Zimbabwe's Cultural Heritage

The Kalanga and ‘Nholo we mwizana’

118 The Kalanga and ‘Nholo we mwizana’ For the better part of a week, one issue dominated conversation in Bulawayo. In offices and commuter buses, at bus stops and on factory floors, the talk was about nholo we mwizana, an age old Kalanga cultural practice. Interest in the matter was generated by a story in the Sunday News about a woman from Kezi who burnt her father–in-law’s hut in protest against his sexual advances. One might have expected that most people in the region would be fairly au fait with both the history and customs of the Kalanga. Professor David Beach (1980) explains the situation as follows: “The position [of the Kalanga] between the better known states (Ndebele and Ngwato) and the peoples on either side of them has meant that they have been almost totally neglected historically, and so far there is virtually no traditional evidence available on the Kalanga that could illuminate their history before 1650, or indeed, before 1800.” Be that as it may, there is general consensus on the key elements of nholo we mwizana. Nholo, in the Kalanga language, means head and mwizana a lamb. So, nholo we mwizana means head of a lamb. But what is the connection between the cultural practice and the head of a lamb? “Very good that you ask that question,” said Mr Raphael Jonathan Bhutshe. “My mother was a pure Kalanga. When a young man married, he was not allowed to have sexual intercourse with his wife before she was approved as a daughter-in-law by the family.” Approval by the family took the form of the father-in–law having sexual intercourse with the daughter-in-law. The relationship was engaged in on the first night following her arrival at her in-laws. The community accepted the practice. “You see, Mr Pathisa, among the Balilima in Botswana, it was the opposite of what the Kalanga did. A young man marrying into a Lilima family was required to prove his manhood before he could take their daughter’s hand in marriage. Mature girls in the family had sex with the prospective husband. If the young man’s manhood passed the rigorous test, the future wife would not have grounds for deserting the husband because of his lack of sexual virility,” said Mr Bhutshe. Among the Kalanga, sexual intercourse between father-in-law and his daughter-in-law served as an initiation into the family. 119 Responding to a suggestion that the purpose of the one-off encounter was to test the girl’s virginity, Mr Bhutshe had this to say. “No, no. Virginity tests could be undertaken by women on their own without assistance from men. In any case, among the Kalanga, the daughter-in-law’s loss of virginity was not a stigma. With or without her virginity, the daughter-in-law would still undergo nholo we mwizana,” said Mr Bhutshe emphatically. So what purpose did nholo we mwizana serve within a family? The Kalanga, like several other African ethnic groups, were strongly patriarchal. The man was the unchallenged head of the household. He presided over disputes among his charges. For the daughter-in-law who has had sexual intercourse with her father-in-law, all barriers are removed. She would report, without inhibition, any matter concerning her sexuality. Another Kalanga tradition was that on the death of the head of the household, the eldest son could marry all his late father’s wives – except his own mother. In the late 1920s my own family experienced this phenomenon when one of my grandfathers married his late father’s youngest wife. Though originally Sotho, my people, by marrying Kalanga wives, ended up adopting some Kalanga cultural practices. Such a practice helped to keep the wider family together. Younger wives did not, on the death of their husbands, have to go back to their own people. The critical assumption here is that if a father has had sexual intercourse with his son’s wife, the son, on the death of his father, could have unimpeded access to the widows. Concerning the name of the practice, Mr Bhutshe explained as follows: “If the father is the head of the family, he is likened to a ram. The son is therefore likened to a small sheep, mwizana. In sexual matters the law of the jungle applied. The powerful monopolised access to sex. The powerful ram chased the small ones - mwizana - so that it could have the lion’s...