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Tradition and Prestige among the Ngoni

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Margaret Read
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Extract

I. The Ngoni People. Before I made my first camp in an Ngoni village, many Europeans had said to me, ‘There are practically no Ngoni left to-day. They are all hopelessly mixed with other tribes. None of them keep to the Ngoni customs any longer. Their chiefs are no good.’ From the doorway of my hut I saw people coming all day long to the Paramount Chief, behaving towards him with profound respect, bringing him presents, working for him. His children formed a special group in the village, easily recognizable by their bearing and their manners. Old indunas came to instruct me, as they had instructed chiefs in their day, on the duties of a ruler, and the code of Ngoni laws. Old warriors in war dress came and danced by the cattle kraal and sang praise songs. Courts were held with scrupulous regard for order and justice. Other chiefs came visiting from distant parts with their retinues, and were received ceremonially. It soon became apparent that here was the centre of a political state, whose head was invested with prestige and authority over a wide area, and where behaviour to the Paramount and to every one else was strictly regulated by custom, and as strictly observed. These were Ngoni, and they and their fellow Ngoni in other areas for the next ten months introduced me to the Ngoni people. The European assertion, that they no longer existed as a people, they laughed at, and proceeded to demonstrate that the contrary was true.

Résumé

TRADITION ET PRESTIGE CHEZ LES NGONI

Les Ngoni sont une section des Zoulou qui habitent l'Afrique orientale. Le vocable Ngoni désigne aujourd'hui deux groupes: les descendants des clans originels qui, il y a cent cinquante ans environ, émigrèrent vers le nord et les membres des tribus assujetties et absorbées dans l'état Ngoni. Les Ngoni proprement dits forment une aristocratie, qui se distingue par la communauté clanique et la connaissance de la langue Ngoni originelle et des traditions historiques de la tribu. Leurs institutions également different de celles des tribus soumises et n'ont pas toujours été imposées à ces dernières avec succès. En retour celles-ci ont modifié leurs coutumes sous l'influence de ce contact, particulièrement là où elles ont épousé des femmes d'autres tribus. Il est à remarquer toutefois qu'elles sont très mal disposees à admettre des changements.

Les institutions que les Ngoni soulignent comme leur étant propres sont la chefferie, la hiérarchie dans l'organisation politique et judiciaire, la division du village en hameaux qui ne sont d'ailleurs qu'un reste des villages plus étendus de jadis, le code moral radicalement différent de celui des tribus voisines, la succession et l'héritage patrilinéaux, les danses et les chants et—anciennement—l'organisation militaire basée sur les classes d'âge. La charte de ces institutions se retrouve dans les annales se rapportant aux temps passés dans le sud et à l'émigration vers le nord. Elles sont soigneusement conservées par des ‘historiens’ spécialistes et récitées de temps à autre dans les villages de chefs importants.

Des chants de louange, des chants de guerre, les noms d'expéditions restées célèbres, des scènes empruntées à des événements historiques, certains villages portant des noms de chefs de village du sud, des noms claniques ainsi que l'histoire de la fondation de nouveaux villages par fragmentation de villages plus grands sont autant de souvenirs du passé.

L'occupation européenne a servi plus aux tribus soumises qui désormais ne peuvent plus être traitées en esclaves, qu'aux Ngoni dont elle a tenu en échec le penchant aux conquetes militaires. Ceux-ci se reportent constamment ‘au temps de paix, avant que les Européens n'étaient venus jeter le trouble parmi nous’. Une administration indirecte pourrait mettre à profit cette fierté nationale. Peutêtre le moment de la ranimer est-il passé.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , October 1936 , pp. 453 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1936

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References

page 453 note 1 According to the census returns there are about 80,000 Ngoni in Northern Rhodesia and nearly 250,000 in Nyasaland, with other groups in Tanganyika Territory and Portuguese East Africa.

page 454 note 1 For the purposes of this article these are the only groups which will be considered.

page 455 note 1 This collecting of village plans was viewed with some suspicion at first as a new way of helping the Government to catch tax defaulters. However, when I promised the Paramount Chief that no one in the locality should see the village plans, he sent out word that I was to be given all the information I needed, and no one need fear the consequences.

page 456 note 1 I avoid using vernacular terms in this article because usually the Ngoni, Chewa, Nsenga, and Tumbuka terms are all different. The field worker has to make a comparative linguistic table giving equivalent meanings in vernacular terms. Here I use the English word ‘clan’ to express the unilateral group according to kinship descent. ‘Tribe’ should be used in a cultural sense, of a group of people possessing a common language and common institutions. The ambiguity with which ‘tribe’ and its vernacular equivalents is used, by Europeans and Africans alike, necessitates an investigation on linguistic and historical lines. The so-called Chewa tribe, for example, rarely, if ever, use the word Chewa, but refer to themselves as Ntumba, Maravi, &c. The Ngoni, speaking of themselves in the south, refer to the Ndwandwe, Ntungwa, &c, and only use the ‘blanket term’ Zulu or Swazi when they think you are ignorant of the finer distinctions. I use the word ‘tribe’ here to express these distinctive groups, but it is impossible to avoid some ambiguity without long linguistic digressions.

page 457 note 1 See Bantu Studies, Sept. 1934Google Scholar, for classification of the South African languages. Also A. T. Bryant, Olden Times in Zululand and Natal, for list of Nguni clans.

page 458 note 1 This word ‘respect’ is constantly in use among the Ngoni. It implies both ‘honour’ and ‘fear’, and they sometimes use one word and sometimes the other. It really means, ‘to give a person his due’, that is, to behave towards him (or her) in the manner which his rank requires.

page 459 note 1 One striking modification was the replacing of the village as a small kinship group by villages of hundreds of huts, with an elaborate organization into hamlets.

page 459 note 2 Using chieftainship in the sense of the Ngoni inkosi whose office and powers were very different from those of the surrounding petty chiefs.

page 459 note 3 As one of these processes, the piercing of the ear-lobes became the ‘tribal mark’ of the Ngoni as various forms of tattooing were of other tribes. Ear-piercing was sometimes forced (i.e. upon captives taken in war), sometimes voluntary. To-day children of local clans are teased by children of Ngoni clans and called ‘Chewa’ if they have not had their ears pierced, and they beg their mothers to take them to the ‘doctor’ to be ‘made Ngoni’.

page 461 note 1 The kind of antique guns traded to the Chewa by the Portuguese and Arabs were no match, for the Ngoni skill with the long throwing-spear or the short stabbing-assegai, and the bullets were such that the stout cow-hide shields of the Ngoni could withstand them. Hence the consternation of the Ngoni when the machine-gun bullets of the British troops pierced their shields in the Ngoni ‘war’.

page 461 note 2 With the possible exception of Chikuramayembe, Chief of the Henga.

page 461 note 3 Translations of vernacular terms.

page 461 note 4 Or trilingual if they know English too.

page 461 note 5 The same as Nyanja.

page 462 note 1 One Ngoni Paramount has prohibited any but Ngoni dances to be danced in his country.

page 463 note 1 He used the verb kudauka, which implies root or origin.

page 464 note 1 800-1,000 words.

page 464 note 2 This is their own account and is confirmed by the Rev. Charles Stuart, formerly at Ekwendeni, but not so far recorded by other Europeans.

page 465 note 1 In Mwambera's country.

page 466 note 1 I am not clear yet what was the precise sociological process by which the identity of these villages was preserved.

page 466 note 2 An idiomatic use which has the force of a double negative ‘No one cannot know it’.

page 467 note 1 B. Malinowski. Article on Culture in Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences.

page 467 note 2 The two Paramounts at present holding these titles are grandsons of the first holders, to whom I refer as old Mpezeni.

page 470 note 1 i.e. chiefs' areas.

page 470 note 2 The description of this Inqwala given by men and women who took part in it in their youth shows much similarity to the Inqwala of to-day among the Swazi.

page 471 note 1 Head-ring, the sign of a warrior ready to marry.

page 473 note 1 This was the old Mpezeni, son of Zwangendaba.

page 475 note 1 In the Report of Justice Maughan on the North Charterland Inquiry he says, ‘It was a remarkably well-managed little war and the Ngoni accepted their defeat in good spirit like other Bantu races’.

page 475 note 2 Over 3 miles across.

page 475 note 3 in 1885.

page 476 note 1 ‘Finding Mpezeni obdurate the British South Africa Company concluded treaties with all the surrounding indigenous chiefs whom Mpezeni had possessed. We consequently declined to acknowledge him as ruling chief.’

page 476 note 2 F.O. 6537.

page 477 note 1 See North Charterland Inquiry.

page 478 note 1 Under British South Africa Company till 1924.

page 478 note 2 See North Charterland Inquiry.

page 480 note 1 It is said that it is useless to bribe Ngoni chiefs and councillors.