ple is the Ncwala, a ritual which grows in elaboration and
potency as the king increases in power. If the king dies and
his successor is a minor, a very attenuated ceremony, known
as the Simemo, is performed. (On Sobhuza’s death, the
council selected as his heir a boy of fourteen years.) Tradi-
tionally, the first full Ncwala should be performed when the
young king reaches full manhood and is married to two ritual
queens.
Ncwala is divided into two parts, Little Ncwala and Big
Ncwala. Little Ncwala, which opens when the sun reaches
its resting place in the south and the moon has waned, lasts
two days and symbolizes the break with the old year. Big
Ncwala, which opens when the moon is full and lasts six
days, symbolically revitalizes the king and fortifies the nation
against evildoers within the country and enemies outside its
borders. In the liminal period, sacred dances and songs are
practiced throughout the country, ritual costumes are pre-
pared, and sacred ingredients are collected by national
priests. Swazi participants, as well as foreign analysts, inter-
pret the complex ritual at various levels of meaning.
Ingwenyama is recognized as the “owner” of Ncwala.
Anyone else who attempts to “dance Ncwala” is judged
guilty of treason. Politically, Ncwala is a reflection of rank
in which major social categories—princes, chiefs, queens,
councillors, and warriors in age regiments—are visibly dis-
tinguished from each other by sacred costumes and perform
distinctive roles in the service of Ingwenyama as symbol of
the nation. At another level, Ingwenyama is mystically iden-
tified with the miraculous and ever-changing powers in na-
ture—the sun and the moon, not as separate elements but
in their interaction. The king’s body is bathed with “waters
of all the world” drawn from rivers and from the ocean by
two groups of national priests, each group carrying a sacred
gourd titled Inkosatana, “the princess,” which is also the title
of the rainbow. Ingwenyama “bites” of the green foods of the
new year and also of the organs of a fierce black bull which
has been thrown and pummeled to the rhythm of a lullaby
by a regiment of “pure youths who have not yet spilled their
strength in children.”
The king appears in the ceremonies in a variety of
unique clothing, whether it be a penis sheath of ivory on his
naked body or, as at the climax of the main day, an indescrib-
ably elaborate costume of bright green, razor-edged grass and
evergreen shoots. With his face half hidden by a cap of black
plumes over a headband of lion skin, he is an awe-inspiring
creature of the wild.
On the final day of the ritual, the day of purification,
relics of the past year are burned on a pyre in the sibaya (cat-
tle kraal) of the capital village, and rain, symbolizing the
blessing of the ancestors, must fall to extinguish the flame
and drench the rulers and their people.
A complementary and less elaborate women’s ritual,
Mhlanga (from the word for “reed,” a symbol of fertility),
centers on the queen mother. Each winter, unmarried girls
are sent on a pilgrimage to marshy areas to cut the long sup-
ple reeds needed to repair the fences surrounding the enclo-
sures of the queen mother and the queens. The reeds must
be golden ripe, not brittle, the tassles full, and the seeds not
yet dispersed. The girls wear brief costumes to reveal their
beauty and purity, and singing and dancing are essential for
the performance. The king must be present; the girls are
feasted and the ancestors offered their share.
Although early missionaries who preached the Protes-
tant ethic condemned traditional Swazi beliefs and practices,
Swazi rulers were interested in learning the new religion.
From their point of view, the ancestral cult is not incompati-
ble with the basic tenets of Christianity, only with the specif-
ic applications of the tenets that missionaries have made.
Sobhuza never identified himself with any specific de-
nomination, but his role as priest-king of the entire country
was increasingly recognized during his reign not only by in-
dependent African churches, but by some of the more con-
ventional congregations as well. Queen mothers have re-
tained their affiliation with individual churches while at the
same time carrying out their traditional ritual duties. Priests
of independent churches participate in Ncwala, and mem-
bers of any denomination may hold services in the Lobamba
National Church, an impressive structure completed in 1978
in the ambience of the ritual capital. The extent to which this
symbiotic process will continue is unpredictable. As long as
the myth of the Swazi divine kingship retains a political hold
over the Swazi, this will be ritualized in the Ncwala. If the
myth is abandoned and Swazi kingship ends or is made sub-
ordinate to other myths with different loyalties and interests
(such as individual equality), both the ritual and the underly-
ing political meaning of the Ncwala will be lost. But judging
from the histories of other African societies, the Swazi will
hold to their belief in the ancestors and in diviners.BIBLIOGRAPHY
There is as yet no full-length study of Swazi religion, although a
general monograph by Brian Allan Marwick, The Swazi
(Cambridge, 1940), does include a chapter titled “Religion
and Magic.” A very rich store of information on Swazi be-
liefs, rituals, and symbols is contained in books and articles
I have written: among them, An African Aristocracy: Rank
among the Swazi (Oxford, 1947) is a detailed account of the
traditional political system and its economic and religious in-
stitutions; The Swazi: A South African Kingdom (New York,
1963) is a case study with an interpretive chapter on religion;
So-bhuza II: Ngwenyama and King of Swaziland (London,
1978) is a biography of a traditional king which illustrates
the importance of religion as an attribute of modern Swazi
kingship. The close relationship between Swazi kingship and
the independent church movement is well documented by
Bengt Sundkler in Zulu Zion and Some Swazi Zionists (Lund
and Oxford, 1976).
My study “A Ritual of Kingship among the Swazi,” Africa 14
(1944): 230–256, also included in An African Aristocracy, is
a detailed ethnographic account of Ncwala based on partici-
pant observation and texts. The ritual has received differentSWAZI RELIGION 8897