tile soils, abundant perennial bush pasturage, forests alive
with wondrous trees and wild animals, precious minerals,
and four major rivers and several streams. Some 40 percent
of all land, the legacy of colonial concessions, is owned by
whites. Although few Swazi are able to support themselves
with agriculture or pastoralism and most rely on wage labor,
they remain deeply attached to their ancestral lands and to
their cattle. The land is vested in the king as trustee for the
nation, and its use is allocated by hereditary chiefs to heads
of homesteads. Throughout the region, the king and queen
mother are renowned for their knowledge of ritual “to work
the rain,” the symbol of fertility and “the water of life.”
Swazi traditionalists perceive a majestic order in their
universe, one alive with powers, emandla (a collective noun
that has no singular). These powers continue through time
and are not bound by space. They appear in diverse forms
and operate with varying degrees of potency. They are in
substance rather than of substance; in water, not of water; in
earth, not of earth; in man, not of man. Among the Swazi,
no rigid division is drawn between natural and supernatural.
No substance is considered immutable. Sacred and secular
are shifting dimensions of a total reality in which human be-
havior may influence the elements as much as the elements
influence the human condition. Between them there is per-
petual and dynamic interaction.
The Swazi have no elaborate myth of creation. The
world is there, mysterious and wonderful. In the symbolic
system of the Swazi, there is a diversified hierarchy of powers
connecting humans to each other and to the cosmos. In the
mythical distance is Mvelamqandi (“who-appeared-first”)
generally described as a power “above,” unapproachable, un-
predictable, of no specific sex. He/she is sometimes identified
with, and sometimes distinguished from, Mkhulumqandi,
the first mkhulu, a term applied to a grandfather, symbolic
mediator between those living on the earth and those
“below,” the ancestors, emadloti. Mvelamqandi occasionally
sent as his messenger Mlendengamunye, the “one-legged”
(interpreted as oneness, unity), who descended in a thick
mist and whose appearance, visible only to women and chil-
dren, portended the coming of fever, a generic term for a va-
riety of illnesses; thus Mlendengamunye had to be propitiat-
ed with symbolic sacrifices. He was last seen in the reign of
King Mbandzeni (1875–1889), during a period of early mis-
sionary activity. Although Mvelamqandi, Mkhulumqandi,
and Mlendengamunye are no longer mentioned in prayer or
sacrifice, Swazi theologians, including Sobhuza, have re-
ferred to these three divinities, as well as to other powers in
the pantheon—such as the rainbow, titled Inkosatana (“the
princess”); the lightning, titled Inyoni (“the bird”); and a
water serpent, titled Inyoka Yemakhandakhanaa (“the snake
with many heads”)—to emphasize a sacred and hierarchical
order of the cosmos.
The earth is seen as stationary; the calendar of religious
events, both national and domestic, is regulated by the visible
movements of the sun against fixed points on the horizon
and by its position in relation to the waxing and waning of
the moon. The divinity of the king is associated with the
sun—radiant, burning, source of both heat and light, jour-
neying across the sky in a more or less regular path twice a
year, controlling the seasons and the productive activities of
nature. The moon has its own internal dialectic, associated
with fertility, femininity and growth, decline and rebirth.
Ceremonies to introduce a person into the fullness of a new
status take place when the moon is growing or when it is full.
A ceremony that temporarily isolates a man from his fellows
is held in the period of the moon’s decline and darkness.The earth, mother to the living and the dead, must be
approached with reverence. When a person dies, all in the
homestead are prohibited from digging, plowing, or plant-
ing, or in other ways “wounding” the earth until the body
has been buried and the mourners purified. When Sobhuza
died in late August 1982 (the time of the first rains), such
prohibitions were imposed throughout the kingdom until
the rising of the third moon. The fact that rain did not fall
for several weeks afterward and that the country was threat-
ened by drought and famine was interpreted as a reaction to
this disturbance in the balance between human actions, the
ancestors, and cosmic powers.The king and the queen mother together represent the
physical embodiment of sacred power, as indicated by their
traditional titles, ingwenyama (“the lion”) and indlovukah
(“the she-elephant”). These are two of the most powerful an-
imals in nature: the lion—male, father of many cubs, aggres-
sive, carnivorous; the she-elephant—maternal, matriarchal,
stable, firm, herbivorous, mother of one calf after a long peri-
od of gestation. Together the two monarchs are spoken of
as “a twin,” a mysterious, unequal double, united in a rela-
tionship riddled with ambivalence. Their everyday actions—
eating, drinking, bathing, dressing—are circumscribed by ta-
boos, and they receive unique treatment to endow them with
the “shadow of sovereignty.”At the observable, sociological level, the queen mother
and king live in separate homesteads; hers is the sacred cen-
ter, his is the administrative capital. Their duties are comple-
mentary; the balance of power is delicate, and tension be-
tween them is believed to endanger the physical condition
of the country. The most sacred objects are in the care of the
queen mother, and the king must come to the shrine of
the nation to address his royal ancestors and offer sacrifices.
The correct performance of rituals takes considerable time,
concentration, and self-discipline. While the secrets of spe-
cific rituals are known to appointed representatives of histor-
ically associated clans, only the king is “owner” of all.Swazi religion sanctions enjoyment of the material and
physical: food, women, and dancing. It does not idealize
poverty or place a value on suffering as a means to happiness
or salvation. To deal with the hazards of life—failure of
crops, unfaithfulness of women, illness and ultimate death—
the culture provides a set of optimistic notions and positive,SWAZI RELIGION 8895