sangoma. Although she commonly diagnoses cases to be of this type, it is an article of emphasis in ngoma circles that the master-novice relationship must be entered voluntarily. The diviner-healer who makes the diagnosis is not necessarily the one with whom you apprentice. Clients are quite free to go elsewhere, with whomever they feel comfortable. Those who do come to Mabuza stay in residence five to six years; for the first four they are counseled and participate in the sessions. Then they become involved in intensive training. During this time she delegates responsibility in pengula bone-throwing divination and in the femba mediumship. Anyone who is available gets an opportunity to learn through practice. If one's spirit cannot read a case, another helps out or takes over.

The novices must be sexually abstinent throughout their stay with her. They do not shake hands with others; they are ritually apart. Mabuza was surprised at the pictures of the Cape Town novices who held wage-labor jobs, wondering how apprentices could be part-time or intermittently in isolation.

The presence of clients who stay in residence overnight or for longer periods (in addition to whom there are up to twenty apprentice diviner-heaters) suggests that Mabuza's establishment at Betani is very much an institution, with anywhere from thirty to fifty people "in residence" at a given time. The institutional dimension of ngoma at this place was apparent to us one day when, driving up the steep road to Betani, we came upon two young apprentices working to get the Datsun truck, heavily laden with groceries for the college, up the hill. They had to unload some of the flour sacks so the vehicle could drive up a particularly steep eroded passage. Later, I saw them unload thirty dozen eggs, a fifty kilogram bag of mealie flour, bags of wheat flour, cartons of canned condensed milk, sugar, and the like—food for twenty novices and their families, as well as the inpatients. Six times a month they send to town for such a load of groceries. It was reported that the tazoka

novices, conspicuous in their red ochre and sand hair-dos and loin-cloths, are frequently seen in the bank in Mbabane drawing money from the Betani account for their shopping.

Pengula: Divination By "Throwing The Bones"

Throughout northern Nguni society and among Shona and Sotho-Tswana society, the most common method of divination is called "throwing the bones." The diviner sits opposite the client, with a mat between them (plate 9). In a small bag the diviner has a set of bones, usually vertebrae of an animal, which are thrown out upon the mat. The constellation of bones, their relationships and profiles, are "read" in a manner similar to divination methods of the Southern Savanna Ngombo basket ingredients, or the Ifa oracle's shells when cast. Constellations identify areas of social life, personal problems, and cultural emphases. Accordingly, in Betani, divination "bones," which include dominoes, dice, coins, shells, stones, as well as the standard vertebrae, are interpreted to include not only luck (good if dominoes turn dots up, bad if down) and various interpersonal relational profiles and bewitchment (vertebrae in various positions), but also the presence of tuberculosis, diabetes, and other conditions. One constellation of bones refers people to the hospital. Another constellation tells the diviner that the client has come in bad faith.

A third individual, in addition to the diviner and client, is often present in sessions of bone-throwing as a type of interpreter or mediator. This individual may be part of the divination staff, as was true in a number of cases at Betani, or may be a friend of the client or a family member. The mediator's role is to know the case, to have gotten acquainted with it, just as the expectation upon the diviner is that clairvoyance will be used to "see" the truth of the case with the help of the bones or the spirits. As the bones are thrown and the diviner begins to interpret, using a format like "twenty questions," the mediator responds with "I agree" (si ya vuma ) or "I disagree." Such sequences of questioning reveal whether the issue is in the paternal or maternal family, whether it is a family- or work-related issue, or whether it has to do with the client's own responsibility or with another's involvement. If the constellation does not seem appropriate, and the diviner reaches a dead-end in the incantation of questions, another throw may reveal a new constellation with another sequence of questions.

Clients who come to Betani for good fortune stay overnight to take emetics, which Ma Mabuza teaches them how to administer it themselves. Emetics and purification are important for people who have taken in contrary medicines (what Kongo call intoxification). The medicine "releases them"; the spirits allow them to change. Those who stay overnight receive free meals prepared by the apprentices or other staff. The overnight fee is fifteen emlangeni ($12, in 1982), whether the client is African or white. Pengula divination has grades of elaborateness, beginning with the simple bone throw for two emlangeni for a basic outline of the issue, which tells whether one can count on chance or has no chance (as in a court case). Sometimes lengthy counsel apart from the bone throw may increase the rate. The maximum fee for pengula, an overnight stay with a meal, and an extended femba possession session by the entire hierarchy of spirits is thirty-five emlangeni. A diviner as skilled as Ma Mabuza can earn a good living at these rates.

Ukufemba: Divination By Mediumship

We had been told that in Mabuza's school, divination by mediumship (ukufemba ) was held about every other day. The exact timing, however, depended on the spirits. One evening we arrived at Betani unannounced at about five o'clock. The resident novices were eating and drinking in front of Mabuza's house. One of them came to us and welcomed us and spoke with us, and another brought us a well-sifted container of beer. Another male novice came with a similar bucket of medicine (ubulau ) to an area before the seance house, and the entire group of about twenty novices gathered around him and the ubulau. He raised the froth with his stirring stick, then knelt over to take some with his mouth, spitting it out in the four cardinal directions as if forming a cosmogram. The others did the same one by one as the leader sang. Then they knelt in a circle and prayed.

We continued speaking with the novice who had come to us earlier. She spoke about her health (her sore foot, bilharzia) and health education, about age (our graying hair, her impression of our youthfulness), about doctoral degrees, including her sister's. A child walked by carrying a shirt on its head. She observed that when a child holds something on its head in that way, "someone will soon come." We had no idea what she was talking about. Suddenly one of the young takoza bellowed out from the seance house in the now familiar sound of spirit trance.^[2] "There you are," said our companion, "the amadloti [ancestors] have

come." Others moved to the seance house and began drumming almost immediately. We were invited to sit down on a mat with them. Several of the male novices were grunting and spluttering and crying out, possessed, we were told, by the Benguni spirits of the victims of Swazi wars. Presently, to drumming-singing of six tigomene , four of the men who had donned white waist cloths and patterned loincloths over their other loincloths, began to rush in and out of the door. In the minutes that followed these Benguni-possessed men went through a threefold routine: (1) initial trance met by drum-song response; (2) suddenly rushing out and disappearing (to present themselves, we were told, to "him," i.e., Mabuza), then returning to greet those present. A definite call-and-response pattern was apparent here; the drumming-singing occurred only while the possessed entered the room.

When this was finished, four women followed suit in approximately the same way, also possessed with Benguni. Several other persons danced, including some very agile boys and girls, who apparently were not possessed. Each of the classes of spirits—the amadloti , Benguni, Manzawe, and Nzunzu—is said to have its distinctive dances and songs, although I could barely discern them. The drum rhythm was a heavy regular beat on six drums; the dance was a heavy pounding step a little like that of Cape Xhosa amagqira healers, only faster and more vibrant, interspersed with leaping jumps.

At the very close there entered a "senior" graduate sangoma-takoza, the woman who had done the pengula divinations. She was dressed in her full set of beads and carried her beaded baton and cow's tail whisk. She held a stick under one armpit and a knobkerrie under the other. Then the session was over and the group moved outside to go through a seance with Manzawe spirits. We left.

The next afternoon we drove to Mabuza's place again to seek a better understanding of the relationship between individualized pengula bone-throwing and the collective mediumistic ukufemba approach. The case we would see treated was that of a small child, several months old, who had been sickly and weak. Mother and grandmother were present with the child and all necessary diaper bags, aprons, clothing, even a bottle of diaper softener. They had taken the child to the hospital, as well as to an African independent Christian faith healer, but it was still sick and weak. They had come to determine what was causing its affliction, since hospital medicine in their eyes had failed.

Another case came to our attention after the femba session began. A young woman, a university student, offered to translate the proceed-

ings for us. She had had a nervous breakdown shortly after the term began. The hospital doctors had diagnosed her persistent headache, nosebleeding, vomiting, and nausea as due to "nerves" and "heart failure," although a further consultation with another doctor had revealed "nothing wrong." She came to Mabuza feeling miserable. After divination and treatment in residence she began to feel much better, saying she was now fine, although she continued staying at the center.

The sick infant was the final case of the evening, after several cases that kept them busy until about eight o'clock. Then the floor was covered with matting and the drums were brought in from the courtyard where they had been tightening in the sunlight. Children came in and sat down along the wall opposite the door. A pressure lamp had been brought in to illuminate the room. While another femba session was continuing in the other house, the mother, infant, and grandmother entered with their baggage and sat down. A young male takoza from Mozambique brought in the straw basket of medicines with which he would femba the case (fig. 5). Although the book definition of femba is that of trance or possession to identify the spirit cause of an illness, the beginning process here seemed more like positive medicine to prepare the patient.

At first the infant was held on the grandmother's lap; the mother sat aside against the wall, looking on. The diviner-healer began by kneeling before the basket of medicines. While praying, he took off his body beads and donned another set of necklace beads; he donned a new cloth and over all this put on a waistband of six cowrie shells, as well as a headband of two rows of cowrie shells. Then he took several small medicine containers out of the basket. From one he took a grease or ointment and rubbed his face with it. Nearby he had a pottery shard with coals of fire through which he passed some of the medicine. Then he washed his face in a bowl of water. Throughout the next stages he regularly partook of a snufflike substance that may have been hallucinogenic.

The diviner-healer then went to stand before the grandmother, his back to the door. He gestured with his hands to the child, then at one point rubbed medicine on various parts of the child's body soles of the feet, top of the head, temples, chest and back, wrists and ankles. He pulled the child's limbs out taut. He repeated some of this for the grandmother. Throughout this segment of the session a young female assistant brought him the ointment and helped him take the snuff substance. Then he seemed to go into a semitrance and gave the following expla-

Figure 5. 
The arrangement of participants in the ukufemba divination ses-
sion at Betani, described in text. Left diagram: (a) participants including
novices, family, and guests; (b) active trance performers, who enter and
leave as spirits; (c) tigomene (drums) in performance. Right diagram, in
same space: (d) healer kneeling before medicines during case of sick child;
(e) grandmother with grandchild; (f) mother of child.

nation of the causes of the illness, as translated to us by an English-speaking patient.

The first cause was put in the form of an exegesis of family history. The family cattle had strayed onto the fields of others, and those others had taken revenge on the child. Vengeful ancestors were working through living persons, who were trying to hurt the child and its mother. The falsetto voice in which the medium spoke, possessed by the spirit, was said to impersonate the one who was behind the injurious work. The clients would know from the sound of the voice who it was; the person could not be mentioned by name. A further cause was the vengeance of a war victim killed by a family member. Third, there was the matter of the unmarried mother and displeasure by spirits over this. The vengeful forces had already stolen the child's "soul," and unless the forces were neutralized the child would soon die. There followed the blessing of the child's effects, first piece by piece, then a whole bag full, and finally the bottle of diaper softener. The child was now moved to the mother's lap, and was given some emetic fluid to drink, as well as a bit of the snuff in its nose. At one point there was also a brief exorcism near the door, with the comment that the spirits were not all will-

ing to leave but wanted to hide in the room. Then for a while there seemed to be a calm.

A Manzawe spirit struck in the back corner of the room with a powerful cry through another young medium, who rushed up to where the mother was seated with the child. Several other novices and observers took drums in hand and quickly provided rhythmic accompaniment to the spirit's song. This was a "white" Manzawe, evidenced by the possessed medium's controlled gesture of donning a white cloth from the wooden cross beam above him, where all the cloths were draped.

After dancing about for a while in his characteristic manner, this "spirit" went out and came in several times. Then he came before the mother of the sick child and harangued her for several minutes, in a heavy, intense voice, about her case: She had sought help in vain from other places, including the hospital and "church"; she was the victim of dissatisfied spirits because of the family affair and the cattle; there was a victim of the family's involvement in past wars. He appeared to repeat some of the earlier findings. Perspiration poured down his face and body; it was a most impressive effort, for which another two or five emlangeni note was produced. Then this white Manzawe spirit left the room and the medium returned, composed.

Several other male diviners took up the work, donning this time red cloths over their shoulders. These were again Manzawe spirits, more bizarre and strange than the earlier ones. They voiced very strange, incomprehensible, animallike grunts. Their "dance" was as odd as their appearance; they "stood" on all fours before the door, tossing their heads about wildly, their long red clay dreadlocks thrown this way and that. These spirits left as they had come, through the open door. Each time a spirit-medium would enter the door, the drumming would begin anew; each time it left, there would be silence. Someone said the drumming was needed to "bring out the spirit."

Finally, the two mediums who had performed the "red" and the "white" Manzawe moved on to host Nzunzu spirits of those who had drowned. This time they danced upright, but their voices were so strange that our interpreter said, "if you don't know the words of the spirits you can't understand this." After a time the drumming came to an end, and all present dispersed.

I found interesting the decreasing involvement of the mediums with the case at hand, as if the latter spirits made their appearance simply to articulate their niches in the spirit cosmology. It was a kind of

"gloria" to the farthest-out spirit world. At an earlier point, the first Manzawe spirits had done battle with the lingering evil forces around the child. The final spirits proclaimed an uncontested victory over them.

Mediumistic Trance Versus Mechanistic Technique

As noted at the beginning of this section on North Nguni, this exaltation of the spirits and the emphasis on a hierarchy of ancestral, alien, and nature spirits stands in sharp contrast to the absence of these features in South Nguni settings within South Africa, that is, Zulu, Xhosa, and Pondo. I will not develop this issue in any great depth here, but will explore several hypotheses that will be taken up again in subsequent chapters.

One of the external factors that may influence divination and healing bears on the contrast between South African and Swazi society, from the perspective of Africans. In the Republic of South Africa, laws are clear-cut, rigid, and oppressive. South African pass laws, work restrictions, and hardship have not succeeded in eroding the basic worldview of people in African society; it has rather hardened it, so to speak. In Swaziland, on the other hand, which has an intriguing mixture of sociopolitical organization combining an ancient kingdom with modern bureaucracy, and a per capita income that is near the highest in black Africa, there has been a middle-class revolution of rising expectations and realizations. The middle-class work force of both men and women is in an upwardly mobile current that has shaken family and religious values to their core. The boundaries or limits of society and worldview have been exploded open. Divination regarding work opportunities, social crises resulting from individual decisions, and marital or non-marital arrangements all lead to an enormous clientele for the sangoma (or the takoza, as they call themselves). This is the setting in which ngoma roles and activities are associated almost exclusively with divining. Lydia Makbubu (1978), who has been a student of Swazi healing, emphasizes that several decades ago neither the sangoma nor the takoza used drums at all, and that there was no possession or trance in connection with divination. The progression from the pengula (bone-throwing), to the femba "smelling out" mediumistic exercise provides a hierarchy of resort from dealing with the known, controlled world of the lineage, to dealing with the unknown and unclear realms beyond the family.

The new divining did not, however, appear from nowhere. Oral reports and references from Tanzania, Mozambique, and Swaziland trace the takoza mediumistic divining, as well as the N'anga ngoma in Tanzania, to the Thonga in Mozambique, more specifically the Vandau, a group that was a part of the Ngoni diaspora following the early nineteenth-century Mfecane. Harriet Ngubane, a Zulu South African anthropologist who has lived and worked in Swazi society, suggests that the distinctions between the sangoma, who practice only pengula, and the takoza, who practice pengula and ukufemba (mediumship), are the signs of an ideological emphasis in Swazi divination rather than the result of distinctive structural characteristics in society and culture. Although mediumship is emphasized by the takoza, like all Nguni diviners their training period is extensive—five to six years. Clearly the bone-throwing and pengula questioning techniques are learned and require disciplined practice. According to Ngubane, this mediumistic divination and the emphasis on the spirit world reflects an ideological emphasis or predisposition in Swazi thought. Reliance on alien spirits in divination—alien Nguni spirits—is in character with Swazi reserve, with their pacific character, according to Ngubane. Just as they have historically accommodated strangers and are extremely charitable toward strangers, so in the spirit world there is a very considerate memory of those they killed in former wars (Benguni) and those who drowned or were not properly buried (Nzunzu). The spirits are the cutting edge of a sensitive worldview that includes collective guilt toward warfare's victims and care for strangers among them. This view contrasts to that of the Zulu, who have a history of much more bloodshed but who in their spirit worldview try to replace alien spirits with their own, and in divination rely on their own spirits.

Further evidence of an ideological emphasis in the Swazi takoza approach to divining lies in the point Mabuza made about her own patron spirit. When she began her training, and her teacher began to hide things for her to find, the spirit-shade who took over for her was that of an inyanga diviner, very much a particular ancestor. Mediumship is thus for her an added element of her training as a general healer and diviner, not the primary core of her practice.

Thus, although direct mediumship is emphasized in current Swazi divination, there is plenty of evidence of structural comparability with Zulu and Xhosa divining-healing. This structural comparability bridges the apparent distinction between spirit possession, on the one hand, and the learned skills of an apprenticeship, on the other hand. Mabuza and

other takoza of Swaziland are equally adept in discourse on exotic spirits and on types of cases, case load, methods of analysis, and other empirical issues. One has the impression, in visiting ngoma in Swaziland, of an ancient institution in the course of constant evolution, very much tied into national life and in tune with the stresses and strains of individuals.