Professional and State Control of Ngoma on the Swahili Coast

The final example of the social reproduction of health through ngoma is from coastal Tanzania and shows yet another variation of the therapeutic focus and organizational structure of the institution. Among Zaramo and Zigua peoples of the Swahili coast, the coastal healers have utilized their ngoma networks to create a centralized institution, the Shirika la Madawa ya Kiasili, with officers, books, a treasury, and a "director," that is, a representative of government to be a liaison with appropriate ministries. Local ngoma performances draw, as everywhere in ngoma, a shifting set of senior participants with their apprentices and novices. At another level, there are individual waganga who belong to patrilineages, which in the Swahili coastal setting have often passed their therapeutic skills from generation to generation.

The Shirika had about five hundred members in 1983, with strongest representation in Dar es Salaam, Tanga, Bagamoyo, and Morogoro, and in the new capital, Dodoma. They were trying to create branches in other localities. Tanzania had earlier experimented with a national organization of healers, but this was abolished when it became too politicized, that is, fractured and powerful. The links between the Shirika and the government revealed some of the same forces of economic

interest, of political strength, and of party and government control that had surfaced in the national organization. Why was the state interested in ngoma?

The Shirika had official recognition through the Ministry of Culture, which generally handled licenses for ngoma entertainment groups and conducted research on song-dance. Why, though, should therapeutic dancing be controlled by the Ministry of Culture and not the Ministry of Health? The power of ngoma as a resource, especially one so large and well organized, was indicative of its symbolic power in society at large. The role of a party-appointed "director" with affiliation to the national political party hinted at some of the potential tensions between the organization and the state's interest. The director in effect controlled the recruitment of new ngoma cells to the Shirika, thereby exercising restrictions on its overall influence. This would avert what had occurred in the case of a cattle-rustling ngoma that had arisen in response to the need to locate stolen livestock. The government had heard about it only after it was fully constituted and then belatedly tried to gain its allegiance. Somewhat similarly, the ngoma for entertainment organized by the National Service indicated the effort to connect the state to the powerful symbolism of socially focused song-dance.

These details of the relationship between state and ngoma illustrate a significant general principal. A resource such as ngoma, which may arise in response to a need, and which symbolically, socially, and materially reproduces itself, by that very fact attracts the state, which seeks to co-opt power and legitimacy unto itself.

The resources to be drawn from the Shirika—an umbrella organization of therapeutic ngoma—were also apparent to the individuals and families who made their living from these performances. Unlike the populistic networks of reproduction-enhancing ngoma of the Southern Savanna or the township ngoma of the Western Cape, here by no means everyone who was brought into the initial stage of treatment followed through with the full initiation. In fact, according to the records and testimony of the Shirika leaders, only about 3 to 4 percent of the sufferers who entered ngoma dispensaries for treatment were fully initiated. This is corroborated by research of a decade earlier, in which only three of sixty waganga had entered their healing profession through spirit calling (L. Swantz 1974:203).

In Dar es Salaam, the recognition of healers and the opportunity for them to organize into associations has led to the strengthening of their control of resources (Unschuld 1975). On the one hand, this has led to

full-time practice, the utilization of therapeutics as income, and to the control of the therapeutic and symbolic resources, in this case divination, the diagnosis of spirit possession, and the performance of authorized therapeutic song-dance. On the other hand, this has led to the restriction of access to the role of the ngoma healer and to the consolidation of membership in the Shirika.

The effect of professionalization of health care elsewhere has been the codification of methods and the regulation of access to the ranks of those who practice (Last and Chavunduka 1986).