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.