Cosmological Efficacy and the - Specialized Research AI at MIT

Cosmological Efficacy and the
Politics of Sacred Place
Soli Rainmaking in Contemporary Zambia

Ruth Simbao

All photographs by the author

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No performance is pure efficacy or pure entertainment
Richard Schechner (1988:120)

In this article I analyze cosmological efficacy in light of

the politicization and apparent secularization of con-
temporary annual ceremonies in Zambia, south-central
Africa, which are framed by scholars as neotraditional
(Lentz 2001), folklorized (van Binsbergen 1994), or
retraditionalized (Gould 2005:3, 6) events. My term
“festivalization” registers the formalization of Zambian perfor-
mances such as rituals, harvest festivals, inaugurations, and ini-
tiations as annual festival events, but does not imply a pejorative
attitude towards cultural change and so-called inauthenticity,
as the words “folklorization” or “retraditionalization” seem to
do.1 Places of sacredness inevitably shift as ceremonies become
increasingly formalized and as private rituals become semi-pub-
lic or public events, and I argue that the natural suppleness of
ritual enables the endurance of efficacious, albeit reconfigured
spiritual and cosmological relationships.

FESTIVALS AND COSMOLOGICAL EFFICACy
Festivalization and the State of the Sacred. This article focuses on
the Soli Chakwela Makumbi annual ceremony, which takes place
in October in Nkomeshya Village near Chongwe, Lusaka Prov-
ince, and is usually attended by local villagers, visiting urbanites,
national politicians, and a few tourists. “Chakwela Makumbi” lit-
erally means “pulling the clouds,” and the current Senior Chief of
the Soli people, Chieftainess Nkomeshya Mukamambo II (Fig. 1),
is presented to the Zambian nation as the one who directs the cos-
mological forces and calls for rain each year. During the public
festival she pleads with God (Lesa) and the Soli ancestral spirits
(mishimu) to bless the earth with rain.

The public festival format of Chakwela Makumbi fits the gen-
eral script2 of the more than sixty annual ceremonies in con-
temporary Zambia referred to by Zambians as “traditional
ceremonies,” many of which have been formally gazetted by
the Zambian government since the Movement for Multiparty
Democracy (MMD) came into power in 1991. These ceremonies
now form part of a national calendar of heritage events (Gor-
don 2004, Guhrs and Kapwepwe 2007, Simbao 2006, 2008,
2010). Although contemporary Zambian ceremonies provide
a “stage upon which chiefs and their entourages have collabo-
rated to re-write histories, shape collective memories, and define
their places in the postcolonial polity,” David M. Gordon argues
that they “are surely more complicated than the sum of political
interests or social functions that they serve” (2004:64, 65). The
efficacy of Soli cosmology and the notion of who exactly “pulls
the clouds” at this contemporary ceremony are much more com-
plex than the public festivalized event suggests. In my article
“Dialectics of Dance and Dress: The Performative Negotiation
of Soli Girl Initiates (Moye) in Zambia,” I argue that contempo-
rary ceremonies are riddled with slippages that potentially dis-
rupt academic skepticism that frames these Zambian festivals as
being nothing more than displays of standardizing and univer-
salizing spectacle (Simbao 2010:65).

Analyzing the ambiguity of symbolism that fluidly shifts
according to different and often contested needs, I explore
issues of the sacred in relation to place and cosmological effi-
cacy at a time of sociocultural globalization and momentous
environmental change. Moving beyond Victor Turner’s notion of
“unfolding, processual, dynamic dimensions of cultural change:
the shifting relations among liminality, communitas, and struc-
ture” with its “implicit consensual dimension” (Weber 1994:527,
530), Donald Weber argues for a “‘borderland’ position” that

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1 Chieftainness Nkomeshya Mukamambo II,
Senior Chief of the Soli people in Lusaka Province
Zambia, hosts the annual Chakwela Makumbi rain-
making ceremony at Nkomeshya Village, Lusaka
Province. October 2004.

2 Sylvia Masebo, then-Minister of Local Hous-
ing and Development, is one of many Zambian
government ministers who regularly attend cultural
festivals. Chakwela Makumbi ceremony, Nkomeshya
Village, October 2004.

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replaces reintegrative communitas with “resistive/resistant filia-
tions of the border” (1995:525, 531). Cosmological engagements
are complex and are at times disputed, meaning that interpreta-
tions of spiritual efficacy can be contested. As such, even grave-
yards, the most sacred sites of Zambian cultural festivals often
used for rainmaking rituals, can be viewed as “contested sites”—
a term Graham St. John uses for pilgrimage destinations, “where
conflicting interpretations and reinforced divisions might frus-
trate the realization of communitas” (2001:50). Comparable to
St. John’s reading of a contemporary Australian festival, contem-
porary Zambian ceremonies reveal “the presence of multiple
publics maintaining sometimes conflicting, sometimes comple-
mentary interpretations of the event-space” (2001:50, 52).

These multiplicities and contestations cannot simply be attrib-
uted to changes caused by the increase of politicized heritagi-
zation3 and festivalization in the contemporary, globalizing
postcolony, but are also due to the very nature of ritual with its
“magmatic creative core that demands that human life—social,
individual, maybe even biological—keep changing” (Schechner
1993:263). As such, change and accompanying contestations are
nothing new, implying that the festivalization of culture need not
be viewed as that which simply subsumes the sacred and cosmo-
logical efficacy of ritual.

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vol. 47, no. 3 autumn 2014 african arts | 41

3 Although Chakwela Makumbi frames the Soli
chief as the primary rainmaker, behind the scenes
it is often the ritual specialists (bashikulu) who “pull
the clouds” in the Soli graveyard. Left–right: Head-
man Nkumbula, Headwoman Chitentabunga, and
Headman Kalulu. February 2005.

4 During Chakwela Makumbi, as with many other
annual ceremonies in Zambia, the highest-ranking
chief hosting the event enters the arena last. Muzzle-
loaders are shot into the air, alluding to the sound of
thunder, as Chieftainess Nkomeshya Mukamambo II
enters the arena. The chieftainess waves her flywhisk
each time a shot is fired, symbolically spreading
the thunder and rain amongst her people. October
2004.

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Performance Sites of Contested Scripts. With the sociopolitical
formalization of performances through the creation of annual fes-
tival events, sites of sacred cosmological engagement are being
reformulated. Some places, such as graveyards, that were previ-
ously hidden from view are opening up, and while aspects of cul-
ture are being exposed and at times literally staged, new forms of
privacy and secrecy are instituted. It is important not to assume
that private or secret sites of performance are only sacred or that
public arenas that stage cultural performances are nothing more
than secularized sites of entertainment and political cachet that
lack spiritual efficacy. As Chidester and Linethal (1995:15) argue,
the “Sacred is often, if not inevitably, entangled in politics …
Sacred space is inevitably contested space, a site of negotiated con-
tests over the legitimate ownership of sacred symbols.”

There are three key sites linked to Soli rainmaking in Nko-
meshya’s village: (1) the performance arena, which is recon-
structed annually for the public festival; (2) the graveyard, which
is hidden from the general public and visited at other times of
the year; and (3) the shrine, which is situated between these two
spaces. This paper is framed around these three key sites, which
I refer to respectively as places of display, seclusion or invisibility,
and interplay. An important aspect of my research on traditional
ceremonies in Zambia is the consideration of what takes place
beyond the time frame of the formal festivalized events and out-
side the prescribed festival spaces. As such, my analysis of the
Chakwela Makumbi ceremony includes (imaginary) places of
legend (a fourth form of site, in this case) that inform or shape
contemporary ideas about Soli society. It also includes events
leading up to the festival, which demonstrate the complexity of
the relationship between everyday life and the sacred, as well as
representations thereof.

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5 For the 2004 Chakwela Makumbi ceremony,
Headwoman Muyansho painted a muzzleloader
on the path leading to Chieftainness Nkomeshya
Mukamambo II’s throne, linking her rulership to
her powers as a rainmaker. Nkomeshya is part of
a group of politically astute “national chiefs” who
regularly move around the country, and as such this
link to the historical legend of the famous rainmaker
Mukamambo I is an important way to secure ties to
Soli forms of tradition. October 2004.

In terms of the various performances that take place at the
annual Chakwela Makumbi ceremony—sacred ritual, politi-
cal prowess performed by government leaders (Fig. 2) and tra-
ditional leaders, and cultural spectacle—slippage occurs in
relation to the physical sites, revealing “negotiations over the
ownership of the symbolic capital … that signifies power rela-
tions” (Chidester and Linenthal 1995:16). According to Chidester
and Linenthal, power is always asserted and resisted in the pro-
duction of sacred space: “Since no sacred space is merely ‘given’
in the world, its ownership will always be at stake. In this respect,
a sacred space is not merely discovered, or founded, or con-
structed; it is claimed, owned, and operated by people advancing
specific interests” (1995:15).

As such, the construction and reconstruction of a Soli “script,”
which might include the seniority of Soli chiefs, the degree of
political leverage with the government or the authenticity of a
particular version of Soli history, is linked to interpretations of
the efficacy of rainmaking at the annual Chakwela Makumbi cer-
emony and at other times of the year. In other words, who is seen
to bring the rain on the public stage is important, just as the use of
legend to reconstruct the relationship between spiritual efficacy
and political power is strategic, rendering the efficacy of perfor-
mances at sacred spaces open to interpretation. “As an arena of
signs and symbols, a sacred place,” write Chidester and Linenthal,
“is not a fixed point in space but a point of departure for an end-
less multiplication of meaning. Since a sacred place could signify
almost anything, its meaningful contours can become almost infi-
nitely extended through the work of interpretation” (1995:18).

Who “Pulls the Clouds”? A scripted response to the question
“Who brings the rain at Chakwela Makumbi?” would be “Chief-
tainess Nkomeshya,” who is a mobile and visible ruler whose
power is broadcast nationally via print media, radio, and televi-
sion. As the most senior of Soli chiefs today, she invites her subor-
dinates Shikabeta, Bundabunda, and Mpanshya to her ceremony,
creating an idea of Soli hierarchy that seems to work within a
coherent unit, even though this hierarchy is contested in the Soli

history published by Manchishi and Musona in 1984. Despite the
fact that the Soli Senior Chief is framed as the primary rainmaker
today, historically it is not clear to what degree the Soli people
were centralized and organized under chiefs, and in fact it has
been suggested that the concept of chiefs did not exist at all.

In his 1950s fieldwork notes, John Argyle asserted that in the
past there were a few people in this area with hereditary author-
ity, and if someone attempted to proclaim himself or herself as
a Soli chief, he or she would be killed.4 According to Headman
Kabeleka, when Soli chiefs did come into being, the chief did not
perform as the sole rainmaker, as is suggested by the Chakwela
Makumbi annual ceremony, but the ritual specialists (bashi-
kulu) played a significant role in rainmaking in a ritual context
that was quite distinct from the current national framework of
heritagized events. Similarly, Manchishi and Musona (1984:iv)
suggest a less centralized past: “Offerings in the form of prayers
to God (Lesa) through the spirits of their ancestors (Mishimu)
are made usually by medicine men or village elders. If there is
drought or a misfortune for example, elders will arrange for
prayers (offerings). They go to a grave of some important ances-
tor and offer beer.”

The performance of Nkomeshya Mukamambo II as the key
rainmaker at Chakwela Makumbi appears, then, to register
a shift in the public presentation of Soli cosmology and social
organization, as the chief is presented on this particular day as
the focal point of rainmaking rituals. (Similarly, although the
Priestess Bedyango of the related Leya people near the Victoria
Falls traditionally called for rain through the collaboration of
others at congregational lwiindi ceremonies, today the nationally
renowned Leya chief, Chief Mukuni, publicly “pulls the clouds”
at his annual festival). This shift to a public national stage, how-
ever, does not seem to translate into diminished spiritual efficacy,
for every year the visitors at Chakwela Makumbi stand aghast as
the clear skies cloud over and loud claps of thunder punctuate
the quiet atmosphere of anticipation. Chieftainess Nkomeshya
consistently manages to bring rain during the annual ceremony,

vol. 47, no. 3 autumn 2014 african arts | 43

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an act that has even been known to bring government minis-
ters to tears. Despite changes in rainmaking rituals that might be
viewed as being divorced from traditional modes of spiritually
relating to the cosmos, it is hard to deny spiritual efficacy when
one observes such occurrences firsthand.

The sociopolitical concern about who exactly “pulls the clouds”
is reflected in current articulations of Soli legend, particularly
the legend of an historic rainmaker, Mukamambo, who is now
being reframed as an historic chief, Mukamambo I. This legend
mirrors the current mobility so pertinent to “national” chiefs
(Gould 2005:9) in Zambia, including Nkomeshya Mukamambo
II, who established Chakwela Makumbi as a public rainmaking
ceremony in 1998.5 This emerging pool of “national chiefs” has
gained significant visibility in urban-based politics and these
chiefs “share many of the cosmopolitan features of the profes-
sional elites of Lusaka” (Gould 2005:9). Although named chief
in 1971, the following year Nkomeshya was handpicked as the
Chilanga Constituency parliamentary candidate by the United
National Independence Party (Nyaywa 1998:128) and enjoyed
an almost twenty-year political career moving between the city,
Chongwe boma, and the village, as well as shifting between the
roles of politician and traditional leader.6 While this high polit-
ical profile later facilitated the success of Chakwela Makumbi,
due to the fact that she is the only female Nkomeshya chief since
the nineteenth-century7 Mukamambo I, she is viewed by some
to carry forth the legacy of this early Soli rainmaker who had
a profoundly spiritual relationship to the natural environment.

44 | african arts autumn 2014 vol. 47, no. 3

6 Chakwela Makumbi, which means “pulling the
clouds,” is a rainmaking ceremony that draws the
sky to the ground. At the public, staged event, it
is Chieftainess Nkomeshya Mukamambo II who is
presented to the public as the one who prays to
the Soli ancestors and to a Christian God for rain.
October 2005.

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On the other hand, the perspective that she perpetuates the leg-
acy of the nineteenth-century Mukamambo I could be seen as a
strategy to counteract contested ideas about which group of Soli
people are the “proper” Solis,8 and which Soli chief ought to be
the most senior chief (Simbao 2010:70, Manchishi and Musona
1984:10), linking cosmological efficacy to political potency.

AN IMAGINARy PLACE
The Legend of a Rainmaker’s Geo-Mobility. Amongst Nko-
meshya’s Soli people, the nineteenth-century Mukamambo I
is mythologized as a woman who could not be pinned down
physically or geographically, and when she finally chose to set-
tle, she asserted her own story of origin. While the contempo-
rary Mukamambo II’s recent movement between the city, the
boma, and the village was viewed negatively by some (Nyaywa
1998:120–30) but is largely seen as political capital today, the his-
torical Mukamambo I’s ability to miraculously change location is
framed in contemporary oral history as a manifestation of both

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7–8
During the ceremony, Nkomeshya dips
her flywhisk in water that has been saved from the
pervious year’s rains and sprays this water in the
directions of the four cardinal points, symbolically
sharing the rain with her people. She then sprinkles
the water over the seeds that she later plants. Octo-
ber 2004.

her political and her spiritual powers.9 Depicted in this oral his-
tory as wearing ivory bangles all the way up her arms and from
her ankles to her knees and adorned with numerous conus shell
disks (impande), she could be heard from afar as the shells and
ivory jangled with each step that she took. If someone tried to
capture her, she would suddenly turn into a burning tree, and
people would come to light their cigarettes, cook on her flames,
and eat for a long time. When the flames disappeared people
would say, “Was that not Mukamambo? Where has she gone?”
but by the time they realized who it was, she had turned into a
pigeon and flown away. People would then run after her, but she
would start to snow (chikunka), filling the sky with a white blan-
ket that confused her pursuers. Headman Kalulu of Nkomeshya
Village says that for hours no one would be able to see where
he or she was going, and when the snow stopped, Mukamambo
would be far, far away.10

It is interesting to consider where stories of snow might come
from in an area where no snow is found. In a poem about Victo-
ria Falls, a British woman describes the mist of the Falls as being
a “wreath of snow” and David Livingstone similarly describes
the mist from the waterfall as snow;11 Edward Mohr (1876:325)
refers to it as a “white veil of spray.” More recently, the Leya
Mukuni who lives near the Falls and is related to the Soli peo-
ple told me a story of a historic Leya chief who used supernatu-
ral powers to make whole villages invisible through the use of
mist or fog in order to confuse the enemy.12 As such, the story
of Mukamambo I turning into snow might be a story about her
ability to use her supernatural powers to veil visibility and create
a thick fog in order to strategically evade her enemies. Muka-
mambo I was “as quick as the wind,” says Headman Kabeleka,
who also claims that each time she bathed she turned into a dona
fish,13 and Kalulu says that when her enemies tried to shoot her

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9 During the Chakwela Makumbi ceremony,
Nkomeshya demonstrates to her people and visitors
how to clear a field with fire, making way for new
agricultural growth and new fertility. At times fire is
also used as a metaphor for human fertility. October
2004.

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AN INVISIBLE PLACE
While the supernatural powers of the legendary Muka mambo
I were used to veil visibility, the festivalization of culture poten-
tially increases the dynamics of visibility and invisibility, as cer-
tain aspects of ritual are more self-consciously made visible,
while other aspects are deliberately hidden from a general and
often less-informed audience. Behind the scenes and before the
festival begins, an enormous amount of activity occurs, and at
times some of the activities—even rituals—appear to contradict
what is formally made visible. Rather than reading this as a form
of degeneration, which renders festivalized culture fake or inau-
thentic, I argue that this highlights the ambiguity and contin-
gency of all ritual symbolism.

Symbolic Contingency. In a time of complex environmental
change, it is important to remember that rain is not automatically
considered to be a blessing, for the relationships among humans,
their natural world, and their ancestral guardians need constant
tuning. As such, cosmological interrelatedness and symbolic rep-
resentations thereof are neither predictable nor foreclosed, for in
ritual’s reliance on performance, it becomes as emergent and con-
tingent as performance necessarily is (Askew 2002).

with guns, water poured forth from their weapons, causing her
enemies to run away. Associated with the elements of fire, wind,
and water, Mukamambo I escapes the grip of categorization: one
day she would appear as an old woman, the next as a young girl.
Mukamambo I would also use her spiritual powers to fight the
Chikunda,14 and although the Chikunda chief kept sending sol-
diers to capture her, she kept on killing them. According to Soli
legend, this chief could not believe that the person who managed
to kill his soldiers was a woman, and so Mukamambo I went to
see him and took off her clothes to prove she was not a man.
When they tried to stab her she would not bleed, and only water
poured forth from her body. Eventually the Chikunda captured
her at Chitameleza, a place, says Headman Kabeleka, where
“God would drop a lot of lightning and thunder.”15 They cut off
her head, but to their surprise she continued to talk, asking to
be taken “home” so that she could rest.16 According to legend,
the Chikunda thought she migrated from the Congo and so they
carried her head all the way to Lubaland, but she said, “No, this
is not my home; I am not Luba,” and when they carried her to
Tongaland she again refused. It was only when she was taken to
the Soli home of Makuyu, named after the makuyu trees—where
Chieftainess Nkomeshya’s rural palace is today—that she rested,
and her head finally stopped talking.17 This story, relayed to me
by Nkomeshya’s Soli people, valorizes the power of mobility and
the ability to shape-shift and emphasizes self-defined agency in
terms of identification with place.

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During the preparations for the 2004 Chakwela Makumbi, for
example, heavy rains threatened the success of the ceremony.
The day before the event, the organizers decided to perform a
rain-stopping ritual called Kukola Imfula, where the head of an
axe was hammered into a fire by a lastborn—the one who puts
an end to fertility.18 During the Kukola Imfula, the onlookers
pleaded, “The rains, pass the other way. Don’t rain here. We can
be embarrassed; we have a ceremony. Rain after the ceremony.”19
While such an appeal might seem contradictory considering
the fact that Chakwela Makumbi is a rainmaking ceremony, it
demonstrates how symbolism is not fixed, but shifts according
to context and need. While the Soli history of both blacksmith-
ing (Manchishi and Musona 1984:22–28, Roberts 1976:103)20 and
rainmaking suggests a symbolic connection between metal, fire,
and the fertility that the rains bring, in this case the metal head
of the axe was put back into the fire to stop the rains. A day later,
at the Chakwela Makumbi, Nkomeshya used fire to demonstrate
to her people and visitors how the dry grasses on the land were

10 Although Nkomeshya’s people know how to
plant seeds, for they rely on their own agricultural
production all the time, Nkomeshya still presents
this skill to them during the Chakwela Makumbi
ceremony. However, rather than merely being a
demonstration, this act of planting can be viewed
as symbolic imitation that “wakes up” the ancestral
spirits who are needed for agricultural fertility and
growth. October 2004.

cleared so that new seeds could be planted. Here, fire makes way
for agricultural growth, and in other contexts the symbolism of
fire evokes a metaphor for human fertility.21

As seen in the Kukola Imfula, the Chakwela Makumbi, and in
the context of sexuality, fire can both cause or represent fertility
and put an end to it; it can pull the rain clouds closer and drive
them away. This mutability of symbolism and the interpretive
layers of efficacy are significant. Symbolism in the aesthetics of
traditional ceremonies needs to be read within particular con-
texts, and it is important to consider that meanings outside of
the defined space and time of festival events can sometimes dif-
fer from or add to that which appears to be showcased for the
general public. Further, subtle covert layers often exist amongst
what seems to be an obvious public display. If, as Kerr (1998) sug-
gests, different members of an audience read events and symbols
differently due to social position and ranges of depth of knowl-
edge, the heterogeneity of “the public” highlights the importance
of the performances, regardless of whether they occur at the
nationally accessible arena or in the Soli graveyard.22 As such,
even within choreographed events staged for broad audiences
that include less-informed urbanites, politicians, tourists, and
other visitors, spiritual efficacy might occur and sacred spaces
might exist despite being invisible to many.

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vol. 47, no. 3 autumn 2014 african arts | 47

A PLACE FOR DISPLAy
Mutability of Ritual Practice and Display. While there is a
tendency for scholars to view annual traditional ceremonies in
Zambia as manifestation of pseudo-culture (van Binsbergen
1994)—an apparent formula construed by the contemporary
drive to heritagize culture in our contemporary age of global-
ization—it is important not to allow this surface layer of public
scriptedness to eclipse, on the one hand, historical or contempo-
rary contestations, and on the other hand, the deep, fluid ritual
activities and cosmic connections that are still able to occur in
such contexts. Further, it is important not to assume that the per-
formativity of ritual cannot pierce the veneer of this scriptedness.
Richard Schechner’s assertion is germane here: “It is clear that
rituals are not safe deposit vaults of accepted ideas but in many
cases dynamic performative systems generating new materials
and recombining traditional actions in new ways” (1993:228).
Even though these ritual performances are repeated year after
year, a performance “script” never results in the same perfor-
mance, following Schechner’s idea of restoration of behavior, in
which “performance originals disappear as fast as they are made”
(1985:50). Rituals, he argues, change either by slow slippage over
time or by “‘official revisions’ made by the owners-heirs of the
‘authorized original’” (1985:43–44), and the disputes that most
readily occur behind the scenes of traditional ceremonies stem
from differing opinions around who the owners-heirs are and
what the so-called authorized original is. As “dynamic perfor-
mative systems” (Schechner 1993:228), there is no fixed original
ritual event that can be known, and as Butler argues in relation
to gender, “a script can be enacted in different ways” due to the
“non-referential” characteristic of performativity (1988:526, 522).
Performativity, in J.L. Austin’s (1962) sense of doing things with
words, is often critical to ritual.

While Chieftainess Nkomeshya Mukamambo II successfully
commands the sky at the annual staged event, which is trans-
mitted nationally by the Zambian National Broadcast Corpora-
tion, ritual specialists (bashikulu) (Fig. 3) play a significant role
behind the scenes, particularly at the Soli graveyard, which is hid-
den from public view. Even though the performed public event
on the official day of the ceremony might appear to merely be a
theatrical form of pseudo-ritual with somewhat muted spiri-
tual relationships to the cosmos, a broader consideration of per-
formance that regards Soli rainmaking within and beyond the
parameters of the annual festival reveals that deep cosmological
links are maintained, even during staged performances that tend
to be interpreted as mere spectacle. This suggests that spectacle is
not necessarily a form of degenerating ritual, as John MacAloon
(1984:243) asserts. Similarly, cosmological efficacy is not ineludibly
eliminated by contemporary forms of globalization and festivaliza-
tion, for while MacAloon suggests that “Ritual is a duty and spec-
tacle is a choice” (1984:243), Richard Schechner argues that “No
performance is pure efficacy or pure entertainment” (1988:120).
Rainmaking is based on contingent interpersonal relationships
and performances that allow for improvisation and unpredictabil-
ity,23 breaking down the apparent dichotomy between “real” hid-
den rituals at the graveyard and “fake” rituals staged for a general
public and national television.

As with most other ceremony “scripts,” the order of entrance

48 | african arts autumn 2014 vol. 47, no. 3

into the performance arena is extremely important: the general
audience is seated, then invited guests are seated; politicians
enter from the least to the most important; and finally traditional
rulers enter, also from the least to the most important (Fig. 4).
Chieftainess Nkomeshya, who is referred to as the Guardian of
the Seeds, finally makes her grand entrance into the arena wav-
ing her royal flywhisk as she walks along a pathway that leads
towards a painting on the ground of a muzzleloader (Fig. 5).

As the chief was escorted to her throne during the 2004 and
2005 ceremonies that I observed, guns were fired into the air,
suggesting thunder associated with rain clouds.24 With each vol-
ley, the chief would wave her flywhisk in the air, spreading the
sound of the thunder. As Headman Kabeleka suggests, when
God brings rain, he does not do so quietly.25 When Nkomeshya
spreads the thunder, she in effect disperses the blessings and
prayers for rain amongst all her people. Performance and sound
amplify the painting of the gun on the pathway, evoking Nko-
meshya’s rainmaking powers and the action of her flywhisk.

Later in the ceremony, the chief used her flywhisk to further
bless the agricultural pursuits of her people. After long govern-
ment speeches, she knelt in front of bowls of seeds to begin a
heartfelt and emotionally arduous prayer. Continually switch-
ing from Soli to English, Nkomeshya’s prayer was directed to a
Supreme Being (Lesa) framed as a Christian God, reflecting her
devout Catholicism. Even though I have seen her pray directly
to ancestral spirits in the Soli graveyard, this staged prayer was
exclusively Christian, reflecting the fact that Zambia is officially
a Christian nation. Nkomeshya’s prayer (Fig. 6) was lengthy and
all-encompassing, drawing in as many people as possible in a
gesture of international cosmopolitanism:

I am presenting these seeds to you Lord. I am asking for these people
to go back to their fields, to step in the mud. My Lord, we are ask-
ing the clouds in the sky to form, we are asking for raindrops … I
am asking so that the UNDP [United Nations for Development Pro-
gram] should hear, my Lord. The whole world, all are of your cre-
ation, whether Whites, Indians, Blacks or what, all are your people,
you gave them to us because in time of trouble they do help us.26

After this prayer, rainwater that had been collected from
the previous year was poured into a large dish. This rainwater
never touches the ground and is kept in the Soli shrine for many
months, and it is believed that Soli ancestral spirits reside in it.
Nkomeshya then dipped her flywhisk into the rainwater and
vigorously flung it into the air four times, spraying the water in
different directions: north, south, east, and west (Fig. 7). Finally
Nkomeshya dipped her flywhisk into the pot and sprinkled the
rainwater over the seeds, thus symbolically dispersing the power
of the ancestral spirits over the seeds that were now ready to be
planted (Fig. 8).27

While this performance in a contemporary festival arena
might be viewed as a mere representation of ritual devoid of
spiritual efficacy, it is important to consider how modernity
redefines the sacred through the instigation of “counter-prac-
tices” (Kiong and Kong 2000:36) rather than obliterating the
sacred in ritual. As Kiong and Kong write, in terms of both pub-
lic and private sacred spheres, “new conceptualizations of space
and time may be invented to cope with changing social circum-

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11 The graveyard (malimbo) is a key space of
Soli cosmology, and as the home to the deceased
chiefs, it is believed to control the rains. After
months of waiting for rain, in February 2005 the
ritual specialists (bashikulu) went to fix the hole in
Nyeleti Bimbe’s gravestone in order to appease the
offended ancestral spirit. February 2005.

12 At Nyeleti Bimbe’s grave, an all-black, male goat
was skinned, and the bones, skin, and gall were used
to fill the hole in the gravestone before it was sealed
with cement. It was believed that the hole in the
gravestone had affronted the ancestral spirit, who
in turn withheld the rain. The color black represents
rain clouds, and shortly after the ritual, the rains
appeared. February 2005.

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stances” (2000:40). The formalization of rainmaking rituals in
the creation of the annual Chakwela Makumbi ceremony does
not obliterate the sacred within the festival, nor does it mean
that other secret forms of rainmaking do not take place. Instead,
there is a malleability and mutability to ritual practice (Kiong
and Kong 2000:41), and the exposure of aspects of Soli rainmak-
ing to a national or even international audience does not simply
eradicate local needs (and contestations) in a top-down man-
ner. As Kiong and Kong argue, “Modernity is not an omnipotent
force that changes social, cultural, and spatial conditions unilat-
erally. Conditions of modernity are mediated through local cir-
cumstances, and the specific intersection of forces of modernity
with local conditions is only meaningfully examined if grounded
in specific empirical contexts” (2000:41).

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vol. 47, no. 3 autumn 2014 african arts | 49

13 On occasion, Nkomeshya prays for rain at the
Soli graveyards, too, and in order to coax the rains
that were overdue, a “proper” gravestone had to
be laid at the grave of Nkomeshya’s aunt. Women
danced and sang, and lay prostrate on the ground as
a demonstration of respect to the ancestral spirits.
March 2005.

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Efficacy and Symbolic Imitation. After her prayer at the 2004
Chakwela Makumbi ceremony, Nkomeshya led a group of peo-
ple to a field at the side of her palace and demonstrated how to
clear a field with fire (Fig. 9), how to dig a hole in the earth with
a hoe, and how to plant a seed (Fig. 10). When I saw this perfor-
mance for the first time I assumed it was merely a staged act for
urbanites and visitors attending the annual festival who might
be unfamiliar with rural self-subsistence. Even when I was told
that Nkomeshya performs this demonstration to indicate to her
own people that the time has come for them to go and plant their
seeds, this explanation did not seem to make sense, for surely

people who live directly off the land know exactly when and how
to plant their seeds. It was only when I compared this action to
similar performances in historic Leya rituals that predated cur-
rent festivalized events that I understood this demonstration as
more than a staged act for visitors.

Describing a related lwiindi ritual that he observed in south-
ern Zambia in the early 1970s, Mubitana writes that after the
blessing of the seeds through prayer and the pouring of libations,
“the women then pick up their hoes and start to cultivate, in a
symbolic manner, the area around the kaanda where the blessed
seed is now scattered in symbolic imitation of the sowing that is

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For the 2004 Chakwela Makumbi cer-

14–15
emony, Headwomen Muyansho produced various
spiritually informed paintings made from clay (ink-
andashi) at the performance arena. “Mukamambo
II” was written across a threshold on the way to
Nkomeshya’s throne. October 2004.

vol. 47, no. 3 autumn 2014 african arts | 51

to begin in a few weeks or so” (1977:70; my emphasis). At the
contemporary Chakwela Makumbi ceremony, Chieftainess Nko-
meshya performs almost exactly the same actions. That a simi-
lar type of demonstration was performed before lwiindi rituals
became festivalized as annual and national ceremonies suggests
that these actions may have been performed by ritual special-
ists for their communities to demonstrate that “in ritual, doing
is believing” (Myerhoff 1984:157). Further, this symbolic action
could be read as a way of “waking up” the spirits, indicating to
them that planting is soon to begin and special care is needed.
This suggests then, that seemingly staged demonstrations at tra-
ditional ceremonies should not necessarily be read as pseudo-
ritual presentations, for traditional forms of symbolic imitation
might indeed play a role in efficacy too.

As Nkomeshya dug with her hoe at the 2004 Chakwela

Makumbi, she explained her actions to a responsive crowd:

Nkomeshya: What I am doing here, I want to dig the land, which the
Lord has given unto us so that we plant the seeds. In His mercy the
seeds will germinate for all of you to have food. In God’s presence,
there is no one who is poor. In God’s presence, there is no one who is
rich. All are his children and with God. There’s no one bad. All those
who don’t believe in Him at a time like this, they all receive water. It
is up to them to choose whether to use the water or not. If you think
you are too smart, refuse the water; continue being smart and in the
future your smartness will be over, because no one has bones in the
stomach. How many have bones on their stomach?

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Crowd: No one!

Nkomeshya: The time we’ve been seated there until now, the bones
we had on our stomachs, God has melted, isn’t it?

Crowd: Yes!

Nkomeshya: We are going to plant these seeds. We are symbolizing
this, so that these people, when it rains, they go straight to their fields
and plant.28

During this performance at Chakwela Makumbi, the chief not
only used symbolic imitation as a way of leading her people to
the fields, but also as a way of instigating broader cosmological
awareness of the need to plant and the need for rain. As such,
the staged performance was not simply produced to illustrate
Soli customs to an uninformed audience, but was also used as
an integral part of doing ritual and igniting efficacy. While such
staged performances do not necessarily render ritual impotent,
conversely, ritual that takes place in secluded areas more typi-
cally associated with sacredness, such as graveyards, is neither
irrefutably efficacious nor devoid of human interpretation.

16–17
According to Headwoman Muyansho,
the cow represents agricultural wealth for the Soli
people and is also a symbol of Nkomeshya’s clan. (At
the 2004 ceremony Nkomeshya wore a cowskin-pat-
terned robe). The painting of the clay pot represents
the sacred pot that is used to store the rain from
the previous year, and the gourd represents the
traditional beer that is poured on the ground in the
rain shrine in order to “wake up” the ancestral spirits
during an appeal for rain. October 2004.

frame of the annual ceremony in a context in which the only
spectators besides the living ritual participants are usually the
ancestral spirits themselves. The graveyard (malimbo) is a key
space in Soli cosmology, and as the home of the deceased chiefs,
it is believed to control the rains. In Nkomeshya Village in Febru-
ary 2005, the December and January rains had not yet arrived, and
scorching heat threatened the destruction of the already planted
maize. At the chief ’s command, the ritual specialists went to
inspect the graveyards and they found them to be overgrown and
damaged. They decided that they needed to clear the grass, fix the
damaged gravestone belonging to Nyeleti Bimbe, and appease the
offended ancestral spirit by performing a ritual (Fig. 11).

As we walked to the graveyard to fix the gravestone and perform

the necessary ritual, bashikulu Kalulu sang on top of his voice:

A PLACE FOR SECLUSION
“The Sky is Dry.” The shift to a national stage with the empha-
sis on Nkomeshya as the key Soli rainmaker does not mean that
covert performances have ceased to exist, for private rituals per-
formed by the ritual specialists still take place beyond the time-

Mutupeko menshi afwe oh!
Give us water oh!
Bona wee
See now!

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Onam kwilu ncho kwayuma amwe nga ni chain?
Look the sky is dry. What’s the matter with you?

Chorus:
Mwana Kalulu ulalilinga chain oke?
Baby Kalulu what are you crying for?
Ndalilinga imfula ame
I want rain

ame ndapenge kung’anda kwakame wo!
I have suffered at home, wo!
Wo! Ndandanga menshi amwe
Wo! I want water

Oh lya woo!
Oh lya woo!
We mwana leka kulila,
You child, stop crying
Tumutwale kuli Mukamambo
We take her to Mukamambo
kuli kakuyu yakutekelela
where they are watered mukuyu trees.29

At the graveyard, the four ritual specialists slaughtered an all-

black male goat on top of Bimbe’s gravestone and poured the
blood and gall into the hole (Fig. 12). As with the Leya and Tonga
rainmaking rituals, it is essential that the animal is entirely black,
for black is the color of rain clouds. As Kabeleka explains, “The
goat must be a male black goat. It’s these days that we buy red or
white coffins, but long ago the dead slept in black coffins only
and the rain long ago, they used to call it likumbi lishipa mean-
ing dark clouds. So that’s why we use black things, because black
stands for dark clouds as well as the color of the coffin.”30 The
specialists then skinned the goat, roasted it on a fire, ate the
meat, and stuffed the skin, bones, and gall into the hole in the
grave. Dancing on the gravestone Kalulu sang about Chakwela
Makumbi—“pulling the clouds”—and offered up prayers, beg-
ging the deceased chief for rain.

On our way home from the graveyard there was a very light
sprinkle of rain, and the ritual specialists announced that they
would all dream that night to find out when the real rains would
come. Dreams act as a kind of liminal space in which the ances-
tors and living ritual specialists reach out to each other in order
to understand why the rains are being withheld. That night the
ancestor Chief Mapulanga appeared in their dreams, angrily
waving his flywhisk. Mapulanga informed all the ritual special-
ists that it would rain within eight days, and before these eight
days were up, the rains did indeed soak the earth.

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18 Paintings of a calabash and a bow and arrow were
also painted at the Soli shrine (ntangu) just behind Nko-
meshya’s palace. The words “Muka Mambo II, Nkomesha
Bimbe, Soli” were written across the threshold. Built
between the Soli graveyard and the ceremony arena, the
shrine serves as a counterbalance, drawing the ancestral
spirits from their abode to the public space of the living.
October 2004.

Layers of “Real” Rainmaking. In this instance, the real rain
(the rain that sufficiently soaked the earth) only arrived a while
after the covert performance of the ritual specialists that called
upon the ancestral chiefs directly. This brings to mind Myer-
hoff ’s reflection that “rituals have consequences that reach past
the moment when they occur; their outcome is usually to be
known only in due time” (1984:170). As such, efficacy can be a
result of an accumulation of spiritual efforts and supplications.
It is important to note that Chieftainess Nkomeshya’s rainmak-
ing role is not limited to the national stage of the annual cer-
emony, for on another occasion she too attended to the Soli
graveyards. In March 2005, Headman Kabeleka announced that
we were going to celebrate together by placing a “proper” grave-
stone on Nkomeshya’s aunt’s grave. It was believed that the lack
of a “proper” gravestone was causing her spirit anguish, and in
turn she was holding back the rains. This time we went to the

54 | african arts autumn 2014 vol. 47, no. 3

women’s graveyard, which is separated from the site where the
men are buried, and we sang the song about “pulling the clouds”
as we danced around the grave. A group of women periodically
rolled on the ground, first to the right and then to the left, clap-
ping their hands in a gesture of respect (Fig. 13).

Once the marble stone had been laid, Chieftainess Nkomeshya
prayed at her aunt’s grave, and in contrast to the public Chris-
tianized prayer at the main arena of the Chakwela Makumbi cer-
emony, she spoke directly to the deceased relative, asking her why
she had stopped the rain. Nkomeshya complained that people had
planted seeds, but the earth was very dry and there was hunger.
She appealed to the aunt and the ancestors to be ambassadors and
to speak to God, seeing as they were in the spirit world. She spoke
directly to them with amazing emotion in her voice and expres-
sion on her face as if she were looking the ancestors directly in
the face. She then knelt down at the foot of the grave and started
to plead, waving her arms around and holding her hands up in a
prayerful gesture. After a long prayer she moved to her mother’s
grave and pleaded with her as well, ending her prayer by clapping
in respectful thankfulness, saying “twakabomba” (we thank you).
Amazingly, even though it was very hot and had been hot and
dry for a number of days, during Nkomeshya’s prayer large grey
clouds came over us, and it started to thunder. A ferocious wind
suddenly whipped up, seeming to appear out of nowhere, and all

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the trees surrounding the clearing of the graveyard swayed and
whirled, recalling the story about Mukamambo I who “moved like
the wind.” Very soon it began to rain.

While I have thus far contrasted the rainmaking in the grave-
yard (associated with the ancestral spirits) to the rainmaking on
a national stage (associated with Nkomeshya and a Christian
God, Lesa), it is important to note that the Chakwela Makumbi
also actively calls ancestral spirits to the main stage of the cer-
emony. Such references, however, are veiled in aesthetic codes
that might elude the gaze and comprehension of the average
visitor. Although displayed at the arena (the space of suppos-
edly overt performance), a number of paintings produced on
the ground that are believed to be inspired by the spirits, reveal
ambiguous, veiled ways of engaging with the spirit world.

A PLACE FOR INTERPLAy AND COUNTER BALANCE
Drawing the Sky to the Earth. The paintings at the festival
arena consist of various symbols of fertility and rainmaking,
drawing the sky—and its rain—to the ground (Fig. 14). The day
before the 2004 Chakwela Makumbi ceremony, Headwoman
Muyansho created paintings on the ground at the arena which
she says were spiritually informed.31 Using clay (inkandashi), she
painted a crocodile, a cow, a calabash, a pot, a bow and arrow,
various abstract patterns, and some text, such as the word
“muka mambo,” which was written on a threshold at the end of
the pathway that leads to Nkomeshya’s throne (Fig. 15).

According to Muyansho, the cow (Fig. 16) represented farm-
ing, for cows are an important sign of agricultural wealth for the
Soli people, and it also represented Nkomeshya’s clan, the clan
of the cow, which was further embodied in the cowskin pattern
on Nkomeshya’s robe. Near to Muyansho’s painting of a cow was
a painting of a calabash (Fig. 17), which represented the tradi-
tional beer that is typically drunk and poured on the ground for
the Soli ancestors during rainmaking rituals. A painting of a clay
pot (Fig. 17) recalled the container used for storing the previ-
ous year’s rainwater. This water houses ancestral spirits and was
sprinkled on the seeds that were about to be planted. Just before
the public component of the Chakwela Makumbi began, ritu-
als took place at the Soli shrine (intangu) (Fig. 18) that is behind
Chieftainess Nkomeshya’s palace.

Referring to the historical shrine (kaanda) of the Leya people,
who are related to the Soli, Mubitana says that the fact that it
was deliberately built away from the graveyard and was placed
in the village created a “counter balance” in order to “draw the
ancestral spirits from their abode at the graveyard to the abode
of the living” (1977:67). Similarly, this Soli shrine was built away
from the graveyard and was placed closer to where people live.
The ritual specialists dressed in black and painted their faces
with clay (nkundwe) that was mixed with ash,32 a substance with
rich symbolic value in terms of shift and transformation, sug-
gesting the movement from hot to cold, and from life to death
and to the afterlife. As they entered the shrine, they chanted the
names of deceased Soli chiefs and poured libations of beer onto
the ground where paintings of a calabash, a bow and arrow, and
a pot echoed the paintings at the arena. Across the threshold of
the entrance to the shrine were the painted words “Muka mambo
II, Nkomeshya, Bimbe, Soli.” As the ritual specialists physi-

cally crossed the threshold—a symbol of liminality, ambiguity,
and mediation (like the space of dreams and graveyards)—they
connected the two worlds, the world of the living and the world
of the dead. Crossing the threshold, they spoke to the ances-
tors, saying, “Thank you, thank you, it’s us your grandchildren
who have come here. We have brought the beer as we did some
time back. We’ve come to ask that even this year, this Chakwela
Makumbi, we want a lot of rain, enough that we must grow a lot
of food. We don’t want hunger. We want to grow a lot of maize,
so that we eat with happiness.”33 They then sang songs in praise
of the ancestral Mukamambo as they threw seeds onto the shrine
and poured libations of beer.

Stepping back across the threshold as they exited the shrine,
the ritual specialists chanted, “We thank you Lord, because it
is you who knows all the spirits. Move in this area of the Soli
people. It is you who is responsible for all the spirits. Today, we
are thanking you very much because your children are gathered
here to ask for rains. We thank you, we thank you, Mukamambo,
forever!” Through song, performance, and spiritual interces-
sion, they invited the ancestral spirits into the world of the liv-
ing, beckoning them to move amongst the living and observe
the performances. Just as thresholds activate a crossing-over
from the spirit world to the human world, so too does the shrine
create a counterbalance between the hidden graveyard and the
arena of annual spectacle, drawing the spirits into a public per-
formance space that might easily be interpreted as not being
conducive to sacred activity.

CONCLUSION
In their article “Religion and Modernity: Ritual Transforma-
tions and the Reconstruction of Space and Time,” Kiong and
Kong consider literature on religion and modernity and critique
the secularization thesis that suggests that “religious values have
been replaced by secular ones” tending “towards a static under-
standing of ritual.” What this thesis fails to address, they argue,
“is how the functions, meanings and forms of rituals, change,
and social, economic, and political circumstances shift” (Kiong
and Kong 2000:30).

Shift, be it to do with power, symbolism, or the environment, is
significant to the Chakwela Makumbi ceremony, which is about
“pulling the clouds,” that is, drawing the sky closer to the earth
so that people can engage with their environment in a way that
enhances the possibility of survival. Key to the oral history of the
Soli people is the story of a powerful woman who commanded
the sky and whose relationship to the cosmos was regarded with
awe. The legend of Mukamambo I is all about shift; the mytholo-
gized change of location, change of activity in the environment,
and the change of the physical shape of this celebrated figure.
Mukamambo I could turn into snow to veil visibility and win
battles; she could fly like a pigeon, pour forth like water, and
bring thunder and rain. Despite the fact that the contemporary
Chakwela Makumbi ceremony has, in many ways, scripted the
social, political, environmental, and spiritual history of the Soli
people in line with a national (and global) trend to heritagize
culture, it is important to recognize the ways that it too embraces
shift and allows cosmological engagement to move beyond sim-
plistic scriptedness.

vol. 47, no. 3 autumn 2014 african arts | 55

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Efficacious relationships to the cosmos still persist, and these
relationships are fluid and open to complex interpretation. While
certain performances at festivals appear to be mere illustrations
for ignorant audiences, such performative actions can success-
fully ignite the cosmos in particular contexts of supplication.
Symbolism is not fixed, and as such, the drawing of the sky to the
earth through the production of various rituals, drawings, sculp-
tures, and performances perpetually generates new possibilities
for cosmological engagement. Even though the spaces of Chak-
wela Makumbi seem to be divided into spaces of display that are
separated from spaces of seclusion and invisibility, it is impor-
tant to recognize the physical spaces of interplay and counterbal-
ance (such as the Soli shrine) as well as the symbols and actions
of counterbalance (such as thresholds, paintings, and forms of

supplication), which draw the sacred into everyday, contempo-
rary spaces. As such, it becomes evident that “a sacred space is
not defined by its spatial limits,” but rather “it is open to unlim-
ited claims and counter-claims on its significance” (Chidester
and Linenthal 1995:18). Such an understanding of cosmological
efficacy and sacred space renders the Chakwela Makumbi and
other festivals in Zambia and beyond open to spiritual surprise,
interpretive openness, and the possibility of counterclaims that
are so important to sacred spaces, rendering them political too.

Ruth Simbao is Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture and
Founder of the Visual and Performing Arts of Africa Humanities Focus
Area (www.research-africa-arts.com) at Rhodes University, South Africa.
R.Simbao@ru.ac.za.

Notes

Sincere thanks go to Chieftainess Nkomeshya Muka-
mambo II, Headman Kabeleka, Headwoman Muyansho,
Headman Kalulu, and Research Assistant Susan Mwape
for shaping this research and to Christine Kreamer and
Allen Roberts for insightful comments.

1 As I argue in my PhD dissertation (Simbao
2008:4–5), while many ceremonies have long perfor-
mance histories (often in the form of rituals, harvest fes-
tivals, initiations, and inaugurations), the recreation of
performance in contemporary annual events inevitably
involves the embellishment and overlooking of certain
aspects of cultural heritage. Rather than being an
“invention of tradition” (Ranger 1983, revisited in 1993)
or even a process of renovating tradition (Kodesh 2001),
practices of embellishing and overlooking simply are
characteristics of tradition. As Kwame Anthony Appiah
(1992:32) writes, the phrase “invention of tradition”
is a pleonasm, as tradition has always and will always
involve perpetual processes of change that combine in
new ways with aspects of continuity (Appiah 2006: 107).

In their book Ceremony! Celebrating Zambia’s

Cultural Heritage, Guhrs and Kapwepwe provide an
overview of the numerous traditional ceremonies that
take place in contemporary Zambia, many of which
have been formally gazetted by the Zambian govern-
ment. Due to the fact that, broadly speaking, most
ceremonies have similar formats and that this format
is largely repeated from year to year, one could argue
that they present a scripted form of Zambian tradition.
However, in my work I emphasize the slippages and
contestations that occur and argue that no performance
script can actually be repeated, for performance exists
ontologically in its disappearance (Phelan 1993:147).
3 The recent drive to festivalize and heritagize
culture is manifested in the proliferation of monuments,
memorials, “natural” heritage sites, intangible heritage
performances, and museums worldwide. As Jean
and John Comoroff (2001:629) suggest, “Heritage has
become a construct to conjure with as global markets
erode the distinctive wealth of nations, forcing them
to redefine their sense of patrimony—and its material
worth.” I refer to this construct as a process of heritagiza-
tion rather than an act of simply protecting existing
cultural heritage, as this reveals the fact that cultural
inheritance, or “cultural patrimony” (Appiah 2006:118)
is actively designated and performed. Even though
an inheritance is usually passed on within a “family”
(however this is defined), the process of heritagization
highlights the fact that people outside of this “family,”
such as UNESCO, are often the ones designating and
defining the beneficiaries.

John Argyle’s 1958 fieldwork report, “First

56 | african arts autumn 2014 vol. 47, no. 3

Report on Field Work amongst the BeneFutwe Branch
of the BaSoli” in the Institute for Social and Economic
Research (INESOR) Archives, Lusaka.

It does not seem as if Chakwela Makumbi

existed in the form it takes today prior to 1998. John
Argyle, who conducted research on the Soli people in
the 1950s, states that the previous Nkomeshya chief
never mentioned such a ceremony (personal corre-
spondence, September 13, 2007). However, this does not
mean that the modern ceremony is not based on certain
rituals that used to take place.

See Simbao (2008:20–208) for more detail
about her political career and how this affected her
mobility and the establishment of her cosmopolitan
identity.

7 The dating of Mukamambo I is unclear.

Brelsford (1968:77) suggests that she might have died
in 1889, but he also states that this is not a certainty.
Oral stories assert that she lived in the eighteenth or
even the seventeenth century.

8 According to the oral history of Nkomeshya’s

village, Nkomeshya’s Soli are considered to be the
“proper” Soli, amongst the earlier people found in
Zambia. Headman Kabeleka asserted the Nkomeshya
Soli “have always been there” and were not part of
the migrations from Lubaland. The Solis from the
villages of Chief Bundabunda, Chief Mpanshya, and
Chieftainess Shikabeta are said to have migrated with
the Lala and Lamba from Lubaland and were incor-
porated by the “proper” Soli so that they could help
to fight off the Soli enemies—the Chikunda (inter-
view with Kabeleka, Nkomeshya Village, Chongwe
Village, October 2004). Others, however, disagree.
For example, the research done by Manchishi and
Musona frames the Bundabunda Soli chief as the
one who was supposed to be the most senior of Soli
chiefs. They argue that the ordaining of Nkomeshya
as Senior Chief was actually a mistake on the part of
the colonial administration.

9 This description of Mukamambo I and her

astonishing mythological powers is based on two
conversations, one with Headman Kabeleka (Kabeleka
Village, October 27, 2004) and the other with Head-
man Kalulu (Kalulu Village, February 4, 2005).

10
11

Interview, Headman Kalulu, February 2005.
In Macnair (1954:153) Livingstone is cited as

saying that “the mass of vapor leaps quite clear of the
rock, and forms a white unbroken fleece all the way
down to the bottom. Its whiteness gives the idea of
snow … the snow-white sheet seems like myriads of
small comets rushing on in one direction” The artist
Thomas Baines’s (1864:488) description is remarkably

similar: “a jet … formed comet or rocket-like trains
of spray and vapor, till the whole, before reaching the
abyss, was transformed into a broken, snow white,
fleecy stream, bearing but little resemblance to actual
liquid water, and reminding me more of the descrip-
tions I have read of the Staubbach in the Alps than
anything else.”

Interview, Chief Mukuni, Lusaka, July 19,

12
2005.

13 According to Headman Kabeleka, Muka-
mambo I could turn into a dona fish (Mami Wata)
whenever she was near water, and so when she went
to Livingstone (near Victoria Falls), she would trans-
form into this mermaid-like creature; see Simbao
2008.

14 Nkomeshya’s Soli people talk about the Chi-
kunda as the historical enemies of the Soli. The Chi-
kunda were well known as traders and were actually
slave soldiers who escaped from black slave armies of
Portuguese estates on the lower Zambezi. They were
what Roberts (1976:125) calls “a new African ‘tribe’ …
formed under European pressure, but … thoroughly
African in its customs and institutions.” (See also
Lancaster 1974). Today the Chikunda have their own
traditional ceremony, Dantho, run by Chief Mpuka
in Luangwa District. (See the document “Historical
Background of the Chikunda People of Luangwa-
Feira” in file: Mbambala Ceremony, ZCSLP/101/15/77,
Lusaka Provincial Cultural Office archives).

Interview, Headman Kabeleka, Nkomeshya Vil-

lage, Chongwe District, October 27, 2004.

16 Thanks to Allen Roberts for pointing out that
talking severed heads is a common theme of regional
folklore (see Siegel 1985), and that beheading is an
important trope (see White 1997, Lalu, 2009, and Rob-
erts 2012).

Interview, Headman Kabeleka, Nkomeshya Vil-

lage, Chongwe District, October 27, 2004.

18 As the blacksmith White Chinondo says, one
can’t use the metal part of a hoe (makasu); it has to be
the head of an axe (kembe). A hoe is usually associated
with female fertility and an axe is usually associated
with male fertility. Interview, White Chinondo, Chi-
tentabunga Village, February 3, 2005.

19 Recorded in Nkomeshya Village, October 24,

2004.

20 As in many other African contexts of black-
smithing, there are restrictions on Soli blacksmiths
around sexual conduct during specific times, and in
the past women were not allowed to enter the smithing
area, which was usually located far from the village
(Manchishi and Musona 1984:23). Roberts (1976:103)

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says that in the nineteenth century, the Soli were well-
known blacksmiths and that many furnaces can still be
seen along the upper Chongwe valley.

21 According to Mrs. Malasha, fire is used as a
metaphor for human fertility when a matron has to
check on the sexual well-being of a newlywed couple
if they have not produced a child within a year. The
matron would traditionally make the young wife put
matchsticks in her hair, and after each round of sex, the
husband would take one of the matchsticks out. The
next morning, if the matron were given the match-
sticks (indicating that the man was capable of sexual
intercourse) she would shout out, “There is fire in this
house!” If, however, she were not given the matchsticks,
she would presume that the man was “infertile” (or
impotent). See also Moore (1999) for discussion of the
metaphorical relationship between fire and gender in
southern and eastern Africa.

22 Even amongst Nkomeshya’s four ritual special-

ists who perform rituals in the graveyard (Headman
Kabeleka, Headwoman Chitentabunga, Headman
Kalulu, and Headman Nkumbula) there are varying
degrees of knowledge on certain topics. Nkumbula
mentioned that he grew up in the city and therefore
doesn’t have knowledge of certain things.

23 For example, during the 2005 Chakwela

Makumbi ceremony, Chieftainess Nkomeshya became
overwhelmed with spiritual burden and unexpectedly
collapsed during her public rain prayer.

24 Interview, Headman Kabeleka, Nkomeshya Vil-

lage, Chongwe District, October 27, 2004.

Interview, Headman Kabeleka, Nkomeshya Vil-

lage, Chongwe District, October 28, 2004.

26 Prayer recorded October 30, 2004. Interestingly,
she suggests in her prayer that the water that floods the
Lozi floodplains (creating the impetus for the Kuom-
boka ceremony) is a result of her prayers: “it becomes
unbearable for the Litunga to remain in the first capital
because Mukamambo has called for the rains.” This is
important in the context of the scriptedness of ceremo-
nies, as the Kuomboka ceremony is often seen to be the
premium ceremony, while others are considered to be
mere copies. Here Mukamambo positions her rainmak-
ing powers as the very catalyst for the Kuomboka.

27 A centering device of this sort called a lilindwe
was used by earlier Tabwa to produce or prevent rain.
See Roberts 2000.

28 Recorded at Nkomeshya Village, October 30,

2004, trans. Idah Phiri.

29 Recorded February 14, 2005, trans. Idah Phiri.
30 Interview, Kabeleka, Chalimbana, March 19,

2005.

31 Muyansho says that it was the ancestors’ idea
that she produce paintings at the arena and the shrine,
and she says that each year the paintings are different,
“depending on which spirits come. The spirits tell me
which design to paint.” Certainly the designs that I saw
in 2004 and 2005 were very different. In this section I
discuss her designs from the 2004 ceremony. (Interview,
Nkomeshya Village, January 25, 2005).

32 The munga tree is burnt for this ash, as it has a

very fine ash that is not poisonous.

33 Recorded at the shrine just behind the palace,

Nkomeshya Village, October 30, 2004.

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