The Birth of A Ngoni Child

Author: H. F. Barnes
Source: Man, Vol. 49 (Aug., 1949), pp. 87-89,
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland

The following is an account, almost as I wrote it down at the time, of the birth of a baby amongst the Fort Jameson Ngoni living in the Eastern Province of Northern Rhodesia. I have added some notes on the relationships of the people concerned and some comparisons with other births which I attended among the same people.

The mother, Mwanijinga,¹ was a young primipara living in the village of her husband's mother's father. Puberty had occurred twenty-three months previously in June, 1945, and shortly afterwards she had married. Her husband worked at a tobacco factory about ten miles away and visited the village only at weekends.

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Some Notes on the Ngoni by James Stewart

Excerpts From: Lake Nyassa, and the Water Route to the Lake Region of Africa
Author: James Stewart
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography,New Monthly Series, Vol. 3, No. 5 (May, 1881), pp. 257-277
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute ofBritish Geographers)
(Read at the Evening Meeting, March 14th, 1881.) Map, p. 320.

The Language of West and North of Lake Nyassa (now Lake Malawi)

The language which is now most widely disseminated through the country to the west and north of the lake is the Kafir language (i.e. ngoni language). It is not, however, the most generally spoken. The Kafir or Mangone invaders have wandered over the whole of the district, and wherever they have been, they have left a knowledge of their language among the residents of the country, many of whom they had subjugated and enslaved during the period of their occupancy. Such men were frequently my interpreters in the highlands of Mambwe and Maliwandu. This language has for years past been reduced to writing. The Scriptures and other books have been translated into it, and newspapers are now published in it, at the Missionary Institution at Lovedale. This fact facilitates our work among them very greatly. None of the other languages,

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A TRIP TO NGONILAND.

Below is an account of the experiences of one of the early Livingstonia Missionaries which helps to shed light on some few aspects of life in Ngoniland  after they accepted christianity.

FROM : STREAMS IN THE DESERT  A PICTURE OF LIFE IN LIVINGSTONIA BY  J. H. MORRISON, M.A.
PUBLISHED IN 1919.

No man is entitled to be called an experienced traveller who has not had experience of travelling by machila. The recipe for a machila is as follows : a stout bamboo pole, with a hammock slung below it, and a team of a dozen high-stepping, quick-trotting natives to shoulder the pole, two at a time. It is true that the Portuguese down on the coast use four carriers at a time, who jiggle along with short, mincing, irregular steps, in the most ridiculous and effeminate way. But this is a refinement of luxury not to be looked for in the interior, any more than the quiet amble of a lady's pony is to be expected of a broncho. The raw native, who sees the Portuguese jelly-fish trot for the first time, is convulsed with inextinguishable laughter, and, on his return home,will entertain his village to a daily pantomime.

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Coronation Of Inkosi yamakhosi Gomani IV

This is a video of the coronation of the late Inkosi yamakhosi Gomani IV of the Maseko Ngoni at Nkosini, Lizulu in Ntcheu district on 21st June 2008. Gracing the occasion was the State President Ngwazi Dr Bingu wa Mutharika

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Video of the Mzimba Centenary Celebrations Ceremony: From Kingdom to Protectorate and Beyond

Below is a video of the Mzimba Centenary celebrations: From Kingdom to Protectorate and Beyond ceremony held at the foot of Hora Mountain in 2008. Mzimba district of Malawi,  formerly known as Ngoniland was initially left out of the British Protectorate until 1904 when with the help of Scottish missionaries, the British incorporated Ngoniland into the British Protectorate of Nyasaland.

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Zambia Ngoni Praise poetry

Taken from Shona Praise Poetry

'These tentative and rather inconclusive remarks have been triggered by comparing Shona Praise Poetry with a recent dissertation on the Ngoni poetrys of Zambia by Steven Moyo. Moyo observes, in passing, that the moribund state of the language has definite ramifications for the existence of the poetry. The ramifications are not spelled out. A caveat to the work points out that Ngoni is "no longer a sociolinguistically dynamic language." Yet a long and detailed analytical description (539 pages) of the Ngoni aesthetic ambiance proves to be a significant contribution to the corpus of African literary criticism. Indeed so broad, deep, and comprehensive is Moyo's analysis that it spans dance, song, and verbal poetry.

Ngoni Izingoma are portrayed as the totality of the aesthetic experience implied by the genre of praise poetry. Moyo elaboratesupon the cognitive and taxonomic aspects of Izingoma (the basic modes of aesthetic communication) under eighteen subheadings-seven under the subcategory of dance (ingoma), six under singing (izihlabelelo), five under praises or stylized speech (izithokozo). The names of the subgenres begin with umgubho [war dance] and culiminate in imidabuko [national epics]. The songs go from imilolozelo[lullabies] to izigiyo [adult self-advertising songs]. The complete list is umgubho [hunting dance, war dance, and song], isigiyo [singly performed and rendered as self-praise], ngoma [pastime dances], umgido [associated with women and children], tshimbo [a two man or two woman dance], mzangaza [a dance in which young men and women form parallel lines and occasionally pair off], mvunga [in which men dance and murmur to women solists], imilolozelo [lullabies], umsindo [sung in the context of nubility rites and the initiation of girls in preparation for marriage], umthimba [sung in the context of bride wealth negotiations and marriage ceremonies], vyanusi [sung in the context of therapy presided over by diviners or medicine persons], ligubho [death songs and dirges], izigiyo [dance songs that accompany isigiyo dances] , vigiyo [topical boasts and self-praise poems], vithokozo [praise poetry proper in which "others" are declaimed], imihubo [community lyrics in which place names occur frequently as spiritual homes], viwongo [clan praises], and imidabuko [national epics].'

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Northern Ngoniland - Imperial Possibilities of Missions

Extract from Missionary Idea in Life and Religion, 1926

....Perhaps the imperial possibilities of missions have never been better illustrated than in the story of Laws of Livingstonia of the annexation of Ngoniland. It was won for the British Empire, neither by the soldier, nor by the administrator, nor by the explorer, but by the missionary. Sir Alfred Sharpe, Commissioner of Nyasaland, put absolute confidence in the judgment of Doctor Laws about the precise moment when the country was ripe for annexation. On receipt of a letter from Doctor Laws, the commissioner "did a thing surely unparalleled in the story of British colonization. He went up into the wilds of Ngoniland to annex the country, unattended by the military, and taking only his wife with him." On September 2, 1904, the day fixed for the great palaver with the native chiefs, "the Ngoni gathered in their thousands, chiefs and indunas and fighting men, with spears and shields, the proudest and most warlike people in Central Africa, and the commissioner walked into their midst to take away their independence, with all the implication which that involved the surrender of their old care-free life, the submission to outside authority, the imposition of taxation and he was alone. The few soldiers he had brought with him as a matter of form mingled, unarmed, with the spectators."

A mission teacher acted as an interpreter; and after a long palaver, with many explanations asked and patiently and tactfully given, without the firing of a single shot and with the good will of the "wild Ngoni," by the setting of the sun Ngoniland had been added to the British Empire. The commissioner gratefully acknowledged his great indebtedness to Doctor Laws and the other missionaries.

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Ngoni Language - Scholars' Views

A COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR SOUTH-AFRICAN BANTU LANGUAGES, 1891

Sources: Introductory Grammar of the Ngoni language by W. A. Elmslie, M. B., 1891. Ikatekisma la Hari... ngu W. A. Elmslie, 1890. Izindaba zombuso ka Mlungu, 1890.

There are in South Africa several different tribes which go by the name of Ngoni. Those among which the Rev. W.A. Elmslie has passed several years live under the rule of Mombera, on the western side of Lake Nyassa. Their language must not be coupled with Bunga (p.xix of this work), but with Mfengu, Zulu, Xosa, and Tebele, in the Kafir cluster. In the sources mentioned above I have scarcely found more than two or three words which may not be heard among the Kafirs of Cape Colony and Natal.

The demonstrative pronouns and a few other forms are the same as in Zulu, not as in Xosa (n. 124). A few grammatical forms are proper to Ngoni, or borrowed from the dialects of the Nyassa region. Thus the classifiers ci and vi replace si and zi of Kafir {ci and zi of Tonga); and the connective pronouns of the plural number in the 1st and 2nd person are ti "we" instead of the Kafir si; mu or li "you" instead of the Kafir ni. Consequently, the substantive pronoun mwena or lina "you" replaces nina. (See pp. 153 and 160). Were it not for these few differences, all good Zulu and Kafir (Xhosa, Zulu or Ndebele) books might be used among the Ngoni of Nyasaland.

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PAINTING OF A FINE LOOKING DEAD MASEKO NGONI WARRIOR

Below is a painting of a dead Maseko Ngoni warrior as drawn by Sir Harry Johnston during the war against Yao slavers around  1890s. Below is a vivid description of the realities of war and the circumstances that led to the discovery of the body of this brave warrior.

In a secluded part of the precincts amid the scattered vegetation of the village outskirts I suddenly came across the body of a fine-looking Angoni, not many minutes dead. He might have been fighting on our side; he might haven been hired by the Arabs as one of their raiders, but someone had killed him with a bullet  through the head and he had fallen in his tracks, in all his panoply of war, scarcely conscious of the object for which he fought. His right hand still grasped the stabbing spear, his left still held the ox-hide shield. His throwing spears had flown from his hand and were scattered on the ground. Grimmest sight of all — four vultures had already arrived on the' scene to examine him. Two birds promenaded up and down with a watchful eye, ready on noting any sign of returning consciousness to take their departure; another bird, somewhat bolder, stood on one leg and inspected him as might a thoughtful surgeon; and the fourth whirled in circles on out-spread pinions round the body, wishing to settle but frightened, in case after all it was a swoon and not a death.

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NOTE ON CLICKS IN THE BANTU LANGUAGES

Author(s): A. Werner

Source: Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 2, No. 8 (Jul., 1903), pp. 416-421

Note from moderator: Alice Werner worked as a Blantyre Mission missionary in Nyasaland in 1890s and was more acquainted with the Maseko Ngoni having worked among some Maseko Ngoni as a teacher. 

IT is generally conceded that the clicks which occur in Xosa, in Zulu, and, to a limited extent in Sesuto, have been borrowed from the Hottentots. Accordingly we find a greater number of click-words, though not a greater variety of clicks, used by the Xosas than by the Zulus, the former having been more in contact with the previous occupants of the country than the latter. Dr. McCall Theal (History of South Africa, II., 196) says that the clicks "were introduced by females spared when the hordes to which they belonged were conquered, as is evident, not only from tradition, but from the words in which they occur being chiefly those pertaining to the occupations of women." This, however, scarcely holds good, at least as far as Zulu is concerned, as the following list of words (which might easily be made longer) will show. (It is scarcely necessary to point out that c stands for the dental click, q for the palatal, and x for the lateral).

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