Kuper’s (1944) original account of the ritual of Incwala in the Swazi territoriy in Southern Africa has spurred an immense literature over the past seventy years. From sociological-functionalist accounts focusing on the Incwala as a ritual of ‘internal rebellion’ (Gluckman, 1953,1960) over a symbolist focus on the metaphorical power of the King’s separation (Beidelman, 1966) to the historical embedding of different forms of the Incwala (Kuper, 1972; Lincoln 1987), no singular interpretation seems adequate on its own. Adding a further layer using a more ‘practice oriented’ and individual analysis of rituals (La Fontaine, 1985; Bloch, 1991), I try to accomplish an even more complicated and multi-faceted interpretation claiming that no single line of thought can represent the complexity of this ritual in its various historical forms.
How would you analyze the Swazi Ncwala?
Kuper’s (1944) original account of the ritual of Incwala in the Swazi territoriy in Southern Africa has spurred an immense literature over the past seventy years. From sociological-functionalist accounts focusing on the Incwala as a ritual of ‘internal rebellion’ (Gluckman, 1953,1960) over a symbolist focus on the metaphorical power of the King’s separation (Beidelman, 1966) to the historical embedding of different forms of the Incwala (Kuper, 1972; Lincoln 1987), no singular interpretation seems adequate on its own. Adding a further layer using a more ‘practice oriented’ and individual analysis of rituals (La Fontaine, 1985; Bloch, 1991), I try to accomplish an even more complicated and multi-faceted interpretation claiming that no single line of thought can represent the complexity of this ritual in its various historical forms.
Kuper (1944) describes how the Incwala ritual is celebrated annually before the summer solistice (December) marking the turning point of the year. It begins with the ‘Small Incwala’ when food is scarce and ends with the First Fruits on the next full moon. Concentrating on the Big Incwala, it is possible to differentiate two parts of it. The first half consists of preparational ceremonies in particular collecting waters and plants from different parts of the Swazi kingdom. On the fourth day – the ‘Great Day’ – the ritual reaches its climax in the ‘biting of the first fruits’ by the King. Spitting medicine east and west, he ‘stabs the year’ and welcomes the new fruits. In the afternoon of this day, the princes – the kings administrators and rivals at the same time – drive him into the cattle hut with wild songs of hostility. The return of the King from the hut is marked by his appearance as ‘the monster of legends’ dancing wildly accompanied by choruses from young warriors. Forcing the strangers, aliens and rivals – including the princes – to leave, a green gourd is destroyed as an emblem of the past year. The following day is a day of prohibition gradually dispersing the ambiguous magic preparing the celebration of the last day. Recapitulating this in an ethnographically succinct 25 pages, Kuper takes the ritual mainly as an expression of ‘kingship’. “The Incwala unites the people under the king” it has a “nationalising value” and leads to “internal solidarity” putting the hierarchical structure of Swazi society into ritual practices (ibid.:256). Altogether, her account is very limited in its interpretative quality, however. Kuper’s strength lies in her ethnographic observation and description.
Gluckman (1953) on the other hand focuses on a particular interpretation, namely the aspect of ‘rebellion’. Again looking at the ‘big Incwala’ Gluckman notices the obsession with conflict in both the ritual chants and practices: the king is driven into the hut on day four, first the commoners then the princes chant hostile hymns – the whole scenery is dominated by antagonism (ibid.:19):
"One can feel the acting out of the powerful tensions which make up national life - king and state against people, and people against king and state; king allied with commoners against his rival brother-princes, commoners allied with princess against the king; the relation of the king to his mother and his own queens; and the national united against internal enemies and external foes, and in a struggle for a living with nature.”
Rebellion and rivalry are all-pervasive in Gluckman’ eyes – at least in a temporary form before they resolve in affirmations and unity. In his analysis, he follows the Aristotelian notion of ‘catharsis’ where rebellion within an unchallenged political order leads to a purified order (ibid.:20f). Rather than rebelling against the institutional structure as such – the divine kingship – the Swazi are believed to (metaphorically) battle against the person of the king in his individuality. Constrained by belief and custom the repetitive ritual is seen to defend the kingship against the king (ibid.:29). Making the case for an historical argument, Gluckman tries to prove the strength of his analysis (ibid.:25): "the very structure of kingship thrusts struggles between rival houses, and even civil war, on the nation; and it is an historical fact to state that these struggles kept component groups of the nation united in conflicting allegiance around the sacred kingship". In ‘License in Ritual’, Gluckman (1960:134) confirms this interpretation claiming that “conflicts can be stated openly wherever the social order is unquestioned and indubitable – where there are rebels and not revolutionaries”. In an almost Geertzian manner, Gluckman seems to claim that ‘expressing’ the cleavages within society in a ritual context unites it – in particular against external threats. This claim seems somehow counter-intuitive: does the external threat not automatically unite a society, without necessarily involving an internal ritual conflict? Furthermore, how does society accomplish change if conflict is always ritualised – how are kings overthrown? More important than this, however, is that Gluckman’s account is very much focused on the sociological significance of the ritual in its functional form. Not only that he concentrates his energy on searching for the function, what if he got his interpretation of the chants wrong – what if the chants do not express a deep hostility?
Beidelman (1966) heavily criticises this one-sided interpretation as being limited to “a very narrow aspect of ritual” diverting “attention from the main themes and purposes” (ibid.:374). Rather than approaching a sociological and psychological analysis as Gluckman, Beidelman starts with the symbolic vocabulary, the cosmology, in more general. He gives us a detailed account of the Swazi order of heavenly bodies, their relation to human processes and the particular symbolism (moon = sea, female); sun = annual rites, male). Illustrating the ambiguous quality of darkness (as in the ox or the darkness of the moon on the day of the ritual) between angriness, confusion and profoundness, as well as the symbolism of sexuality, right versus left and rain / water, Beidelman presents a general description of ritual action: a period of separation (between living men and supernatural beings) has to be followed by a ‘bridge’ based on a second separation within the object serving to join divided categories (ibid.:387). Transferring this thesis, Beidelman (ibid.:377) gives a very simple meaning to the Incwala at first: “the first half gradually increases all the powerful supernatural attributes of the king” while the “second half is a gradual decreasing of this dangerous but potent concentration”. With regards to the King, his analysis presupposes conflicting demands upon him: the Incwala serves as a ‘revival’ from those demands, as a resolution. “The Great Incwala is a ritual separation of the king so that he may take on certain supernatural attributed which provide him with power” (ibid.:394) Symbolised through the isolated hut, his separation from the village and his temporary nudity, isolation and separation are primary elements in the ritual. Medicines (sea water, organs from an ox, plants such as the gourd) are strengthening the king through their relationship with the supernatural. On the last day the ‘mediating dirt’, the remainders of the beasts, huts and medicines are burnt serving as the necessary ‘bridge-of-separation’ (ibid.:401). Through the King’s segregation, he is revived. Embedding and anchoring his interpretation in the symbolic apparatus and particularly the embodied, ritual practices of the Swazi, Beidelman critics Gluckman’s ‘teleologically functionalist’ analysis of ‘meaning’.
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- Johannes Lenhard (Autor), 2013, How would you analyze the Swazi Ncwala?, Múnich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/230430
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