Journal articles on the topic 'Ritual – Zimbabwe'

Abstract Salvage excavations in the 1970s uncovered a sizeable commoner occupation at Great Zimbabwe, as well as evidence for the early construction of an elite stonewalled enclosure. As a result of these excavations, we can revise somewhat the chronology of Great Zimbabwe. The most important changes are the extension of Period IVa, lasting from AD 1285±10 to 1395±10, and the appearance of P, P/Q and Q-coursed walling in Period IVa. The small Nemanwa palace was built in P/Q and first dates to Period IVa, as does the Outer Perimeter Wall, and both were linked to the growth of the Zimbabwe state. Period IVb represents the floruit of Great Zimbabwe, while Period IVc encompasses the occupation after the political elite moved north to become the well-known Mutapa dynasty. After the move north, the Mutapa established a masungiro ritual centre at Great Zimbabwe, perhaps to maintain territorial rights in the face of Torwa expansion.

Despite Westernization and particularly the advent of Christianity and its widespread entrenchment on the African continent, traditional indigenous rituals continue to constitute an integral part of African religious belief systems and practices. This article presents the results of an ethnoarchaeological study of two death rituals that are conducted by the Ndau people of south eastern Zimbabwe. The rituals are a demonstration of attitudes towards death and beliefs about the role of the dead among the living. The Ndau do not believe that death signals and represents the end of life. In the same vein and perhaps more importantly, the Ndau do not believe that death just happens. It is caused by human agency out of jealousies, hatred and conflict among the living. These beliefs are central to the two rituals presented and discussed here: the first ritual is conducted to ascertain cause of death and the second to bring back the spirit of the deceased from a temporary state of limbo immediately after death. Meat and beer are central to these rituals, firstly as offerings to the deceased and secondly as an important part of the living celebration of the rituals. The paper then explores some interpretive implications of the rituals from an archaeological perspective.

This study seeks to look at the meaning and significance of Glossolalia 1 in the Apostolic Faith Mission in Zimbabwe. 2 This paper has also been influenced by debates surrounding speaking in tongues in most of the Pentecostal churches in general and the Apostolic Faith Mission in Zimbabwe in particular. It was the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) that brought Pentecostalism to Zimbabwe. 3 The paper situates the phenomenon of glossolalia in the Zimbabwean socio-economic, spiritual, and cultural understanding. The Pentecostal teachings on the meaning and significance of speaking in tongues have caused a stir in psychological, linguistics, sociological, anthropological, ethnographical, philological, cultural, and philosophical debates. Yet those in the Apostolic Faith Mission in Zimbabwe argue that their concept of glossolalia is biblically rooted. Surprisingly non-glossolalist Christians also use the Bible to dismiss the pneumatic claims by Pentecostals. The emphasis on speaking in tongues in the AFM has rendered Zimbabwean ‘mainline’ churches like Anglicans, Catholics and Methodists as meaningless. This is the same with African Indigenous Churches which have also been painted with ‘fault-lines’, giving an upper hand to AFM in adding up to its ballooning number of followers. This is as a result of their restorationist perspective influenced by the history of the Pentecostal Churches that views all non-Pentecostal churches as having fallen from God's intentions through compromise and sin. The AFM just like other Pentecostal churches in Zimbabwe exhibit an aggressive assault and intolerance toward certain aspects of the African culture, which they label as tradition, 4 for example, traditional customs, like paying homage to ancestral spirits (Kurova Guva or bringing back the spirit of the dead ceremony), and marriage customs (polygamy, kusungira or sanctification of the first born ritual). The movement has managed to rid itself of the dominance of the male adults and the floodgates were opened to young men and women, who are the victims of traditional patriarchy. Besides glossolalia being one of the pillars of AFM doctrines, the following also bear some importance: personal testimonies, tithing, church weddings, signs/miracles, evangelism and prosperity theology.

AbstractIn view of the actual debate on funeral rites in Christian Churches in Africa, a revision of the old position of missionaries that forbade all traditional ritual concerning death as belonging to paganism should be undertaken on the basis of social anthropological research which analyses structure and function of the funeral practices. Thus the mourning rites are understood as means of purification and reconciliation of the bereaved extended family. Parallels between African rituals and those of Israel of the Old Testament may also be taken into account. The efforts towards contextualisation of the Christian message in days of mourning by the ancient Ethiopian Church and by churches in Zimbabwe of today may serve as guidelines for developing rituals marking the end of mourning focused on reconciliation and the victory of life over death.

The rising of the Ndebele and southwestern and central Shona people against colonial rule in the 1890s has become one of the classic cases of such resistance. Yet, since the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980, very little fresh research has been carried out on the subject. This paper re-examines the role of Shona religious authorities in the rising, especially that of the medium of the Nehanda spirit of the Mazowe valley in the central Shona area. In just over a century, the figure of “Mbuya Nehanda” has become the best-known popular symbol of resistance to colonial rule in modern Zimbabwe. She has been commemorated since 1980 in statues, street names, a hospital, posters, songs, novels, and poems, and is soon to be the subject of a full-length feature film. This paper examines the historical basis behind the legend.This legend runs as follows: the historical “Nehanda” was supposed to have been the daughter of the founding ancestor of the Mutapa dynasty, who lived in the fifteenth century. Her ritual incest with her brother Matope gave supernatural sanction to the power of the Mutapa state. After her death, she became a mhondoro spirit, and this spirit possessed a number of mediums (masvikiro, singular svikiro). During periods of possession by the spirit, the svikiro was regarded as speaking with the voice and personality of the original Nehanda and not with her own. In the last part of the nineteenth century one medium, Charwe, was responsible for the organization of resistance to the government of the British South Africa Company and the settlers in the Mazowe valley, and in particular for the killing of H.H. Pollard, Kunyaira, the extremely oppressive Native Commissioner of the area. This resistance began in June 1896, and from then until her capture in late 1897 the Nehanda medium was a major factor in the war. Tried and sentenced to death in March 1898, she refused to convert to Christianity and struggled right up to the moment when she was hanged.

The female ex-prisoners interviewed in the semi-autobiographical collection A tragedy of lives: Women in prison in Zimbabwe (2003) caused the deaths of their own loved ones, consequently they were unable to mourn or bury them. The processing of the homicides precludes these women going through the appropriate rites and rituals which ordinarily form part of deaths in Zimbabwean cultural traditions. Variously manifesting in the experiences of the different women interviewed, the complex psychiatric and psychological problems observed in these women are attributable to incomplete mourning and unresolved grief which are linked to the social inadequacies of a necessarily truncated expression of that grief. The present textual analysis is dually guided by Africana womanist and psychoanalytic theoretical frameworks. The study establishes a shift by Zimbabwean women writers from merely highlighting issues that affect women, to taking a stance on the effects of imprisonment on female offenders both during and after incarceration. Empathy and optimism are shown towards the interviewees. The semi-autobiography also enables the generality of Zimbabweans to understand the effects of such crimes and the need to rehabilitate offenders. The study encourages harmonious co-existence between males and females in the postcolony.

This paper explores the reconciliatory possibilities of the theatrical piece Rituals (2011) penned by Stephen Chifunyise and directed and produced by Daves Guzha. The Rituals’ theatrical piece memorialises as well as condemns a culture of violence demonstrated during the 2008 harmonised elections in Zimbabwe. Through “ritualized” performance, a community embarks on a metaphysical journey focused on exorcising the ghosts of political violence still haunting individuals, communities, politicians, and the nation as a whole. These day-to-day modes of healing and reconciliation, dramatised through Rituals, suggest that communities can create platforms for peace, cultivate tolerance and permit dialogue to prevail if victims are brought face-to-face with perpetrators of violence with the hope of ironing out political differences. It is going to be argued in this paper that although the political drama in Rituals, centralises politicians as major culprits that fomented violence, its failure to go beyond political meta-narratives constricts its capacity to explore the complexities of violence in Zimbabwe. These complexities are informed by factors such as lack of voter education, existence of age-old grudges, and fragmentation of community values, among others. Another critical strand to be explored in this article is one that interrogates Rituals’ potential to reach out to the wider audiences at grassroots levels, since the political drama in Rituals speaks to the “upper class” and intellectual circles, thereby foreclosing critical debate and “voices” that should emerge from “below” which are communi­ties many of whom were directly involved. By adopting a down-top methodological approach, the article seeks to place communities at the forefront in confronting questions of violence, peace-building and reconciliation in Zimbabwe.

The Need for HealingThis article is about the unseen world of war—the unrecorded consequences for children of large-scale horror. There are two parts to it. The first is on the need for healing: it is an account of children's suffering during Zimbabwe's War of Liberation and their part in the fight for freedom. The second describes the means for healing: it examines how traditional healers (n'anga) provided opportunities through ritual for reconciliation and the soothing of individual trauma.

Abstract‘Any study of Great Zimbabwe has to rely a great deal on re-examining and re-assessing the work of early investigators, the men who removed all the most important finds from the ruins and stripped them of so much of their deposits’ (Garlake 1973: 14). The authors have here done us a great service in reviewing the surviving archaeological evidence from this world famous site. They challenge the structuralist interpretation – in which different parts of the site were allocated to kings, priests, wives or to circumcision rituals – and use the architectural, stratigraphic and artefactual evidence accumulated over the years to present a new sequence. The early enclosures on the hill, the Great Enclosure and the valley enclosures now appear as the work of successive rulers, each founding a new residence and power centre in accord with Shona practice.

The study reconnoitred elements of performance that are found at Korekore funerals. The purpose of the study was to revisit indigenous performance practices and elaborate elements of performance that are embodied within. Korekore funerals of Guruve district, Zimbabwe were used as a case study in this article. The paper argues that Korekore funerals demonstrate the use of theatre elements where space, actors, stagecraft and improvisation are key to a ‘Kunemera Mufi’ production. We argue that the ‘Kunemera Mufi’ at a typical Korekore funeral demonstrate the fact that theatre has always existed among the indigenous African people well before the first Whiteman came to Africa. Theatre was and remains part of the everyday activities among the Korekore, not only at funerals but also in other everyday chores such as hunting, work, child games, rites of passages, rituals and ceremonies. Thus, the paper argues against the Eurocentric definition of theatre or performance by elaborating the elements of performance at a Korekore funeral.

This edition is the first issue of Dewa Ruci’s Journal, in which all articles are in English. We deliberately changed the language of publication to English to facilitate information delivery to a wider audience. We realize that English is the official language for many countries rather than other languages in this world. The number of people who have literacy awareness and need scientific information about visual and performing arts regarding the archipelago’s cultural arts is also quite large.The decision to change the language of publication to English does not mean that we do not have nationalism or are not in love with the Indonesian language. This change is necessary to foster the intensity of scientific interaction among writers who are not limited to Indonesia’s territory alone. We desire that the scientific ideas outlined in Dewa Ruci’s Journal are read by intellectual circles of the arts internationally. We also want to express our scientific greetings to art experts from countries in New Zealand, the USA, Australia, Europe, especially Britain, and other English-speaking countries such as the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, the Caribbean, Hong Kong, South Africa, and Canada. Of course, a change in English will also benefit intellectuals from countries that have acquired English as a second language, such as Malaysia, Brunei, Israel, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka. In essence, Dewa Ruci’s Journal editor wants to invite writers to greet the scientific community at large.We are grateful that six writers can greet the international community through their articles. The first is Tunjung Atmadi and Ika Yuni Purnama, who wrote an article entitled “Material Ergonomics on Application of Wooden Floors in the Interior of the Workspace Office.” This article discusses office interiors that are devoted to workspaces. The purpose of this study is to share knowledge about how to take advantage of space-forming elements in the interior design of a workspace by utilizing wooden floors like parquet. The focus is on choosing the use of wood by paying attention to the elements in its application. This research result has a significant meaning in the aesthetics, comfort, and safety of wooden floors in the workspace’s interior and its advantages and disadvantages.The second writer who had the opportunity to greet the Dewa Ruci Journal audience was intellectuals with diverse expertise, namely Taufiq Akbar, Dendi Pratama, Sarwanto, and Sunardi. Together they wrote an article entitled “Visual Adaptation: From Comics to Superhero Creation of Wayang.” This article discusses the fusion and mixing of wayang as a traditional culture with comics and films as contemporary culture products. This melting and mixing have given birth to new wayang creations with sources adapted from the superhero character “Avenger,” which they now call the Avenger Wayang Kreasi. According to them, Wayang Kreasi Avenger’s making maintains technical knowledge of the art of wayang kulit. It introduces young people who are not familiar with wayang kulit about the technique of carving sungging by displaying the attributes in the purwa skin for Wayang Kreasi Avenger. This creativity is an attempt to stimulate and show people’s love for the potential influence of traditional cultural heritage and its interaction with the potential of contemporary culture.The next authors are Sriyadi and RM Pramutomo, with an article entitled “Presentation Style of Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun Dance in Pura Mangkunegaran.” This article reveals a repertoire of Yogyakarta-style dance in Mangkunegaran, Surakarta, namely the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun. The presence of this dance in Mangkunegaran occurred during the reign of Mangkunegara VII. However, the basic character of the Mangkunegaran style dance has a significant difference from the Yogyakarta style. This paper aims to examine the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun dance’s presentation style in Mangkunegaran to determine the formation of its presentation technique. The shape of the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun dance style in Mangkunegaran did not occur in an event but was a process. The presentation style’s formation is due to a problem in the inheritance system that has undergone significant changes. These problems arise from social, political, cultural, and economic conditions. The responses to these problems have shaped the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun dance's distinctive features in Mangkunegaran, although not all of them have been positive.Hasbi wrote an article entitled “Sappo: Sulapa Eppa Walasuji as the Ideas of Creation Three Dimensional Painting.” This article reveals Hasbi’s creative process design in creating three-dimensional works of art, named Sappo. He got his inspiration from the ancient manuscripts written in Lontara, namely the manuscripts written in the traditional script of the Bugis-Makassar people on palm leaves, which they still keep until now. Sappo for the Bugis community is a fence that limits (surrounds, isolates) the land and houses. Sappo’s function is to protect herself, her family, and her people. Sulapa Eppa means four sides, is a mystical manifestation, the classical belief of the Bugis-Makassar people, which symbolizes the composition of the universe, wind-fire-water-earth. Walasuji is a kind of bamboo fence in rhombus rituals. Eppa Walasuji’s Sulapa is Hasbi’s concept in creating Sappo in the form of three-dimensional paintings. The idea is a symbolic expression borrowing the Lontara tradition's idiom to create a symbolic effect called Sappo.Mahdi Bahar and his friends wrote an article entitled “Transformation of Krinok to Bungo Krinok Music: The Innovation Certainty and Digital-Virtual Contribution for Cultural Advancement.” Together, they have made innovations to preserve Krinok music, one of Jambi’s traditional music themes, into new music that they call Bungo Krinok. He said that innovation is a necessity for the development of folk music. In innovating, they take advantage of digital technology. They realize this music’s existence as a cultural wealth that has great potential for developing and advancing art. The musical system, melodic contours, musical grammar, and distinctive interval patterns have formed krinok music’s character. This innovation has given birth to new music as a transformation from Jambi folk music called “Bungo Krinok” music.Finally, Luqman Wahyudi and Sri Hesti Heriwati. They both wrote an article entitled “Social Criticism About the 2019 Election Campaign on the Comic Strip Gump n Hell.” They explained that in 2019 there was an interesting phenomenon regarding the use of comic strips as a means of social criticism, especially in the Indonesian Presidential Election Campaign. The title of the comic is Gump n Hell by Errik Irwan Wibowo. The comic strip was published and viral on social media, describing the political events that took place. In this study, they took three samples of the comic strip Gump n Hell related to the moment of the 2019 election to analyze their meaning. From the results of this study, there is an implicit meaning in the comic strip of pop culture icons' use to represent political figures in the form of parodies.That is the essence of the issue of Volume 16 Number 1 (April Edition), 2021. Hopefully, the knowledge that has been present in this publication can spur the growth of visual and performing art science in international networks, both in the science of art creation and in scientific research of art in general. We hope that the development of visual and performing art science can reveal the various meanings behind various facts and phenomena of art life. Therefore, the growth of international networks is an indispensable need.Thank you.

The Vumba Hills in central Mozambique, close to the Zimbabwe border, are the kingdom of Mambo (Chief) Chirara. The Mambo’s leading position is acknowledged by the government, and in addition to being the region's most important spiritual leader, the Mambo has the right to hold court cases that deal with minor crimes, problems involving spirits and domestic affairs. He is assisted by several subchiefs and ritual leaders. In the northernmost corner of the Mambo’s kingdom, Mbuya Gondo, an over 70-years-old woman, is a spiritual medium. She often holds ceremonies at a well-known rock drawing site. Mambo Chirara is not pleased with the old lady's activities. In his opinion, Mbuya Gondo acts too independently and demands too much money for carrying out the ceremonies. In the film, gender issues and local politics are brought to the surface as we follow these two leaders during a period of preparing for and performing the annual rainmaking rituals. The film is based on the fieldwork and archaeological research of Tore Sætersdal and Eva Walderhaug Sætersdal.