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Depicting the Servants of the Spirits
The ancestral spirits are concerned about the lives of their descendants and know the reasons for any trouble they might have and how to correct it. Diviners are called upon by their ancestral spirits to be mediums between the realms of the living and the dead, alerted to the spirits' presence (ukufukame la) most frequently through bad dreams, pains in the shoulders, and fainting. Ignoring the call to become a trainee (iTwasa) in controlled mediumship—a process that involves a series of symbolic rituals—can result in madness (ubuh lanya).4 During the divination ritual, a diviner is described as "working with" (ukusebenza) the ancestral spirits. Before the diviner calls on the ancestral spirits "to speak," it is customary for a client to offer a gift to the spirits through the diviner, who acts as their intermediary. To induce the ancestral spirits to communicate their insights, a diviner must put on ritual apparel and use special divination paraphernalia, which increase the diviner's isithunzi by attracting the spirits. When asked, "Is it possible for a diviner not to possess isithunzi?" one iTwasa answered that there ought always to be some indication (in the diviner's bearing, behavior and dress) of the presence of isithunzi the diviner's isithunzi is "not separate from" that of his or her ancestral spirits.5 One aspect of a qualified diviner's appearance that enhances isithunzi is his/her distinctive headdress (umyekho), which has its origin in a prohibition against cutting one's hair. The inflated gallbladders attached to the hair are from goats sacrificed during the training, and the white beads decorating the hair indicate the clear "white" world of the ancestral spirits.6 A diviner's ritual apparel includes goatskin shoulder-bands (iminqwamba) and wristlets, which indicate that the iTwasa's training has been completed. Among the diviner's paraphernalia is a whisk (ishoba), which is thought to be sensitive to the ancestral spirits, who "use" it (via the diviner, who is "possessed" by the spirits during trance) to point out problems.7 In the Campbell Collections of the University of Natal,8 there are thirty-five works depicting Zulu diviners (not including medicine-men [iNyanga]), by seven artists. Among these are portraits of real people, text illustrations, field sketches, costume studies, drawings evoking the atmosphere of divination, and sculptures. In an overall collection of three thousand artworks, thirty-five is not very many, especially considering the centrality of diviners to indigenous Zulu religion. There are several reasons for the scarceness of such works. Diviners do not like their image recorded in photographs (or paintings), especially during their training, when the presence of the ancestral spirits is heavy and "people must not look too much."9 Diviners are the servants of the ancestral spirits and therefore must be treated with respect by those who come into contact with them.10 And there has been a historically tense relationship among diviners (and thereby indigenous religion), representatives of colonial law, and adherents of Western Christianity.11 One of the thirty-five depictions of diviners in the Campbell Collections is an ink drawing by Gerard Bhengu, an attempt to capture a diviner in a state of altered consciousness (fig. 1). If Bhengu intended to show isithunzi or uku sebenza, he has failed; the diviner seems to be in a state of ubuh lanya, which is belied by the apparel indicating that he has successfully completed his training. The depiction is similar to early Christian images showing Zulu diviners as pagans possessed by demonic spirits rather than as communicating with benign albeit sometimes righteously angry ancestral spirits.12 Bhengu, a Zulu artist born and reared on Centecow Roman Catholic Mission in southern Natal, created this and other drawings as illustrations for the missionary doctor Max Kholer's The Izangoma Diviners.13 That Bhengu was not wholly prejudiced against his culture is indicated in a portrait of a diviner that he painted in the 1950s (fig. 2), a time when he did not have to produce pictures for the tourist trade in order to generate an income. This portrait and Barbara Tyrrell's costume studies (fig. 3) can be seen as attempts to show individual people (who happen to be diviners) and to indicate their profession by details of costume.14 Barbara Tyrrell, an artist who is not Zulu, had to be introduced to the ancestral spirits before carrying out her in-depth studying and sketching of diviners in the Richmond district of KwaZulu-Natal (fig. 4). She has stated, "I respect the beliefs of others with one proviso—that the core, the direction of the belief is toward good. Diviners serve the people for good."15 Her respect and knowledge of the forces invoked by diviners resulted in a relatively successful painting depicting divination (fig. 5). As a trainee diviner described it, "This [painting] shows umsebenzi, . . . deep, deep talking with the amaDlozi."16 Here, the diviner is depicted burning incense (imphepho) and using snuff from a beaded calabash snuff-container, both substances that enhance clairvoyance and are indigenous to the Zulu people. 1.
The Zulu people consist of a number of related clans of Bantu-speakers
who fall either directly or by association under the royal clan of Zulu.
They live in KwaZulu-Natal, southeastern Africa. 2.
Axel-Ivan Berglund, Zulu Thought-Patterns and Symbolism (London: Hurst, 1976), p. 86. 5.
D. Mthethwa and Yvonne Winters, interview with iTwasa Ms. X, in
Umbilo, February 17, 2000. 6.
Berglund, Zulu Thought-Patterns, p. 90 8.
The Campbell Collections hold numerous resources of historical, sociocultural,
and other material about South Africa.
9.
Berglund, Zulu Thought-Patterns, p. 134. When members of the University
of Natal museum staff were photographing in Ixopo in June 1983, the trainees'
teacher forbade them to take pictures of her students but allowed herself
to be photographed. She explained that this was because the trainees did
not yet have a "strong enough" isithunzi; author's personal
communication with R. Msomi, June 1983. 10.
One diviner's response to questioning was simply, "Go away . . .
I tell you [about divination] and tomorrow I hear what I say on TV. .
. . You weaken my link with my amaDlozi." On another occasion,
a Zulu poet had to offer a goat to request the ancestral spirits' permission
to write about them. Author's personal communication with D. Mthethwa,
February 17, 2000. 11.
Mthethwa and Winters, interview with iTwasa MsX. The informant
conceded that diviners can take on the look of their ancestral spirit;
thus, a "rude spirit creates a rude diviner. And a neat spirit (like
my own) makes for a neat diviner . . . Also, sometimes a diviner can reflect
the 'animals' [demonic entities] present in a situation .... but this
[picture] is just fear. The artist maybe does not like izangoma."
12.
Berglund, Zulu Thought-Patterns, p. 198. 13.
Max Kholer, The Izangoma Diviners (Pretoria: Government Printers,
1941). In the nineteenth century, diviners were acknowledged to have power
over evil and a gift to "smell out" wrongdoers. However, the
colonial administration under Christian missionary influence tried to
eliminate what was seen by them as "witch finding" and divination
was declared illegal; George Maxwell Whitfield, South African Native
Law (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1948), p. 541,
and Berglund, Zulu Thought-Patterns, p. 308. 14.
Such "tribal studies" were made acceptable by the patronage
of the artists by Dr. Killie Campbell, who was anxious to acquire them
for her Africana Library. 15.
Barbara Tyrrell, Her African Quest (Cape Town: Lindlife, 1996),
pp. 84–85. |
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Fig.
1. Gerard Bhengu, iSangoma, ink wash [WCP 2837] Fig.
2. Gerard Bhengu, iSangoma, sepia wash [WCP 3074] Fig.
3. Barbara Tyrrell, iSangoma, watercolor [WCP477] Fig.
4. Barbara Tyrrell, iTwasa, watercolor (field sketch) Fig.
5. Barbara Tyrrell, iSangoma, acrylic on canvas [WCP3270]
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