bolizes the evil of the past year.” This exactly parallels rituals
farther north for “cleansing the country” in which the popu-
lation of entire regions “throw out the rubbish,” especially
ashes from all the hearths, and distribute newly kindled fire.
The Ngonde (Malawi) chant: “Let us dance, let us fight that
the homesteads may be peaceful.... Let us throw out the
ashes that death may leave the homesteads and they be at
peace.” Close analysis shows that such rituals symbolically
cast out the anger in people’s hearts. The Taita of Kenya cele-
brate a similar rite of casting out anger, as Grace Harris
(1978) has shown.
These cleansing rites speak repeatedly of ridding the
people of “the dirt” of the past year. The similarity to ancient
Hebrew rituals is obvious, although published reports from
southern Africa make no mention of any symbolism having
to do with driving out a scapegoat. Rather, the symbols
which recur here are those of heat and coolness. Heat is asso-
ciated with pollution, which in turn is closely associated with
anger and sexual activity; coolness is associated with rain,
tranquility, and purification. These symbols are familiar to
all Sotho-Tswana-speaking peoples and to others also.
Throughout southern Africa communal rituals have to
do with rain, especially the dramatic “break of the rains,” so
eagerly awaited after the dry season. Local rituals celebrate
seedtime and harvest; the firing of pasture to destroy unpalat-
able grass and bush which harbor tsetse flies; game drives or
a fishing battue; murrain or plague; war and peace; the coro-
nation of a chief and/or the handing over of power from one
generation to the next. Details of such celebrations vary both
with economy and with political structure. Regional rituals
may involve the distribution of once-scarce goods, such as
salt and iron tools, which in former times were brought to
the shrine from beyond the boundaries of the political unit.
The priests who brought the goods were sacred people:
Among the Nyakyusa these priests traveled in safety, an-
nouncing their status by drumbeat. Other rituals may be
connected with the growth of chiefdoms. J. Matthew Schof-
feleers has written about the spread of the Mbona cult with
the development of MangDanga chiefdoms in Malawi.
KINSHIP RITUALS. Unless they concern a royal family, the
rituals of kinship have no political overtones. They are cele-
brated on the great occasions of a person’s life: at birth and
death, at maturity and marriage. In southern Africa each
family or lineage directs its celebrations to its own dead se-
nior kinsmen, who are not sharply distinguished from living
seniors. The living may indeed be referred to by the term for
a shade as they grow old. In 1931 in Pondoland this writer
heard the word itongo (“a shade”) used in reference to an el-
derly father’s living sister. Living as well as dead seniors are
thought to bring sickness, sterility, and other misfortunes—
even failure to secure a job or a residence pass—on insolent,
quarrelsome, or neglectful juniors.
Family rituals vary with the economy, for the place of
the shrine and the form of the offering depend upon the sta-
ple foods. Among a pastoral people the altar is the byre, the
offering milk or a slaughtered animal. If the people cultivate,
beer is added. Among banana-eating peoples the altar is set
in a plantain grove, at the base of a succoring stem which rep-
resents the patrilineage; among hunting peoples it may be a
tree or branch on which are placed trophies of the chase. To
the Lele, who live on the southern edge of the equatorial for-
est belt, the forest is holy and is associated with men; the
grassland, where villages are built, has no prestige and is asso-
ciated with women. Among other peoples the cleavage is be-
tween the open pastureland or bush (the veld) and the vil-
lage; or, within the village itself, between the byre and its
gateway-where prayer and offerings are made and men gath-
er—and the great hut occupied by the senior woman of the
homestead. But everywhere the hearth and house, especially
the doorway of the house, are sacred also, for among some
peoples explicitly, and probably for all implicitly, the house
represents the mother, the hearth stands for the marriage,
and the doorway is the passage through which children are
born. Taboos surrounding the hearth, the fire, and the whole
reproductive process may be seen as an expression of the holi-
ness of normal fertility and procreation, processes which are
thought to be controlled by the shades.
Offerings to the shades consist of staple foods, especially
choice foods such as a tender cut of beef eaten by the one
on whose behalf prayer is made (the same cut from the right
foreleg is used by peoples from Tanzania to the southern
coast of Africa); a libation of fermented milk or beer; a sprin-
kling of flour or porridge; seeds of pulses, cucurbits, and
grains. A strongly pastoral people will cling to the symbolism
of slaughtering an animal—shedding blood—even when
they live in a city. White goats may yet be seen grazing on
the outskirts of the African quarters of Cape Town, or one
may see them being led along a country road or wandering
about on some modern farm where African laborers are em-
ployed. They are there to be used as offerings at times of
birth or death, sickness or initiation, when meat from the
butcher will not suffice; at such times informed authority
turns a blind eye. The beer poured out may be made of sor-
ghum, millet, bananas, bamboo, or even maize or cassava,
which reached the coasts of Africa only in the sixteenth cen-
tury and parts of the interior only in the nineteenth century.
Whatever the material used, the intention of the offer-
ing is the same: The shades are called to feast, and what is
offered is a communion meal for living and dead kinsmen.
If an ox has been slaughtered or much beer brewed, friends
and neighbors will be asked to gather with the kinsmen, but
they do not share in the sacred portions set aside for kin, who
first eat and drink in a place set slightly apart from the main
gathering. At an offering to the shades it is essential that kins-
men be present—the range of kin summoned depending
upon the gravity of the occasion—and that they be loving
and charitable to one another. Any quarrels must be admit-
ted and resolved. This writer has heard the officiant at such
a ritual urging all the kinsmen present to “drink up and speak
out.” Sometimes a funeral feast, or a feast celebrating the re-SOUTHERN AFRICAN RELIGIONS: AN OVERVIEW 8657