Gabriel M. Setiloane, himself a Methodist minister, ar-
gues cogently in The Image of God among the Sotho-Tswana
(Rotterdam, 1976) that the first missionary to the Tswana,
Robert Moffat (the father-in-law of David Livingstone), mis-
understood the Tswana language (into which he translated
the New Testament) and hence the Tswana experience of
God. But it is John V. Taylor who shows, in The Primal Vi-
sion, that in Africa God is both there and not there, that he
is both sought and rejected. Bishop Taylor fastens upon the
“significance of this ambivalence,” saying that humans have
been aware of the numinous and their dependence upon it
but have sought to separate themselves from it.
SHADES. Among southern African peoples shades are of two
categories: the dead senior kin (male and female) of each
family or lineage and the founding heroes. Family shades are
relevant only for their junior kin who celebrate “rituals of
kinship”; founding heroes (male or female) have relevance
for political units, that is, chiefdoms, groups of chiefdoms,
or regions which honor a hero and his or her descendants
in “communal rituals.” The ancestors of a ruling lineage,
where one exists, commonly claim descent from the found-
ing hero; or the hero may be thought of as a benefactor or
prophet who left no descendants but who is celebrated in
some grove or cave by a lineage or priests. The ancestors of
a chief, it is believed, retain power over the country they once
ruled, so in addition to rituals for founding heroes there may
be a series of offerings to past chiefs.
Like God, the shades are associated with brightness,
light, radiance, and whiteness. Among the Zulu and Xhosa
a gray-leafed helichrysum, whose leaves and pale gold flowers
both reflect light, is linked with the shades; in Pondoland
“the medicine of the home” is a small, yellow-flowered sene-
cio which gleams in the veld. The beads offered to shades and
worn by a diviner, novice, or pregnant bride are white, and
when an animal is slaughtered and offered to the shades, the
officiants wipe their hands in the chyme, a strong bleaching
agent. But again, as with God, contact with the shades is seen
to be somehow contaminating. A shade must be “pushed
away a little”; it must be kept from continually “brooding”
over humans as a hen broods over its chicks. The dead must
be separated from the living and then “brought home,” that
is, transformed.
Although they are numinous, the shades are held in far
less awe than is God himself. To many Africans the shades
are constantly about the homestead, evident in a tiny spiral
of dust blowing across the yard or through the banana grove,
or in the rustling of banana leaves; thought to be sheltering
near the byre or in the shade of a tree, or sipping beer left
overnight at the back of the great house. Their presence is
so real in Pondoland that (into the twentieth century) a wife
of the homestead carefully avoids the yard and the byre
where men sit, even at night, lest the shades be there, and
as she walks through a river associated with her husband’s
clan she lets her skirts trail in the water, for to tuck up her
skirts would insult his shades.
The living and the dead are so closely associated in
southern Africa that it is common for a man’s heir (a brother,
son, or sister’s son) and a woman’s heir (a sister, daughter,
or brother’s daughter) to take the property, the name, the so-
cial position, and the responsibilities of the deceased. Hence
one may be told that the holder of some office—a priest,
chief, king, or senior kinsman—is “Mswati the third” (or
tenth, as the case may be). A founding hero frequently has
a living representative in this sense, a “divine king,” that is,
a ruler or priest on whose health and virility the health and
fertility of men, cattle, and land are thought to depend. Even
into the twentieth century, a divine king who was ailing or
feeble would be smothered—he must “die for the people”—
and then be replaced.
Founding heroes typically are associated with a bed of
reeds, from which the first man is said to have sprung; with
a river source along the watershed between the Zambezi and
Kongo rivers; with a pool in one of the rushing rivers of the
south; with a hole in the ground (from which men and cattle
emerged) on the dry edge of the Kalahari Desert; or with a
grove of trees. Like family shades, heroes are of the earth and
water, not of the sky. The place of celebration has moved as
groups of kinsmen have moved, as chiefs have been installed
and later buried, and as trees planted as boundary marks or
on graves have spread into thickets.
RITUAL LIFE. Communal rituals are of various sorts, includ-
ing offerings to the founding heroes, their living representa-
tives, and chiefly descendants. Such offerings are celebrated
by the leading men of the region, chiefdom, or village. The
common people know little of the details; they are aware
only that a celebration has taken place.
But there is also a type of purification ritual that con-
cerns everyone. Sometimes it is linked to a celebration of first
fruits; at other times it is accompanied by a military review.
At the break of the rains in tropical Africa, or at the summer
solstice farther south, and in any general emergency such as
plague or war, the people may be called upon to purify them-
selves, to sweep the homesteads, throw out the old ash from
hearths, and rekindle new fire. Among at least some peoples
everyone is expected to “speak out,” that is, to confess anger
and grudges held against neighbors and kin, or against fellow
priests and leading men. It is a spring-cleaning of hearts and
minds as well as homesteads.
In the Swazi kingdom today—as formerly in other
Nguni kingdoms and chiefdoms on the southeastern coast
of Africa—all the men of the country, and many women
also, gather at the time of the summer solstice to celebrate
the first fruits and strengthen their king, while regiments
dance and demonstrate their loyalty. The Zulu form of this
ritual was powerfully interpreted by Max Gluckman (1954)
as a “ritual of rebellion,” but it now seems that this early anal-
ysis was based on a mistranslation. According to Harriet
Ngubane (1977), a Zulu anthropologist, the key phrase used
in the ritual expresses a rejection of pollution: “What the
king breaks to pieces and tramples upon is a gourd that sym-8656 SOUTHERN AFRICAN RELIGIONS: AN OVERVIEW