Ginyintsimbi, Eastern Cape, South Africa (photo: Joshua Gaunt on Unsplash)
Last December, there was a popular meme in social media of people wearing Xhosa attire with exhilarating vibrancy in what was clearly an umgidi (coming of age of a young Xhosa man in the mountains) celebration. The caption of the meme read: “Give December to amaXhosa!” This, though said in jest, touched a nerve. I have been among amaXhosa people who have expressed their growing concerns about the abuses that are creeping into imigidi celebrations. Let us first give a background context for those who are not familiar with imigidi.
Most Xhosa boys go to the mountains for a rite of passage during the December holidays. It used to be in June, the first month of the Xhosa calendar. Hence an adult male in Xhosa culture counts his adult years by a number of izilimela (Pleiades) he has seen since coming back from the mountains. The Seven Stars (Pleiades) have a sacred significance in Xhosa lore. They’re visible during the same months in both the southern and northern hemispheres. Although they are a summer asterism here, they appear lower in the sky during winter in June. I am not sure if the Xhosa calendar is influenced by the Western Gregorian calendar, but the Bantus seem to have used it before their encounter with occidental people. I suspect their influence is from Arabic cultures they encountered first, because the Hijrah calendar also has twelve months and the Arabs were the founders of the numeric system used everywhere today.
June worked well for Xhosa circumcision, because in winter the wound is less susceptible to becoming septic. But now, most boys go to school during the December holidays, which are longer. Traditionally, the young man must spend at least four weeks in the mountains, although these days three weeks is also fast becoming a norm. In the bygone days, the young men were required to spend a minimum of six months there. The practice was still a strict rite of passage then, when you were expected to learn male adult mannerism, cultural and moral mores of being a Xhosa man, as well as your genealogy, the history of your nation and clan, etc. You were also instilled with the manly duties of husband and father. The now popular leitmotif (“A man must …”) comes from the commandments boys used to be instructed in at the school of circumcision when it was still an authentic rite of passage.
This rite of passage is heavily dependent on the family structure. Fathers are an anchor of the process. In the absence of the father, the uncles assume the responsibility, especially when the boy has grown up in a household led by a single mother. Where there is a serious breakdown of the family structure, problems usually ensue. When uncles are not available or are irresponsible, the family resorts to a hired hand nurse known as ikhankatha to look after umkhwetha (the initiate) in the mountains. Unfortunately, the hired hand often doesn’t have the attendant care and responsibility of a sibling or blood relative. They also, mostly to make more profit, may take on too many clients, resulting in their not being able to provide service and properly look after them. Due to this neglect, or a botched circumcision, serious problems emanate that sometimes lead to the death of the initiate.
Like most traditional practices, there is an element of esotericism in the rite of passage of ulwaluko. The name ulwaluko, meaning “straightening up”, hints at the process being an attempt to make straight the ways of the young man towards adulthood. During the four weeks he is in the mountains, daubed with white clay, a symbolic clarion call of withdrawing from normal society. During the four weeks, he undergoes strict mannerism discipline that includes observing rituals of disassociation from certain taboo practices, and abstention from some foods, sex, smoking and drinking, etc. In the bygone days, this process was more intensive and rigorous, involving historical and cultural identity therapy and other cleansing rituals in a manner similar to that now practised only by amagqirha initiates. There used to be daily rituals of songs, dance and such things that were supposed to bring the initiate closer to his ancestral spirit. This was also the time the initiate’s dreams and pain-induced visions were attentively noted and interpreted as the path the ancestors wished the young man to take in his adult life.
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As much as I understand and respect the now common practice of clustering young boys under the care of a district surgeon or something similar, I lament the loss of other rituals in this arrangement.
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Also, in the bygone days, the process yomoluko was organised by the royal/chief/priestly house. The parents of the common initiate would donate a cow or two for the upkeep of the boy, but everything was done collectively from one of these houses. This safeguarded the custom against fly-by-night charlatans pretending to be surgeons and who sometimes botched the process. It also gave the initiates a sense of belonging and hierarchical positioning. For instance, the initiates who went to the school of circumcision with a prince would be what was termed amafanankosi, his strict confidants and protectors for life. Nkosi Maqoama’s coevals who went to the mountains with him helped him establish his own house of AmaJingqi; subsequently, he moved away from his father’s shadow to settle in the region of the Kat River, the land he went to his grave lamenting because the British confiscated it from him to form the Kat River Settlement.
As much as I understand and respect the now common practice of clustering young boys under the care of a district surgeon or something similar, I lament the loss of other rituals in this arrangement. For one, unless families privately arrange this, there is now no teaching of the young men who they are amid the myriad clan origins. They come out of the mountains without any better or deeper understanding of their history and identity. The modern practice is informed by the underlying concerns for the health of the initiates. Perhaps some sort of cultural induction should accompany this modern practice also, even if organised by families. Some sort of traditional tutors or seers should be collectively organised as part of the package to teach children about the reservoir of their family/clan/national history. Ideally, this role used to be fulfilled by the father/grandfather/uncle of the family, but we are now not in an ideal situation, and things, including culture, evolve. In the absence of immediate siblings, someone versed in the oral history of the region and clan should be employed to fulfil this role.
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The thing is, umgidi is a collective custom that is practised by others in your family/clan circle also. It is not an individual thing you can alter as you please, because it involves sacred, collective rituals that have been established over generations.
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Among the disturbing modern practices is where izibazana, the mother of the initiate, usurps the child’s umgidi as something to celebrate her achievements. Laudable as her role might have been in raising the boy, umgidi should always be about the boy as the celebration of his final stage in the rite of passage. I encourage the practice whereby the mother gathers her friends before the boy goes to the mountains – bamambathise – where they give her some material assistance for the momentous task ahead. But the prominence of her role and celebration should be limited to that. Unfortunately, these days, crass capitalism has also taken a hold over imigidi, and you see the umkhwetha being brought from the mountains in a luxury car or limousine, or even a helicopter in some instances. I strongly dispute those who say the family has a right to flaunt their money if they so wish. The thing is, umgidi is a collective custom that is practised by others in your family/clan circle also. It is not an individual thing you can alter as you please, because it involves sacred, collective rituals that have been established over generations. What you do during umgidi implicates in particular those of the same clan as you. When I object to how you conduct umgidi, it is not because I am jealous of your material wealth, but because I’m protecting the dignity and sacredness of our common ritual. We are Africans, not people of rugged individualism.
Lastly, imigidi is now fast becoming an excuse for glaring alcohol abuse. There was an article going around about how South Africans spent about R7,7 billion on alcohol during the week between 24 and 31 December 2024. I doubt the veracity of the article, which I am sure was not even verified. Although I suspect it was a gross exaggeration, I understand the sentiment it was trying to invoke. As a country, we are among the highest alcohol consumers in the world. Naturally, imigidi contributes vastly to this, because during the celebrations alcohol forms more than 80% of the means of donation or gift exchange. Some people now even measure the success of umgidi by how drunk the guests were. As such, hosts compete in wanting to ply their guests with alcohol during imigidi celebrations. Luckily, I noticed a growing practice of banning alcohol in some of the imigidi I went to during the past holidays. I think this should be encouraged.
Most people don’t believe me when I say the only form of alcohol that the Xhosa drank before the arrival of the Europeans was iqhilika, mead made from honey that they got from the San people, with whom they also exchanged tobacco and dagga. The Xhosa were introduced to umqomboti (traditional beer) with the arrival of the so-called Mfengu in the early part of the 19th century. The practice of using umqomboti during traditional ceremonies took off after Nkosi Ngqika married two Mfengu wives so they could teach his household how to brew it. Brewing umqomboti among the Xhosa became popular after that. Then the Europeans introduced them to hard liquor, peach brandy in particular, which resulted in the demise of many Xhosa aristocrats, including Nkosi Ngqika, who died from liver cirrhosis.
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From the very moment black people in general, and the Xhosa in particular, lost their land, and thus the means of sustainable sustenance, the seduction of alcohol became a fatal pandemic and double curse.
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I used to dismiss the first Xhosa intellectuals, who were mostly Christian converts, for being a little prudish and uppity because of their constant complaints about the drinking habits of amaQaba abomvu (red ochre, unconverted, staunch tribalists). People like Zisani Tiyo Soga, and William Gqoba after him, propagated the ban of alcohol sales to the Xhosa. The likes of SEK Mqhayi up to AC Jordan also heeded this call. In his seminal book, The land is ours, advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi showcases how, in the early 20th century, almost all the first black constitutionalists he studied ended up with the problem of alcoholism. The trend continued in the ’50s with the black Drum writers, as shown by Sylvester Stein in his book, Who killed Mr Drum?. He calls it “the Black Disease”. From the very moment black people in general, and the Xhosa in particular, lost their land, and thus the means of sustainable sustenance, the seduction of alcohol became a fatal pandemic and double curse. In my book, The wanderers, I rendered the traditional poem which my grandfather, who was a teetotaller, liked to use to caution us about the fatal dangers of alcohol, which he said makes individuals, and thus nations, dysfunctional:
The rod of Victoria
crushed the shoot of Phalo,
the Brits took Gungubele and Mfanta
to follow Maqoma who followed many
to be incarcerated at the Leper Colony
to catch its breath,
the nation of Phalo
curtseyed to Victoria’s tears.
A double curse
the sons Albion brought to our land. (71)
It would indeed be a double curse for our generation to smuggle the disease in through the innocuous cultural celebrations of imigidi.
Also read:
On the unlawful banning of Inxeba (The wound) by the Films and Publications Board (FPB)
PEN Afrikaans strongly objects to the X-rating given to Inxeba | The Wound