Marginalized Knowledge: An Agenda for Indigenous Knowledge Development and Integration with Other Forms of Knowledge

Mujaji: the Rain Queen

While Venda women rulers were never ‘great chiefs’, the Lovedu to the south had perhaps the most famous of all African women chiefs, Mujaji, the rain queen, described in many fictionalised accounts by European writers, most notably Rider Haggard in ‘She’, as well as by E.J and J.D Krige in their ethnography ‘The Realm of a Rain-Queen: a study of the pattern of Lovedu society (1943). The Kriges note that while rain making is an important duty of the ruler among many peoples, among the Lovedu it has become central to the whole system of social and political control. While the ritual powers of a ruler, including elements of divine kingship are present in most societies in southern Africa, for no other people has it been reported that such ritual power is relied on as a sanction for the maintenance of internal law and order to the exclusion of physical force. The value of this ritual power in foreign relations has been such that a fair-sized kingdom has been built up without a significant military presence.

The Kriges write ‘hallowed by a heritage of incest, she (the Lovedu queen) is chosen for her role by the ghost of her predecessor, and her destined end is death at her own hands, in order that she may rule by divine right’ (1943: xii). Marshall Sahlins quotes Luc de Heusch as referring to St.Just to the effect that ‘between the people and the king there can be no natural relation….for (power) is typically founded on an act of barbarism – murder or incest, or both.’ De Heusch calls this ‘the exploit’, a feat mythically associated with the ancestor of the dynasty, and often re-enacted at the installation of each successor (quoted in Sahlins, 1985: 79). Sahlins continues ‘ it is important to note that power is not shown here as an intrinsic social condition but as an usurpation in the sense of a forceful seizure of sovereignty and denial of the prevailing moral order (thus) usurpation itself is the principle of legitimacy’ (1985: 80).
By 1800 the Lovedu kingdom had existed for two centuries, small compared to larger neighbours such as the Venda, the Pedi and the Shangaan-Tonga but more renowned. While Lovedu kings had always been sacred rulers, known for their rain making ability, rulers of other tribes shared this talent. But to many, including the Zulu, it was Mujaji who was the greatest rain maker, held to be inaccessible, immortal and mysterious. Her mystery lay in her power to transform clouds into rain. The Kriges say the name Lovedu is derived from a word meaning the country where the wealth of foreign chiefs (cattle, daughters) is lost for they become offerings to Mujaji for rain.
The origins of the Lovedu, Krige writes, lie in the vaKaranga people of Zimbabawe around 1600. Sons of the Monomotapa or king, quarrel and set themselves up as mambos (chiefs) who rule not by force but through supernatural powers ending their reign by ritual suicide. One mambo’s daughter gives birth to a son, although she is unmarried. She refuses to identify the father and runs away with her child, but not before stealing her father’s rain charms and sacred beads and learning how to use them from her mother. After a long journey the chief’s daughter arrives in vuLovedu with her son and a handful of faithful followers. Lovedu tradition records that the child was the result of an incestuous affair between uterine brother and sister. The brother remained behind in vaKaranga and became mambo as successor to his father. His sister ‘by virtue of her incest..justifies the creation of a new people’ the Lovedu. The origin myth continues with recording the presence of a savage hunter-gatherer people in the new land, who knew no fire, and were tutored by the cultivated Lovedu. On the other hand, the Lovedu avoided the ruins of the indigenous Ngona people as the ancestral spirits of the Ngona were believed to haunt their ancient dwellings, a very similar belief to the Venda.
The following two centuries replicated a succession of tribal splits among the Lovedu, pitting brother against sister. Around 1800 one of the daughters of King Mugogo gained the upper hand over her brothers. Before the old king died he is said to have prophesied the accession of a woman, the raids of black ants on Lovedu territory (Nguni from the south), and the conquest of the land by red ants (Europeans). The daughter of the first Mujaji is said to have been born as a result of an incestuous union between her mother and mother’s father.
The inaccessibility of Mujaji and the fairness of her complexion, became, according to the Kriges, ‘the subject of rumour and fantasy’ for Europeans who had never seen the previous queens. The anthropologists remark that fairness of complexion is a feature of many Lovedu and is highly prized. Rider Haggard attributed Mujaji’s wisdom to Arab ancestry but Eileen Krige is having none of that: ‘it was not by virtue of any foreign blood that ‘She’ ruled the tribe..and there is nothing to suggest that the Lovedu owe their organization or culture to an alien conqueror’ (1943: 2).
A more lurid version of the foreign ancestry of the queen came in a 1936 book quoted by Krige called ‘The Bush Speaks’, in which Mujaji is represented as a crafty woman of mixed white extraction who came with her people from West Africa and persuaded them to believe in her rain-making powers. Krige notes that the author of this fantasy supposed that the female ancestors of Mujaji were white women, sold to Arabs on the slave markets of West Africa, who enchanted their new masters with their sexual attractions. Hence Mujaji remaining unmarried and the many women at the royal court (wives of the queen) whose duty it was to captivate foreign chiefs. As Krige puts it, the author of the ‘The Bush Speaks’ paints a picture of intrigue and debauchery at Mujaji’s capital, supported by assassinations and poisonings. Such fantasies were constructed from the Lovedu tradition that the queen should have no physical defect and should poison herself at the end of the fourth initiation of her reign, ritual suicide thus elevating her to the status of a divine being, for only by her own act could she die. The death of the queen, however, is a portent of drought and disaster. As she is the ‘soil’ of the kingdom, her death is said to heat or ‘dry up’ the soil and the land is said to die with its owner. Eileen Krige notes that when the second Mujaji committed suicide in 1894, there followed three years of unprecedented drought and pests during which almost all the cattle and a third of the Lovedu population died.
The myth of the rain queen as a West African stranger may have originated in romantic fantasies of Europeans, but a curious echo has emerged in present day Malawi, after the death of the dictator Hastings Banda. Banda never spoke ciCewa and had no apparent close relatives in Malawi. He had spent many years abroad, first in South Africa, then in the United States where he trained as a medical doctor and later in Britain where he practised medicine, before returning to Nyasaland to lead his people to independence from colonial rule and becoming ‘President for Life’ in an independent Malawi. After his death it was a common rumour^v that Banda had died as a young student visiting West Africa and that his identity had been stolen by a friend of his. It was this imposter who was said to have returned to Malawi and ruled the country. Evidence for this story was that strangers had been observed to arrive secretly late at night at the presidential palace. It was said that these people were greeted privately by Banda in a West African language.
While the Lovedu queen’s remoteness and inaccessibility in her mountain home increased the mystery and awe with which she was regarded by subject and foreigner alike, it was her ability both to make rain and withhold it from her enemies that was the real source of her considerable influence and power among neighbouring and relatively far flung tribes. The gomana or beating of the sacred drums was the chief ritual which had the power of asking for rain from the ancestors. These sacred drums were regarded as gods. Everywhere among the Lovedu their beating was associated with rain and the agricultural year. Not only were the drums gods, but their sound was thought to be pleasing to the zwidajani , ancestral spirits, who, when the drums are sounded are said to come and sing and dance.
The Thaveni and Nareni, tribes to the south of the Lovedu used to offer to the sacred drums the first fruits of their harvests. Sahlins notes for Fiji that pre-Christian documents show that the enormous quantities of food and goods brought for ceremonial exchange from other lands were presented to the gods of the recipients. ‘Nearly everything we call ‘trade’ and ‘tribute’ was at that time sacrifice’ (1985: 88). The process of incorporation of foreign tribes into the sphere of influence of the Lovedu depended on the obligation of the foreigners to send one of their daughters as wife to Mujaji. These women were then given to the noblemen of the aristocratic founding lineages among the Lovedu. Through the links created by giving brides and receiving cattle, loyalties were created and foreigners and Lovedu became closely linked.
The gomana or sacred drums are regarded as goma^vi to the Lovedu, meaning something secret and wonderful, which it is a privilege to see, almost supernatural. For instance, an essential aspect of Lovedu initiation is the showing of digoma figurines, which may be clay figures of humans or animals, but also masked figures in reed or animal costumes who perform dances during the vyali initiation ceremonies. While laws taught in initiation schools are also referred to as digoma, the greatest goma of all are the sacred drums and the greatest goma of vyali is khiudogani which means the Great Bird of Muhale (Zimbabwe). The Bird is the ruling spirit of the initiation ritual and it has many praises sung by girls in its honour. It comes when the green foods of summer are eaten and is associated with fertility and plenty.^vii
Lovedu royal dwellings and sacred spaces share features with the remains of many other important archaeological sites of the Limpopo valley (Mapungubwe, Dzata), the confluence with the Sashi river (K2, Schroda), further into the Kalahari in the Tsodilo hills, and most famously, with Great Zimbabwe, home of the famous soapstone birds. In all these places, archaeologists have found the evidence of wide scale and prolonged trading and little or no evidence of a military force.