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Lord of the Sky-King of the Earth: Zulu traditional religion and belief in the sky god
By
Irving Hexham
Copyright 1979
[Originally published in Studies in Religion (Waterloo), Vol. 10, 3, 1981, pp. 273-285,
to find out more about Studies in Religion, visit their Web Site at:
http://www.wlu.ca/~wwwpress/jrls/sr.html ]
Introduction
In The Rise of Christian Europe Hugh Trevor Roper describes African history
as the 'unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes.'[1] For scholars like Roper Africa has no history
before the arrival of European or Arab invaders brought literacy and civilization.
This dismal view of the African past pervades studies on African religion. Geoffrey Parrinder, in Religion
in Africa, suggests that the development of traditional African religions
can 'rarely be guessed'[2] while the African
theologian John Mbiti says 'African religions have neither founders nor reformers.'[3] A brief survey of works on African religion
will quickly convince the enquirer that these views are in fact true. Excellent anthropological works exist which
show great appreciation of African religious beliefs and practices but almost
without exception they are set in the timeless ethnographic present.
This article is written from the conviction that African religions
have a history and that it is the duty of African historians and theologians
to explore that history, thus enabling African peoples to claim their place
in the great religious traditions of mankind.
To that end this paper is an attempt to examine the development of
Zulu traditional religion and to discover what may be learned by other peoples
from the history of religion in Zululand.
It argues that belief in a heavenly deity or sky god can be observed
in various stages of development after the establishment of lasting contact
between European missionaries, traders, and settlers with the Zulu people;
but contrary to many writers there is no evidence that the Zulus believed
in a sky god before the arrive of Europeans.
Through an examination of the documentary evidence provided by Henry
Callaway in his classical work The Religious
Systems of the Amazulu, and by looking at other early accounts of Zulu
life and religion, suggestions are made as to why contemporary Zulu religion
contains both belief in and worship of a god of the sky. The paper has the following divisions: (1) Zulu traditional religion and belief in a high/sky god, (2)
The evidence of Callaway, (3) Other available evidence, and (4) Some suggestions
about Zulu religion and religious change.
1 Zulu traditional
religion and belief in a high/sky god
This article was provoked by a
reading of Axel-Iver Berglund's fascinating book Zulu Though-Patterns and Symbolism (1976). In it Berglund presents compelling evidence
for the existence of a coherent Zulu religious system which involves the worship
of a heavenly being, the Lord-of-the-Sky. Yet in presenting his evidence Berglund repeatedly acknowledges
that this believe is not apparent in earlier studies of Zulu religion. Thus he can say: 'Reading studies by Callaway, one is given the impression that Zulu
of his time made no clear distinction between a sky divinity and the shades.'[4]
and 'Evidence collected shows very clearly that among Zulu there is a conception
of heavenly divinities... If there has been hesitation on the issue previously
- early literature seems to suggest this - no Zulu today hesitates to accept
and dogmatise on a belief in "God who is in heaven."'[5]
Exactly how Berglund views this 'evidence' is unclear.
The reader is left with the feeling that in accepting that there is
no historical evidence for believe in the Zulu sky-god, Berglund nevertheless
believes that such a belief existed and that earlier scholars misunderstood
Zulu religion. Such an impression
is supported by his constant use of the statement 'Zulu are emphatic' and
similar ways of underlining his argument, his stress on the reliability and
age of informants, the suggestion made on page 42 that 'the now obsolete annual
festival of first-fruits' was 'an integral part of the worship of the Lord-of-the-Sky,'
and by various linguistic arguments which open to doubt the value of earlier
studies. This impression is further
strengthened by reading footnotes 11 and 12 in chapter two where it is strongly
suggested that in the past the Zulu 'definitely have had a God in the sky.'
After reading Berglund's arguments it seems that what he is in fact
portraying is not simply contemporary Zulu religion but Zulu religion as it
has always been for the Zulu.
Should any doubts remain about Zulu traditional religion, an examination
of Eileen Krige's The Social System
of the Zulus (1936), Schapera's The
Bantu Speaking Tribes of South Africa (1937) and Smith's African Ideas of God (1950) will appear to confirm the fact that belief
in a sky deity is and always has been central to Zulu religious thought.
Krige says: 'Unkulunkulu (the old, old one) is the Creator of First
Cause. If a Zulu is asked about the
origin of man and the world, he will say Unkulunkulu made all things....In
addition to Unkulunkulu the Zulus believe in a power which they call "Heaven"
or "The Lord of Heaven"...'[6] W. M. Eiselen and I. Schapera argued that 'all
the Bantu further have some conception, generally rather vague, of a supreme
power.... The Zulu have a sky god... "The Lord of Heaven."'[7] Equally adamant is Edwin Smith in African Ideas of God where, speaking about
the Zulu, he says: 'Unkulunkulu was spoken of as Creator; but the hint seems
to be conveyed that he made things below, as the slave of the Lord above who
created the great things which exist and come from the sky.'[8] So he, too, argues strongly for the Zulu belief
in the Lord of Heaven whom he sees as greater than the archetypal ancestor
Unkulunkulu and whom he suggests was spoken of in awe and referred to as the
Lord of Heaven because, like the Jews of Jesus' day the Zulus thought the
name of God too sacred to utter.
More recently in The Bantu-Speaking
Peoples of Southern Africa (1974), Hammond-Tooke has supported this position
when he states that 'The Zulu also seem to have a personified Sky God, other
than Unkulunkulu'[9] and, as one would expect, John Mbiti makes
great play of the Zulu belief about God in heaven.[10] In a similar way Bolaji Idowu uses evidences
about the Zulu belief in a Lord of Heaven to comment upon African ideas of
justice.[11]
Quite clearly the existence of a Zulu belief in a sky deity, The Lord
of Heaven, is well established in the literature on both the Zulus in particular
and African religions in general. When
this evidence is examined in detail one quickly discovers that where a source
is cited for this belief it is Henry Callaway's The
Religious System of the Amazulu which was first published by Callaway
in 1870 with an English translation, notes, and comments on his informants. Thus Krige, Schapera, and Smith all acknowledge
Callaway as their source while Mbiti quotes Smith. Hammond-Tooke and Idowu fail to cite their
authorities but cite examples given by Callaway. This being the case, a careful analysis of Callaway's evidence is
obviously essential for an understanding of Zulu statements about God. When this is carried out, it comes as a surprise
to discover that the statements given by Callaway say very different things
from the use of them by later writers.
2 The evidence
of Callaway
Two main expressions are taken
up by later writers in their discussion of Zulu religion: these are Unkulunkulu
and the Lord of Heaven. The majority
of writers pay most attention to Unkulunkulu while Berglund develops the significance
of The Lord of Heaven at great length. Callaway has 104 pages of text devoted to Unkulunkulu, 11 to Utikxo
(a term dismissed by later writers), ad 8 to The Lord of Heaven. In addition it is important to note that the
idea of a Lord of Heaven occurs on a number of occasions in his general discussion
of Unkulunkulu.
Callaway argues, and later writers seem to agree, that Unkulunkulu
can be understood as meaning 'the old-old one.'[12]
Later Callaway adds a very important note in which he says:
Mr. Hully, a missionary...interpreter
to Mr. Owen, in 1836. He says the
word Unkulunkulu was not then in use among the natives; but that Captain Gardiner
introduced it to express the Greatest, of the Maker of men.
Mr. Hully refused to use it in this sense.
He allowed that the work kulu meant great, but denied that Unkulunkulu
existed in the language to express that which Captain Gardiner wished.[13]
This statement is perhaps the key
to some of the obvious confusion in the minds of Callaway's informants when
they talked about Unkulunkulu. Again
and again there is ambiguity and hesitation in their accounts. Thus one informant could say, 'The old men
say... they did not know Unkulunkulu.'[14] And another said, 'The ancients used to say
before the arrival of the missionaries that all things were made by Umvelinquangi;
but they were not acquainted with his name. But they lived by worshipping snakes...'[15]Yet
another added, 'So finally we hear that Unsondo is, as it were, a man... Unsondo
is the same as Unkulunkulu, who we say dies...'[16] As one reads the texts it becomes clear that
if Unkulunkulu had any meaning at all prior to Gardiner's use of the term
it was as a name or way of referring to an early ancestor which carried with
it no implications of deity. That
they worshipped or could possibly worship Unkulunkulu was denied repeatedly
by Callaway's informants.[17] Callaway also admits that he often had difficulty
getting information about Unkulunkulu[18] and in doing so
makes it clear that in collecting his information he and his helpers asked
questions of their informants which were designed to elicit a response that
assumed the Zulus had a belief in a high god. Thus, as one reads the texts and attempts to
see the question which the informant was asked to answer, one is struck by
the desire of informants to give the answers which they believed were sought: 'Two natives, perfect strangers... overheard
what I was saying... I asked what he knew of Unkulunkulu; H replied....'[19] Here Callaway admits the Africans knew the
answers he sought before he talked to them.
One informant gives the clue to the origins of Zulu beliefs about Unkulunkulu:
'We used to hear it said by our fathers, they too having heard it from others....'[20] The significance of 'having heard it from others'
becomes clearer when statements by Callaway like the following are taken into
account: 'This is a very common occurrence. Very old Amazulu, when asked to speak about
Unkulunkulu, are apt to speak not of the first Unkulunkulu, but the Unkulunkulu
of their tribes.'[21] What he means by this is that old Zulu would
not speak of a 'first' or creator but simply of their tribal ancestors. In reporting the response of one old woman
we read: 'Truly Unkulunkulu is he who is in heaven. And the whitemen, they are the lords who made all things.'[22] Here Unkulunkulu and whitemen are linked together
with the idea of creation. This association
becomes understandable when it is realized that if Unkulunkulu was thought
of as the first ancestor, he would be the one who, according to Zulu mythology,
had created the nation by giving it its basic technology.
Thus, just as Unkulunkulu had provided the original Zulu with fire
and iron weapons, so too whitemen had begun to provide them with guns and
other products which were changing their way of life.
Another informant whose conversation Callaway records seems to confirm
this interpretation by saying:
And when I enquired, saying 'Do
not your teachers tell you that the lord which is in heaven is Unkulunkulu?'
he replied with a start, 'Hau! by no means. I have never heard such a word,
neither did I ever hear them mention the name.
It is your teacher alone with whom I have ever spoken it.'[23]
The teacher in this case was Callaway
himself as he admits in a footnote. The
same informant waxed lyrical about the superiority of the whitemen over blacks
and said that "Now they [whitemen] tell us all things....'[24] Another missionary quoted by Callaway told
him: 'Since you were here I have questioned the bearer about Unkulunkulu,
as also others. But unless I first give them the idea, they know very little or nothing
about it...'[25] (italics mine).
It is clear then that sufficient evidence is available in Callaway's
texts to show that the Zulu usage of Unkulunkulu in his time had a primary
meaning of ancestor and the overtones of a Christian view of God that it gained
came, according to his informants, from Europeans both through direct teaching
and in response to the sort of questions which they were constantly asking
Zulus about their religious beliefs.
Turning to the term Utikxo, Callaway has no hesitation in saying that
it was 'a word adopted for God by the early missionaries among the Kxosa or
Frontier Kafirs.... And it is generally supposed that the word does not properly
belong to the Kxosa or any other of the alliterative dialects spoken in South
Africa; but has been derived from the Hottentots.'[26] The remainder of his discussion of Utikxo is
as to its meaning amongst the Khoi-San peoples and as to whether or not it
really had the connotations of deity understood by the missionaries in their
use of it.
His shortest discussion is reserved for the notion of The Lord of Heaven. Several times in discussing Unkulunkulu informants
mentioned a heavenly Lord who seemed similar to the Christian God.
And, indeed, it is this heavenly Lord which Berglund finds to be more
important to contemporary Zulu than the rather vague figure of Unkulunkulu.
Before studying the section in the texts which Callaway devoted to
the Lord of Heaven it is worth reviewing the evidence about this being recorded
in his discussion of Unkulunkulu.
The first reference to the idea comes on page 10 where an informant
says, 'When we were with the Dutch they did not tell us that there is a Lord
above; but said that we black people should be burnt and that we have no spirit,
but are like a dog, which has no spirit.'[27] Later, however, another informant said: 'And
the King which is above we did not hear of him (first) from whitemen. In summer time, when it thunders, we say, "The
King is playing..." This is why
I say, that the Lord of whom we hear through you, we had already heard of
before you came.'[28] The
same informant went on to distinguish between the heavenly king and Unkulunkulu
and insisted that while Unkulunkulu was the creator of men, he died, unlike
the heavenly king who reigns above.[29] The third reference to the heavenly Lord came
from an informant who claimed that the heavenly Lord was the creator of the
world.[30] A fourth informant, an old woman, began by
denying that Unkulunkulu had gone 'above' to become the 'creator which is
in heaven.'[31] The fifth informant to mention a Lord in Heaven
was careful to distinguish him from Unkulunkulu[32] who was said to be the creator of men and of
human social institutions but could not be spoken of as a lord.[33] The sixth informant emphatically denied that
the lord of heaven was the Zulu god. He
said:
The ancients said that it was Unkulunkulu
who gave origin to men, and to everything else besides, both cattle and animals.
They said it was an ancient man who gave origin to these things, of
whom it is now said that ancient man is lord; it is said, he is the Lord which
is above. We have not heard from you that the Lord which
is above made everything. The old
men said that Unkulunkulu was an ancestor and nothing more...[34]
The same informant told of how
the efforts of a missionary so impressed the people that they ultimately came
to accept and use the term Utikxo as referring to a being who was above. But the informant adds: 'we used to speak of
the whole heaven, saying "Utikxo dwells in the whole heaven" but
did not clearly understand what we meant.'[35] The seventh and final reference to the Lord
of Heaven in this section comes in a very confused dialogue where the informant
at first denies that he knows Unkulunkulu and then says that he points to
heaven and says, 'There is Unkulunkulu.'[36] In commenting on this Callaway says that at
first he had not intended to use this piece of evidence but later thought
that when the informant denied knowledge of Unkulunkulu he was in fact speaking
of the first man, while when he again acknowledged Unkulunkulu he was speaking
of the ancestor of his tribe or clan. In
this incident, as with the other reports, the reader is left in confusion
about both Unkulunkulu and the Lord of Heaven.
When Callaway turns to a discussion of the Lord of Heaven, the information
he gives throws light on the entire debate.
Callaway begins his discussion with a general discussion of belief
in a heavenly lord amongst the nations of the earth. In this, as in many footnotes, he shows both his wide reading and
interest in the comparative religion of his day. He also lays bare his own predisposition to believe in a god who
is in heaven.[37] Having done this he records the comments of
his informants without apparently realizing exactly what they are saying or
the implications of their statements for an understanding of the development
of religious ideas amongst the Zulu.
His first informant is quite explicit when he says:
It is by no means clear what is
really said about the lord of heaven. For
when the heaven (lightning) has struck any place, it is said, 'The lord is
angry.' ...It is not very clear which is the lord that strikes - whether it
is the lightning, or whether the lightning is the lord's power.... But there
are many who are called lords by men....[38]
The same informant went on to say:
It is not permitted that there should
be any greater than the chief. The
greatness of heaven was said to belong to Upanga, who was a great Zulu chief;
for you can see by this that it is merely something done for the purpose of
exalting a man when it said that the heaven too belongs to him.
It used to be said if any omen happened to a village, that it was occasioned
by the chief... 'it was done by heaven'... and the people understood... it
is a mere exaltation of the chief.[39]
Another informant told him:
Among the Amazulu they use the name
of heaven; when it thunders they say, 'the heaven of the chief thundered.'
They do not mean the owner of the heaven who made it, but a mere man who is
chief; he is exalted by saying the heaven is his.... They say this because they see no one else but the chief himself,
who is he chooses can command any particular person to die, and he will die
at once.[40]
Callaway concludes by saying: 'It
appears, therefore, that in the native mind there is scarcely any notion of
Deity, if any at all, wrapt up in their sayings about a heavenly chief. When it is applied to God it is simply the
result of teaching.'[41] This is a strange conclusion for a man who
began his discussion of the heavenly Lord by affirming that such a belief
is found in 'almost every country' and who in his other comments appears predisposed
to finding the belief amongst the Zulu people.[42] It is significant in light of this that these
comments were ignored by later users of Callaway's texts.
3 Other available
evidence
Lest it be thought that too much
is being read into the evidence of Callaway, it is worth surveying the very
scanty evidence about Zulu religious beliefs from the earliest period of recorded
contact between Zulu and European cultures. There are four major sources for information about Zulu beliefs
in the years 1836-37. They are the
trader Nathaniel Isaacs' Travels and
Adventures in Eastern Africa (1836), Captain Alan Gardiner's Narrative of a Journey to the Zoolu Country
(1836), The Diary of Henry Francis Fynn,
and another missionary work, Owen's
Diary, edited by Sir George Cory in 1926.
The picture of Zulu religion given in all of these documents is of
a secularized society where the ancestors and witchcraft are important, but
where belief in a high god or Lord of the Sky is non-existent.
Nathaniel Isaacs' first mention of religion is in connection with a
conversation with the Zulu king Chaka during which the king asked Isaacs what
the sky was made of. When he found
Isaacs' answer unsatisfactory he 'introduced the subject of religion' and
Isaacs comments:
We explained to him that the religion
of our nation taught us to believe in a Supreme Being, a First Cause, named
God, by whom we swore, in whom we believed and trusted: that he created all
things, and was the giver of light and life. To this he paid marked attention; and when we advanced to the origin
of the world, he seemed as if struck with profound astonishment.... We told him that we had not brought any doctors
with us (missionaries) to instruct the ignorant in the ways of God; this he
appeared to regret, and expressed the wish for them to come and teach his
people, observing, 'that he had discovered we were a superior race,' and that
he would give the missionaries abundance of cattle to teach him to read and
write.[43]
After living amongst the Zulu for
some time Isaacs was able to make the following observations:
Religions. - They have none. The Zoolas have no idea of a Deity, no knowledge
of a future state. They cannot comprehend
the mystery of creation... and though they could not comprehend the worship
of an invisible Creator, they seemed to be somewhat convinced that our motives
had more in them than they, poor illiterate beings, could possible fathom
or divine.[44]
Captain Alan Gardiner, the first
missionary to the Zulu, arrived in Zululand after the death of Chaka and met
his successor Dinegaan. He gives the
following account of an interview with Dinegaan: 'That my views were not in
any degree connected with trade he could understand, but what was God, and
God's word, and the nature of the instruction I proposed, were subjects which
he could not at all comprehend.'[45] Gardiner was, however, convinced that all men
have some natural knowledge of God. He
was therefore able to assert: "We seem to have arrived here at a period
when the traditional knowledge of
a Supreme Being is rapidly passing into oblivion' (italics mine).[46] As a basis for this statement he repeats a
Zulu legend which he takes as a creation account and in doing so makes the
assumption that the Zulu originator of life is equivalent to God. This is, of course, highly suspect when , in
fact, other Zulu accounts of creation clearly refer to an original ancestor
rather than to God in the Christian sense.
Even here, however, it is doubtful if Gardiner is relating a story
which is uninfluenced by European contact because on the next page he adds:
'The generality of the people are ignorant even of this scanty tradition;
but since their recent intercourse with Europeans
the vague ideal of a Supreme Being has again become general' (italics mine).[47] After making this observation, he adds the
highly significant statement that 'At present, the reigning king absorbs all
their praises, and he is, in fact, their only idol.'[48]
Owen's
Diary is a mine of information, but Fynn's says nothing about this issue.
Owen arrived in Natal in 1837 in response to a call for missionaries
by Captain Gardiner. Upon arrival in Zululand he made the following
comment: 'Dingaan then asked how old I was.... He then called for an old print
he had of the Kings of England.... he then asked me if God was amongst these
kings.... The Indoonas asked me if I had seen God....'[49] From this narrative it is clear that Dingaan
and his chiefs thought of God as an ancestor and, despite the teaching of
Gardiner and other whites to the contrary, found it difficult to conceive
of God in non-cultural terms. From
another conversation it becomes clear that the Zulu story of the origin of
death was not a story about God. In
the tale Unkulunkulu set in action a chain of events which caused men to die. But when Owen tried to explain his evangelical
understanding of the Fall to Dingaan, he encountered a host of questions about
the death of God. These questions
show quite clearly that the concepts of an undying Supreme Being was foreign
to Zulu thought because none of Dingaan's chiefs could understand what Owen
was talking about.[50]
Commenting directly on the Zulu notion of God Owen says: 'The Zoolas
have no word in their own language to express the sublime object of our worship....
The word Unkulunkulu...being applied by the natives to a certain ancient chief....'[51] Given this problem Owen was unsure how to refer
to God and seems to have favoured the suggestion that the Hebrew Elohim be
introduced into the Zulu language.
Much later in 1857 the missionary Joseph Shooter could assert that
the Zulu had a tradition of a 'Being' whom he identifies as Unkulunkulu who
was a kind of creator. However, he
adds: 'This tradition of the Great-Great is not universally known among the
people. War, change and the worship of false deities
have gradually darkened their minds,
and obscured their remembrance of the true God' (italics mine).[52] Clearly, Shooter wanted the Zulu to have a
'traditional' belief in God and was forced to interpret their apparent lack
of such a belief in terms of their degeneration as men in rebellion against
the truth of God.
Nine years later in his book The
Past and Future of the Kaffir Races William Holden was able to argue that
the Zulu was 'literally "without God"'[53] and went on to argue that although a belief
which appeared to be a belief in a god-like being could be found amongst some
people, it was wrong to interpret this as a belief in God. He was dogmatic in asserting that 'they do
not recognise a Supreme Being in the sense that we use the term....'[54] Although a few Zulu had some vague idea of
deity, the vast majority, he argued, had no such belief. More importantly, those who did have some indistinct
beliefs which seemed like a belief in God really should be seen as worshipping
their ancestors. This point about
misunderstanding Zulu belief was developed by J. A. Farrer in Zululand and the Zulus (1879). He saw ancestor worship as the basic Zulu religious
response and added that the Zulu understanding of Unkulunkulu was essentially
a belief about the ancestors of the people even though it could be said to
function in a similar way to beliefs about God through the attribution of
creation, etc. to Unkulunkulu.[55] Farrer also discussed the Zulu traditions concerning
a 'lord of the sky' or heavenly deity. He relates how Zulus speak about such a being whom he sees as 'subordinate'
to Unkulunkulu. He then adds: 'It
is possible that missionary teaching has somewhat modified the original conception
of the "king of heaven"....'[56] This statement fits well with the accounts
recorded by Callaway indicating an original usage which referred to the Zulu
king and not to God. Thus it can be
seen that ample evidence exists to support the interpretation given earlier
of Callaway's testimony and the assertion that before the coming of Europeans
the Zulu had no traditional belief in a supreme deity. What then are we to understand by the evidence that today modern
Zulu have such belief which they cast in traditional terms?
4 Some suggestions
about Zulu religion and religious change
When Europeans first arrived in
Zululand, they appear to have been welcomed by the Zulu because of their trade
goods and the technological superiority which the Zulus recognized they possessed.
The great desire of the Zulu kings was to acquire the knowledge which
made whitemen superior to their people. This
superiority was bound up with the possession of firearms and, in the eyes
of the Zulus, the ability to read. Therefore,
when Captain Gardiner told them such things as 'They were now a great people
but I wished them to know these words that they might become greater,'[57]
he was listened to with great interest and care. The promise to make them 'greater' must have seemed a hopeful one
because these new strangers sought to teach the Zulus the art of reading,
which to them appears to have been seen as the key to European power.[58]
In inviting missionaries Dingaan clearly wished to get hold of gunpowder
and the means of producing firearms. When
the missionaries refused to do this he seems to have thought that by learning
to read and by listening to the missionaries his people would acquire the
skills of the whites. This understanding
is probably best seen as interpreting white technology in terms of a new magic
which reading would make available to his people.[59]
The missionaries and traders who visited the Zulu during this early
period of contact did so with an overwhelming confidence in the superiority
of their civilization which they were quick to point out to the Zulus and
which they attributed to the Christian religion.[60] Their belief in the truths of Christianity
could, however, have been severely challenged by the existence of Zulu society.
The zulus represented a people who appeared not to have heard the gospel.
The question could therefore have arisen as to how a just God could
judge a people who were totally ignorant of his commands.[61] But this question never seems to have been
asked because a theological interpretation of Zulu life existed which allowed
for their apparent ignorance of the gospel.
This interpretation depended upon the assumption that the Zulu people
must at one time have known the truth of God and that their present state
of ignorance was a result of wilful rebellion against God's commands. There was, for the missionaries, therefore,
no real possibility that the Zulus did not know about God at some time in
their history. If the Zulus they encountered
denied such knowledge, this was simply the result of their sinful nature. Gardiner observed: 'What an awful condition
for an immortal being! Man, when once
departed from God, goes out, like Nebuchadnezzar in his banishment.... Breathe,
Lord upon these dry bones, and they shall live.'[62] For him, and later missionaries, it was obvious
that they had 'arrived at a time when the traditional knowledge of a Supreme
Being...(was) rapidly passing into oblivion.'[63] This interpretation was neatly summed up by
Shooter who said: 'false deities have gradually darkened their minds, and
obscured their remembrance of the true God.'[64] As a result the missionaries set about proclaiming
the truth of God without making any concessions to Zulu religious beliefs.
As can be seen most clearly in the preaching of Owen, they proclaimed
their understanding of the gospel, expecting that the Zulus would be able
to understand and respond to it.[65]
By contrast, the Zulu world view at the time seems to have been entirely
bounded by their social needs. When
Owen asked them 'where the rain came from,' they told him that the clouds
were made by their 'doctors.'[66] Again and again Zulu questioners asked him
if he had 'seen God,' while other questions indicated that they saw God in
ancestral terms. Above all, the impression
gained from reading Owen's own account of his mission work is of the confusion
he must have created in Zulu minds. He
told them that they were sinners whom God would punish and send to hell if
they did not repent and believe in the 'blood' of Jesus, the Son of God, who
had died for them and risen from the dead. Such concepts were by his own account beyond their comprehension
and their questions, which he sometimes records, reflect their confusion.[67]
Yet from later evidence it is clear that despite the original confusion
created in Zulu minds, certain beliefs were implanted which, in time, came
to be regarded as 'traditional' Zulu beliefs.
One of the most important of these is that of the existence of a Lord
of the Sky.
An important clue to an understanding of the way in which the Zulu
people came to accept this belief is to be found in a discussion of swearing
in Owen's Diary. He relates:
I had a long argument with the boys
this morning on the subject of swearing.... They asked, 'Are we not to swear when we are at our home? How are we to confirm our words without an
oath? Who will believe us?...the king
himself swears; he swears by Chaka, and Chaka used to swear by the chief who
was before him.'[68]
Two things need to be noted here:
first, swearing was the traditional way of making an agreement; second,
one swore by one's ancestor or the king.
Now when Isaacs spoke to Chaka about God he told him that 'our nation
taught us to believe in a Supreme Being... by whom we swore....'[69] And Callaway's informants told him that 'the
white men used to make us swear to the truth of what we said; for they did
not understand what a man said when he swore by our chiefs; so the oath was...
"I swear by the Lord of heaven...."'[70] From this comment it appears that whites encouraged
the usage of the phrase 'the Lord of Heaven' in their business dealings with
the Zulu without understanding its true significance, but in doing so, they
also give the phrase a new meaning which detached it from its original context.
If this is so the remark by an earlier informant that 'the whitemen
are the lords who made all things'[71]
takes on added significance. By their
power whites challenged the power of traditional chiefs and in doing so were
referred to in terms which had originally been reserved for chiefs. When they further insisted on oaths to seal
contracts, Zulus complied by using terminology which forged a link between
traditional Zulu understandings of the powers of their chiefs and the metaphysical
statements which whites thought essential to the binding of oaths. But in the process of these transactions the
phrase 'the Lord of Heaven,' detached from its original context and meaning,
began to take on a life of its own in Zulu thought.
If this interpretation of the origin of the Zulu high god is correct,
it fits very well with Wittgenstein's comments on the word 'God' in his Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief
(1970). In these Wittgenstien observes:
The word 'God' is amongst the earliest
learnt.... The word is used like a
word representing a person.... If
the question arises as to the existence of a god or God, it plays an entirely
different role to that of the existence of any person or object I ever heard
of. One said, had to say, [italics mine] that one believed in the existence, and if one did
not believe, this was regarded as something bad.[72]
This description of the way people
learn to use the word of God fits exactly the case presented in this paper.
The Zulu had to learn to use a phrase which Europeans would recognize
as referring to God if they were to deal with them.
Fortunately such a phrase existed in 'the Lord of Heaven' making a
bridge possible between the two cultures.
The result of this interaction was not simply the destruction of a
traditional Zulu phrase but the adaptation of an existing phrase and belief
system to extend it and widen the horizons of Zulu society.[73] Zulu beliefs and practices were challenged
by the arrival of Europeans and their 'strange' beliefs. But within several generations an adaptation
had taken place which enabled Zulus to deal with the Europeans on their own
terms. Zulu society met the challenge
of European beliefs through a creative response which drew upon its own traditions
to create a new tradition. The traditional
religion which then came into existence not only enabled the Zulu to deal
with Europeans, but also gave pagan and Christian Zulu a common heritage which
acknowledges the existence of a Supreme Being.
Thus, while the conversion of sections of the Zulu nation to Christianity
originally created a sharp division in Zulu society, the emergence of this
'traditional religion' provided all Zulu with a common heritage and identity
as well as a basis for the secondary virtues which are necessary in everyday
life.[74] The present reality of the belief regarding
the Lord of the Sky may therefore be seen in terms of the development of a
civil religion of Zululand.
1 Hugh Trevor Roper, The Rise of Christian Europe (London: Thames & Hudson, 1964),
9.
2 Geoffrey Parrinder, Religion in Africa (Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books, 1969), 9.
3 John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1969), 4.
4 Axel-Iver Berglund, Zulu Though-Patterns and Symbolism (Cape Town: David Philip, 1976),
32.
5 Ibid., 383.
6 Eileen Krige, The Social System of the Zulus (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter,
1936), 280 and 282.
7 I. Shapera (ed.), The Bantu Speaking Tribes of South Africa (Cape Town: Masken Miller,
1937), 262-63).
8 Edwin W. Smith (ed.), African Ideas of God (London: House Press, 1950), 108.
9 W. D. Hammond-Tooke, The Bantu Speaking Peoples of Southern Africa (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1974), 321.
10 Mbiti, African
Religions (see n. 3 above), 49, 52-54.
11 Bolaji Idowu, African Traditional Religion (London: SCM Press, 1973), 164.
12 Henry Callaway, The Religious System of the Amazulu (London: Folklore Society, 1870),
1, note 1.
13 Ibid., 54, note 3.
14 Ibid., 7-8.
15 Ibid., 10.
16 Ibid., 14-15.
17 Ibid., 16-17, 25, and 34.
18 Ibid., 33.
19 Ibid., 39-40.
20 Ibid., 45.
21 Ibid., 54.
22 Ibid., 55.
23 Ibid., 62-63.
24 Ibid., 79.
25 Ibid., 86.
26 Ibid., 105.
27 Ibid., 10.
28 Ibid., 19.
29 Ibid., 21.
30 Ibid., 50.
31 Ibid., 53-55.
32 Ibid., 56.
33 Ibid., 59.
34 Ibid., 63.
35 Ibid., 69.
36 Ibid., 83.
37 Ibid., 117.
38 Ibid., 118.
39 Ibid., 120.
40 Ibid., 122.
41 Ibid., 124.
42 Ibid., 117-18.
43 Nathaniel Isaacs, Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, Vol. 1 (London: Edward Churton,
1836), 119-20.
44 Ibid., Vol. 2, 301-02.
45 Ibid., 31.
46 Alan Gardiner, Narrative of a Journey to the Zoolu Country (London: William Crofts,
1836), 178.
47 Ibid., 179.
48 Ibid.
49 Sir George Cory (ed.), Owen's Diary (Cape Town: Van Riebeech Society, 1926), 39. James Stuart and D. Mc. Malcolm (eds.), The Diary of Henry Frances Fynn (Schuter
and Shooter, 1950), adds little to our knowledge of Zulu religion and his
diary throws no light on the subject at hand.
50 Core (ed.), Owen's Diary, 74.
51 Ibid., 90.
52 Joseph Shooter, The Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu Country (London: E. Stanford, 1857),
160.
53 William Holden, The Past and Future of the Kaffir Races (London: Privately published,
1866), 297.
54 Ibid., 298.
55 J. A. Farrer, Zululand and the Zulus (London: Kirby, 1879), 128-29.
56 Ibid., 131.
57 Gardiner, Zoolu Country (see n. 46 above), 133.
58 Ibid., 33, 133.59 [1] Cory (ed.), Owen's Diary (see n. 49 above), 46-47; Gardiner, Zoolu Country, 132-33, 32-33.
60 Cory (ed.), Owen's Diary, 39, 40, 47, 53-55, 56, 59, 65-66, 72-73; Gardiner, Zoolu Country, 31-32, 133.
61 Isaacs, Eastern
Africa (see n. 43 above), 120.
62 Romans 2:1-16.
63 Gardiner, Zoolu Country, 179.
64 Ibid., 178.
65 Shooter, The
Kafirs (see n. 52 above), 160.
66 Cory (ed.), Owen's Diary, 30-31, 37-39.
67 Ibid., 94.
68 Ibid., 30, 37, 39, 74, 102.
69 Ibid., 69.
70 Isaacs, Eastern
Africa (see n. 43 above), 119.
71 Callaway, Amazulu (see n. 12 above), 121.
72 Ibid., 52.
73 Cyril Barrett (ed.), Wittgenstien: Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and
Religious Belief (Oxford: Blackwells, 1970), 59.
74 Monica Wilson, Religion and the Transformation of Society
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), ch. 2: David Welsh, The Roots of Segregation (Cape Town: Oxford
University Press, 1971); and Alister MacIntyre, Secularisation and Moral Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1967).
[6] Eileen Krige, The Social System of the Zulus (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter,
1936), 280 and 282.
[7] I. Shapera (ed.), The Bantu Speaking Tribes of South Africa (Cape Town: Masken Miller,
1937), 262-63).
[9] W. D. Hammond-Tooke, The Bantu Speaking Peoples of Southern Africa (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1974), 321.
[12] Henry Callaway, The Religious System of the Amazulu (London: Folklore Society, 1870),
1, note 1.
[43] Nathaniel Isaacs, Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, Vol. 1 (London: Edward Churton,
1836), 119-20.
[46] Alan Gardiner, Narrative of a Journey to the Zoolu Country (London: William Crofts,
1836), 178.
[49] Sir George Cory (ed.), Owen's Diary (Cape Town: Van Riebeech Society, 1926), 39. James Stuart and D. Mc. Malcolm (eds.), The Diary of Henry Frances Fynn (Schuter
and Shooter, 1950), adds little to our knowledge of Zulu religion and his
diary throws no light on the subject at hand.
[53] William Holden, The Past and Future of the Kaffir Races (London: Privately published,
1866), 297.
[60] Cory (ed.), Owen's Diary, 39, 40, 47, 53-55, 56, 59, 65-66, 72-73; Gardiner, Zoolu Country, 31-32, 133.