Musho!, with its extensive historical introduction, and literary commentary on Zulu poetry, is a major contribution to the field.
Musho!, with its extensive historical introduction, and literary commentary on Zulu poetry, is a major contribution to the field.
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Overview
Musho!, with its extensive historical introduction, and literary commentary on Zulu poetry, is a major contribution to the field.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780870133060 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Michigan State University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/30/1991 |
| Series: | African Historical Sources Series , #3 |
| Pages: | 237 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Mafika Gwala is a South African writer and editor.
Read an Excerpt
Musho!
Zulu Popular Praises
By Liz Gunner, Mafika Gwala
Michigan State University Press
Copyright © 1991 Liz Gunner and Mafika GwalaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87013-306-0
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION: IZIBONGO, POWER AND THE POPULAR VOICE
Izibongo: a definition
Izibongo is a plural noun which can be translated as "praises", "praise names" or "praise poems". When viewed collectively, it can be spoken of in the singular as "praise poetry". It constitutes a genre of poetry widely used in Southern Africa by speakers of Zulu, Ndebele and Xhosa. It is also a genre related to Tswana praise poems (maboko) and Sotho praise poems (lithoko). Yet to see izibongo as a fixed genre with fixed boundaries in the sense of western literary genres would be a mistake. In some cases as we point out later, izibongo cross genre boundaries; they also exist in very close relation to song and chant, particularly izigiyo which we translate as "songs to go with the war dance" and of which there are examples at the end of this collection. Izibongo are also closely related to dance, particularly but not only ukugiya, "the war dance". In popular performance, the three activities of praising, dancing and calling out izigiyo fuse together.
Although these two latter terms are linked with war and martial prowess, they stress a potential rather than a constant, all embracing, link with war and the martial. The ukugiya dance is often wild, flamboyant, athletic and even balletic. It often shows the exuberance and vigour of youth, particularly male youth, rather than harking back to the old martial ties and the days when men in the regiments (amabutho) performed ukugiya and were praised after battle. These warlike ties can, however, be called on, depending on the context of place and time where the dancing and praising happens to be. As the izigiyo at the end of this collection show, the songs, chants, statements, all of which men call their izigiyo, range in their subject matter and in some cases have nothing to do with war. Women's izigiyo hardly ever touch on war, and focus often on things close to their lives like money (or the lack of it) or absent lovers last heard of in inaccessible places such as "Number 4 Jail" in Johannesburg. In short, izibongo, ukugiya and izigiyo all have an eclectic and elastic element to their make-up. They all illustrate how fluid a term can be in indigenous discourse, and how hard to pin down. There is a constant borrowing and cross-referencing in many oral art forms and this "freeness" is often underestimated by scholars and commentators searching for safe taxonomies. As a form it is also very responsive to social and historical pressures, and is open to ideological manipulation.
In a way the term praise poetry or praise names is misleading because what izibongo are primarily concerned with is naming, identifying and therefore giving significance and substance to the named person or object. It is, moreover, as this collection shows, a broadly-based poetic tradition widely practised and widely circulating, not a tradition tied to the aristocratic and the powerful. In this respect history has largely misrepresented it: it has been distorted by power brokers and indigenous intellectuals within the culture and has been frequently "misread" by those seeking to interpret and record Zulu culture and history.
The notion of what constitutes the Zulu past and the Zulu kingdom is itself a changing one, and one that is sharply contested. Hamilton and Wright in a recent article argue that the early nineteenth century accounts of a fluid kingdom with shifting boundaries in the areas of present day Natal are much closer to the truth than the subsequent shaping of a Zulu past presented by A.T. Bryant in Olden Times in Zululand and Natal. This contains accounts of the history of many clans and chiefdoms in the area, but rather than recognising its shifting lack of cohesion Bryant gives a view of an established and firmly constructed Zulu kingdom and monarchy. Hamilton and Wright suggest that this interpretation of Zulu solidity with the Thukela River as the boundary between Zululand and Natal began to be particularly prevalant after the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879, when in fact the Zulu kingdom as a political reality no longer existed. At the same time, we would argue, a common Nguni base in terms of language, cultural and social norms did exist. This could be found on both sides of the Thukela and was not simply a result of a "Zulu" drift from north of the Thukela.
Shifts in political alliances have often meant changes vis-à-vis "Zuluness". Nicholas Cope and Shula Marks have both shown how ideological manipulation of Zulu ethnicity played a key role in the inter-war years in Natal. Both the Natal breakaway section of the I.C.U. (Industrial and Commercial Workers Union) and the newly formed, conservative Inkatha vied for its use. Marks and Cope have also pointed out how the Natal black bourgeoisie in the early twentieth century were at first unwilling to have any truck with Zulu royalty or nationalism. Only after continued rebuttals from white authority did they form an alliance with the royal family and support Zulu cultural nationalism. Zuluness is thus shown to be an unstable notion eminently open to construction and reconstruction.
Izibongo have the potential to be drawn into these movable parameters of identity. The act of praising focuses on identifying a person, embodying his or her personality through the process of naming and also in essence providing a link with his or her community, lineage and origins. Also the naming is a process of objectifying, so that once a name has been given, or self-given, it is in a way outside the power of the individual to remove it or contest it. It is a part of their identity, one which may be used even after their death when their praises are called out on ceremonial or public occasions. (See examples of this in the sections Chiefs and Lineage Members and Lineage Members). A single praise name is formed by nominalising either a single word, a phrase, a sentence or a succession of sentences, so that the whole becomes a name controlled usually by the class la concord "u ...". Izibongo may have "I", "you" or "he" all in a single person's praises as the focus shifts and the dialogic essence is emphasised. The pronoun of direct address, "you ..." ("wena. ...") is also sometimes used when an imbongi may be moved to directly address the individual being praised, an imbongi may sometimes use the vocative in reciting a list of lineage izibongo. By doing so he shows that the personages addressed, the forefathers of the living individual, are through their naming being invoked and summoned (see the Buthelezi lineage izibongo pp. 112-125).
Izibongo may be freefloating in a way that written poetry is not, but there are still certain conventions of language that mark them off from ordinary speech and give the language a rich, varied denseness. The cluster of praise names which mark and identify a person often make use of very condensed, compact language. Information which in normal discourse would be presented in a leisurely, expansive form is compressed, often paratactic, and lacks the wide range of tenses of the verb available in ordinary speech. Expression is often cryptic and aphoristic. Single lines often recall the balanced structure and the gnomic brevity of proverbs. Take, for instance, the following praise names of the late Chief Magemegeme Dube who died in 1975 and who came from Mpembeni, the area adjoining Richards Bay to the south. The praise refers to a time when the chief managed to stop a serious fracas breaking out between the bride and bridegroom's party at a wedding in the area and the event becomes encapsulated into a name for him. The concord "U" nominalises and objectifies the whole praise name:
USikhwil' sivimbel' amashingana, ayikh' impi.
The Fighting-stick blocks off the young scallywags, there is no fight. (pp. 148-149)
Here the use of the present tense, the elisions, the front-placed metaphor all give the line a force and immediacy which would be absent from its prose equivalent.
Alongside the brevity of praise names is their often highly allusive nature. A praise such as the following is typically compact but is also allusive, and allusion is itself savoured and appreciated by composers and listeners alike. Here the (undocumented) praise from the izibongo of Ma Hlabisa of Hlabisa district hints at a deep story of sorrow and marital neglect:
UMalal' odongeni abanye belal' e'ndlini zamadod' abo.
Sleeper leaning against the outside wall others sleep in the huts of their menfolk.
On the one hand there is the economical and frequently allusive style which composers and all who use izibongo must master. On the other hand there is the technique, which seems at first contradictory, of expansion. In this case redundancy of expression, that is a piling up of repetitions, is a favourite stylistic device. This happens in the main through kinds of parallelism. For instance where lexical items and syntactic structures are repeated over two or more lines with incremental items providing the necessary variables. In ordinary speech such practice would be considered inappropriate and a hindrance to communication. But in the widely recognised conventions of izibongo it is accepted as heightening communication and effectiveness. It is useful too for the typical praising device of cataloguing names from line to line, so that they become a kind of litany of praise, sorrow or defiance.
Another convention of izibongo is the process of linking. This technique enables composers to insert a short sequential narrative element or to enlarge on and emphasise an initial statement. Here too the flow of words characteristic of normal discourse is disrupted in order to achieve the patterning characteristic of poetic language. So a man's or woman's izibongo may contain many kinds of devices, each of which is well-known in the composing convention: established praise names that recur, binary balance, linking, parallelism, alliteration and assonance over and above the inbuilt features in the language, and the allusiveness that is often seen as a spice flavouring the taste of a particular set of izibongo. The following lines recited by Elias Mjadu from his own izibongo have most of these devices: The established praise name (at the beginning of the first line), the binary balance (at the end of each line), and the alliteration and assonance are all in this version:
UPhunyuka bemphethe abafazi namadoda
Amadoda ahayizana nasekhaya nangasenhle.
Escaper as they grab him, the women and the men.
Men fight among themselves both at home and above the
homestead. (pp. 196-197)
The formal qualities of izibongo have been discussed extensively elsewhere from a range of positions, some formalist and print-based, some acknowledging the variability of the performance situation, and others integrating a view of form and a broad social and historical context. What the present writers wish to emphasise is that the formal qualities of izibongo are the product and the expression of working conventions of a genre of oral poetry which has circulated widely for generations among Zulu speakers north and south of the Thukela River. Izibongo have responded to shifting emphases of time and dynamic cultural and social pressures but have still remained a recognisable genre.
Moreover, praise poetry is a genre that has been and still is extremely open to appropriation by those who had or wished to have access to political power and influence. It can also be used by leaders wishing not only to validate positions of power, but to include some groups and exclude others. Perhaps this is why it has been easy to "misread" it as a genre that is basically the preserve of the powerful, of kings and chiefs. It was clearly used by those in power as a means of validating their claim to rule and Shaka may have been particularly adept at exploiting the genre's capacities in this way. The elevation of the praises of the Zulu royal line and of Shaka himself would have played a crucial role in stamping his right to rule on the consciousness of his subjects. At the same time the emphasis on war and an accompanying macho virility, which are still prominent features of men's izibongo, may well have been forced to the fore during the streamlining and building up of the regimental war machine under Shaka. This process could have "driven underground" the broader biographical and autobiographical thrusts of izibongo which are so evident in the izibongo in this collection. We would argue that the images of war and heroism have always existed within a broader framework. It is as if the dynamic, multi-vocalic capacity of the genre has resisted a singular definition. Nevertheless, the heroic ethic in izibongo remains important. It is itself flexible and adaptable and can link in with a libertarian or oppressive system, with a tradition of resistance or one of violence and domination.
Deceptive visibilities and the broader base
If the links with war have tended to obscure the wider life-experience base of praises, so too the link with authority has tended to hide its broader social base. Certainly in the immediately post-Shakan years nineteenth century European travellers and missionaries recorded sightings of praise poets and sometimes scraps of text in the territory controlled by the Zulu. Although it was the specialist poets who caught the attention of early observers such as Captain Gardiner, the genre fundamentally transcends status differences. It has, besides its link with izimbongi, always been practised by non-specialists but often highly skilled individuals. It has served as social entertainment, as part of the validation of marriage ceremonies. It has played a key role in expressed statements of lineage continuities and related socio-historical happenings both small and great. Although it is nowadays — before being reclaimed by the black trade unions FOSATU (Federation of South African Tade Unions) and COSATU (Confederation of South African Trade Unions) — more prevalent in rural areas of Zululand and Natal than in urban, it is also used for football where players and teams have izibongo zebhola (football praises). Social control was exerted in urban areas over traditional activities such as beer brewing and drinking. These practices often had close links with wedding festivities and other rural activities such as ukwemulisa (a daughter's coming-of-age ceremony) and umsebenzi wokubuyisa (ritual for the returning of the dead). Men working in urban areas have since the 1920s used praises and dancing to praises as ways of weekend relaxation in cramped hostels and compounds. In such contexts the link with the old martial ethic may have been to the fore. Yet this could have partly been due to moulding by white officials intent on keeping the "Zulu warrior" stereotype, and so prevent the flow of innovation so noticeable in song and dance forms. As a genre izibongo has its base in biography and experiences and imaging of the self that are not necessarily tied to war. It is therefore a form with rural and urban provenance in contemporary terms. As many of the izibongo in this collection show, it has an appetite for novelty and new experience that meshes into older perceptions in the performed texts of the praises of individuals.
New incidents, harsh observations on the wandering life of an urban worker with few rights can be set in izibongo, alongside more conventional images of strength, as in the izibongo of Swidinonkamfela Mhlongo (pp. 184-187). Women too can comment with gusto — or sorrow — on aspects of their lives to which they wish to give prominence. But people do not only compose praises for themselves, others compose for them too, and name them through their compositions. As we have pointed out, eminent people often have izimbongi who both compose themselves and bring in to their compositions the praises given by others. An imbongi, as the royal praise poet pointed out to Liz Gunner, will also listen to what people are saying and weave their comments in poetic form into his or her composition.
Ordinary people too will be named and praised by others, and these praise names, often apt and astute rather than flattering, stick with the individual as well as those that are self-composed. Izibongo can thus be a combination of shrewd revelations on an individual's life and personality, social comment and compressed narrative.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Musho! by Liz Gunner, Mafika Gwala. Copyright © 1991 Liz Gunner and Mafika Gwala. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
OTHER TITLES IN THE AFRICAN HISTORICAL SOURCES SERIES,Title Page,
Copyright Page,
Introduction,
Acknowledgements,
NATIONAL FIGURES,
CHIEFS AND LINEAGE MEMBERS,
IZIBONGO ZAKBAKWABUTHELEZI,
THE BUTHELEZI CHIEFLY LINEAGE,
IZIBONGO ZABAKWAHLABISA,
THE HLABISA CHIEFLY LINEAGE,
IZIBONGO ZABAKWAMKHWANAZI,
THE MKHWANAZI CHIEFLY LINEAGE,
IZIBONGO ZABAKWAMZIMELA,
THE MZIMELA CHIEFLY LINEAGE,
IZIBONGO ZABAKWADUBE,
THE DUBE CHIEFLY LINEAGE,
IZIBONGO ZABAKWAMBONAMBI,
THE MBONAMBI CHIEFLY LINEAGE,
LINEAGE MEMBERS,
IZIBONGO ZABAKWAMTHETHWA,
THE MTHETHWA LINEAGE IZIBONGO,
OKHOKHO ABABILI ABAKWAQWABE, UBABAMKHULU NOMZUKULU,
TWO MEMBERS OF A QWABE LINEAGE, GRANDFATHER AND GRANDSON,
OKHOKHO ABABILI ABAKWAMHLONGO,
TWO ANCESTORS OF AN MHLONGO LINEAGE,
EZABAKWABUTHELEZI,
A BUTHELEZI LINEAGE,
EZABAKWAMTHETHWA,
IZIBONGO FROM AN MTHETHWA LINEAGE,
MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN,
IZIBONGO ZAMADODA,
IZIBONGO OF MEN,
IZIBONGO ZAWOMAME,
IZIBONGO OF WOMEN,
IZIBONGO ZABANTWANA,
IZIBONGO OF CHILDREN,
IZIGIYO,