LIKE everyone, the maidens carry smart phones and use laptops for their study, some even decorate their wrists with fancy wristwatches. But when the reeds along the river basins south of the Tropic of Capricorn, far south of the terrestrial equator ripen, they set technology aside, as everyone pauses in anticipation of the full moon.
This is the Kingdom of Eswatini where the Gregorian Calendar first introduced by European missionaries in 1844 is an optional extra. Here, the rhythm of life is determined by astrologers who constantly measure the position of the moon’s orbit around the sun and map it around key earth features.
The core of the people believe they emerged from the sea, and their first emotional experience of life-on-earth was the texture of the reeds. This memory is eulogized as the first day of the year. Thus as soon as the society stabilized and settled in a new home that they named Ezulwini (heaven), they also recalled the reeds into the centre of their cosmology.
And so, two days before the full moon between the end of August and September they release the nation’s crop of virgin girls to fetch the reeds in a ceremony that is emblematic of what is often referred to as the last most preserved African Kingdom. In September 2024, the ceremony of the virgins’ reed dance drew almost 100 thousand visitors – equalling almost 1 percent of the population to the Kingdom. While certainly a tourist attraction, it is by far more than that to the average Swati.
Since the reed dance, the astrologers are back at their posts, now watching the sun to estimate the date of the southern hemisphere summer solstice when the whole country will be on the move.
A casual visitor arriving between the months of October to January would never suspect the extent that normal activity gravitates to the slow lane. Significant men mothball their western attire and are recognizable by their colourful sarong wound over one shoulder and knotted on the right breast and a simple string of beads around the neck marking them as part of the initiated inner circle of society. As the food crops of the year ripen in the field, every afternoon, the elders of the land are joined by members of parliament, ministers and other policy-making structures don shawls of oxtails and leopard skins and join the nation’s elders coalesce around the King, lionized as Ngwenyama. Together they hum and sway in dances that each day last into the summer evening. This is serious months-long activity that starts at the Queen Mother’s residence expands in concentric circles beyond the valley of heaven to cover significant parts of the country. It culminates in a re-enactment of the 18th Century northwards migration away from the cauldron of war and terror in the days of Shaka, to the safety of the plains of the Mdzimba Mountains. Life only returns to normal with the opening of State opening of Parliament late in January.
Culture is the identity of the Kingdom. It is the motive force and source of energy behind every aspect of the people’s social, political and even economic life. Adherents point at the country’s stability, peace and continuity.
But when the cat is away, the mice are bound to play. While national leaders are focused on ceremony and tradition, though no one will openly admit, the wheels of Government, often on auto-pilot do wobble awkwardly. For almost a quarter of a century, a sluggish economy has been the bellwether suggesting that not everything is as well as it should. It’s also no longer a monolithic society. New communities uninitiated in the ways of the Kingdom do pursue their ways of life unaffected by the humming and dancing of the elders. The youth too, as in every society, tend to have a way of testing the boundaries and in 2021, erupted in a violent uprising that upset and frayed the fabric of the society.
Within this tapestry of ancient African culture juxtaposed on a modern technological world forms the background for the stories we will tell on this news website.
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