Bewitching Zulu Women: Umhayizo , Gender, and Witchcraft in KwaZulu-Natal
2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 64; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/02582473.2012.671352
ISSN1726-1686
Autores Tópico(s)Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health
ResumoAbstract Umhayizo, a form of bewitchment of young women supposedly caused by the use of love medicines, has been reported in south-eastern Africa, especially in the Province of KwaZulu-Natal, for more than a century. Co-authored by an historian and an anthropologist, ‘Bewitching Zulu Women’ begins with an ethnographic description of an incident of umhayizo in 2000 and then brings together a variety of sources and perspectives on umhayizo including late-nineteenth-century evidence of umhayizo from missionary accounts of the use of love medicines; archival documents which reflect increasing African ambivalence about the use of love medicines; accounts and explanations of umhayizo by ethnographers, anthropologists and psychologists from the 1950s; and recent observations of and treatments for umhayizo in rural KwaZulu-Natal. We argue that it is important to pay attention to the specificities of the phenomenon of umhayizo so as to understand how it might be placed in the context of gender politics, including the gendered use of love medicines, and of the control of women's sexuality both in the past, and now, at a time when HIV/AIDS ravages this region. Keywords: umhayizo witchcraftlove medicinesmagicgendersexualityKwaZulu-NatalhysteriaemotionsHIV/AIDSpower Acknowledgements This article is published in memory of the woman we have called Zandile, who died of AIDS in 2008. Earlier versions of the article have been presented in various fora, including the University of KwaZulu-Natal's History and African Studies Seminar, at the (US) African Studies Association meeting in Houston, and at Cambridge University and Yale University. We thank all those who gave comments and suggested further sources. Notes 1All names used in this account are pseudonyms. In this article, ‘Zulu’ and ‘isiZulu-speaking’ are used interchangeably, though historically this has not been the case. For discussions of Zulu identity, see B. Carton, J. Laband and J. Sithole, eds., Zulu Identities: Being Zulu, Past and Present (Scottsville, Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2008). For the geographic specificity of our research see fn 3. 2Dried aromatic plants, used as incense in almost all ritual and ceremonial events to facilitate communication with ancestral spirits. 3This account has been compiled from conversations and interviews that author, Fiona Scorgie, had with Zandile and with her mother and sister. Also present the night the chief came to her home, Scorgie lived in Zandile's village for 18 months during 2000 and 2001. The village borders the Catholic mission station of Centocow, in southern KwaZulu Natal, an area dominated by isiZulu-speakers, although its geographical proximity to the Eastern Cape and East Griqualand region implies commonalities in cultural and linguistic terms with AmaXhosa and AmaBhaca peoples. (Indeed, some of our archival sources are drawn from the former Transkei region of the Eastern Cape.) Formerly a part of the Colony of Natal, then of the ‘homeland’ of KwaZulu, residents of this area suffered state neglect and repression during apartheid, and continue to experience major development challenges, especially in the provision of housing, sanitation and other basic services. Unemployment levels are high – many households depend heavily on welfare grants and remittances from migrants – as is the prevalence of HIV. Centocow itself, founded in 1888 by German Trappist monks, remains a functioning mission station that serves a large population and also hosts a district hospital. Despite the continuing dominance of Roman Catholicism in the area, the lively presence of African Independent Churches (mainly Zionist) and evangelical, Pentecostal churches is increasingly evident. 4J. Parle, States of Mind: Searching for Mental Health in Natal and Zululand, 1868–1918 (Pietermaritzburg: UKZN Press, 2007). 5See, for example, J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, eds, Modernity and its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) and P. Geschiere, The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997). 6Page 65 of hand-written Chronicle of Centocow Mission. Thanks to Father Stanley Dziuba of the Monastery of the Pauline Fathers of Centocow for kindly permitting access to this document. 7‘Ihabiya’ or ‘Ihabiyo’ first appears in dictionaries in A.T. Bryant's 1906 Zulu-English Dictionary: ‘n. Medicine or love charm of any kind (of modern introduction from Natal) used by young men to cause a girl to hayiza, i.e. to throw her into fits of shouting hysteria in which she repeatedly cries out hayi! hayi! or hiya! hiya!’ ‘Hayiza – Have the Native crying hysteria, i.e, cry out involuntarily hayi, hayi, hayi, as hysterical girls, or hysterical men who have become witchdoctors’. In C.M. Doke, D.M. Malcolm, J.M.A. Sikakana, and B.W. Vilakazi, English-Zulu Zulu-English Dictionary (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1990: 292). ihabiya’ – “n. 1. Medicine or love-charm used by young men to cause a girl to have hysterical fits. 2. Hysterical fit [cf. umhayizo]” ‘hayiza’ - “v. [>perf. -hayizile; pass. hayizwa; ap. hayizela; caus. hayizisa; umhayizo; umahayiza.] Have the Native crying hysteria; rave (as girls who are believed to be affected by charms); be hysterical“ (299). Several authors note the similarity between the peculiar cry made under an attack of umhayizo and that during uthwasa (the state of possession by the amadlozi [ancestral spirits] of those called to undergo training as izangoma [diviners]), but historically there have many significant differences between umhayizo and uthwasa. 8A.T. Bryant, Zulu Medicine and Medicine Men (Cape Town: C.S. Struik, 1966 [1911]), 70–71. 9Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository (PAR), Accession A4/59, A. Cowles, ‘A Love Tragedy’ in Flash Lights into Zulu Homes [n.d.], 10–12. 10National Archives Repository, Pretoria (NAR), Secretary of Native Affairs (NTS) 9465 5/394, ‘Transkeian Territories: Witchcraft’ Transkeian Territory: General Council, Printed Debates, Wednesday 2 May 1917, 74, 120–121, ‘Black Arts and Hypnotism’. 11A recent edited collection – J. Cole and L.M. Thomas, eds, Love in Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) – has begun to explore the histories of emotion and love in Africa, although unfortunately does not consider love medicines. 12In ‘Sexual Socialisation in Historical Perspective’, African Studies, 61, 1, 2002, 27–54, Peter Delius and Clive Glaser trace the ways in which sexuality has been forged and contested in Southern Africa over the past century and more. For Zulu-speaking societies, they draw mostly on E. Krige, The Social System of the Zulus (Pietermaritzburg: Shooter and Shuter, 1950), and B. Carton, Blood From Your Children: The Colonial Origins of Generational Conflict in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2000). 13Much has been written about the unacceptability of pre-marital pregnancy in isiZulu-speaking societies, especially in the literature on kinship and in more recent work on HIV/AIDS in South Africa. Some foundational texts are: E. Preston-Whyte, ‘Families without Marriage: A Zulu Case Study’, in J. Argyle and E. Preston-Whyte, eds, Social System and Tradition in Southern Africa (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1978), 55–85; E. Preston-Whyte and J. Louw, ‘The End of Childhood: An Anthropological Vignette’, in S. Burman and P. Reynolds, eds, Growing Up in a Divided Society: The Contexts of Childhood in South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1986), 360–392; H. Ngubane, Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine (London: Academic Press, 1977); C. Varga, ‘Sexual Decision-making and Negotiation in the Midst of AIDS: Youth in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa’, Health Transition Review, 7, 3 (1997), 45–67. 14F. Scorgie, ‘Mobilising “Tradition” in the Post-Apartheid Era: Amasiko, AIDS and Cultural Rights in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2004). 15Intercrural sex, a non-penetrative form of sexual practice. 16J.G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (London: MacMillan, 1957 [1890]), 16. 17Cowles, ‘A Love Tragedy’, in Flash Lights into Zulu Homes, 11. 18J.B. Shephard, Land of the Tikoloshe (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1955), 47. 19J.B. Shephard, Land of the Tikoloshe (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1955), 48. 22 The Collector, (April 1911), 13: 149. 20Campbell Collections, Durban, Rev. W. Wanger, ed., The Collector, Printed as MSS at Mariannhill, 1 (June 1911), 41: 313. 21 The Collector, (April 1911), 13: 142 and 145. 23According to informants, it is possible for a girl to send the umuthi back to the boy (which would bring an end to her umhayizo) but this is quite unusual. 24S. Reynolds-Whyte, S. van der Geest and A. Hardon, Social Lives of Medicines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 25See also B. Keller, ‘Marriage and Medicine: Women's Search for Love and Luck’, African Social Research, 26 (1978), 489–505. Keller observed similar dynamics among women in urban Zambia in the mid-1970s. 26A. Ashforth, Madumo: A Man Bewitched (Cape Town: David Philip, 2000), 158–159. 27A. Ashforth, Madumo: A Man Bewitched (Cape Town: David Philip, 2000), 158–159. 28S. Leclerc-Madlala, ‘Demonizing Women in the Era of AIDS: An Analysis of the Gendered Construction of HIV/AIDS in KwaZulu-Natal’ (PhD thesis, University of Natal, Durban, 1999). Chapter 7 is titled ‘The Kiss of Death: Women and Love Medicines’. 29Bryant, Zulu Medicine, 70. 30M. Köhler, Marriage Customs in Southern Natal. Ethnological Publications, Vol. IV (Pretoria: Department of Native Affairs, Government Printer, 1933), 28. 33PAR, Secretary of Native Affairs, I/1/452, 4045/1909 = R 1126/1909, Enclosure No. 7. Summary of Magistrates’ Replies to SNA Circular No. 53, 1909, & DNC Circular No. 62, 1909: Ndiki. Further Enclosure No. 3 G, C.G. Jackson, Magistrate, Ndwandwe to DNC, Minute Paper ND 8/1910, Forwards report on the practice known as ‘indiki’. Dated 4 January 1910. 31C.G. Gower, ‘Native Superstition in its Relations to Crime’, Reprinted from the South African Journal of Science, (January) 1917, 8. 32For a lengthier discussion of this, see J. Parle, ‘Witchcraft or Madness? The Amandiki of Zululand, 1894–1914’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 29, 1 (2003), 105–132. 34‘Black Arts and Hypnotism’, 121. 35Editorial by Rev. W. Wanger, The Collector, (April 1912), 110–111. 36See Delius and Glaser, ‘Sexual Socialisation in Historical Perspective’, 2–3, for comment on the ethnographic paradigm's attempts to ‘describe and analyse total social systems’, with an emphasis on family, marriage and the socialisation of children. 37S.G. Lee, ‘A Study of Crying Hysteria and Dreaming in Zulu Women’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1954), 2. See also S.G. Lee, ‘Some Aspects of Zulu Psychopathology’, in Proceedings of the Social Science Conference Relating to Problems Arising from the Structure and Function of a Multi-Racial Society, University of Natal, Durban, July 1956, 203–208; and ‘Spirit Possession Among The Zulu’, in J. Beattie and J. Middleton, eds, Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 128–156. Many of these ‘conditions’, ‘diseases’, or ‘syndromes’ have been more properly identified by other authors as forms of spirit possession that do not necessarily – as Lee's work implies – reflect forms of psychopathology. Similarly, we would not wish to endorse such a negative and instrumentalist interpretation of spirit possession. Rather, here we are concerned to show how umhayizo has been discursively framed over time. It is interesting to note Lee's association of umhayizo with spirits at this time, while his research subjects apparently continued to attribute its cause to ‘love charms’. See Lee, ‘Some Aspects’, 204. 38Lee, ‘A Study’, 24. 39Lee, ‘A Study’, 2. 40The plasticity and inter-changeable nature of many of these terms is shown in that ufufunyane was, in the 1920s, regarded as an ailment caused by possession of either women or men by hordes of ‘Indian’ and ‘white’ spirits. Lee's research assistant and interpreter, Charles Mthembu, however, was of the view that ufufunyane was synonymous with the symptoms of umhayizo. In contrast, it seems that it is only recently that the term umhayizo has begun to be applied to ‘disorders’ that are caused by something other than love magic. 41Lee's methodology involved an initial ‘extensive investigation’ of 416 questionnaires administered to both women and men, followed by an ‘intensive investigation’ through the administering of a much longer questionnaire to more than a hundred subjects, supplemented by a specifically designed thematic apperception test, interviews, and dream analysis. 42Lee, ‘Some Aspects’, 207. 43Lee, ‘Some Aspects’, 204. 44Lee, ‘Some Aspects’, 204. 45B.F. Laubscher, Sex, Custom and Psychopathology (London: Kegan Paul, 1937). Laubscher regarded hysteria in Africans as commonplace and, in the case of women, largely due to ‘unfulfilled erotic desires’. There is some danger of attributing such crudely racist interpretations to Lee, but in his dissertation in particular he pays heed to the wider socioeconomic context that ‘produces psychopathology’ rather than seeing such ‘dysfunction’ as innate. Indeed, along with his contemporaries, Sidney and Emily Kark, Lee recognised the material and emotional impact of migrant labour, rural immiseration, and the worsening nutritional and health situation for Africans in Natal in the mid-twentieth century. In his landmark study ‘The Social Pathology of Syphilis in Africans’, South African Medical Journal, 23 (1949), 77–84, Sidney Kark noted that in Polela, 80 per cent of the men aged 20 to 40 had been absent for an average of eight months during the past year, with profoundly destabilising effects on marriage, ‘social relationships’ and ‘family life’, including an increase in the number of widows (and decrease in levirate marriage), as well as ‘intercourse with single girls at rural homes’. For a recent analysis of these factors and their historical and contemporary implications, see Mark Hunter's Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender and Rights in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg: UKZN Press, 2010), especially ch. 3. 46Lee, ‘Some Aspects’, 207. 47M. Gluckman, Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1954), 8. Here, Gluckman cites several sources which deal with these aspects of Zulu women's psychological disposition – among them, S.G. Lee's PhD, and Sidney Kark, who had established a community health centre at Polela in the 1940s, and who has left a substantial archive of documents and manuscripts dating from his work at this time. 48Gluckman, Rituals of Rebellion, 27. 49Bryant, Zulu Medicine, 71. 50At a girls’ school in Umtata, in the former Transkei, in 1999, over a hundred girls were affected by an outbreak of ufufunyane spirit possession: all underwent exorcism, some were hospitalised as being ‘ill’, others were recommended for psychiatric treatment. Discussed in Parle, ‘Witchcraft or Madness?’ Several outbreaks of ‘hysteria’ with many of the characteristics of umhayizo amongst school children – usually girls – also occurred in Gauteng and KwaZulu provinces in late 2008 and early 2009. Most, but not all, were in rural areas. Explanations ranged from ‘stress’ to ‘witchcraft’, ‘demons’, ‘hysteria’, ‘hormonal imbalances’ and ‘Satanism’. See, for example, ‘Mass Hysteria at Soweto School?’, The Saturday Star, 28 September 2008; ‘Girls Keep Fainting at Ladysmith School – Even at Prayer Meeting’, The Witness, 17 March 2009; ‘Demons Blamed for Hysteria: Mpophomeni School: Grade Nine Girl “accused of witchcraft”’, The Witness, 21 March 2009; ‘Mysterious Wave of Mass Hysteria Hits City School’, Pretoria News, 27 March 2009; ‘School Hysteria is Stress-related’, The Times, 2 April 2009. 51The anthropological, historical, theological, psychological and other scholarly literature on healing, religion, and spirit possession in the region is vast and cannot be reviewed here. Suffice to say that African Zionists have been engaged in healing and cleansing people in KwaZulu-Natal – through exorcism, the combating of Satan, and the use of isiwasho – since the early twentieth century at least, and these churches and groups were given great impetus in the decades after World War 1 and the Great Influenza. For a recent helpful article, see J.A. Draper, ‘A Broken Land and a Healing Community: Zulu Zionism and Healing in the Case of George Khambule (1884–1949)’, Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 36, 1 (May 2010), see http://umkn-dsp01.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/4571?show=full, accessed 20 December 2011. For participation of isi-Zulu-speaking women in evangelism, revivalism and the Holy Spirit in the first half of the twentieth century, see R.J. Houle, ‘The American Board Mission Revivals and the Birth of Modern Zulu Evangelism’, in Carton et al., Being Zulu, 222–239. 52J. Kiernan, ‘Saltwater and Ashes: Instruments of Curing Among Zulu Zionists’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 9, 1 (1978), 30. See also F. Scorgie, ‘Weapons of Faith in a World of Illness: Zionist Prophet-healers Confront HIV/AIDS in Rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa’, in T. Falola and M.M. Heaton, eds, Health, Knowledge and Belief Systems in Africa (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2006), 83–106. 53As numerous studies have shown, spirit possession is often more characteristic of women in African contexts, than of men. The explanations for this are varied, but many revolve around the subordinate status of most women and spirit possession as a limited, but powerfully socially sanctioned, means through which they express their experiences, both subjective and objective. The literature on spirit possession, gender, and agency is considered in greater depth than is possible in this article in Parle's States of Mind, ch. 3. Key texts on this subject also include J. Boddy, Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan (Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 1989) and ‘Spirit Possession Revisited’, Annual Review of Anthropology (1994), 407–434. See also G.T. Haar and S. Ellis, ‘Spirit Possession and Healing in Modern Zambia: An Analysis of Letters to Archbishop Milingo’, African Affairs, 87, 347 (April 1988), 185–206. 54It matters little that the boy himself is seldom named. In a way, there does not need to be a specific boy implicated in each case. The girl may, quite feasibly say that she simply does not know who has done this to her. This would not be surprising or suspect to observers because it is common for young girls to receive numerous love proposals from boys at any one time. 55H. Ngubane, ‘Marriage, Affinity and the Ancestral Realm: Zulu Marriage in Female Perspective’, in E. Jensen Krige and J.L. Comaroff, Essays on African Marriage in Southern Africa (Cape Town: Juta, 1981), 84. 56In his The Roots of Black Africa (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1993), 126, W.D. Hammond-Tooke mentions a custom of ‘ukubaleka’ (lit. to ‘escape’ or ‘run away’) practiced in the past by North Nguni which appears to be similar to ukugana. 57Many men pride themselves on being ‘amasoka’ [s. isoka] – a term that describes someone who has many sexual partners simultaneously. For discussions of masculinity and sexuality in KwaZulu-Natal, see M. Hunter, ‘Masculinities, Multiple Sexual Partners, and AIDS: The Making and Unmaking of Isoka in KwaZulu-Natal’, Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, 54 (2004), 123–153; and ‘Cultural Politics and Masculinities: Multiple-partners in Historical Perspective in KwaZulu-Natal’, Culture, Health & Sexuality, 7, 4 (2005), 389–403. 58See E. Showalter, Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture (London: Picador, 1998), especially ch. 2: ‘Defining Hysteria’; and many works by M.S. Micale, including ‘On The “Disappearance of Hysteria”: Notes on the Clinical Deconstruction of a Diagnosis’, Isis, 84 (1993), 496–526; Approaching Hysteria (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1994); and S. Gilman, H. King, R. Porter, G.S. Rousseau and E. Showalter, Hysteria Beyond Freud (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). These works historicise hysteria, which they see as ‘a universal human response to emotional conflict’. 60Cowles, Flash Lights, 11–12. 59Showalter, Hystories, 6, 18. 61Many ‘scripts’ or narratives may coexist and, to some extent, compete. Schools in southern Africa are not infrequently the site of ‘epidemics’ of spirit possession that call forth a variety of treatments and responses. 62J.J. Brumberg, ‘From Psychiatric Syndrome to “Communicable” Disease: The Case of Anorexia Nervosa’, in C.E. Rosenberg and J. Golden, eds, Framing Disease (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992), cited in Showalter, Hystories, 18–22. 63See, for example: R. Jewkes and N. Abrahams, ‘The Epidemiology of Rape and Sexual Coercion in South Africa: An Overview’, Social Science & Medicine, 55, 7 (2002), 1231–1244; R. Jewkes, K. Dunkle, M.P. Koss, J.B. Levin, M. Nduna, N. Jama and Y. Sikweyiya, ‘Rape Perpetration by Young, Rural South African Men: Prevalence, Patterns and Risk Factors’, Social Science & Medicine, 63, 11 (2006), 2949–2961; P. Maharaj and C. Munthree, ‘Coerced First Sexual Intercourse and Selected Reproductive Health Outcomes among Young Women in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa’, Journal of Biosocial Science, 39, 2 (2007), 231–244. 64Most visibly, this takes the form of ceremonies to ‘check’ the presence of a hymen in adolescent girls, and to extol the virtues of female sexual abstinence, modesty and obedience. See S. Leclerc-Madlala, ‘Virginity Testing: Managing Sexuality in a Maturing HIV/AIDS Epidemic’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 15, 4 (2001), 533–552; and F. Scorgie, ‘Virginity Testing and the Politics of Sexual Responsibility: Implications for AIDS Intervention’, African Studies, 61, 1 (2002), 55–75.
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