REEDS hold a special reverend symbolism to the people of eSwatini in southern Africa. Here, special priests carefully watch the shores of the river basins for the moment the grass reaches its prime – usually at the end of August. When the stalks turn golden green and topped by a crown of cumulonimbus tassels, they are cut down to symbolically mark the break from the old year and herald the new.
The Swazi who are part of the Bembo Nguni branch people of the Bantu believe they emerged from the reeds. The notion is captured in the praise phrase “…nine beluhlanga lwakaNgwane” (people of Ngwane who came from the reeds) in the praise names of their Royal Dlamini dynasty but also used as a common salutation for the Swazi nation.
The cutting of the reeds represents a prayer and anticipation the new year will be pure and potent with prosperity. The solemn ceremony is performed by the Kingdom’s virgins.
Each year now, the ripening reeds galvanize an increasingly Africa-wide diversity of virgin maiden pilgrims, each bringing to the Kingdom Eswatini a flavour of the rich cultural heritage of their part of Africa. In 2024, maidens from as far as Botswana, Cameroun, Ghana, Lesotho, Mozambique Zimbabwe, Uganda and various clans in South Africa descended on the only surviving African Kingdom to participate in the festival of the reed dance of virgin maidens.
At the local community level in Eswatini culture is an all-involving lived experience. Local elders coordinate the mobilization to make sure their communities are represented in the much-anticipated Umhlanga (reed) festival. It’s a busy time for mothers who prepare their daughters’ special Umhlanga regalia. Each parent sews and weaves the tapestry of wool and beads ceremonial kit, ensuring conformity with the uniform’s exact specifications. The skirt is to be made of a thick broad cloth-belt decorated with metal buttons and adorned with a short net of sweet pink and blue beads. For royalty the arrangement is rich and includes azure, yellow and red beads to make a micro skirt that showcases the innocence of youth topped by a gurgle of several reels of large bright yellow or azure beads. Blue tassels universally indicate innocence. The more flamboyant colours carefully adorned with colourful balls in yellow and blue are symbolic of maidens of courting age. Their necks are adorned with the iconic two-flag woven bead necklace that is the national standard. Except for the colourful sash of woollen tassels running diagonally from the left shoulder and under the right armpit, the maidens are bare breasted. For some, this is too much show of flesh – a perennial controversy and indignation from Eurocentric religious sensitivities.
Affirmation of virginity
Tradition demands that maidens that step forward to answer the call, implicitly declare that they are pure, virgins, unblemished by the touch of men. They are thus the pride of their community. Each successive year, the maidens that return to the ceremony reaffirm that they continue to keep the faith, typically they attend Umhlanga until they marry.
The call to Umhlanga is made, normally in the last week of August. Maidens flock to their community leaders’ kraals where they are addressed, admonished and counselled values of responsibility and exemplary conduct. Trusted local community leaders are assigned to provide them security and ensure they are safe throughout their mission.
At one of these send-off events at KaLanga, one of the prominent rural communities in the Lubombo Region, Chief, Jozane ll came out to address more than 600 maidens going to the 2024 Umhlanga. This was a significantly large group that so delighted the chief, according to the Times of Eswatini newspaper, he gifted them nine thousand emalangeni in cash (about five hundred USA dollars) as well as a cow to feast on. His gesture was microcosmic of leaders in both rural and urban communities as Umhlanga is highly regarded as a national duty deserving of collective support to ensure maidens are effectively undertake their mission.
The maidens from various points in the country ultimately arrive at Ludzidzini, the national spiritual capital and home of the King’s mother, the Ndlovukati. Customary law now embedded in the national constitution makes her co-ruler with her son the king[1]. She is represented on the national crest as the mother elephant and counter balance on the throne to the lion, her son, recognized in siSwati mythology as the Ngwenyama (lion). Politically her residence is both the national policy-making centre and appeal court providing safety and last refuge for any of the Kingdom’s citizens.
At Ludzidzini the maidens are feted with gifts that include the essential for the journey sneakers, sanitary packs and backpacks to carry their old shoes and other items.
The 2024 Umhlanga, as in other years, maidens, teenagers and adolescents, some as young as 10 descended on Ludzidzini. Officials carefully recorded every name, estimating about 10,000 as having started the outward trip. Along the way, they are joined by more girls. Each maiden comes prepared for a rigorous 60 km journey to the Mbuluzana River basin. This is a tributary of the Mbuluzi that flows to water the city of Maputo about a 120 kilometers in Mozambique, East of the Kingdom. Nowadays though, the journey is completed part on foot but mostly by bus.
The ceremony of the Reeds, is a weeklong affair. Two days is allocated for older maidens to travel to the riverbank. It’s not just any river. “The Mbuluzana is preferred because it is safe. It is clear of burrows where lurking crocodiles can harm the girls,” explains Ntfombiyembuso Tfwala, a respected radio personality and one of the leading authorities of culture and gender. Younger girls are assigned to cut the reeds at a Bhamsakhe on the Kingdom’s principal river, Lusutfu about 20 kilometres south-west of Ludzidzini.
Weather control
Weather is a potential dealbreaker for any major open air public ceremonies. Too much sun or rain can easily spoil a good ceremony. Swazi people have developed a peculiar reputation for rain priests capable of manipulating weather patterns. Legend says that during a great 18th century drought, the great Zulu King Shaka invited the Swazi leader, Somhlolo who was a renowned rainmaker. During that visit, it rained, much to the appreciation of Shaka and accounts for almost 6 years of respite from attack from the Zulu leader. About 40 years later, a British envoy, Captain Normal MacLeod sent by Colonel Evelyn Wood to ask for Swazi military help the British in an attack on the Zulu leader Cetshwayo arrived on 12 November 1878, to be very surprised to find Cetshwayo’s messengers at the Queen Mother Sisile’s residence. They said they had come to ask for some rain as drought was again scorching Zulu lands[2].
Swazis believe a little rain before a major event ensures dust is suppressed and that rain after the event, is a good omen. Rain is often on hand to douse tempers. A large deluge of rain ended serious 1977 nationwide students’ in Mbabane. It hardly rains during the cold winter season between April and September. But a dry cold April in 1986 was briefly interrupted by a week of cold rain showers. It stopped, and the clouds lifted in the morning of the 19th April to allow King Mswati lll’s coronation to proceed in splendid weather.
Rain is expected to fall during the nation’s most sacred religious ceremony, Incwala (festival of the fresh fruit), and often does. And so, it was with the 2024 Umhlanga. The dry spell consistent with winter was broken midweek, bringing two days of light rain which lifted at the weekend to allow the maidens to deliver the reeds and to dance under a splendidly cool sunny Saturday and Sunday.
The final two days of Umhlanga happen on Saturday when the maidens return to Ludzidzini in song, marching under a column of reed tassels that usually stretches for kilometres along the special road connecting Ludzidzini and the King’s official residence, the Lozitha State House.
Both the Queen Mother and the King witness the delivery of the reeds and acknowledge each wave of singing maidens prance past and hand large bundles of the fresh reed stalks to hefty men who stack them upright against the northern face of the stockade of the large Royal Cattle Byre. There the reeds will wait for the next ceremony – this time, the regiment of mothers bearing grass ropes. Their task each year, is to construct the reed stockade at Ludzidzini and other royal residences.
Next day, they rest, ready for the Monday which is declared a national holiday so everyone can turn up in their best. The maidens, now resplendent in their ceremonial bead skirts, tassels and colourful chiffons, are joined by maidens from around Africa. They flood the royal arena on the eastern front of the Royal Kraal. It is a day of non-stop activity, the girls punching the air with their shields and slashing with their knives in graceful song and dance, swirl past the royal box where the Queen Mother, the King and their dignitaries sit and admire.
For every girl in the dancing regiment, this is their most important day. They put their best foot forward, summoning all their energy and grace; knowing the King is watching. Any of the thousands of maidens that day is a prospective potential future queen.
A healthy Swazi is allowed to marry as many wives as he can support. Polygamy is a normal and important element of Swazi tradition. Umhlanga allows the King to exercise royal prerogative of first pick among the fairest of the year. King Mswati lll who has been on the throne now for 38 years has been judicious, choosing a new bride about every three years or so. It is his duty to marry from as many from the nation’s clans, thereby promote national unity.
Zuma factor
Going into the 2024 Umhlanga, the King appeared to look outside the borders of the kingdom for his next bride. All signs suggested he had set his eye on Nomcebo Zuma, daughter of former South Africa President Jacob Zuma. She was accorded the honour of cutting the first reed at the 2024 Umhlanga, and held centre of attraction at the Umhlanga main day. Though the King’s life is public knowledge, generally accepted customary decorum reserves public discussion of the king’s private life outside the boundaries of normal discourse. However if the King does marry Miss Zuma, he will be reverting to a practice common among his earlier ancestors. Swati Kings regularly married into the Ndwandwe clan – the dominant Nguni dynasty of the early 18th Century. King Somhlolo (Sobhuza l) had married one of the Ndwandwe leader, Zwide’s youngest daughters, Tsandzile together with four of her sisters. His great grandfather, Dlamini lll had married la Yaka, also a Ndwandwe. Following the final crushing of the Ndwandwe by Shaka at the battle of Ndololwane in 1826; Somhlolo’s successor, Mswati ll had married Sisile Khumalo from Mzilikazi Khumalo clan. By then, Mzilikazi was well on his way to establish the Matebele nation in southern Zimbabwe, he too having been dislodged by Shaka. Mswati’s successor, Ludvonga had chosen Mdlalose Hlubi, the daughter of Langalibalele, chief of the Hlubi people of the Natal. Subsequent Kings have kept their choices local.
Over the years Umhlanga has shed its mantle as a parochial event. As more Africans seek to reconnect with their Africaness, they are flocking in to experience a lived cultural experience in Eswatini where various key institutions and traditions are still well preserved. The circle is increasingly expanding beyond the core Nguni family to attract tourists and cultural interest far into Africa. Some are taking lessons and reincarnating Swati traditions in their own communities.
The Zulu people of Shaka, now part of South Africa have transplanted the practice, introduced by King Mswati lll’s sister, Princess Mantfombi when she married the Zulu leader, King Zwelithini. Her son, King Mswati lll’s nephew, Misuzulu who succeeded to the Zulu kingship is a regular Umhlanga guest. He joined the 2024 event along with leaders of Nguni lineages including Xhosas, Mabhuda Tsonga, as well as the Khumalo Ndebele in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
In recent years, the Queen Mother’s Umhlanga circle of visitors continues to expand, with African royalty hailing from as far afield as West Africa descending on Eswatini. The paramount leader of the Ashanti of Ghana, Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II has dropped in to grace the Eswatini cultural event. During the 2024 event, former Nigeria President Olusegun Obasanjo joined the King prance on the arena in a customary dance to appreciate the maidens from close range.
Umhlanga a tourism magnet
The cultural event is now a major tourist magnet for the Kingdom, drawing more visitors during August than any other month. Eswatini Tourism Authority head, Vusi Dlamini acclaimed August for registering high numbers of tourists. At over 86,000 visitors in August 2024, this is more than any other month. The strong majority of visitors came from Africa; with 86% from the kingdom’s neighbours of Mozambique and South Africa. A surprising surge in interest came from Lesotho, with an almost 300% increase. Botswana also sent in almost 100% more visitors compared to 2023. The two are part of Eswatini’s colonial era sisterhood under the High Commission territories of Basotholand, Bechuanaland and Swaziland that were being prepared for incorporation into apartheid South Africa. The three, now being bonded again under Umhlanga progressively grew apart since independence, disbanding their last colonial link in the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland in 1974 as each sought a separate development trajectory.
Zimbabwe and Zambia numbers were up 40% and 26% respectively. Interest from South East Asia and the Pacific is also significant. August tourists from Australia were up by 40%, Taiwan 27% and South Korea 26%. The USA, normally a significant visitor had a modest 8% growth. Europe tourists was significantly subdued, reflective of the ongoing Russia-Ukrainne-NATO. UK turists were down by 2.3%, France by 27% and the Netherlands by 13%.
Home for Lojiba
Maidens were first sent to collect Umhlanga in 1821 to build the home of Somhlolo’s mother, Lojiba at Lobamba, a few kilometres from Ludzidzini.
Windbreakers are an essential feature of a traditional Swazi homestead. They establish the parameters of public and private living spaces and fence off the residence of the royal family inner circles, providing privacy and a conducive family atmosphere. An average reed fence can last in good condition for several years. The imperatives of royal hegemony though require periodic public mobilization in collective communal efforts that involve all sectors of society. The royal fence requires the hands of the nation’s maidens; of men who bring in timber stalwarts and stays that hold the stockade firm as well as married women who come with grass ropes and sew the reeds into place.
As they say, it takes a village to bring up a child. As African people continue to search for an authentic African legacy, Eswatini’s Umhlanga’s relevance as a social framework for the upbringing and protection young girls grows. It is a practice that provides a social mechanism ensuring that society maintains systems that promote a character that is consistent with the identity of the community. By promoting social expectations of virginity as a valued standard for girls, the stigma staying from the social norm is supposed to vilify pre-marital sex, thus protecting girls from socially transferable diseases and teenage pregnancies that are a danger to young women.
Strong fathers are essential for the girlchild’s protection. Daughters staying chaste until marriage enhances their parents’ social standing, dignity and respectability. When they marry, they carry the high expectation that they are transferring solid family values into their bridal family. For well brought up brides, receiving families are more than willing to handsomely compensate the girl’s family with cattle as lobolo (token of appreciation paid in cattle).
Jm/1.9.24 Today
[1] Constitution of Swaziland 2005
[2] Huw M. Jones, Biographical Register of Swaziland to 1902, page 347 ISBN 0 86980 880 X
