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Vimbuza
The Healing Dance
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Copyright 2014 Boston Soko
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
prior permission from the publishers.
Published by
Imabili Indigenous Knowledge Publications
P.O. Box 1376
Zomba, Malawi
Published under the auspices of UNESCO
ISBN 978-99908-0247-4 Imabili Text no. IV
Layout and Cover: Josephine KaweJele
Editor: Professor Klaus Fiedler, Mzuzu University
Cover Picture: Kennedy Mvula, Vimbuza Dancer, by Rupert Poeschl
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Vimbuza
The Healing Dance of Northern
Malawi
Boston Soko
Imabali Text no. 4
A World Cultural Heritage
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Foreword
UNESCO must be commended for recognizing the Vimbuza healing
dance of the Tumbuka of Northern Malawi. We would like to thank, in
particular, UNESCO Malawi for recommending this to their headquarters
in Paris. This decision has ultimately led to the promotion and safe-
guarding of the dance as part of the world's cultural heritage. This book is
based on the thesis for a PhD degree presented to the University of Paris
III La Sorbonne Nouvelle in 1984 and which was published by the
Museum of Man (Musée de l’Homme) on microfiche that same year
under the title: “Stylistique et Messages dans le Vimbuza” (Style and
Message in the Vimbuza). I am happy to acknowledge the funding of the
publication by UNESCO and the editorial work by my colleague at
Mzuzu University, Professor Klaus Fiedler.
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Contents
Chapter One:
Historical Background 7
Chapter Two:
Vimbuza as a Possession Cult 23
Chpater Three:
Vimbuza as a Social Fact 75
Chapter Four:
Style in Vimbuza Songs 116
Chapter Five:
Vimbuza Songs 170
Bibliography 250
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Introduction
Our readings on and actual experience of Vimbuza possession dances
stimulated us to peruse researches already undertaken. As this
phenomenon was widespread, we thought that an in depth study could
produce some interesting scientific results. In fact, there is enough
material in Vimbuza for sociological, historical, medical and ethnological
investigations. Moreover, through the richness of the texts and their
stylistic features, Vimbuza has a firm place in oral literature.
In the course of our enquiry, we were able to establish that Malawi is a
country rich in oral traditions. With a surface area of 118,484 km2 and an
estimated population of 13 million people (2008), researchers have
registered more than seventy different dances. It is not by accident that we
have so many dances; these traditional dances have diverse functions
which can be subsumed under three categories:
Entertainment dances
Ritual dances
War dances
The Vimbuza dance belongs to the second category.
The phenomenon of possession is recognized everywhere in Malawi.
The phenomenon is also known in several of the African countries, of
course under different manifestations and names. Our study relates to the
districts of Mzimba and Rumphi. The area Mzimba – Rumphi is a cross-
roads of ethnic groups following the upheaval caused by the Mfecane
wars in Zululand. The autochthonous Tumbuka live there in osmosis with
a host of other ethnic groups brought there by the Ngoni, formerly the
Ndwandwe, running away from Shaka Zulu.
For a whole century these diverse ethnic groups have lived side by side
in the area, each one bringing its own kind of Vimbuza, that’s why the
Vimbuza healing dance is a complex phenomenon.
The Vimbuza dances are rarely performed during the rainy season, as
everybody is busy working in the fields. The situation changes after
harvest for the people then find time for leisure. Certain men have the
habit of making such items intended for sale such as mats, baskets,
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mortars and pestles. The women, whose routine changes little because of
domestic chores, find free time in the evenings, and their distractions are
in the form of traditional dances, and particularly Vimbuza which seems
to interest them greatly. Thus during the dry season the whole area
engages in dancing Vimbuza in the evening.
During the past thirty years Vimbuza has attracted many researchers.
We are thinking in particular of the following departments in the
Universities: English Department (theatre), African Languages
Department (oral literature), Religious Studies Department (traditional
religions), and Biology Department (Herbarium). We hope that our book
will be of some use in all these different fields.
In the final analysis, the interest of this book is to show that the
possession cult of Vimbuza presents itself as an oral genre which is part
and parcel of African Oral Literature. The ethnolinguistic study which we
undertake will permit us to catch a glimpse of its whole complexity. The
analysis has a bearing on four principal aspects:
(cid:129) historical developments: a certain number of facts concerning the
birth of possession among the Tumbuka.
(cid:129) possession: the study attempts to show how the cult articulates
itself with its beliefs and the use of divination.
(cid:129) the social role: analysis of social functions.
(cid:129) the style: an analysis of the linguistic procedures which are
characteristic of Vimbuza songs. The presence of rhetorical
figures would confirm that we are talking about an oral literary
genre.
It is our hope that the book will present an adequate representation of the
Vimbuza phenomenon.
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Chapter 1: Historical Background
Introduction
The history of the Vimbuza healing dance goes back in time to the
beginning of Scottish missionary work and the colonial era. It came into
the limelight especially when the Nyasaland colonial government banned
it in the 1920s following articles presented almost exclusively by
missionaries and their local converts of Livingstonia Free Church of
Scotland in Northern Malawi. These articles display a systematic
prejudice against Vimbuza.1 After reading these articles, the image one
gets of the healing dance seems greatly flawed. Hence the need to retrace
the history of Vimbuza with a view to providing an alternative
perspective, and particularly elucidating the reasons why the colonial
administration decided to prohibit the dance, a move which was doomed
to failure, in order to finally arrive at a study of the Vimbuza phenomenon
among the Ngoni-Tumbuka ethnic groups.
The historical account will essentially revolve round important events
concerning Vimbuza which happened between 1900 and 1963.2 In this
connection, we used two sources of information; the writings of the
missionaries and of local converts and the oral sources of our research.3
The Arrival of the Scottish Missionaries in Central Africa
It was David Livingstone who, after having visited the shores of Lake
Malawi in 1859,4 had had the idea, on his return to Scotland, of asking the
Church authorities to send to those far away lands (Malawi) missionaries
and merchants in order to Christianize and “civilize” the local popula-
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1 Available at the National Archives, Zomba.
2 This period covers more or less the colonial era.
3 Field research for doctoral thesis, 1978–1981.
4 David Livingstone named the lake as Lake Nyasa. The British Protectorate
later adopted the name Nyasaland.
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tions. It was precisely in this part of the African continent that the slave
trade was rampant.5 In response to this appeal, Dr Robert Laws saw
himself being entrusted by the Free Church of Scotland with the task of
leading the first mission in Nyasaland. After having tried to establish this
mission at Cape Maclear and later at Bandawe, along Lake Malawi, he
settled definitely on Khondowe Mountain. The mission was later called
Livingstonia Mission; with its satellite stations of Njuyu, Ekwendeni and
Loudon, it is right in the middle of Vimbuza territory.
The missionaries’ first task was to “impose order” in the region
through their evangelization. The Ngoni, a break-away group of the Nguni
of South Africa, controlled most of this territory, from Dwangwa in the
South up to Mwenerondo in Karonga in the North, and up to the Luangwa
River (Malambo) in the West. The Ngoni had the habit of living on war
booty. During that era, all the neighbouring tribes such as the Chewa,
Tonga, Senga, Tumbuka and Ngonde, were subject to frequent raids by
the Ngoni in search of food and cattle.6
That William Koyi, a South African Livingstonia missionary, had
Xhosa as his mother tongue and was therefore easily understood by the
Ngoni, facilitated the pacification of the Ngoni.7 Moreover, the Ngoni
accepted the principle that the missionaries be established in their country,
known as Mombera kingdom. Many citizens got converted to the new
religion and quite a few others benefited from the school education that
had been offered to them.
Nyasaland acceded to the status of a British Protectorate in 1891, but
the Mombera Kingdom was left out until 1904, when in a special
agreement Chimtunga, the Ngoni Paramount Chief, agreed to enter the
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5 J.G. Pike and G.T. Rimmington, Malawi. A Geographical Study, London:
Oxford University Press, 1965, p. 125. Up to about 1900 Arab slave traders had
continued to ferry men to the island of Zanzibar, the “depot of human
merchandise."
6 Donald Fraser, Winning a Primitive People, London: Seeley Service, 1914, p.
215.
7 For William Koyi and his fellow missionaries from South Africa see: T. Jack
Thompson, "Xhosa Missionaries in Late Nineteenth Century Malawi: Strangers
or Fellow Countrymen?" Religion in Malawi 1998, pp. 8-16.
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