or reveal the affairs of her husband. Often there are taboo
words and riddles with a set answer, knowledge of which are
taken as proof of initiation. In Chisungu Audrey I. Richards
(1956) admirably demonstrates the use of songs, mimes, de-
signs, and models to inculcate in a Bemba girl the proper be-
havior of a wife. Always the rituals instruct the novice in the
behavior required of an adult man or woman, and a transfor-
mation from childish behavior to responsible behavior is
expected.
The rituals assert the authority of a senior generation
over a junior: The initiated secure the young novice’s sub-
mission through the pain of an operation, beating, scolding,
and threats, or by playing upon the novice’s fear of the un-
seen and longing to become an honored and fertile man or
woman. The ritual creates a fraternity or sorority of those
who have undergone the ordeal: Those who have not under-
gone it are outsiders, but all who have endured are free to
participate in the admonition of their juniors. A determina-
tion to use circumcision rites to bolster civil authority was
made explicit in October 1981 when the Ciskei, later an “in-
dependent state” on the border of the Republic of South Af-
rica, passed legislation empowering a chief to compel a
young man to be circumcised, on the ground that “it is well
known that circumcision causes irresponsible youths to be-
have in a responsible manner.” This happened at a time
when opposition by school boys and students to Ciskeian po-
litical authority was intense.
Why maturity rituals have survived among some peo-
ples but not others, or for one sex but not the other, in fast-
changing societies can only be demonstrated by analyzing
historical events in particular areas. What is certain is that
in some areas changes in practice have occurred since the
eighteenth century, rites spreading or being abandoned; but
there is also eyewitness evidence from survivors of wrecks on
the southeastern coast of Africa which suggests minimal
change in circumcision rites among Xhosa and Thembu peo-
ples over three centuries.
CULTS OF AFFLICTION, SPIRIT POSSESSION, AND DIVINA-
TION. Besides the cycle of rituals associated with families and
the birth, maturity, and death of individuals, and the cycle
celebrated for a chiefdom or region, there is a cycle of rituals
for those individuals “called” by their shades to become di-
viners, or for sufferers whose sickness has been relieved by
what Victor Turner has called a “ritual of affliction.” Cults
or guilds are formed of those who have suffered a particular
travail and been cured by a particular ritual. Their experience
entitles them to participate in any celebration for a sufferer
of the same category. Rituals for diviners who have been
called (as opposed to herbalists who learn certain medicines)
and rituals of affliction are much less widespread than those
for birth, maturity, and death, or those for a chiefdom or re-
gion. They are not contained within the frame of kinship or
locality and seem to have proliferated with trade and travel,
but of that process not much is yet known. What is certain
is that among some isolated peoples (such as the Nyakyusa)
these rituals do not occur at all, and among peoples with a
long tradition of distant trade, such as the Shona and Tson-
ga, possession is often interpreted as being the work of an
outsider, not that of a family shade. This phenomenon has
appeared recently among the Zulu, as Harriet Ngubane
(1977) has shown, and, according to John Beattie (1969),
it exists among the Nyoro of Uganda as well.
Diviners are thought to be in a peculiarly close relation-
ship with their shades, who reveal themselves in dreams and
trances. Communication with the shades is fostered by
cleansing and purging, observance of taboos (including sexu-
al abstinence), fasting, isolation in the bush, offerings to the
shades, and dancing to clapping or drums. The emotion is
often intense when, with an insistent beat of clapping pro-
vided by a packed crowd, a novice speaks of what she has
seen in dreams. In Western society the closest analogue to
the diviner in this respect is the medium, and among some
peoples—notably the Shona of Zimbabwe—a state of trance
undoubtedly occurs. Even though it may be a stranger spirit
who possesses the medium, she remains in close contact with
her family shades.
Most mediums deal with the domestic problems and
health of clients who come to consult them. Occasionally,
however, a medium may influence public events, as did Non-
gqause, the Xhosa girl who in 1856 urged all Xhosa on the
eastern frontier of the Cape of Good Hope to kill their cattle
and destroy their grain, prophesying that when they did so
the dead would rise up and sweep the whites into the sea,
or the Shona medium who in 1898 urged resistance against
whites in what is now Zimbabwe. During the colonial period
old prophecies of the coming of whites were repeatedly re-
corded, and these may be seen partly as a reconciliation of
old and new. To at least some Nyakyusa Christians, such
prophecies were evidence of the reality—“the truth”—of an-
cient institutions, the prescience of past prophets. Had not
the prophecy been fulfilled?
WITCHCRAFT. In southern African belief, evil does not come
from the shades, who are essentially good. They discipline
erring descendants, sending sickness or sterility if they have
been starved (for in a real sense the shades partake of the
communion meal—that is, the beer and flesh—and are satis-
fied by it) or neglected, not informed of a marriage, or af-
fronted by the quarrels of their juniors. But they are con-
cerned about the welfare of their children and are held to be
the source of blessing. Rather, evil comes from another
source: witchcraft. It is thought to be embodied in a ser-
pent—a “python in the belly” (Nyakyusa), a “snake of the
women” (Pondo); or it takes the form of a baboon, or a fabu-
lous hairy being with exaggerated sexual organs (Xhosa), and
so forth. Such creatures are as real in imagination as was the
pitchfork-wielding Devil to the medieval European, and like
him they walk the earth seeking those whom they may de-
vour. The witch familiars (and witchcraft generally) personi-
fy the evil recognized as existing in all humans, specifically,
anger, hatred, jealousy, envy, lust, greed. Even sloth appears,SOUTHERN AFRICAN RELIGIONS: AN OVERVIEW 8659