Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2009
Debates over the ‘Zimba’ period of Zambesian history prompt a new consideration of the mythical element in oral traditions. The work of Matthew Schoffeleers on Mbona, presiding spirit of a famous rain-shrine in southern Malawi, is exploited in order to cast doubt on his reconstruction of sixteenth/seventeenth-century political history. It is suggested that Mbona was the serpentine power immanent in the Zambesi; that reports of his ‘martyrdom’ at the hands of a secular ruler are versions of an ancient and widespread myth of the lightning and the rainbow, whose opposition establishes the due alternation of the seasons and the generations; that his journey to, and subsequent flight from, Kaphiri-ntiwa, scene of the Maravi Creation myth, is a variant of the visit made to the sky by Kintu, the ‘First Man’ of Ganda tradition, who introduced sex and death to middle-earth. It is not very likely that such stories attest the rise of a great military state c. 1600 and the ensuing suppression of religious institutions.
Comparative mythology (which does not have to be technically ‘structuralist’) has positive as well as negative uses for the historian. The peoples of southern Uganda, Zaire, Zambia and Malawi appear to share a common heritage of religious thought and practice and there must be a historical basis for this cultural affinity. At the same time, differences between the myths reflect recent political divergence: whereas successful states such as those of the Ganda and Luba became more secular, the Mbona cult alone survived the disasters that overwhelmed southern Malawi in the nineteenth century.
1 Newitt, M. D. D., ‘The early history of the Maravi’, J. Afr. Hist., XXIII (1982), 145–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarSchoffeleers, Matthew, ‘The Zimba and the Lundu state in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries’, J. Afr. Hist., XXVIII (1987), 337–55 (with comments and reply).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Alpers, E. A., Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa (London, 1975), 46–55.Google Scholar
3 Schoffeleers, J. M., ‘Symbolic and social aspects of spirit worship among the Mang'anja’ (D. Phil. thesis, Oxford, 1968).Google Scholar
4 ‘The history and political role of the M'bona cult among the Mang'anja’, in The Historical Study of African Religion, ed. Ranger, T. O. and Kimambo, I. N. (London, 1972), 73–94.Google Scholar
5 The Guardians of the Land (Gwelo, 1979) introduction and 147–78;Google Scholar‘A martyr cult as a reflection of changes in production: the case of the Lower Shire valley, 1590–1622’, African Perspectives, II (1978), 19–33;Google Scholar‘The story of Mbona the martyr’, in Man, Meaning and History, ed. Schefold, R. and others (The Hague, 1980), 246–67;Google Scholar‘Oral history and the retrieval of the distant past’, in Theoretical Explorations in African Religion (London, 1985), 164–88;Google Scholar‘Ideological confrontation and the manipulation of African history: a Zambesian case’, History in Africa, xiv (1987), 257–73.Google Scholar
6 ‘The Zimba and the Lundu state’, 351.Google Scholar
7 Bocarro, A. in Records of South Eastern Africa, ed. Theal, G. M. (Cape Town, 1898–1903), III, 395;Google Scholar Luis Mariano in a document of 1624 cited by Newitt, ‘Early history’, 151;Google ScholarBarretto, M. in Theal, , Records, iii, 475, 480.Google Scholar
8 Alpers, E. A., ‘The Mutapa and Malawi political systems’, in Aspects of Central African History, ed. Ranger, T. O. (London, 1968), 24.Google Scholar
9 Schoffeleers, ‘Martyr cult’; idem, ‘Ideological confrontation’.
10 Schoffeleers, ‘Oral history’, 181.Google Scholar
11 Schoffeleers, ‘Symbolic and social aspects’, 123.Google Scholar
12 Nyakatura, J. W., Ky'Abakama ba Bunyoro (1947), edited by Uzoigwe, G. N. as Anatomy of an African Kingdom (New York, 1973), 82–7.Google Scholar
13 Schoffeleers, ‘The Zimba and the Lundu state’, 346–9, 354.Google Scholar
14 Schoffeleers, ‘Ideological confrontation’, 262–3.Google Scholar
15 Judges 5:4–5. Cf. Pss. 17, 29 and Habakkuk 3.Google Scholar
16 Murray, S. S., A Handbook of Nyasaland (London, 1922), 32, 73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 Rangeley, W. H. J., ‘Mbona—the rain maker’, Nyasaland J., vi (1953), 8–21.Google Scholar
18 Schoffeleers, ‘History and political role’, 89.Google Scholar
19 See below, p. 379Google Scholar
20 Junod, H., ‘The ethnological situation in Portuguese East Africa’, Bantu Studies, x (1936), 309. In Bantu languages it is the special privilege of divinity to dispense with a nominal prefix.Google Scholar
21 Heintze, B., ‘Der südrhodesische dziva-Komplex’, Anthropos, LXII (1969), 337–68.Google Scholar
22 Crazzolara, J. P., The Lwoo, part I (Verona, 1950), 43–4,Google Scholar However, songs quoted by Hofmayr, W., Die Schilluk (Mödling bei Wien, 1925), 405, show that the river was also seen as Nyikang's mother. He was in any case the conqueror of the sun and giver of rain.Google Scholar
23 de Rop, A., Lianja, l'épopée nationale des Mongo (Brussels, 1964).Google Scholar
24 For the etymology see Guthrie, M., Comparative Bantu (Farnborough, 1967–1971), IV, CS 1934 and attachments.Google Scholar
25 Eliot, T. S., Collected Poems, 1909–1962 (London, 1963), 205 (‘The Dry Salvages’, lines 1–2).Google Scholar
26 Schebesta, P., in Bibliotheca Africana, III (1929), 1–20.Google Scholar
27 Le Roi ivre (Paris, 1972), 47–96;Google ScholarRois nés d'un aeur de vache (Paris, 1982), 331–75.Google Scholar
28 Notwithstanding the passionate critique by Jan Vansina, who is reluctant to concede that myths may have a life that extends far beyond tribal boundaries: ‘Is elegance proof? Structuralism and African history’, History in Africa, x (1983), 307–48. The theme is not, however, exclusively Bantu, being found also in the conflicts of Indra and Namuci, Zeus and Typhon and in the North American battle (or lacrosse match) between the Thunders and the Serpents.Google Scholar
29 Schoffeleers, Guardians of the Land, 162–3;Google ScholarRangeley, W. H. J., ‘Two Nyasaland rain shrines’, Nyasaland J., V (1952), 31–50;Google ScholarMetcalfe, M., ‘Some Nyasaland folk-lore tales’, Nyasaland J., VII (1954), 46–9;Google ScholarBruwer, J. P., ‘Remnants of a rain cult among the Acewa’, African Studies, xi (1952) 179–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
30 Schoffeleers, ‘Symbolic and social aspects’, 276.Google Scholar
31 Jones, Gwyn and Jones, Thomas (eds.), The Mabinogion (London, 1949), 37–40.Google Scholar
32 Colle, R. P., Les Baluba (Brussels, 1913), II, 420;Google ScholarBurton, W. F. P., Luba Religion and Magic in Custom and Belief (Tervuren, 1939), 4–8; de Heusch, Roi ivre, 15–30.Google Scholar
33 Genesis 6–9.Google Scholar It has been shown by Hendel, Ronald S. (‘Of demigods and the Deluge’, J. Biblical Literature, CVI (1987), 13–26) that the decree of 6:3 is integrally related to the story of the Flood.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
34 Vansina, ‘Is elegance proof?’, 312.Google Scholar
35 Schoffeleers, ‘Ideological confrontation’, 260–1.Google Scholar
36 The earliest full version is that used as a translation exercise in Le Veux, R. P., Manuel de langue luganda (Algiers, 1914, but used in Uganda from 1883).Google Scholar Others include Roscoe, J., The Baganda (London, 1911), 460;Google ScholarKagwa, A., Engero za Baganda [Tales of the Ganda] (London, 1927), 1–8;Google ScholarJohnston, H. H., The Uganda Protectorate (London, 1902), II, 700–5.Google Scholar
37 Phiri, Kings M., ‘Chewa history in central Malawi and the use of oral tradition’ (Ph.D thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1975), 41.Google Scholar
38 Schoffeleers, M., ‘The religious significance of bush fires in Malawi’, Cahiers des religions africaines, X (1971), 272–82.Google Scholar
39 As it happens, this cliché of African cosmogonic speculation was not very wide of the mark; creatures that might be called the first man and the first woman did leave their footprints on a lava flow in Tanzania.Google Scholar
40 Gluckman, M., ‘The Lozi of Barotseland’, in Seven Tribes of British Central Africa, ed. Colson, E. and Gluckman, M. (London, 1951), 26–7.Google Scholar
41 Ibid., 19.
42 See Schoffeleers, ‘Symbolic and social aspects’, 8, 253.Google Scholar
43 ‘Ideological confrontation’, 262–3; ‘Oral history’, 171–2.Google Scholar
44 Roi ivre, 57–60.Google Scholar
45 E.g. Lestrade, A., Notes d'ethnographie du Rwanda (Tervuren, 1972), 61;Google ScholarSmith, Pierre, Le récit populaire au Rwanda (Paris, 1975), 128.Google Scholar
46 Hence the proverbial assurance, ‘Not all Kintu's children perished’. In the same spirit the distinguished African physician Professor G. Monekosso, speaking on BBC Radio not long ago about the worsening medical situation, including the AIDS nightmare, remarked: ‘We have no plans to disappear’.Google Scholar
47 Schoffeleers, ‘Oral history’, 179.Google Scholar
48 Lévi-Strauss, C., The Raw and the Cooked, trans. Weightman, J. and Weightman, G. (London, 1969), 35–65.Google Scholar
49 Roberts, A. D., A History of the Bemba (London, 1973), 39.Google Scholar
50 Roscoe, J., ‘Further notes on the manners and customs of the Baganda’, J. Anthrop. Inst., XXXII (1902), 25–6;Google ScholarKaggwa, A., The Kings of Buganda, ed. and trans. Kiwanuka, M. S. M. (Nairobi, 1971), 6–7.Google Scholar The full version is in Kagwa, A., Ebika bya Buganda [The Clans of Buganda] (Kampala, 1949), 7–9.Google Scholar (An English translation made available by J. A. Rowe is in Makerere University library. I am very grateful to Professor Rowe for a copy of this document.) The story is also told by Nsimbi, M. B., Amannya Amaganda n'Ennono zaago [Ganda names and their meanings] (Kampala, 1956), 222–3.Google Scholar
51 In Vansina's one-line summary Kintu ‘disappears from remorse over having killed a lover of his wife’ (Oral Tradition as History (London, 1985), 169).Google Scholar
52 Sexuality as the disruptive factor was established in one of the oldest recorded myths, the Mesopotamian tale of Enkidu, the wild man who lived with the beasts until he encountered a woman, after which he had to become civilized — and mortal. In a modern version, it was adolescence that put an end to Mowgli's idyll (Kipling, Rudyard, The Second Jungle Book (London, 1923), 263–95).Google Scholar
53 Chadwick, H. M. and Chadwick, N. K., The Growth of Literature, iii (Cambridge, 1940), 589–90.Google Scholar
54 Smith, E. W. and Dale, A. M., The ha-Speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia, ii (London, 1920), 182–3.Google Scholar
55 ‘Religious significance of bush fires’; also in The Early History of Malawi, ed. Pachai, B. (London, 1972), 91–103; ‘Symbolic and social aspects’, 412–15.Google Scholar
56 Schoffeleers, M., ‘The Nyau societies, Society of Malawi Journal, XXIX (1976), 59–68;Google ScholarRangeley, W. H. J., ‘The “nyau” in Kotakota District’, Nyasaland j., 11 (1949), 35–9, and III (1950), 19–33;Google ScholarHodgson, A. G. O., ‘Notes on the Achewa and Angoni of the Dowa District of the Nyasaland Protectorate’, J. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., LXIII (1933), 123–64.Google Scholar
57 Jung, C. G., Symbols of Transformation (Collected Works, vol. v, London, 1956), 145ff.Google Scholar
58 Vansina, J., The Children of Woot (Madison, 1978), 34–5.Google Scholar
59 Berger, Ruth C., in Prelude to East African History, ed. Posnansky, M. (London, 1966), 157–8.Google Scholar
60 Richards, Audrey, Chisungu a girls' initiation ceremony among the Bemba of Northern Rhodesia (London, 1956), 106.Google Scholar
61 Dr Roberts reminds me that he was the first to bring the Ring into the discussion of African tradition (History of the Bemba, 48n.). And he was certainly one of the first to see African genesis myth for what it is.Google Scholar
62 Cf. Gamitto, A. C. P., King Kazembe, trans. Cunnison, I. (Lisbon, 1960), 103.Google Scholar
63 See especially Okpewho, I., Myth in Africa: A Study of its Aesthetic and Cultural Relevance (Cambridge, 1963).Google Scholar
64 Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, 8. History and structure are not really antitheses, nor does structural analysis of myth condemn Africa to eternal stasis, as Schoffeleers has alleged (‘Oral history’, 164–5).Google Scholar
65 The nyau of Malawi are clearly related, etymologically and otherwise, to the myaao spirits of the Fipa and the migavo of the Nyamwezi, and it is hard not to connect the term with the ethnic designation ‘Yao’, though in this case the phonetics would be irregular.Google Scholar
66 Kagwa, A., The Customs of the Baganda, ed. Edel, M. M. (New York, 1934), 9–11.Google Scholar
67 Stanley, H. M., Through the Dark Continent (London, 1978), 222–8;Google ScholarKaggwa, Kings, 71–3.Google Scholar
68 Roscoe, The Baganda, 191–200.Google Scholar
69 Cunningham, W., Uganda and its Peoples (London, 1905), 170–8;Google ScholarKaggwa, Kings, 5;Google Scholaridem, Ebika, 421; Nsimbi, Amannya, 184–5.Google Scholar For an acute though in my view only partly correct analysis see Atkinson, R. R., ‘The traditions of the early kings of Buganda: myth, history and structural analysis’, History in Africa, II (1974), 17–57.Google Scholar
70 Kaggwa, Kings, 45;Google ScholarLe Veux, Manuel, 331. The rise of the lubaale is especially associated with the reigns of Mutebi and Nakibinge, respectively two and six generations before Mawanda according to the official genealogy. The real sequence of the kings is, however, very uncertain.Google Scholar
71 Rangeley, ‘Mbona—the rain maker’, 8–21.Google Scholar
72 Kaggwa, Kings, 20.Google Scholar
73 For Khambageu see Gray, R. F. in African Systems of Thought, ed. Fortes, M. and Dieterlen, G. (London, 1965), 50–61;Google Scholar for Ryangombe see de Heusch, L., Le Rwanda et la civilisation interlacustre (Brussels, 1965).Google Scholar
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.