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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2015
In a historiography that paints relations between chiefs and women as antagonistic, the history of the Nazaretha Church in Mtunzini, South Africa in the early twentieth century sheds light on conditions that allowed chiefs and women to find common ground. During the era of segregation, Mtunzini was, on one hand, subject to relatively less interference from white government officials, but, on the other, ravaged by social and economic change. In this context, the Nazaretha Church flourished thanks to the support of many chiefs and women. The religious community not only proposed new answers to related questions about health, healing, and morality, but it also afforded chiefs and women important social options amid rural decline and challenges to traditional authority.
The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Fulbright-Hays DDRA grant and the Mellon-ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for JAH as well as Elizabeth Clement and Jill Kelly for their invaluable insights and suggestions. Finally, thanks to Al Duncan for reading various versions of this manuscript and for creating the map that accompanies it. The author can be reached at: [email protected]
1 Today Natal and Zululand make up the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal.
2 The Nazareth Baptist Church is the most common name associated with this group in the English-language press today. Followers of the church are, however, still referred to by other names in English and in Zulu, including amaNazaretha, Shembeites, Nazarites, the Shembe Church, and kwaShembe. I have chosen Nazaretha in this article because of its earlier provenance.
3 The scholarship on runaway women in the twentieth century is abundant both in South Africa and in sub-Saharan Africa more broadly. See B. Bozzoli with Nkotsoe, M., Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy and Migrancy in South Africa, 1900–1983 (London, 1991)Google Scholar; Epprecht, M. and Nattrass, A., ‘This Matter of Women is Getting Very Bad’: Gender, Development, and Politics in Colonial Lesotho (Pietermaritzburg, 2000)Google Scholar; Jeater, D., Marriage, Perversion, and Power: The Construction of Moral Discourse in Southern Rhodesia, 1894–1930 (Oxford, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schmidt, E., Peasants, Traders and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870–1939 (London, 1992)Google Scholar; and Shadle, B., ‘Girl Cases’: Marriage and Colonialism in Gusiiland, Kenya, 1890–1970 (Portsmouth, NH, 2006)Google Scholar.
4 Evidence of the history of the Nazaretha in Mtunzini during the early twentieth century can be found in a few main bodies of sources: oral traditions gathered by church members (and later put in print by foreign missionary scholars) and South African state archives, at both the national and provincial level. For the former, see, in particular, Hexham, I. and Oosthuzien, G. C., The Story of Isaiah Shembe, Volume I: History and Traditions Centered on Ekuphakameni and Mount Nhlangakazi (Lewiston, NY, 1996)Google Scholar; and Hexam, I. and Oosthuizen, G. C., The Story of Isaiah Shembe, Volume II: Early Regional Traditions of the Acts of the Nazarites (Lewiston, NY, 1999), 182–230Google Scholar. (Where possible I have read these sources against transcripts in Zulu.) Henceforth, these will be abbreviated as SIS I and SIS II, respectively. See also, South African National Archives Repository, Pretoria (SAB) Native Affairs Department (NTS) 24/214.
5 Mamdani, M., Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, 1996)Google Scholar most fully articulated the change in traditional authority in the twentieth century with the concept of ‘decentralized despotism’.
6 Chanock, M., Law, Custom, and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar.
7 Carton, B., Blood from Your Children: The Colonial Origins of Generational Conflict in South Africa (Charlottesville, VA, 2000)Google Scholar; J. Guy, ‘An accommodation of patriarchs: Theophilus Shepstone and the foundations of the system of native administration in Natal’, paper presented at the Colloquium on Masculinities in Southern Africa at the University of Natal, Durban, 1997; McClendon, T., Genders and Generations Apart: Labor Tenants and Customary Law in Segregation-Era South Africa, 1920s–1940s (Portsmouth, NH, 2002)Google Scholar.
8 Hodgson, D. and McCurdy, S. (eds.), ‘Wicked’ Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa (Portsmouth, NH, 2001)Google Scholar.
9 Government of Natal, ‘Interview with Hloba’, Evidence Taken Before the Natal Native Commission, 1881 (Pietermaritzburg, 1882)Google Scholar, 35. For similar complaints at a later date, see also Marks, S., ‘Patriotism, patriarchy, and purity: Natal and the politics of Zulu ethnic consciousness’, in Vail, L. (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (London, 1989), 219–20Google Scholar. The scholarship already cited on runaway women is also full of complaints about women's morality and mobility.
10 Hodgson, D. and McCurdy, S., ‘Wayward wives, misfit mothers, and disobedient daughters: “wicked” women and the reconfiguration of gender in Africa’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 30:1 (1996), 1–9Google Scholar.
11 The prolific oral and written testimonies of church members are some of the best-studied elements of the Nazaretha movement. In addition to the already mentioned edited volumes by Hexham and Oosthuizen, see Cabrita, J., ‘Politics and preaching: chiefly converts to the Nazaretha Church, obedient subjects, and performance in South Africa’, The Journal of African History, 51:1 (2010), 21–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cabrita, J., Text and Authority in the South African Nazaretha Church (Cambridge, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gunner, E., ‘Power house, prison house – an oral genre and its use in Isaiah Shembe's Nazareth Baptist Church’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 14:2 (1988), 204–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gunner, E., ‘Hidden stories in the light of the new day: a Zulu manuscript and its place in South African writing now’, Research in African Literatures, 31:2 (2000), 1–16Google Scholar; and Gunner, E., The Man of Heaven and the Beautiful Ones of God: Writings of Ibandla Lamanazaretha, A South African Church (Leiden, 2002)Google Scholar.
12 Peter (or Petros) Mnqayi was an especially prolific writer but there were many others. For but a small sampling of these letters, see, Mnqayi, P. J. D., ‘Ezakwa Shembe’, ILanga laseNatal, 20 July 1914Google Scholar; Mnqayi, P. J. D., ‘Imisebenzi ka Shemba’, ILanga laseNatal, 2 Feb. 1916Google Scholar; Majola, A. B., ‘AmaNazareta’, ILanga laseNatal, 21 Mar. 1915Google Scholar; Kwela, J., ‘Obonga uRev. Shembe’, ILanga laseNatal, 10 May 1919Google Scholar.
13 Sundkler, B., Zulu Zion and Some Swazi Zionists (Oxford, 1976), 175Google Scholar.
14 As much of a boon as these sources are to scholars, the majority of church members has had little contact with written forms of church oral traditions and has contributed to their preservation by listening and repeating. As a result, oral traditions transcribed by literate church members in the 1910s can still be heard at Nazaretha events today, over one hundred years later. I heard almost verbatim accounts while conducting research in South Africa in 2009–10, 2012, and 2013.
15 Although I do not wish to reduce stories of miracles to rumors, my approach to understanding these traditions as sources borrows much from White, L., Speaking With Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley, CA, 2000)Google Scholar; and White, L., ‘True stories: narrative, event, history, and blood in the Lake Victoria Basin’, in White, L., Miescher, S., and Cohen, D. (eds.), African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington, IN, 2001), 281–304Google Scholar.
16 SAB NTS 24/214 (Part I), ‘Report to District Officer - South African Police’, 10 Sept. 1921. Even if the 95 per cent figure was skewed because of men's greater access to jobs (and, therefore, their relative inability to participate as regularly in church events), it suggests women's significant involvement in the early church community. Moreover, Shembe, when asked why so many women joined the church, did not dispute that there were far more women than men. Natal Archives Bureau, Pietermaritzburg (NAB) 1/NWE 3/3/2/15, 2/24/2, ‘Interview with Isaiah Tshembe’, 15 Jan. 1923. (This folder is included with ten years' worth of correspondence and material relating to the Nazaretha mistakenly labeled ‘Poor relief – Relief of distress’.)
17 The correspondence about the discovery can be found in Durban Archives Bureau, Durban (TBD) 1/MTU 3/4/3/3, N2/8/3/2(2), ‘Rural locations – Allotments – The Estate of John L. Dube’. The government did not learn of Dube's holdings until after his death, when his wife tried to claim income from them and came into conflict with the chief who had allowed the arrangement.
18 TBD 1/MTU 3/4/2/1, 2/3/13, letter to Chief Native Commissioner, 22 Aug. 1913.
19 P. Dhlomo, ‘Judiah’, and J. Cele, ‘The beginning of Judiah’, SIS II, 201–2.
20 Interview with Edward Ximba, Durban, 13 July 2013. Oral traditions suggest this too. See P. Dhlomo, ‘Shembe in the Wesleyan Church’, SIS I, 14–16; H. D. Mncwanga, ‘Inkatha – the coil of the Zulu kingdom’, SIS II, 243–5.
21 Case, J., ‘And ever the twain shall meet: the Holiness movement and the birth of world Pentecostalism’, Religion and American Culture, 16:2 (2006), 127CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Dhlomo, ‘Wesleyan Church’, 14–16.
23 Early oral traditions about healing include P. Dhlomo, ‘Shembe's ministry before his baptism’; P. Dhlomo and L. Mtungwa, ‘Shembe's early ministry in the Durban region’; P. Dhlomo, ‘Shembe's second mission journey to the Durban region’; and L. Mntungwa and D. Shembe, ‘Early healings of Shembe’, SIS I, 32–4, 43–7, 48–51, and 59–60. These traditions emphasize how Shembe healed people when ‘Brown, White, and Indian doctors’ had tried ‘in vain’.
24 Guy, J., The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom: The Civil War in Zululand, 1879–1884 (London, 1979)Google Scholar.
25 Quotations from Government of Natal, Report of Zululand Delimitation Commission (Pietermaritzburg, 1904), 87–8Google Scholar; and unsigned, ‘Zululand Commission’, Natal Witness, 4 Feb. 1905, 2.
26 Minnaar, A., uShukela!: A History of the Growth and Development of the Sugar Industry in Zululand: 1905 to the Present (Pretoria, 1992)Google Scholar; Minnaar, A., Empangeni: A Historical Review to 1983 (Pretoria, 1984)Google Scholar.
27 Beinart, W., ‘Joyini inkomo: cattle advances and the origins of migrancy from Pondoland’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 5:2 (1979), 212, 217CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Minnaar, uShukela!, 32–5; Minnaar, Empangeni, 41–3.
28 TBD 1/MTU 3/4/2/1, 1/26/13, ‘Annual report – 1913’, 1913. The annual report notes that in 1913 alone, African men took out 74 passes to go work in the Transvaal and 353 to work in Natal (most likely around Durban).
29 These health problems are chronicled in the annual reports compiled by the magistrate between 1914 and 1920. See TBD 1/MTU 3/4/2/3, 26/624/14, ‘Annual reports’. Marks also mentions a syphilis epidemic of ‘epic proportions’ in Zululand more broadly. See Marks, ‘Patriarchy, patriotism, and purity’, 219.
30 Ballard, C., ‘The repercussions of rinderpest: cattle plague and peasant decline in rural Natal’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 19:3 (1986), 421–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also MacKinnon, A. S., ‘Chiefly authority, leapfrogging headmen, and the political economy of Zululand, South Africa ca. 1930–1950’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 27:3 (2001), 567–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. MacKinnon notes that, by the 1930s, food production in Zululand had declined significantly (569).
31 For a useful analysis of bridewealth inflation in Zululand, see MacKinnon, A. S., ‘The persistence of the cattle economy in Zululand, 1900–1950’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 33:1 (1999), 98–135Google Scholar.
32 Bradford, H., ‘“We are now the men”: women's beer protests in the Natal countryside, 1929’, in Bozzoli, B. (ed.), Class, Community, and Conflict: South African Perspectives (Johannesburg, 1987)Google Scholar; Edwards, I., ‘Shebeen queens: illicit liquor and the social structure of drinking dens in Cato Manor’, Agenda, 3:3 (1988), 75–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 A. MacKinnon, ‘Chiefly authority’, 584–5.
34 MacKinnon, A., ‘Negotiating the practice of the state: reclamation, resistance, and “betterment” in the Zululand reserves’, in Crais, C. (ed.), The Culture of Power in Southern Africa (Portsmouth, NH, 2003), 71Google Scholar.
35 The description of women's status as ‘perpetual minors’ is from Walker, C., ‘Gender and the development of the migrant labour System c.1850–1930’, in Walker, C. (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (London, 1990), 185Google Scholar.
36 One particularly interesting case of succession that involved women in the chiefly family can be found in the Mchunu chiefdom in the 1920s and 1930s in Msinga District. NAB 1/MSG 3/1/1/1, 2/1/2, ‘Cunu tribal disturbances’ chronicles this case. The eventual Mchunu chief (Simakade Mchunu) and his mother were both strong supporters of the Nazaretha.
37 Guy, The Maphumulo Uprising, 1–10.
38 For an analysis of the significance of spirit possession among groups of women, see Vail, L. and White, L., Power and the Praise Poem (Charlottesville, VA, 1971), 231–77Google Scholar. And for an episode of spirit possession in Zululand, see Parle, J., ‘Witchcraft or madness: the Amandiki of Zululand, 1894–1914’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 29:1 (2003), 105–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39 H. Mncwanga and B. Zulu, ‘Early opposition at Linda’, SIS II, 246.
40 SAB NTS 24/214 (Part I), ‘Enticed women away’, 15 Dec. 1924.
41 It is difficult to establish when Nazaretha missionaries first arrived in Mtunzini. Archival evidence suggests that missionaries were well established in the neighboring district, Empangeni, by 1922. See SAB NTS 24/214 (Part I), ‘Ethiopian movement: Shembe and Philious’, 13 Nov. 1922. An early 1920s arrival date makes sense in light of the pattern of the growth of the church elsewhere.
42 Cope, N., To Bind the Nation: Solomon kaDinuzulu and Zulu Nationalism, 1913–1933 (Pietermaritzburg, 1993), 10Google Scholar.
43 This borrows terminology from Janzen, J., The Quest for Therapy: Medical Pluralism in Lower Zaire (Berkeley, CA, 1978)Google Scholar.
44 M. Mjadu, ‘Early events at Nelisiwe’, SIS II, 183.
45 M. Ndunakazi, ‘Shembe comes to the Dube tribal territory’, SIS II, 186.
46 For the skepticism of some elders, see Parle, ‘Witchcraft or madness’.
47 Examples of healing stories involving infertility include Mjadu, ‘Early events at Nelisiwe’; and V. Mathonsi, ‘The birth of Velendlozini Mathonsi’, SIS II, 182, 206–7.
48 For examples of oral traditions describing women's paths to Ekuphakameni, whether to stay temporarily or permanently, see Mntungwa, ‘Early healings’; G. Mbambo, ‘The conversion of Gertie Mbambo’; and M. Ndunakazi, ‘Shembe comes to the Dube tribal area’, SIS II, 59–60, 131–2 and 185–92.
49 Although Emmanuel Akyeampong and Charles Ambler have addressed the importance of studying leisure in African history, rural dwellers remain largely left out of these analyses. Akyeampong, E. and Ambler, C., ‘Leisure in African history: an introduction’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 35:1 (2002), 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
50 SAB NTS 24/214 (Part I), ‘Statement of Chief Ntyidi Mnguni’, undated. (Although undated, this is in a series of correspondence from 1940.)
51 J. Cele, ‘The beginning of Judiah’, SIS II, 202.
52 O. Thabethe, ‘Bride-wealth and marriage fees’, SIS II, 307–8.
53 H. Mdluli, ‘A dispute with the fathers of Marianhill’; S. Mtolo and J. Mnyandu, ‘Shembe comes to Thesalonika’, SIS II, 13–15, 68.
54 H. Mdluli, ‘The marriage of Miss Agagi Shozi’, SIS II, 13; P. Ngubane, ‘The angel of Mpondoland calls Shembe south’, SIS I, 56–7.
55 Cele, ‘The beginning of Judiah’, 202.
56 J. Mzimela, ‘Healings at Velabahleke in 1932’, SIS II, 200.
57 Ndunakazi, ‘Shembe comes to the Dube tribal region’, 185–92.
58 V. Mathonsi, ‘The birth of Velendlozini Mathonsi’, SIS II, 206–7.
59 O. Thabethe, ‘Bride-wealth and marriage fees’, SIS II, 307–8.
60 Numerous oral traditions valorized young women's virginity; one that most clearly advocates virginity testing is P. Dhlomo, ‘The order of the virgins in the temples’, SIS I, 232. This tradition suggests that ‘parents should take care that their children are in tact … [and] know this so that they may be fit to stand before God’.
61 This is an idea that I am exploring in a forthcoming piece, tentatively entitled ‘“Wailing for purity” revisited: virginity testing and women's mobility in segregationist South Africa’.
62 NAB, Papers of the Chief Native Commissioner (henceforth CNC) 227, 1916/57, ‘Miscellaneous: examination of native girls as to virginity. Order by Chief Swaimana’, 1916. Shembe had arrived in Swaimana's ward not long before 1916 and was said to have healed him. E. Ntuli and D. Dube, ‘Chief Swayimane, the son of Ziphuku, at Emqeku’, SIS I, 83–6.
63 This assessment is from A. Vilakazi with Bongani, M. and Mpanza, M., Shembe: The Revitalization of African Society (Skotaville, 1986)Google Scholar, 32. Although Vilakazi's book was published in 1986, he conducted much of his research in the 1940s and 1950s.
64 One report noted that ‘the local raw natives look upon Shembe's women converts as prostitutes and nothing else’. SAB NTS 24/214 (Part I), letter from J. W. Craddock to District Commander, 31 July 1921. By the late 1940s, however, this reputation had changed significantly.
65 Ndunakazi, ‘Shembe gets a site’, 193.
66 V. Mathonsi, ‘Healing at Vunizitha’, SIS I, 208.
67 This survey is the result of a court case against the women of the church that occurred after a man was stoned to death. Of the more than 500 women listed, more than one hundred were from Mtunzini. TBD, Verulam Magistrate (henceforth 1/VLM), 1/2/1/1/1/44, case no. 516.39.
68 L. Zuma, ‘Liberation by peaceful means’, SIS I, 159–60.
69 Ndunakazi, ‘Shembe gets a site’, 192.
70 Erlmann, V., ‘Migration and performance: Zulu migrant workers’ Isicathamiya performance in South Africa, 1890–1950’, Ethnomusicology, 34:2 (1990), 199–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Margery Perham's description of an Industrial and Commercial Workers Union dance in urban Durban in Perham, M., African Apprenticeship: An Autobiographical Journey in Southern Africa, 1929 (London, 1974), 195–9Google Scholar.
71 Ndunakazi, ‘Shembe comes to the Dube tribal region’, 190–1. Other oral traditions indicate that congregations wanted regular dances and that Shembe occasionally used dance (and the threat of canceling) to control different groups within the church.
72 For a different interpretation, see Cabrita, ‘Isaiah Shembe's theological nationalism’, 621.
73 Marks, S., The Ambiguities of Dependence in South Africa: Class, Nationalism, and the State in Twentieth-Century Natal (Baltimore, 1985)Google Scholar, 2.
74 SAB NTS 24/214 (Part I), ‘Activities of the Shembe sect: Mtunzini District’, 25 Jan. 1940.
75 Cabrita, J., ‘Politics and preaching: chiefly converts to the Nazaretha Church, obedient subjects, and sermon performance in South Africa’, The Journal of African History, 51:1 (2010), 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
76 These numbers are based on the description of congregations included in SIS II. Most of the information for this project was gathered in the 1980s.
77 Many of these cases took place in the late 1930s and toward the end of the timeframe covered in this article. See, for example, chiefs' court records from TBD 1/MTU C2/1/7, case no. 72/38 - 180/40; and TBD 1/MTU C2/1/8, case no. 186/40 - 276/42.
78 Lamontville, built outside of Durban in 1934, was among the first African townships in South Africa. Others, including Umlazi and KwaMashu, followed. The statistics on women's movement to urban areas are from Marks, ‘Patriotism, patriarchy, and purity’, 221.
79 Jill Kelly's work on a chiefdom near Table Mountain in KwaZulu-Natal points to connections between chiefs and women as apartheid jolted toward an end in the 1980s and 1990s. J. Kelly, ‘Bantu authorities and betterment: the ambiguous responses of chiefs and regents’, paper presented at the Northeastern Workshop on Southern Africa, Burlington, VT, Apr. 2013.
