RITES OF PASSAGE: AFRICAN RITES

Rituals in Africa, just as in other parts of the world, utilize symbols to express and convey meanings, verbally and nonverbally. In traditional African societies, a firm stress is placed on the performance of rituals as customary, standardized, and symbolic social communication that is repeatable according to fixed patterns. All African societies have different age-linked rituals, and mark the passage from one to another, but not all have the same rituals, either in number or in kind. The following are typical: (1) prenatal rituals (e.g., rituals to confirm pregnancy, for fetal growth, and for safe delivery); (2) naming rituals; (3) pre-pubertal and pubertal initiation rituals for the entrance into adulthood; (4) betrothal and marriage; (5) initiation into prestige-bestowing adult associations; (6) rituals elevating individuals to high office or to priestly functions; and (7) funeral (Turner, 1985).

African rituals thus can be analyzed helpfully under the category "life cycle rituals," or what have been called "rites of passage" since the publication of the book of the same title in 1908 by Arnold van Gennep and expanded later by the British anthropologist Victor Turner. Van Gennep identified three phases in such rituals: rites of separation, which provide a socially accepted way to move away from a prior status; rites of transition, which safeguard participants during the dangerous liminal, or "in-between," period; and rites of incorporation, which ensure that the participants have been reinstated properly into society and legitimated by the community in their new roles. Turner argued that the entire ritual process, from separation through transition to incorporation, can be understood as liminal because each phase occurs in a time between times and in a space that is set apart from other places.

Because Africa consists of vast regions and multiple traditional societies, examples of selected groups from different parts of the continent illustrate the way various rites of passage are understood and practiced.

Ndebele Birth Ritual

A typical birth ritual among the Ndebele-speaking people of Zimbabwe begins with the woman leaving her husband during her ninth month of pregnancy to go to her own parents' home. This constitutes the separation phase, which involves women preparing the room by polishing the floor with cow dung. After the room is cleaned thoroughly, no one is allowed into it until the mother is nearing the time for the delivery. When the time approaches for the birth, the liminal phase of the ritual begins. The pregnant woman is accompanied into the room by her mother and grandmother and any other women assisting in the childbirth. It is forbidden for any man to enter the room when a woman is giving birth, even her own husband. Before touching the pregnant woman, the woman acting as midwife, usually the grandmother, washes her hands in water that contains herbs prescribed by a traditional healer. When the baby comes out of the mother's womb, the midwife is the first to touch the baby by cleaning the blood off with the medicated water. The umbilical cord of the baby is then cut, but some of it is left hanging to its navel and tied with a string. The midwife then washes the baby again in the medicated water. While the baby is sleeping, but before the baby is allowed to feed from its mother, a fire is prepared in the room. Specially selected herbs are put onto the fire, which is allowed to reduce to burning coals. The baby is then awakened and its head placed in the smoke from the fire containing the herbs. The baby may be held over the fire for over an hour before being allowed to suck from the mother. The next day, the same process of putting the baby in the smoke from the medicated fire is repeated, and is continued until the umbilical cord falls off, which may take up to a week. After the umbilical cord falls off, the liminal phase ends when the baby is recognized as a person and given a name. As a sign that the mother and baby have been incorporated into the community, people outside the room are called in to celebrate the birth by bringing gifts; only after this is the father of the baby allowed to see his child. To complete the ritual, the father is given the piece of umbilical cord, which he takes to a place near the homestead and buries, offering thanks to the ancestors and asking them to protect the new baby. After these events, the father, mother, and baby return to the father's home, fully reincorporated into society in their new status as parents with a child (Cox, 1998).

Agikuyu Initiation Rites

The Agikuyu of Kenya are organized around the age-set system (marika ), and thus male and female initiation rites (irua ) play a central social role. These involve prolonged and intensive puberty rituals that culminate with male and female circumcision. Although boys and girls are taken to separate locations for the rituals, those circumcised at the same time are considered age-mates, and those circumcised during the same season are regarded as age-sets. The process of separation begins with the slaughtering of a goat that is eaten while members of the extended family, under the direction of the chief elder, consider if any of them might have broken any social rules that would result in harm coming to the initiates during the rite of passage to adulthood. If some breach of the social code is discovered, the initiates are not allowed to take part in the ritual until a purification ritual is performed for the family. If no rules have been broken, the next stage of preparation takes place with the slaughtering of another goat, which is dedicated to the ancestors. Those to be initiated then leave their own families to go other, "adopted" families for the actual ritual. This signals that they are separating from their biological families and becoming part of the larger Agikuyu community. The initiates sing and dance all night at the homesteads of their adopted families. The following morning, ceremonial elders anoint them with a white soil that is considered to be sacred. Further rituals then occur, including more dancing and singing, competitive games between initiates, and additional purification ceremonies. When the actual circumcisions are performed, each initiate receives a sponsor, experienced women for the girls and senior men for the boys, who in the former cases nurse the wounds caused by the cutting of the genitalia. After the circumcisions are completed, both boys and girls remain in seclusion until their wounds heal, during which time they are instructed fully by their sponsors in the social and moral norms of Agikuyu society, including sex education. They then return from the period of seclusion to be recognized by members of the community as "emerging" adults. They are allowed to remain still in a kind liminal phase for a few weeks, as if on a holiday, with no responsibilities. Finally, they are incorporated into the community as adults through a ritual called menjo, which involves shaving their heads, symbolizing that they have been transformed into different people during the rituals; they were separated from their biological families as children and have returned, reborn as it were, as adults (Hinga, 1998).

Marriage in Tswana Culture

In most African societies, kinship relations are closely connected to economic security that is ensured through childbearing. Because marriage rituals solidify alliances between kinship groups, they formalize the material conditions on which the alliances have been forged and on which the continuation of the lineage depends. Within traditional Tswana society in Botswana, for example, the separation phase in a marriage ritual is marked by an agreement between the families of the boy and the girl that a formal kinship alliance will be made. This can occur even when the boy and girl are children, or in some cases, even before they are born. The next stage of separating a woman from her own family involves a payment (bogadi —sometimes translated as "bride price") from the husband's family to the wife's family (Amanze, 1998). Although today compensation is often made in cash, typically the bride price is satisfied by offering cattle to the girl's family, usually between four and ten head, with the number decided entirely by the boy's family. Once the payment is made, the girl is regarded as entering into a liminal phase that transfers her labor and her childbearing properties to her husband's family. In some parts of Tswana society, particularly in sections where longstanding traditional patterns persist, this stage is extended by the boy cohabiting with the girl at her parents' home for up to a year, during which time the girl might become pregnant as a sign that she is fertile. If for any reason she is not able to bear children, the contract between the families can be abrogated. In this sense, the liminal phase becomes potentially dangerous, because the couple have not yet been incorporated into society, which only occurs when the couple returns to set up a household at the boy's parental home. Although this system of marriage is based on strictly defined kinship relations that in some senses are quite specific to Tswana culture and to subgroups within it, from the point of view of ritual activity, it conforms to the general pattern throughout Africa that marriage never occurs between two people, but is based on a contractual agreement between two extended families (Schapera, 1950).

Sacred Kingship amongst the Edo

Although initiation into sacred kingship amongst the Edo (Benin) people of Nigeria begins with a series of funeral rituals for the deceased king, it is best classified as a rite of passage into a high office. The death rituals for the king of Benin (oba ) correspond to the annual cycles of nature because he is believed to represent in his person a variety of nature spirits that are essential for ensuring the well-being of the people. For this reason, he is regarded as qualitatively different from other humans, and becomes an object of worship in himself. He is thought not to eat or drink as other humans do. Elaborate measures are taken to safeguard him against becoming sick, but if he does fall ill, no direct references are made to this among the people. Rather, the oba is said to be sleeping, as expressed in the proverb, "the leopard is resting." Because the oba symbolizes the whole of the Edo people in his person, when he dies, his eldest son (the crown prince, or edaiken ) acts out on behalf of the whole nation quasi-historical legends that relate great deeds performed by the royal ancestors. This dramatization is reinforced graphically and concretely by effigies of past obas that have been cast in bronze and placed on ancestral altars around the palace compound. After the burial of his father, the edaiken begins a year-long process of separating from his role as a prince, enters the liminal stage, and finally is incorporated into Edo society in his new role as the divine earthly ruler, the oba of Benin. During the hazardous liminal phase, the edaiken's life cycles are reinacted ritually by recounting first his passage from childhood to youth, then his period as a novice-in-training learning princely responsibilities, and finally his rise to full maturity as the oba. The ceremonies are concluded when the crown prince is installed as the oba, one who in the eyes of the people has been transformed from being a human to one who is sacred (Kaplan, 2000).

Limba Funeral Rituals

Amongst the Limba of Sierra Leone, the belief in the ability of ancestor spirits to affect the living is demonstrated by the care with which funerary rituals are performed. Burial ceremonies are thought to be the first steps in the transformation of the deceased into an ancestor. In the separation phase, the corpse must be cleaned, wrapped, and prepared ritually for burial, only after which can the social roles that have been left vacant by the deceased be filled and the property distributed to the next of kin. From the time of the burial until a ritual called aboreh is performed, a period of between forty days and one year elapses, during which time the spirit of the deceased is in a state of liminality, neither in the world of the living nor in the company of the family ancestors. The aboreh ritual, which lasts for one week, must be conducted to effect a transition that removes the spirit of the deceased from a condition of roaming about the bush dangerously to one who assumes ancestral duties, such as protecting the family from misfortune, illness, and witchcraft attacks. If the deceased had been a member of a secret society (Gbangbani for men; Bondo for women), during the first few days of the aboreh ritual, members of the secret society perform special rites which nonmembers are prohibited from attending. When the ritual becomes public later in the week, the whole community is involved. Of particular importance in the public ritual are singers who praise the ancestors of the deceased, rehearse the names and deeds of the ancestors, and appeal for the ancestors to accept the one who has died as one of them. On the last day of the ritual, at dawn, a white fowl is carried to the grave of the deceased by some of the elders. Rice is placed on the grave while the chief elder, who holds the fowl in his hand, praises the ancestors and implores them once again to receive the deceased among them. When the elder completes his speech, the fowl jumps from his hand and eats the rice on the grave to indicate that the spirit of the deceased has now been accepted as an ancestor. The fowl is then killed and its blood poured on the grave. After the sacrifice is completed, a stone known as betiyeh is taken from the grave of the deceased and kept in a special container at the homestead, symbolizing that the deceased has now become an ancestor and can protect the family from misfortune (John, 1999).

Conclusion

Additional cases could have been multiplied both in types of rituals and from different societies to illustrate the many ways rites of passage are practiced and understood in Africa. Nevertheless, these instances, which follow closely the transitional stages outlined by van Gennep and Turner, demonstrate that for practitioners of African indigenous religions, life crises are overcome successfully by performing ritual acts precisely and meticulously. In this way, African societies make sense of major social transitions and, at the same time, ensure that traditional authority is maintained.

See Also

Liminality.

Bibliography

Amanze, James N. African Christianity in Botswana. Gweru, Zimbabwe, 1998. Focuses on African Independent Churches, but begins with a helpful description of traditional Tswana religion.

Cox, James L. Rational Ancestors. Scientific Rationality and African Indigenous Religions. Cardiff, Wales, 1998. Contains numerous descriptions of Ndebele and Shona calendrical, life-cycle, and crisis rituals.

Hinga, Teresia M. "Christianity and Female Puberty Rites in Africa: The Agikuyu Case." In Rites of Passage in Contemporary Africa, edited by James L. Cox, pp. 168–179. Cardiff, U.K., 1998. Included among several articles analyzing the changing nature of African rites of passage, particularly under the influence of Christianity.

John, Irene. "The Changing Face of Kabudu : An Examination of Community and Community Relationships in Sierra Leone since 1960, with Specific Reference to the Rise of the Evangelical Christian Groups in Freetown." Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1999. Contains recent fieldwork material from members of the Limba people who fled to Freetown to escape war in rural areas.

Kaplan, Flora Edouwaye S. "Some Thoughts on Ideology, Beliefs, and Sacred Kingship among the Edo (Benin) People of Nigeria." In African Spirituality. Forms, Meanings, and Expressions, edited by Jacob K. Olupona, pp. 114–153. New York, 2000. A thorough outline of field-based studies of sacred kingship within the Kingdom of Benin (Nigeria).

Schapera, I. "Kinship and Marriage Among the Tswana." In African Systems of Kinship and Marriage, edited by A.R. Radcliffe-Brown and Daryll Forde, pp. 140–165. Oxford, U.K., 1950. A dated, but detailed anthropological study of kinship and marriage among the Tswana as it was practiced during the first half of the twentieth century.

Turner, Victor W. "Liminality, Kabbalah, and the Media." Religion 15 (1985): 205–217. One of Turner's last contributions to his theory of liminality.

Van Gennep, Arnold. Rites of Passage. Chicago, 1960 [1909].

James L. Cox (2005)