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

The role of the father’s sister in Tonga

The influence of women in their role as sisters has been well-documented in Polynesia and Melanesia (Weiner 1976, 1978 a.) The way in which the authority of the father’s sister was diminished by the colonial authorities, who considered this brother-sister relationship of collaboration and power inappropriate, can be seen in Christine Ward-Gailey’s (1987) accounts of Tongan kinship in pre and post colonial contact periods. A father’s sister was never ignored – Tongan women, especially chiefly women, exercised social authority throughout life as sisters. These rights, which Ward-Gailey notes were often termed privileges in the literature, included the sister’s call on her brother, his household and his descendants. She and her children were fahu to the brother and his children. The term fahu subsumed the claims of sisters and sisters’ children. The term meant ‘above the law’ or ‘beyond custom’. The father’s sister, the imposing mehikitanga was the focus of avoidance by the brother and his children, especially his sons. She arranged and vetoed her brother’s children’s marriages. She could command the labour and produce of her brother’s spouses and she had the right to adopt her brother’s children. A curse from the mehikitanga threatened a brother’s children and spouse with painful childbirth. The role of the sister and fahu transcended lineage affiliation. Before, during and after marriage a sister had the same claims to a brother and his children. The colonial authorities frowned on the apparent ‘interference’ in the brother’s affairs by the sister and put an end to the power of the mehikitanga to use her veto over her brother’s childrens’ marriages. The I867 Tonga legal code tried to limit the influence of the fahu and at the same time to strengthen the role of the nuclear family as a social unit. The code consistently stressed the centrality of the conjugal pair and especially the responsibility and authority of husbands over any collateral kin collection. For instance, it was forbidden for anyone “to interfere to stop a wedding”, which effectively eliminated the right of the father’s sister to arrange or veto the marriages of her brother’s children. The Tongan state later banned all exercise of fahu prerogatives, which meant that a woman could not legally call on the labour of her brothers or their wives and made wives more dependent on their husbands, in European fashion (Ward-Gailey, 1987:208,211).

Gillian Feeley-Harnik (1997) notes that French observers writing in the late 18^th century and the 19^th century of the Malagasy, argue that the Malagasy preferred male heirs, but Malagasy documents from the Merina royal archives emphasise the role of a group of ‘brothers and sisters’ in deciding succession and clear emphasis on brother-sister endogamous unions and the heirs of such unions. Moreover the French colonial conquerors disparaged the great female 19^th century Madagascan female rulers and Feeley-Harnik comments that even Maurice Bloch chooses to analyse the Merina royal bath in generic, rather than historical terms, persistently referring to the central royal figure as ‘he’ or ‘the king’. This despite the fact that from 1828 to the French invasion of 1895, Merina royals were women (with one exception who was strangled after two years in office.)
The power of women rulers in Southern African kingdoms is mystical in origin and was related to their connection to fertility and the ability to make rain. Tshisinavhute of Mianzwi in eastern Venda was a female rainmaker and ruler. Tshisinavhute was the title of the Mbedzi ruler who has been female since at least the end of the 18^th century and possibly much earlier. The first female Tshisinavhute, Mufanadzo, had been given the gift of rainmaking by her father, but according to oral tradition, had had to enlist the help of Chief Ligege Tshivhase to drive out and kill her brother who also had been a powerful rainmaker at Mianzwi. Since then succession to the headship and powers of rainmaking at Mianzwi had passed from mother to daughter. Ralushai and Gray (1977) suggest that the change from male to female in succession in this area may be partly explained by the increasing incidence of male circumcision in the area, a custom which was introduced by Sotho speakers from the south-west. Ralushai and Gray mention raids on the Mbedzi in search of uncircumcised men. These raids were detrimental to the rain-making powers of the Mbedzi as males who had been circumcised were not allowed to hold sacred objects. Tshisinavhute, as a woman, was saved from these raids (1977).
In a similar manner to Tshisinavhute, the origin of the Vondwe female chieftaincy appears to lie in a dispute involving a sister and her brother, although here the accounts given by local people and that given by the headwoman herself differ considerably. Matshidze (1988:24) dates the emergence of female chieftaincy at Vondwe to the installation of Nyatshitahela in 1914. In this account, Nyatshitahela was the wife of Chief Rammbuda of Dzimauli. Following a succession dispute she fled with her only son to her maternal grandmother’s home and, upon the death of her father, Headman Ramugondo of Vondwe, returned to Vondwe and became headwoman there. Some of Matshidze’s informants said that the Vondwe ancestors preferred a female ruler; others that Nyatshitahela had engineered the removal of her classificatory brother who had been installed as chief shortly after the death of her father. Musanda Gumani, the present headwoman, said ^iv that her ancestor was made headwoman at Vondwe by her brother, a local chief. She related that Nyatshitahela had been married to another chief nearby who had died. The people of his village blamed his wife for his death and wanted to kill her. To save her, her brother removed her to his own chiefdom and made her headwoman at Vondwe.
Although Nyatshitahela was succeeded by several male descendants, their reigns were inauspicious. One died after having been struck by lightning, and his son, who succeeded him, died childless in 1976. It was at this point that the chief’s family and the community reached a decision that there should be a return to female rule, since it seemed that Nyatshitahela, as an ancestor, was asking for a female successor as the males had not fared well. The present headwoman was installed and given the title Gumani at the age of twenty one in 1976. Musanda Gumani has commemorated her ancestress by naming a local school after her. VhoGumani is an educated woman who is a senior officer at the Thohoyandou Central Prison, which is situated not far from her khoro (traditional court) where she hears cases on Sundays in the company of her vhakoma or headmen.
Another example which Stayt gives of women being able to succeed to at least petty chiefship in Venda is of Nyadenga of Phiphidi and Nyakhalavha of Khalavha. ‘When the father of Chief Tshivhase left Phiphidi to make his capital at Mukumbani, he left his daughter Nyadenga as petty chief in the Phiphidi district; she was his heir, being the only child of his great wife, but being a woman could not succeed her father as a great chief. At Phiphidi she has the full rights of a man and is only subordinate to the chief himself. Her position will be inherited by her eldest daughter’ (1931: 215).