Routledge

Chapter Notes

Chapter 13 Mission Hymns and the Founding of the Shembe Community

  • Protestant mission work began in South Afrcia when Georg Schmidt, a Moravian, opened a mission in the Cape in 1737. He returned to the Netherlands in 1742, and his work was only followed up in 1792 when three Moravian missionaries started a new mission in the Cape.
  • In the following years, missionaries arrived from England, the Netherlands, Scotland, France, and the United States. They focused on creating Bibles and hymnbooks in local languages and establishing missionary villages in order to evangelize, educate, and ‘civilize’ Africans. In practice this meant ‘to Europeanize’ Africans, and teaching them to sing hymns in four part harmony was a central dimension of this work.
  • In 1824, English settlers established a trading post in what is now Durban. From there, missionaries first made their base in Natal in 1838, and they and other Europeans were constantly in contact with Zulu chiefs north of the Tugela River.
  • Missionaries usually were not sensitive to the linguistic and cultural dimensions of African song performance, and the translated hymns were often awkward and coarse in tonal languages like Zulu and Xhosa. African leaders were responsible for the flourishing of Christianity, for they better grasped how to incorporate it into local forms.
  • Some of the most successful were African prophets such as Xhosa-speaking Ntsikana Gaba, a poet, composer, orator, and dancer who died in 1821. He had a visionary experience in which he was called to reject some aspects of Xhosa tradition and incorporate aspects of mission Christianity. His hymns similarly incorporated elements of both mission and Xhosa musical cultures.
  • Women's afternoon and all-night prayer meetings beginning in the late 1880s and organized by missionary wives in South Africa were another important stimulus for blending African and Mission practice. The appeal of these meetings (manyano) was connected to lively oral traditions in which the African women had participated their entire lives. They learned the Bible and hymns from hearing and memorizing, not from reading.
  • The system of labor migration and taxation imposed by the colonial government in the late nineteenth century after the discovery of gold and diamonds near Johannesburg, the racism and colonial attitudes in mission churches, the persistence of African beliefs in the Christianity of the converts, the contested place of polygamy, and the central place of healing in African spirituality prompted a movement towards religious independence, split into two main streams: Ethiopianism and Zionism.
  • Ethiopianism was an early form of African/Black consciousness in South Africa that relocated Zion in Ethiopia that began with Mangena Moroke's split with the Wesleyan Church in 1892 over racial segregation. Ntsikana's hymns were particularly popular within this religious community.
  • Zionism was an alternative model of secession with clearer mission roots. Baptism, faith healing, and the Pentecostal gift of speaking in tongues remained strong aspects of faith and practice. Zionist hymn singing takes mission hymns and Africanizes their performance practice.
  • Zulu Zionists insert hymns into the service spontaneously, along with handclapping, body swaying, and dance. The hymns structure a meeting, function as signature tunes for the contributions of specific people, provide a way of transitioning if a speaker goes on too long or is tedious, and accompany faith healing. John Blacking has argued that the style of singing, more than the words, articulates an Africanist worldview.
  • Venda Zionists use both the Psalms and European hymns translated into the vernacular. They tend to sing the Psalms faster and the hymns more slowly (so that individuals may ‘catch’ the Holy Spirit). They sing in a call and response format with voices singing in parallel to create a thick harmonic texture, but pieces of a verse typically overlap in hocket-like phrases such that there are no pauses or rests in the stream of sound.
  • Durban today is very diverse religiously and includes Zulu-speakers who engage in Judeo-Christian derived practices such as baptism: Zionists and ibandla lamaNazaretha, the Church of the Nazarites (followers of the charismatic prophet Isaiah Shembe).
  • Isaiah Shembe founded ibandla lamaNazaretha around 1911 and it consisted of a community primarily of young women and girls whom he had miraculously healed.
  • Today the religious community claims approximately one million members spread throughout South Africa and parts of Swaziland, Zimbabwe, and Botswana.
  • Isaiah Shembe was born around 1870 and lived through many traumatic historical events, including the crushing of the Bambatha Rebellion by the British in 1906 and the Land Act of 1913 which took land from black South Africans for white purposes.
  • Shembe was called by God to go to Nhlangakaze, where he received a vision of heaven. Accounts of his twelve days on the mountain concur that he was instructed to preach and to baptize all people, but that Jehovah made a special covenant for people of African descent that made a space for them and their cultures in heaven.
  • He traveled the east coast of the country and drew people into his community. He purchased land in Inanda and called it Ekuphakameni, the elevated place; it resembled both mission villages and the layout of the Zulu royal residence.
  • This became a refuge for young women and girls left destitute by the poor conditions in KwaZulu Natal. It appealed to them both by requiring women to be self-sufficient and by stressing ritual performances, sacred dance, and festive attire. He later purchased additional land tracts in many places.
  • The Bible, rather than mission Christianity, was Shembe's source of knowledge about Christianity. He interpreted it literally, especially Old Testament law, and required worship on the Sabbath, sexual abstinence, and avoidance of pork and unleavened bread while on Nazarite ground. He also used this knowledge as a powerful tool in struggles with mission churches for control over spirituality in the area.
  • The New Testament provided models for managing the magic of modernity: became known as a healer and miracle worker who kept followers safe during violence and cured women of infertility.
  • Isaiah Shembe and his son Johannes Galilee composed hymns that were collected and are now used in congregational worship, as accompaniment to sacred dance in church festivals, in less formal gatherings of church members and families, and in gospel-music-style performance on television, on cassettes, and at world music festivals.
  • Isaiah Shembe received the new style of sacred singing and dancing from the ancestors who called on him to preach to and heal Zulu traditionalists, and this reinforced his spiritual authority.
  • He departed from the teachings of Christian missionaries by composing new melodies and texts and by encouraging dance in religious ritual, which they had forbidden. The religious community he created is similar to the Zionists and Ethiopianists but departs from mission Christianity in slightly different ways.
  • The hymn singing of ibandla lamaNazaretha is similar to Venda Zionist practice but combines the poetry of the Psalms with Wesleyan hymnody to create a single repertory of song. Words are also particularly important for articulating a political consciousness.
  • Professor Muller first encountered ibandla lamaNazaretha in 1990 when she climbed the Nazarites' holy mountain, Nhlangakaze with Professor Oosthuizen, who was also studying the community. They wore no shoes on this climb, as they are forbidden on the mountain.
  • Nazarite members typically make the climb to and spend time on Nhlangakaze during January. Along the path to the summit are tents selling food, dance attire, Zulu language Bibles, the Shembe hymnbook, prayer gowns, materials for shelter, and photographs of important moments in the life of the church and the Shembe leadership: items required for the time on the mountain.
  • As they climb, they wear white prayer gowns (imiNazaretha) and sing hymns, stopping periodically to pray. Professor Muller wore imiNazaretha as Oosthuizen had suggested, and she was assumed to be a believer. Halfway up the praise singer (imbongi) calls out the praises of Shembe.
  • On Muller's first Sunday at Nhlangakaze, ibandla lamaNazaretha celebrated umgido, the festival of sacred song and dance. The young girls remained below and prepared to open the festival by blowing on indigenous trumpets, beating large bass drums, and singing. She also discovered that an electric organ has been incorporated into hymn singing.
  • Each group of dancers sings its own hymn, memorized from the Shembe hymnal and accompanied by clapping, dance rhythms, woodblocks, trumpets, bugles, and drums. Several groups of dancers spread out along the mountaintop, creating a dense wave of musical sounds.
  • Muller returned a year later to Ebuhleni, the current headquarters of the religious community, to begin her research with the followers of the third leader, Amos Shembe (younger son of Isaiah and brother of second leader, Johannes Galilee).