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Shoot the Sergeant, Shatter the
Mountain: The Production of

Masculinity in Zulu Ngoma Song and
Dance in post-Apartheid South Africa
Louise Meintjes
The paper situates Zulu ngoma song and dance within the related worlds of state and
gender politics in post-apartheid South Africa. It poses as its problem the difficulty of
retaining the presence of individualized expression and stylized body movement in an
analysis that also situates the body politically and theorizes it phenomenologically. In
the midst of unemployment, an AIDS epidemic and a history of violence in rural
KwaZulu-Natal, ngoma is a critical means to attaining responsible manhood.
Keywords: Performance; Praise Names; Migrant Labour; Gender; Aesthetics; Body and
Expression; HIV/AIDS; Competition; Art and Violence
There is sweetness and there is the hitting. In the soft gesture, in the gentle roll of the
dancers torso, his poised turning hand, in a playful somersault there is sweetness.
In the plaintiff upper male voice that tinges the dense and bassy vocal chorus over
which it floats, there is sweetness. A melodic line sung in the purer head register by a
few young men parallels the contour sung grittily by the majority of the singer-
dancers in their chest and middle registers.
In a humorous lyric there is sweetness: The plane Ive bought for my darling is
coming sings Siyazi Zulus team, Umzansi Zulu Dance.
1
Darling, you will get all the
promises. . . Hurry back [home] in the afternoon, darling, Im going to get things set
up for you/Youll get your stove this afternoon/not a coal one, darling, but a gas
one. . .the [temperature] setting will be just right they joke. Women cook most often
Louise Meintjes is associate professor of music and cultural anthropology at Duke University, Durham, NC, and
author of Sound of Africa! Making music Zulu in a South African studio (Duke University Press, 2003). Contact
address: Dept Music, Box 90665, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. 27708. Email: meintjes@duke.edu
Ethnomusicology Forum
Vol. 13, No. 2, November 2004, pp. 173/201
ISSN 1741-1912 (print)/ISSN 1741-1920 (online) # 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1741191042000286185
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on open fires at the rural homes of Umzansi Zulu Dance members. They travel
mostly on foot, in minivan taxis or on the back of pick-up trucks.
Pretty poetics are for nothing really, just for sweet in a song, Siyazi says. He
turns the phrases of local idioms and metaphors in his own playful way when he
composes. He recounts everyday stories to which people in the community will relate,
in a style he anticipates they will enjoy. The chicken was riding in a minivan taxi; it
was going to the city of Durban with my sister. What [kind of behaviour] is
this?!. . .Only a rooster pays his bride price with such speed, only a rooster [not a
man]! he admonishes young men who run away with their girlfriends.
2
Sweetness in its multiple guises heightens the drama of the dense, fast and powerful
move it precedes. It is a preparatory rhetorical device that by means of contrast
hardens the hit.
Of the hardest hit they say in Zulu inesigqi! (It has power!). The hardest hit has
power. The voiced palatal click -gqi is an aural icon of the thud of the foot hitting
the ground after a high frontal kick in the Zulu mens dance styles called ngoma. After
a preparatory sequence, the dancers right knee bends, his back arches, his head tilts
back. He extends his right arm over his head as his left leg stretches back to prepare
for the pick-up to the beat. The forward thrust of his left arm balances his taut and
arching body. Then, as if a spring suddenly triggered, he kicks his left leg into the sky,
curls his torso and shoots his right arm forward to balance his one-legged stance. His
skyward foot thunders down onto the ground on the beat, gqi! Dust flies. He throws
away the movement with his hands, in the recoil of his torso, with a flick of his head,
and he saunters off.
Isigqi also describes a strong sound or gesture. When the team captain sings out
stridently, loudly and high while maintaining timbral and pitch control in his upper
vocal range, he displays isigqi. A hard dense sound of a bass drum is the essence of
isigqi, whether in a dance arena or in the studio. In the studio, a sound engineer
programmes a bass sound for Umzansi Zulu Dances recorded songs. Siyazi takes the
cassette home to listen. Discontented, he brings it back for a remix. It is too muffled
and boomy. It feels like it has no core. He wants a harder bass sound pushed up into
the foreground of the mix. He wants some of the bottom end cut and the middle
frequencies boosted. That would give the sound more power, more of a hit.
3
At home in rural Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, Mthatheni and Bheki are
drumming for the dance. They are positioned to the side of the huddle of singing
clapping dancers sitting in the dust. They thwack double-headed marching bass
drums in a pattern somewhere between a dotted duple and triplet feel: short /long,
short /long, left/right, right /left. Plastic drum heads on factory-manufactured
drums are cheaper than the skin-and-wood isigubhu and they offer a sharper attack
when beaten. Each drummer repeats the short /long motive over and over, in a
pattern of alternately louder and softer renditions. When Mthatheni plays softer,
Bheki plays harder. Together they create a pulsing stream of consistent energy and
volume.
4
174 L. Meintjes
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Isigqi describes that magic moment when a groove absolutely works because its
components are tightly co-ordinated. Exciting teamwork on a soccer field produces
isigqi, as do drummers who make hard dense bass drum patterns sound in sequence
like clockwork. A performance has isigqi when dancers, drummers, singers, and
clappers / leaders and team members / meld sound and movement into a dense
experience that is at once coherent and imminent: it is dense with internal tensions
almost out of balance.
Isigqi is a sense of power experienced when all resources are momentarily
consolidated. That is its drama, its striking virtuosity, its danger and its potential (see
Figure 1).
I am interested in how that sense of power represented in artistic expression and
valued as an artistic principle is harnessed into a process of obtaining forms of
political power. This may sometimes be a process that is self-consciously manipulated
by dancers. But most of the time, for most dancers,
5
the process of converting
performance into forms of power is diffuse and nonlinear, operating largely on the
level of the sense of things rather than by strategic and articulated deliberation.
Studies of aesthetic coherence have brought us a long way beyond analyses of ritual
and symbol (from Levi-Strauss to Turner) in articulating how artistic performance
links symbolic form and social practice. For example, Felds treatment of aesthetics as
iconicity of style enabled him to identify (iconic) layers of significance produced by
aesthetic tropes (Feld 1994). Such tropes span artistic media (song, body movement,
costume, narrative and so forth) where they constitute the form of the artwork, at
least in part. By their connection to worlds of significance outside the artwork, tropes
become the means by which the cosmological is instantiated in the social and
material world, just as the social and material world is imbued with extraordinary
value. Isigqi is not a trope in the sense of being the primary foundational idea out of
which the ngoma art form develops and organizes its patterns and expressive
techniques. But it is a prominent aesthetic principle that has significant bearing on
the way that ngoma becomes an expression of masculinity. The material form isigqi
takes in contemporary ngoma is shaped in part by the recent history of the
institutional and communal world within which it is situated, just as it can shape
some of the future of that world in turn. Likewise, the biography of an individual
man may be pivotally shaped by his dancing practice that in turn hinges on his ability
to produce and experience isigqi within the form of ngoma.
Whereas studies of aesthetic coherence argued definitively for the significance of
art forms to the production of forms of power, more recent ethnomusicology that
draws on phenomenological theory takes that argument a step further. Phenomen-
ology importantly carries the study of significance into the diffuse world of sense and
into the experience of the socially situated physiological and expressive body.
Analyses of music drawing on this theory / especially on the work of Alfred Schutz,
Roland Barthes and Merleau Ponty / have introduced into ethnomusicology new
ways of integrating the body into a study of sound (e.g. Feld 1996; Porcello 1998;
Downey 2002; Shannon 2003).
6
This has come less out of analyses of dance music
Ethnomusicology Forum 175
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than out of studies of technology, song, instrumental music, martial art. The
approach brings to our attention that performing and listening are intersubjectively
and physiologically experienced in a trained and socialized set of artistic bodily
movements that affectively register values and ideas.
How do we situate this embodied theory in the political world? I am looking for
ways to make the most of the new resources it offers dance music analyses while
moving in the direction of a rights- and advocacy-based ethnomusicology. That is, I
am looking for ways to keep present both individual bodies and the character of the
Figure 1 Bafana Mdlalose dancing at Keates Drift, 25 December 2000. Photo by T. J.
Lemon.
176 L. Meintjes
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body as it is rendered within a particular performance practice while integrating a
political dimension into the analysis. Analyses of embodiment run the risk of
abstracting (and extracting) bodies and voices into a single idea of the body and
the voice in the move to make connections into the worlds of politics, whether it be
national or ethnic politics, the politics of gendered identity, the politics of local
struggles for authority or the politics of creating communitas through struggle. Even
when work is politically agentive and historically contingent, there remains the
challenge of retaining in the analysis the artistry of the moving body and the presence
of the singer-dancer shaping his or her expressive practice in the moment. The power
of specific art forms, as well as the differentiated ways that people express themselves
within specific art forms, slips so easily out of analysts hands. How can we keep the
peculiarities of a stylized, situated body along with stylized situated sound front
and centre? Here is my attempt to adventure in this direction.
Isigqi, Ive been told by musicians, is Zulu too deep to translate (Meintjes 2003,
261). It is often a deeply felt experience that is communicated non-verbally. At other
times, it is a loosely held suggestiveness (Friedrich 1991) that seems too diffuse to
articulate. It is housed in the body and expressed in stylized ways.
In earlier work I have discussed how an understanding of isigqi is integrally tied to
an expression of Zulu-ness in song and dance. Now I want to look within a wholly
Zulu-identified rural/migrant community in Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa,
at how isigqi, that (Zulu) sense of power experienced through art and expressed
intuitively, is harnessed into a process of obtaining other forms of power at the local
community level. More particularly, how does isigqi play a part in the production of
forms of masculine authority and of the institutions that organize and confer that
authority upon men?
Gendered sensibilities, as Ballantines work in South Africa especially shows, are
shaped in artistic practice by all members of a community in relation to one another
and in relation to the larger cosmopolitan world in which they participate (Ballantine
2000; see also Coplan 1994); masculinity is shaped in relation to changing ideas
about womanhood and also in relation to aesthetic expression of the feminine. In
this paper I focus on perspectives on masculinity as expressed in song and dance by
men themselves with the understanding that it is in the participating gaze of both
men and women, youthful and older, experts and fans that these performers create
their art.
While recognizing the performativity of gendered identities, South Africanists
focusing expressly on masculinity have done scant analysis of artistic performance
itself, though the fine ethnomusicological work about South African male genres and
performance practices (see Ballantine 1993, 2000; Clegg 1982, 1984; Erlmann 1991,
1996; Coplan 1994; Olson 2001) indicates that performance (music, dance, oratory)
is critical to the formation and expression of changing masculinities. Here I look at
the creative process through which ideas about mens authority are produced in a
context in which their authority is so easily taken away.
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First I describe ngoma practice at large. Then I focus on the most dramatic
subsection of a dance event: competitive individual display. Within this, in turn I
concentrate on various dimensions of a pivotal detail, the chanting of the dancers
name while he improvises his solo. I then work outwards into the worlds of politics
from which the dancing emerges and to which it responds. The practice of the art of
ngoma demonstrates how aesthetic expression comes to be crucial in situations of
extreme privation, such as in contemporary KwaZulu-Natal, which the dancers call
their home.
The Practice of Ngoma
The tradition of Zulu mens dancing called ngoma is a recreational aesthetic form that
grew out of the system of migrant labour developed by South African state and
mining interests through the 20th century.
7
A style of competitive display, it is danced
at homecoming times, especially at Christmas, in rural KwaZulu-Natal and on
Sunday afternoons at working and work-seeking mens hostels in Johannesburg,
Durban, and at the mines. These decrepit hostels / mens dormitories / house a
number of teams, each of which is usually comprised of migrant homeboys from
one rural ward
8
in KwaZulu-Natal.
There are three ngoma substyles: umzansi , isishameni and ngoma kaBhaca.
9
Each
style combines choreographed group work and individual improvisation and is
danced to singing, clapping and a marching bass drum. Each style features the kick,
though with stylistic differences in its execution. In the umzansi style, the concern of
this paper, the kick is highest and straightest, landing hardest on the gqi .
A team consists of upwards of ten dancers and usually at least double that. They
refer to themselves as amasoja, soldiers. An elected igoso or ukaputeni (captain) and
iphini or vice-captain are responsible for the training, discipline, song selection,
choreography and leadership of the team. Elders advise the igoso and iphini and give
their blessings to the team at performance events. These elders are mature men who
are community leaders, including former team leaders and members. If necessary,
they also admonish the members for poor performance or improper behaviour.
An umzansi dance event begins with an entry dance in file formation (ifolo).
Thereafter the performance is usually broken up into two sets. The opening and
closing sections of a set always involve the whole team: the beginning is sung and
danced with line choreography for the whole group (interrupted here and there by
spurts of action improvised by bold individuals). In the line dance the team members
carry their fighting sticks, wooden rods about the size of broomsticks that are also used
in the martial art of stick fighting. The line dance consists of a slower part followed by
a faster section called dabulo. The set closes similarly, followed by collective song.
The flow and sequence of the subsections within the middle of a set are determined
by the igoso who directs the performance with a shrill whistle, a whip (also used to
herd cattle), sung calls for call and response singing, and sung-spoken directives for
group chanting.
10
These middle subsections comprise self-choreographed subgroups
178 L. Meintjes
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of two to eight peers competing against one another (jabane) and individual
competition (one/one). The competition is usually one without official judges and
never with prizes; rather, individual dancers wager unspoken challenges through
dancing.
Team Performance: Building the Narrative Flow
The biggest annual ngoma dance in Keates Drift, Msinga, happens on Christmas day,
celebrated as a reunion and party time, the biggest homecoming time for migrant
men and now also for some young women who work in nearby towns or in the cities.
On Christmas day, family, friends, neighbours and others from surrounding areas
assemble around a dusty space in the heat of the high summer afternoon. They crowd
into the skinny shade of thorn trees, or protect themselves from the sun under
vibrantly coloured umbrellas, and watch.
The dance team files into the centre of the arena. They sing call and response songs:
(Chorus is in italics here and subsequently.)
There is a girl I wont tell anyone about Ikhonintombi engingeke ngabatshele abantu
Its Sunday tomorrow Isonto kusasa
Im really very sure [about her] Omampela ngiqimsele
Its Monday tomorrow Kuyasa uzombuluko
O absolutely, absolutely [sure] Omampela ngiqimsele
Its Tuesday tomorrow Kuyasa ulwesibili
Its Wednesday tomorrow Kuyasa ulwesithathu
Its Thursday tomorrow Kuyasa ulwesine
Its Friday tomorrow Kuyasa ulosihlanu
On Saturday well meet at midday, Ngomgqibelo sohlanga nemini ngothwalofu
tomorrow is Sunday isonto kusasa
All of you please come Ake nizoyibona
and see this boys girlfriend, intombi yalomfana
and see this boys beautiful girlfriend ake nizoyibona yayinhle into yalomfana
Please come and see her Ake nizoyibona
Beautiful girlfriend of this boy ayinhle intombi yalomfana
Where is she from, my child? Yakabani we ntanami?
We have taken her sesithathile
Where is she from? Yakabani?
Dont trouble yourself Awuxole phela
[flirting with her or proposing to her],
for we have already taken her.
11
Sesithathile.
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After a series of songs, they dance as a choreographed team supported by one or
two marching bass drums. The tempo is slow, held back by an almost ponderous
drum beat. The dancers are controlled, disciplined, together. The feeling is one of
containment. This is the slowest section in the performance. Stretching out in a long
line facing the crowd, the dancers point their fighting sticks forward, to the ground,
back, sideways across the front of their neighbours bodies. They clutch the ends of
neighbours sticks along with their own, forming an unbroken wooden line. Together
they raise the horizontal sticks above their heads, bend their right knees, stretch their
left legs backwards, kick into the air and together, gqi ! Again; once more. Women
ululate appreciatively. Gqi ! The dancers arms drop forward; they release their grip on
their neighbours sticks. With the license afforded her by her age, a granny hobble-
dances into the arena with her walking stick. The drum beat doubles. Mboneni rushes
out of the choreographed line of dancers, paws the ground with an as-if impatient
foot, postures, kicks, zips back into line to join the team as Siyazi, the captain, charges
at him with his whip. At the other end of the line Falakhe bursts out to kick. Siyazi
turns swiftly and heads towards him. When he blows his whistle the team begin their
choreographed movement again. The dancers and drummers ratchet up the energy
with a faster paced line dance (dabulo). Then they shuffle into a tight cluster, sit on
the ground body to body, shoulder to shoulder, knee to neighbours knee.
Next they sing a series of songs, preparing the field for the competitive dancing that
is to follow. Building drama at this stage of the event is important because you have
to prepare the scenario so that a solo dancer can so inhabit the moment that he can
produce and feel isigqi / that sense of total dense consolidation / when he dances
against other men. As Siyazi says, as an individual dancer, you have to be so focused,
so in the experience of your body moving in sync with the sound, that you arent
thinking, you are simply and wholly doing. You and the sound are one. Building
drama collectively within the group is also important, for it sets up a tension between
the cohesive spirit of the team as a collective body and eruptions of competitive
individual expression within it.
Most of the songs in the teams repertoire comment on aspects of manhood:
courtship and relationships with women, competitiveness and camaraderie between
men, generational differences, the poetics and pragmatics of ngoma dance, experience
in the cities and in the world beyond, and politics at local and national levels.
For example, on Christmas day 1999, Siyazi began preparing for one-on-one
competition with an old call and response ngoma song about a dance team from
Germiston, an industrial area near Johannesburg. In the song, the members of this
famous team of migrant labourers get belittled.
He has barely set the groove when he introduces another song without missing a
beat. In this textual fragment, the promise of an international break for the dancers
beckons. The team asks young girls to show them the way to go overseas, just as they
would ask them for directions in a rural area. It is commonly said in the area that in
politeness and deference young girls will reply honestly to a strangers request. Men
unknown to you, on the other hand, might be deceptive.
180 L. Meintjes
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Next he takes the team into the world of humour and local idiom. They sing a
whole lyric text straight through, once, about a bird whose nest building is as
sophisticated as house construction. Siyazi begins the song again, but after the first
line, he cuts it off and turns the teams voices to matters of love and propriety, and to
mens prerogative over women.
There is a girl I wont tell anyone about.
Its Sunday tomorrow. . .
They sing through all the days of the week until the boy can at last meet the beautiful
girl, for oh, he is absolutely sure she is the one for him. Siyazi cuts the song before its
punch line, leaving the fathers, brothers, friends and team mates warning to men
from other areas not to meddle with the new girlfriend of one of their youths
unspoken, but nevertheless referenced:
Dont trouble yourself, for we have taken her
Dont trouble yourself.
From singing about courting practices, Siyazi moves on to taunt those who think
they can beat them at ngoma dancing. They boastfully invite the strangers to enter
their homes, for they are not afraid of those who come to challenge them. We are
too hot these days, way too hot! they sing.
12
Leading the team through these songs, Siyazi cultivates tight cohesion within the
group by means of the lyric content he selects and by the collective experience of
singing.
Team Performance: Building the Sound Event
In addition to the multiple ideas about manhood related to ngoma that are
articulated or indexed in passing in the lyrics and consolidated into a single narrative
flow, Siyazis fast-paced song truncations produce a coherent and seamless musical
groove. The overall sound, compatible pitch contours, tempos and rhythms of the
songs he selects give the performance an underlying formal coherence, while the sonic
character of each individual number adds interest by introducing subtle variations in
the ongoing motion and feeling. Siyazi manipulates this narrative and sonic flow in
order to dramatically set the stage for the climactic solo dancing. He generates the
effect by stringing together song fragments and incrementally increasing their length
by means of textual and melodic repetitions. He also inserts vocables between text
lines as the tension builds. The play with repetition becomes more elaborate as he
proceeds through the songs. (He compares this to having to check everything is
running right before taking off at speed in a car.)
Siyazi is a celebrated dancer, composer and choreographer. He is a master at
sweetness and timing. As a team leader he exploits a range of music resources to build
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the drama. In the process of expanding the texts, he incrementally adds sonic layers,
making the musical texture denser and denser. He plays with vocal timbres (from the
low rasp of the chest register to a high nasal voice), with pauses and with tempo
changes. He introduces clapping, then drumming fleetingly, teasingly, before
integrating them consistently into the texture. He also increasingly engages his
body in directing the team in song, varying his gestures, freezing his pose
momentarily, changing the pace of his movements. His involvement becomes
increasingly embodied as the texture thickens and the drama intensifies, even though
he is yet to dance.
By making room intuitively for individual dancers to throw in exclamations, he
introduces their spontaneous overlapping calls as another colour and layer into the
overall sound. Forget it! Forget it! shouts Mndeni, the heavy comical dancer
everyone enjoys watching. I dont know, my friend, he as-if challenges any of his
team mates in Zulu, but youre going to [have to] run away [if you dance against
me]!
13
In this preparatory performance, Siyazi also cleverly works up the tensions internal
to the group structure. Sometimes he drives the team forward and provokes their
competitive spirit. At other times he exacerbates the tension by pulling back the
energy and frustrating the team. Pusha Khulukuthu! (Push! Get it going,
Khulukuthu!) calls out a dancer to Siyazi, using his dance name, Khulukuthu
(Wild one). Pusha Mankofu! (Push, Mankofu!) urges someone from the back of
the group in a pause, addressing Siyazi by his grandfathers name, while another
whistles through his teeth.
One-One Competition
Once the drama has reached a peak and the drumming is pulsing continuously, the
competition has been prepared. The dance can then move into a series of one-on-one
challenges, which is considered the most exciting part of the event. On the whole,
peers dance against one another. Usually the youngest, least experienced age group
dances first, followed more or less in order of seniority and excellence. Younger
dancers of course tend to display less sophistication and variation in their sequences,
both in their kicking patterns and in the preparation for them, but, as Clegg remarks,
beginners go down very well with the crowd (1984, 67) even when they make
comical mistakes. All dancers strive to feel and produce isigqi, at whatever level of
skill they have developed.
Young Lwabadla uhlupho (Youre a nuisance) steps out into the arena. He kicks
every four beats, setting up a standard metric pattern to which he dances a 16-beat
sequence. He prepares each kick with a right step forward, a right step back, a little
left step forward, a left swing back into the arch position. In the final measure he
doubles up with a mid-measure kick which allows him to shift from kicking with the
left leg (the starter leg) to the right, upon which one must end. His arms follow classic
ngoma formations. Lwabadla uhlupho! Lwabadla uhlupho! chant his team-mates
in cycles to support his dancing. Ji! they exclaim as convention dictates as he hits
182 L. Meintjes
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the ground with his right foot on the final kick. He is young, fresh as young girls
would say as they look on with admiration and delight.
After a series of dancers of increasing skill, Siyazi takes centre stage and excitement
bristles in the crowd. He moves into position, half crouching, arms stretching out
forward at the ready, hands quivering like the shimmer of rattles. He wipes his
forehead, demonstrating to his opponents how they will sweat if they compete against
him. He does it again. Poised, crouching, his torso erect, he is focusing his energies.
He slaps his back on his shoulder blades, gesturing that no competitor can touch him.
Figure 2 Siyazi Zulu dancing at Keates Drift, 28 December 1999. Photo by T. J. Lemon.
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Pause. He launches into a sequence. Khulukuthu! Khulukuthu! they chant for him
(see Figure 2).
14
Siyazis dancing illustrates the absolutely dialogic relation between the kinetic body
and the sound as two expressive elements that collectively compose the form. Melded
into a single, dense experience, sound with kinetics produces isigqi. For isigqi to
happen, all team-mates have to mark the ends of a dancers sequences in a precisely
co-ordinated consolidation of their efforts. This is especially the case for the climactic
finale. Matching the improvisational skills of someone like Siyazi requires intense
focus on the part of each individual in order for the chanting team members to
artfully and collectively adjust their sequences and clapping to co-ordinate with his
changing dance patterns.
As with his manipulation of sweetness and timing in leading the team into the
competition, as a solo dancer Siyazi shows masterful control of the form. After setting
the basic four-beat dance sequence that ends with a kick, he plays around with the
length of the sequence. By expanding it by half, he opens the space for some invention
in the kick preparations. For example, he drops onto his right knee and marks the
eighth notes with left foot- and legwork (one of his trademark innovations) and with
his arm movements. In another expanded sequence he somersaults and jumps. These
expansions also affect the sonic dimension of the performance: by delaying the kick,
he suppresses accents from the clapping chorus (and from the drummer) anticipated
on the landings of his kicks. He also truncates sequences, rapidly firing kicks at the
team. Three times he kicks in two-beat sequences, forcing rhythmic changes
and elisions of his nickname. We Khulukuthu! We Khulu! Khulukuthu! We
Khulukuthu! they chant to match his truncated sequences. The last of these three
kicks, the clap and the chant all land together on a strong beat, with an accent
punched by the drum. Now he shifts from kicking with his left foot to the right. A
series of three right-foot kicks orchestrates the team. Each hit elicits an immediate
off-beat exclamatory ji! After each, he waits an extra beat before initiating the next
sequence. After the last hard hit and its ji! he slices the air with his forearms to cut
off the performance. He saunters off.
Ululating in appreciation of the performance, Ma kaHlela bursts out of the
watching crowd into the dance arena. She circles around swinging her handbag in
the air, marking herself as the wife of the great dancer. The shy Ma Shayumthakathi,
Siyazis second wife, likewise ululates from her place among her friends.
15
The Practice of Nicknames
The voiced nickname plays an important role texturally, rhythmically and
structurally. It is a key expressive element that organizes the competition, integrating
body movement of the one-one dance
16
with the sonic form, and integrating the
participation of the group with the solo dancer. Attentive nickname performance
enhances the possibilities that the dancer (and those watching him) will have a deeply
felt bodily experience of isigqi. As Johnny Clegg writes from his own experience as an
expert umzansi dancer, in the end you dont have to do anything about the drums,
184 L. Meintjes
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you can think about your name, thats all you think about, how you are going to
manipulate it (Clegg 1984, 67).
Each nickname, when repeated in cycles, displays its own sonic character, just as
each dancer has his own dancing style. For example, Uyawaz amajongosi, ufundis
amajongosi sounds rhythmically and phonemically different from Khulukuthu.
The musical potential of the distinctions in the spoken nicknames is further exploited
in the incantations. Such sonic variation is prompted by virtuosic dancing. For
example, the brevity and spoken rhythm of Siyazis dance name requires the prefixing
of a vocable / we / to make the teams chanting fit the basic four-beat dance
sequence. The chanters throw an accent onto the vocable each time they utter it.
However, when Siyazi surprises the team with too fast-paced a succession of kicks,
they drop the prefix. In so doing, they shift the nicknames accent pattern. In
addition, by cutting into their phrase structure to double up on his kicks, Siyazi forces
them to drop part of his name. We Khulu, Khulukuthu! When he shifts into right
leg kicks, they add the vocable ji! / the conventional response to a right foot kick /
introducing a new accent pattern and new sound. The ji! also adds a phonemically
dramatic contrast to the sound of his nickname. Unlike the young Lwabadla Uhlupho
who executes a single right kick, Siyazi by his right kick repetitions invites three
responses from the team, in effect integrating more fully the sonic attributes of the
ji! into the texture. On a micro-level, then, Siyazis carefully conceived footwork
produces timbral and percussive variation in the vocals and adds to the rhythmic
play. (See Figure 3.)
Simply by getting up to dance, a man commands a change in the sound around
him. By dancing alone, he also demands and gets his teams attention. The whole
team chants his name. Furthermore, good nickname performance is in a sense an
indication of the persuasiveness of the dancers rhetoric. An effective dancer induces
the performance around him that supports, amplifies and excites his affective power
over the audience (Abrahams 1968; Bauman 1984; see also Sawin 2002). With strong
support from his team-mates, he gains more control over the audience and elicits
more appreciation from them.
Nicknames not only play a critical role as a performative element in the
competition, but they also make connections into the wider social and artistic
world. For one, having dance names is part of a broader Zulu (in fact, Nguni) naming
practice in which most individuals, and particularly men, hold multiple names
including an English one.
17
Some nicknames fall into disuse over time; others get
used occasionally. Siyazi is most often addressed by his male friends as Khulukuthu,
rarely as Siyazi. Likewise, men and women who are not family members usually refer
to him in conversation by his dance name. Like others, he has earned various
nicknames in past incidents, by his character and through his professional life:
Skheshekheshe (Catch him catch him), for example, dates from his days as a
professional soccer player, when he played left wing (the position for the fast runner
of the team) and regularly scored goals; Buklenyeklenye njengebululu (he who strikes
like a cobra) derives from his dancing.
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The multiplicity of informal nicknames that dancers and other men might have
exists within the context of elaborate formal naming practices which designate a
persons relationships to his or her kin (father of, daughter of, of the Zulu or other
clan and so forth) and, in the case of men, to their lineages. Siyazi is also sometimes
addressed by his fathers nickname, Makhalathi, or more frequently by his grand-
fathers name, Mankofu. (He looks like his grandfather.)
The art of name recitation is taken to its heights in the praise poetry of important
men (chiefs, for example). This is an elaborate Nguni genre with a deep history (see
Kunene 1976; Msimang 1980; Mzolo 1980; Opland 1984), from which genres of
Figure 3 Dance sequence by Siyazi Zulu at Keates Drift, 28 December 2000.
Transcription by Marc Faris.
186 L. Meintjes
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self-praise have sprung (see Coplan 1994), as have styles of national political oratory
(Brown 1998; Gunner 1986; Sitas 1994) and forms for women, children and grand
bulls (Gunner and Gwala 1991). Musicians who perform in the Zulu singer-
songwriter genre called maskanda insert self-praise into their songs. On five of
Umzansi Zulu Dances six CDs, Siyazi inserts self-praise incantations into his songs as
is consonant with the maskanda style from which he borrows. In these incantations,
he strings together names that are poetically descriptive of his abilities with other
names that position him within his lineage: hear the hissing of the snake who is
preparing to bite, the son of Thu-Thwayisi (Two-Twice, his fathers dance name),
Makhalathi is my father.
18
Dance nicknames / or praise names, as Johnny Clegg calls them (1984)
19
/ do
more than designate individual identities. They confer respect upon the named. In
the case of ngoma, they do so within a social system in which creative play with
naming is a high poetic art and the acquisition of multiple names is a sign of prestige
and accumulating status.
20
Nicknames are also about an individuals singularity in relation to larger groups,
whether his age-mates, his team-mates or his family. Each dancer chooses his own, or
his friends confer it upon him. Some names circulate among teams though no one
within a team shares a name; occasionally they are passed down within families; many
are unique. As lexical items, names mark multiple aspects of a mans person: his
professional identity, his relationship to women, camaraderie with other men, his
personality, his lived history, his foibles and affections. The multiple dimensions of
nicknaming indicate ways that he is looked at by those who know him as well as ways
that he looks back. Names tell about what is noticed about an individual / and what
is held over him / while they also suggest features of identity that he claims as part of
his own narrative.
By their semantic referents, nicknames provide poetic links that connect the
dancing, quite directly, to a more specified/articulated sense of masculinity. This is
not to say that bodily posture, kinetics and musical aesthetics in and of themselves do
not or cannot articulate a sense of masculinity. The stylistic features ngoma shares
with stick fighting (a martial art) and with amahubo regimental song and dance
certainly make some links, as does the practice of ngoma dancing through its ties to
the history and social practices of male migrant labour. In addition to these non-
linguistic means of producing significance, language holds an important capacity to
connect, by means of its pragmatics on the one hand and of its lexical poetics on the
other, the aesthetic experience of power in general to a sense of that power as
masculine.
The nicknames all make claims to having power. They are all hyper-real, larger
than life, and they are about prowess. Some double the intensity of their effect
by prefixing a two: Two-Pull (as strong as two drags on a joint), Two-Bullet,
Thu-Philisi (Two-Pills), Thu-Filisi (Two-Feelings), Thu-Sayizi (Two-Sizes), Thu-
Thwayisi (Two-Twice), Thu-Tawuzeni (Two-Thousand South African Rand),
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Thu-Thwalofu (Two-Twelve, that is, two magazines of a .303 rifle which holds twelve
bullets).
21
Others are challenges, and put downs that thoroughly diminish the humanity and
effectiveness of their dancing opponents: Fusegi inja, khwishi! (Go away/fuck off,
dog! Spit!), Winja umsuthu (You dog, Sotho (person/nation)), Lwabadla uhlupho
(Youre a nuisance), Fusegi, Uyabheda (Be off with you, youre making a mess),
Uyewaminza (Youre drowning), Uyasikizela (Youre off-balance); Shiya, hawu!
(Forget it/Leave it/Get off it, hey!).
There are boasts about strength and authority: Dubula sayitshene (Shoot the
sergeant; that is, the dancer is so strong he can beat someone of higher rank), Dilika
Nhlimbithwa (Shatter the mountain called Nhlimbithwa), Uyawudla umuthi (You
are drinking herbalists potions; that is, medicines that enhance your potency).
There are boasts about the efficiency of a skilled dancer: Siphuthuma indlu eshayo
(Were hurrying for the house is on fire; that is, I can finish up with you so quickly
that Ill still have time to extinguish the flames), Uyewatshuza (Youre cutting through
water; that is, diving in), Uyakuzwa ukuzwa? (Can you hear what hes doing? Can you
appreciate what hes doing?).
There are explicit warnings to potential opponents who may or may not be present:
Halala thembeni? (What are you trusting? in other words, dont think that you will
win if you compete against me), Bhula sangoma (Consult a herbalist). One might
consult an isangoma for medicines to protect oneself or to enhance ones power or
abilities, among other things.
Some references equate dancers with the strength, staying power and aggression of
bulls: Hlaba zehlangana (The bulls are goring one another), Nkunzi kayihlehli (The
bull wont give up), Valinkunzi (Block the bull). Cattle are the prime icon of wealth,
bulls also of virility and strength; hence they are prime symbols of manhood. Cattle
are exchanged in bridewealth payments and as fines in the settlement of local
altercations; they are slaughtered to honour ancestors at major rites of passage and
other high celebrations. Metaphors about dancers as bulls are at once often also
metaphors for men who are courting (isoka).
References to militarism are commonplace: Shoot the Sergeant, Two-Bullet, Thu
Thwalofu (Two-Twelve), Usuthu (one of Shaka Zulus crack regimental units),
Uyazizwa izinduku? (Can you hear my sticks?), Ungijikijela ngewisa (Youre lashing
out at me with a knopkierie). Men commonly carry a stick and a knopkierie / a
round-headed club / ceremonially. When walking in rural areas they might carry one
or both.
References to dancing skills are usually at once references to ways with women:
Ushikishi (A fierce wind that gathers everything up before a thunderstorm, a dancer
who gathers up dust and draws everyones gaze, a man who attracts the attention of
women), Uyawazi amajongosi, ufundisa amajongosi (You know the youth, youre
teaching the youth, that is, you stand as a role model for how to dance and how to
get women), Wajika wawukhisi (Youre turning to be kissed / this is either a reference
to being attractive to women or a put down of the relative softness of his opponents).
188 L. Meintjes
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References that mark relationships between men occur occasionally, for
example through kinship and marriage: Sibali inkonsenhle (Brother-in-law must
go well).
There are also references to dancing style, physical attributes and personal character:
Khulukuthu (Unpredictable, wild thing), Isiwula (A stupid person who hits and breaks
everything in his path). Khulukuthu (Siyazi) is a small fast dancer, an energetic person,
a man who will test others cunning. His self praise in his recorded songs includes
reference to him as being like a mouse, so fast you almost do not see the scurry.
Isiwula, on the other hand, is a big, sculpted, physically strong and fit dancer.
References to personal history, especially if it identifies a vice associated with manly
exploits, also occur. Wemalume safa utshwala (Uncle, were dying of beer consumption)
is the name of a dancer who oftenusedto come to practices inebriated. Ayi eJulisi (Dont
go to Jules Street, a pick-up street in Johannesburg), and Umuntu useyinsini (A person
is laughing at you, that is, for doing socially unacceptable things) are other examples.
Referring to guns, alcohol or to marijuana does not indicate the individuals
support of violence, excessive drinking or drug use; ugly insults and references to
promiscuity do not mean that moral turpitude is celebrated. While these references
are indeed grounded in the everyday experience of living in rural Msinga and moving
between home and the city, their significance lies not so much in their literal
references as in the poetics of those references.
Naming practices identify some aesthetic components that are valued in dancing:
strength, agility, endurance, control over the execution of moves, grace, cleverness,
personality, and imagination. The diversity in the nicknames also celebrates that there
are different styles of carrying and performing oneself, different bodies, different
aspects about masculinity that are valued and multiple perspectives on the social
practices of manhood. Performing the nicknames as part of an enterprise to produce
an aesthetic experience of isigqi endorses and celebrates the masculine values they
poeticize. The way they are performed adds to those values an appreciation of
attentiveness to others, solidarity with your brothers and support of them. The act of
praising that the names entail brings into the event a longstanding Zulu complex
of artistic and social practices, altogether deepening the felt experience of isigqi in the
context of the dance. Through a play with the poetics of prowess, through
simultaneous control over metaphor and over the stylized body / indeed, in
producing a historically and socially saturated experience of isigqi / umzansi dancers
demonstrate competence in performance about Zulu masculinity itself.
22
A celebration of a dancers virtuosity is at once a celebration of aspects of his
manhood. Good masculinity is on display, being performed in hyper-real terms, and
in the process of taking shape through embodied experience. Gqi!
Masculinity, Ethnicity and Ngoma Performance
Outside the dance arena, what is the experience of young men in contemporary
KwaZulu, for which such masculinity might be an important resource? Consider the
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historical contingencies from which contemporary discourses of masculinity derive in
South Africa.
The vibrant South Africanist scholarship about masculinity has shown in multiple
historical contexts that apartheids specific configuration of race and class positions
impacted fundamentally on gendered identities, as did changing constructions of
ethnicity (Morrell 1998, 2001; Campbell 1997).
23
Differences in race and/or class
positions also intersected with structures of inequality between men and women.
These gender scholars also emphasize that a distinctive quality that South African
masculinities share is a historical experience of, complicity in and identification with
forms of violence (Morrell 2001).
Concerning black South African men, Morrell writes that under apartheid the
harshness of life on the edge of poverty and the emasculation of political
powerlessness gave their masculinity a dangerous edge. Honour and respect were
rare, and getting it and retaining it (from white employers, fellow labourers or
women) was often a violent process (2001: 18).
Two processes were specific to the shaping of African masculinities across South
Africa: (1) the formation of a massive migrant male labour force around the mines,
with the accompanying impoverishment of rural areas, and (2) rural social
formations in which particular traditional or precolonial patriarchal hierarchies
and values of manhood remained in place albeit in changing forms (ibid.:13). These
two processes endured through the 20th century in a co-evolving relationship. They
were also directly affected by changes in state-level politics.
In the 1980s into the early 1990s the shaping of Zulu masculinity in relation to the
migrant labour politics and to rural social formations stands out particularly starkly
in comparison to the processes shaping other African masculinities. During this time
Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, leader of the ethnic nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP),
and King Goodwill Zwelethini, figurehead of the Zulu nation, pervasively raised
issues about labour and about Zulu tradition in their political rhetoric. These they
coupled explicitly to Zulu manhood.
The IFP had been conceived in the mid-1970s largely as an ethnic nationalist
cultural movement rather than a political body. It was puppeteered by the apartheid
state into a deadly political programme. The strategy was to generate a counter force
to the already broiling internal popular resistance that was aligned with the African
National Congress/South African Communist Party-led liberation movement. During
the 1980s, the Inkatha movement became inextricably and violently linked to state
security and police organs among others. At the end of the decade, Inkatha was
institutionalized as a political party that participated in the negotiations for a new
constitution and government and stood in the subsequent national elections in 1994
(see Mare 1993 for further history).
During these very volatile times, with the future of the country under intense
negotiation, Buthelezi spoke loudly and often. Zwelethini spoke similarly though to a
lesser degree. Both politicians lobbied rural and migrant Zulu men for their support
by coupling talk about responsible manhood as represented by the role of the
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breadwinner (and hence anti-unionist labourer)
24
with valorization of the tradi-
tional warrior figure and the cultural practices that went with it (Waetjen and Mare
2001). These features of ideal manhood had endured through the 20th century / and,
in the case of the warrior figure, probably from much earlier than that.
25
The volatile
escalation in Zulu nationalism in the 1980s and early 1990s only further valorized
these of all possible features of manhood which could have been selected out of rural
social practice.
26
Msinga, the region in which umzansi ngoma dancing is practised, was an IFP
stronghold; and the expansive local chiefdom of Mchunu was loyal to King
Zwelethini in the tumultuous period running up to the first democratic national
elections in 1994. Ideas of manhood valorized by the IFP leadership during this time
were certainly sustained and carried into post-apartheid Msinga.
Let me add another feature of idealized Zulu manhood that is stylized into an
aesthetics of competition. Berglund, writing in 1976, identifies a sense of power that
expresses itself as anger as a characteristic of men (1989 [1976], 255). This anger,
ulaka, he describes as a complex quality of wrath, passion, courage and energy /
qualities that are certainly also valued in competitive ngoma dance as they are in
circumstances of struggle.
The contemporary circumstances in Msinga from within which young men and
women must shape their individual lives are intensely challenging. The region has one
of the highest unemployment rates in the country.
27
Wide-ranging dilemmas grow
out of this: how does a man become a responsible breadwinner in such
circumstances? What happens to his sense of manhood when the option and even
prospect of being a breadwinner is not available / or likely to be available to him?
And how does he build up an independent homestead and support an extended
family? In the dance team at Keates Drift, of the five young men who trekked to
Johannesburg as new migrants in search of work for the first time in 2002, only one
has found employment. Most commonly, young men who do have jobs are employed
after cursory training as security guards in crime-ridden Johannesburg. Recently a
fine dancer lost his life as a result.
Msinga sits at the current centre of the continents HIV/AIDS epidemic. According
to the superintendent at the local hospital, one out of every three or four young
people walking down the dust road are HIV/; as are 75% of the women in the
tuberculosis ward (personal communication, Dr van der Merwe, 1 August 1999, at
the Church of Scotland hospital, Tugela Ferry).
28
Condom use has no history in the
area; having multiple female partners is common. Though the state decreed that
condoms must be free and available, people here do not necessarily know this.
Furthermore, to obtain them, they have to know to request them at the hospital
reception. The local hospital is staffed by fine and dedicated doctors, some of whom
believe on religious grounds that condoms promote promiscuity and therefore the
availability of free condoms is not advertised at the hospital. Under these new and
escalating circumstances, the team has paid dearly with illnesses and deaths.
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Msinga has been ravaged by violence through the twentieth century. Historically,
many local Africans have held martial achievements to be the highest mark of a
man (Morrell 2001, 12). This value contributed to the rapid escalation and bloody
conclusion to turn-of-the-19th-century Anglo-Boer war in which Africans were
implicated (ibid.). The man as warrior played into other struggles through the
century as well, and continues to resonate in local eruptions of violence. Altercations
in the form of factional inter-district vendettas, once fought with sticks and
sometimes channelled into dancing competition (Clegg 1982), now are waged with
guns. Hey, men, stop; the black nation is being diminished, sings Umzansi Zulu
Dance, the beautiful people of Africa are getting finished, being killed by the sticks of
the Europeans [guns]! We must go back to the sticks of our grandfathers and leave
the sticks of Europeans.
29
Violence is nothing new, but over the years the levels of vulnerability for young
men have increased. First, other kinds of tensions (for example, over the control of
taxi routes)
30
become embroiled in local vendettas, complicating the struggles and
implicating a diverse range of individuals. Second, national politics of the last twenty
years have further complicated local troubles (for example, stringently felt differences
between ANC and IFP supporters have been violently settled, especially in the early to
mid-1990s). Third, the easy availability of guns, many of them unregistered, raises the
opportunities and felt necessities of gun ownership as well as the potential for serious
injury.
31
Fourth, years of opposition to apartheid have produced multiple forms of
struggle masculinity for which the use and display of weaponry was a shared
feature (Xaba 2001). Ten years after the end of the struggle the residue of this is still
evident. These circumstances present young men on the ground with challenges
concerning how to position oneself in the face of threat, how to protect family,
friends and ones moral integrity, as well as how to celebrate a Zulu heritage
represented in the warrior figure.
While the definitive longstanding features of responsible and proper Zulu
manhood become acutely difficult to sustain, young men must still negotiate a
pathway into mature adulthood within the community. It is a challenge to find ways
to accumulate the authority of proper Zulu men without risking health and able-
bodiedness and without any real prospects of income generation. They are faced with
having to negotiate the discrepancies between the lingering hegemonic idea of Zulu
manhood promoted by Zulu nationalist discourse and its seeming unattainability.
Ngoma singing and dancing is one source of authority in the face of these
struggles. The performance practice has always held the potential for dancers to
enhance their individual status and their collective rights. That there is a host of
official reports (e.g. Town Council and Native Labour Association records) dating
back to the 1920s that mention acclaimed captains and that record the struggle by
local state officials and mining administrations to control ngoma competitions in
industrial areas attests to this (see Erlmann 1991).
32
But in this post-apartheid
moment, which had promised to be one of empowerment, ngoma seems to be an
increasingly important resource for some young migrant Zulu men as their
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anticipated avenues towards state-assisted empowerment narrow and diminish. Not
only is ngoma an increasingly important resource in the context of diminishing
opportunities, but the stakes in rendering the drama effectively are significantly
raised.
A dance about power can become a source of power. As I show below, through
singing and dancing some men can indeed accumulate institutional power; some
make material gains; some gather military responsibility; many generate seductive
power. That ngoma can be an avenue to these positions of power hinges on the
successful instantiation of isigqi and on the sense of isigqi in these instants as a
masculine domain.
Ngoma captains especially gain institutional power within the community. In full
adulthood, former captains can become respected political figures, elders and advisers.
They, along with current team leadership, form a channel of communication to the
young men for others in the community. As team captain, Siyazi was once in a
position to persuade some young men to refrain from injuring a member of their
community who supported the opposing national political party. Post-apartheid, the
national defence force tried to cajole him into bringing the team in as recruits. He
refused, reasoning that, while it would be an employment opportunity, the move could
potentially refuel local resentments generated in past altercations or spark new
altercations arising out of new circumstances. Basically the problem would be that
their own young men, once trained, would be called in to impose law and order on the
community and in the wider district. Some might resent the imposition of order
by members of one community on another. For others, the imposition of order by
younger men or by men from other families or by friends upon friends might ignite
trouble. To Siyazi, the destructive potential appeared more ominous than it was worth.
Struggles within the community can be made public in the process of a dance. At a
district-wide dance in 2000 Siyazi began his sequence. He kicked / Khulukuthu! /
swivelled round with the grace of a ballerina executing a move in the dust, and
prepared for another hit. Two-Pull emerged fast from nowhere and slickly cut across
Siyazis path, closing him out with a kick. Two-Pull quickly returned to his place in the
seated cluster. Caught off guard, Siyazi shook his head, rested his hands on his hips and
walked off without honouring Two-Pulls cheeky challenge. Here struggles internal to
the local team were dramatized within the context of a district event. The public
display opened the opportunity for dialogue about the expressed differences after the
event / or at least for a reprimand by the elders about disrespectful behaviour.
In terms of military power, prize dancers have been key fighters in factional
vendettas. This is a position of honour. But it is also a position of dreadful
vulnerability. Prize dancers have been targeted for assassination in such vendettas.
Some have been killed. On Christmas day, December 1992, the one-one dancing had
reached a high pitch. The big dancers were competing against one another. Siyazi
pulled a young boy out to dance with the men. The team chanted the name of the
boys father who had been assassinated in a local vendetta. The spindly teenager did
his best to hold the space of his late father.
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Ngoma dancing is also an avenue through which some dancers can provide a little
for their family. Those who dance best can make money performing intermittently. A
young man can occasionally make R40 (approximately US$5) offloading candy from
a truck into a factory in Johannesburg; he might earn R200 (US$25) dancing at a
show in the city.
33
More significant, dance is seen to hold an enormous promise
because of the possibility of international interest. Those who have danced overseas,
representing the magnificent warrior dancer figure in performance, have returned all
the wealthier for it. Ngoma recordings also have a domestic market and a (small)
international niche in the World Music industry. Umzansi Zulu Dance has released
six recordings (Umzansi 1988, 1991, 1994, 1997, 1998, 1999). This is a potential
source for getting the performing group known, with the hope that more
performance opportunities will thereby present themselves. CD sales also generate
royalty payments for the composers, producer and lyricists.
Dancing is a display around which courting and flirtation takes place, and women
mark their relationship to men as wives, mothers, sisters and girlfriends. Adult female
kin and wives ululate for their dancing men. During set breaks at dance events
girlfriends send their sisters to tie gifts around the necks of those they admire. They
string sashes decorated with cigarettes, candy, matches, towels and t-shirts around
those they are courting. Teenagers flock to watch. When the dancers mingle with
the crowd during the set break and after the event, the admired and the admiring, the
flirtatious and the shy have a socially sanctioned opportunity to interact. Expert
dancers enjoy high prestige among women. In terms of the powers of seduction,
ngoma dancers often have it made.
Conclusion
In performance, the idea represented in the nickname gets linked to the sense of power
experienced in the singing, dancing body in the execution of ngoma style. A felt
resonance may crystallize / albeit momentarily / into an identifiable figure, which a
dancer can try on for size and feel, at the very moment it is being named repeatedly,
as one with/representing/demonstrating male prowess. As long as the machismo is
celebrated within the boundaries of performance, it infuses the art form with
extraordinary power and intensity. Likewise, as long as the performance about
masculine competence opens up pathways in the world of social practice to contained
responsible uses of power accumulated in dancing, its striking virtuosity realizes its
social potential. But when the poetics of the hyper-real get treated as more than
performance / that is, when the tensions contained within the exciting density
of isigqi go out of balance / there may be disastrous consequences, leading to the loss
of life through violence or through the HIVepidemic. In the context of the particular
political contingencies within which these young men live, some of the features of the
embodied experience of the larger-than-life persona can make sense and may
sometimes spill over into social interaction outside the dance. In this way, when
dancers become the hyper-real images of their nicknames, features of the struggle for
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responsibility and proper manhood can become embroiled in a destructive cycle that
circulates through the aesthetic form as well. These processes are consonant with
longstanding representations of local moral values. Berglund writes that ulaka, the
anger characteristic of men, has positive and negative potential. It is valued when it
serves to maintain good order, but it is considered immoral and abusive, he says, when
it is geared towards destruction and, if possible, annihilation (1989 [1976], 255).
The nicknames, carried proudly by individuals, are expressed in the personality of
individual dance styles / in the agile poetry of Khulukuthu, the wild unpredictable
one, and in the sheer strength of Isiwula, the one who breaks anything in his path.
Nicknames specify the collective experience and distinguish one young mans dance
identity from another. Collective song and choreographed group dance frame
individual displays and generate some sense of shared feelingful experience among
young men. While the lyrics reiterate, and in a more extended narrative form
elaborate and reflect upon, many of the same themes, the dancing and singing lodge
that masculinity in the socialized and stylized body as an experience and feeling.
Masculinity in ngoma performance has two registers. First, it is about feeling and
being powerful. Second, it is about knowing how and when to be sweet. Both Siyazis
ability to render isigqi and his fine poetics augment his leadership qualities. Showing
that you have control over these registers (and thereby also over the team and the
audience) is an assertion of both good artistry and good masculinity. Control is
wrested from others and heralded as in your command by means of the ngoma
practice of challenging your opponents. The principle of the challenge holds within it
a tension between the cultivation of individual distinction and of team cohesion. The
production of forms of power in a practice of challenges has the potential to
exacerbate difference, to disrupt social relationships and to break the group. The
practice also holds the potential to generate solidarity while celebrating individual
styles. The consolidation of forms of power in the act of performing isigqi / itself an
aesthetic of consolidation and density / corroborates the successful instantiation of
the aesthetic principle and magnifies ngomas expressive significance. Its fine
achievement may become its own undoing if it intersects with contemporary social
crises unchecked, that is, without the reflection that artful play with sweetness allows.
According to Berglund, anger and emotions are considered to be located in the
internal throat, also the location of eloquence, speech and song (ibid.), the confluence
of ngomas drama and beauty, its precarious potential and its power.
On Christmas day 2002 in Keates Drift, the dancers begin with a song Siyazi had
composed in the mid-1990s after a factional vendetta and as the violence leading up
to and through the transition to an ANC-lead democratic state had begun to wane.
Now in the context of an AIDS epidemic and against the backdrop of escalating
violent crime, the team sings sweetly again:
They say, with our fathers children, Bathi ngengane zobaba
with our fathers children ngengane zobaba
Hey, you maggots who will be eating us We ntuthwane ezodla thina,
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With our fathers children, Ngengane zobaba
with our fathers children ngengane zobaba
The earth isnt growing fat [and healthy] Mhlaba kawunoni
with our fathers children ngengane zobaba mhlaba
Hey, you maggots who will be eating us We ntuthwane ezodla thina,
Your heads will be cut off Zonqunwa amakhanda
[if you dare come out of the ground],
Hey, you maggots who will be eating us we ntuthwane ezodla thina
34
In the midst of struggles for dignified living and to uphold the practices of
responsible manhood, they sing about the value ngoma dance has for them, and
about the significance of their ngoma camaraderie:
If youre going to mess me around, Noma ningadlala ngami
I dont care, anginandaba
for my extended family bakhona abakwethu
[Umzansi Zulu Dance] is here
They can come and pick me up anywhere Bayongilanda lakhona abakwethu
I dont care [if you cause me trouble], anginandaba
for my people/family are here bakhona abakwethu
[to look out for me]
My will will never be eaten, Ifa lami ngeke lidliwe
my will, komunye ifa
my will is mine alone lami elami
35
Dancing is my will, Siyazi Zulu says. It is his livelihood, his spirit, his body and
his legacy. No one can take it away from me. My style belongs to me and Ill take it
with me six foot under. He launches the team into another song. In the responding
chorus, a plaintive upper voice floats over the gritty bass vocals:
Hey, the plane Webhanoyi
Hey, the plane I bought Webhanoyi engalithengeludali liyeza
for my darling is coming
Hey, the plane I bought Webhanoyi engalithengeludali liyeza
for my darling is coming
Darling, you will get all the promises Izithembiso zonke dali ozozithola
Darling, you will get all the promises Izithembiso zonke dali uzozithola
The watch I promised you, Newashi engakuthembisa
Ive already given it to you. . .. lona sengakunika. . ..
Hurry back [home] Usheshubuye dali ntambama
196 L. Meintjes
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in the afternoon, darling,
Im going to set things up for you ngizokusetha
36
Out from the midst of the crowd, ululations ripple into the texture of the song.
Laughter.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Siyazi Zulu whose artistry and knowledge is the core of this analysis. He also assisted
me with language translation and gave me permission to record the events and to reproduce his
lyrics. The professional Umzansi Zulu Dance and the larger community dance team at Uthuli
lweZulu, Keates Drift, Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal taught me what I know about ngoma. Many women,
especially Ma kaHlela and Ma Shayumthakathi, have kindly hosted me at Keates Drift. Thank you
to Marc Faris who executed the music transcription and T. J. Lemon who gave permission for the
use of his photographs. Discussions following presentations at the Stanford Humanities Center and
music department of the University of Virginia mightily improved the piece. I am also grateful to
Patricia Sawin, Margaret Weiner, Christina Gier, Fred Maus, David Samuels, Paul Berliner, Jennifer
Fitzgerald and the journals reviewers and editors for their critical readings. A Rockefeller
Fellowship in the Black Performing Arts (Stanford Humanities Center and the Stanford Committee
on Black Performing Arts) enabled me to prepare this piece; eld research was made possible by a
grant from the Arts and Science Council of Duke University and by the Josiah Charles Trent
Memorial Foundation.
Notes
[1] The Zulu lyrics are as follows:
Webhanoyi engalithengeludali liyeza
Izithembiso zonke dali ozozithola. . ..
Usheshubuye dali ntambama ngizokusetha
Isitofu sakho dali ntambama uzosithola
Ayi esemalahle dali esikagesi. . .
Umsetho wakho oright uzowuthola.
A version of the song appears as Ibhanoyi on Umzansi Zulu Dances Khuzani cassette
(Umzansi 1994).
[2] (Inkukhu) ihamba nge20-20
YayeThekwini ingane kababa ihamba nge20-20
Intoni nale?
. . ..
Iliqhude wemalobola ngejubane iliqhude
The excerpt also appears in a version of the song titled Iqhude on Khuzani (Umzansi 1994).
[3] This was for the recording Ingculaza (Umzansi 1999).
[4] When two players play on the same instrument, they face each other, holding the drum
between them. Each alternates playing the motive, essentially leaving out the softer repetitions.
[5] I refer to the team members as dancers, as they refer to themselves, rather than singer-dancers,
though they all sing as well. Singing with the team is taken for granted as part of being a
dancer.
[6] This phenomenological work supports discussions about music and the body begun by
Blacking (1977) and extended by Baily (1995), Grau (1995) and others.
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[7] See Moodie (1994) for an account of the social history of migrant mine labour.
[8] Chiefdoms are subdivided into isigodi / subdistricts or wards.
[9] Ngoma is historically a uid category, and carries a range of meanings within south eastern
Africa. Erlmann also lists isikhuze , isicathulo, ukukomika, isiZulu and isiBhaca as Zulu ngoma
substyles (1991, 95). He describes isiBhaca as the dance that became known as the gumboot
dance (ibid., 100). Ingoma kaBhaca to which the umzansi dancers with whom I have been
working refer is different from gumboot dancing. In naming only three substyles above, I
follow the practice of these umzansi dancers. As Erlmann notes, umzansi is often referred to
interchangeably with isiZulu or indlamu (ibid., 101). On ngoma as an idea and performance
practice in East Africa see Gunderson and Barz (2000).
[10] For further details on the organization of ngoma dance teams, see Thomas (1988) and Clegg
(1984).
[11] A version of the song appears as Intombi yalomfanaon Umzansi Zulu Dances CD Ingculaza
(Umzansi 1999).
[12] Okuthi bhe kulamalanga.
[13] Shiya! Shiya! Angazi ngongane wami, noma ozobaleka!
[14] Lwabalda Uhlupho and Siyazi were dancing at a district-wide event, 28 December 2000, from
which these descriptions ensue.
[15] Polygamy is a traditional practice.
[16] When age-mates dance jabane (that is, as a self-choreographed subgroup), the team chants
the name of one of the dancers in that subgroup.
[17] In addition to terms of endearment, women tend to be addressed and referred to by names
which mark their status as daughters and mothers.
[18] Uyamuzwa uBuklenyeklenye njengebululu mfo kaThuthwayisi noMakhalathi ubaba ozala
mina. This particular version is part of the praise on Bewukhala (Umzansi 1997).
[19] In calling them nicknames in this paper, I honour the English designation Siyazi gives them.
[20] See Barber (1991) for an elaborate Yoruba example.
[21] All nicknames listed in this paper are those of past or present members of the team at Uthuli
lweZulu, Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal, with the exception of Nkunzi kayihlehli, which is one of the
names of musician Johnny Clegg who dances periodically with them. In the Zulu language,
second- and third-person singular are phonetically identical. Tonal differences become
indistinct in the process of group chanting. Sometimes the you/he spoken in the nickname
addresses an opponent; sometimes it indexes the dancer himself.
[22] That demonstrating competence in performance about Zuluness is part of the production of
Zulu identity is an important point made by Erlmann (1991). Here I specify his idea further.
[23] Through the 20th century, constructions of ethnicity changed with experiences of
proletarianization and urbanization as well as in relation to the evolving apartheid policies
of separate development. In historically situated circumstances, some men also had specic
kinds of power over other men on the basis of their generation (for example, elders over
youths), sexuality (heterosexuals over homosexuals, for example) or able-bodied-ness (the
t over the physically impaired for example (Kimmel in Morrell 2001, 338)). See also Morrell
(1998) and Campbell (1997, 2001).
[24] African National Congress-aligned labour unions called on their members to strike. They also
organized stay-aways and go-slows. Inkatha spokespeople argued to their own constituency
that these union practices stood counter to mens responsibility to earn wages to keep their
families.
[25] The warrior gure has been given additional currency by its wide circulation on the
international market in all media and artistic forms through the century (see Meintjes 2003,
177/80). This international circulation, in turn, is of course linked to the ferocious and
militant reputation Zulu warriors earned on the battleelds, reported especially in conicts
with the British.
198 L. Meintjes
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[26] This is not to say that political gures determine ideals of manhood. Rather, in this case, the
discourse of these IFP politicians and their supporters heightened, pervasively circulated and
lent authority to this particular representation of proper Zulu manhood. Not only that, but by
preaching obedience and authoritarian patriarchal order as essential Zulu values (Waetjen and
Mare 2001) they left little room for men to be properly Zulu without also being properly men
in the terms laid out by the leadership.
[27] Published gures for men and women range from 39% (the 1996 ofcial population census
gure) to 93% (a report covering KwaZulu-Natal on the Public Works projects (Khosa, n.d.)).
Statistics are unreliable, especially in a migrancy situation like this. Sufce to say, the
unemployment in Keates Drift especially among young people is drastically high.
[28] The HIV/ prevalence rate for the KwaZulu-Natal province as a whole was 18.4% in 2002
(Dorrington et al. 2002). The gure breaks down as follows: adult men (18/64 years) /
31.6%; adult women (18/64 years) / 31.3%; young men (15/24 years) / 5.9%; young
women (15/24 years) / 19.8% (ibid.).
[29] We madoda, khuzani saphela isizwe esimnyama
Azephela amaAfrica amahle, eqedwa induku zabafo
Saphela isizwe esimnyama, seqedwa induku zabafo
Asibuyeleni kwezomkhulu siyeke induku zabafo.
Excerpt of Ubuzimuzimu (Cannibalism) (Umzansi 1997). A number of the songs that
Umzansi Zulu Dance recorded around the time of the rst national elections in 1994 concern
national political issues and the violence on the ground that accompanied the negotiations at
state tables (Umzansi 1994; see also 1997, 1998).
[30] The minivan taxi industry in South Africa is massive. Black-owned from the start, it grew
out of the informal sector during the apartheid era and provides the primary mode of
transportation for most South Africans. It is the only public means of transport-
ation in the Keates Drift area. To control a taxi route is therefore to monopolize a source
of income.
[31] There are 4.2 million licensed rearms in South Africa (Cock 2001, 48). This is a high gure
for a country that has a population of about 40 million. Cock reminds us that distinguishing
between licensed and illegally owned weaponry misses the complexity of the use of re power
on the ground. Many licensed rearms are used for illicit purposes; many nd their way into
criminal circles through theft; and, on a larger scale, the legal small arms market is the
seedbed for the blackmarket trade (ibid.).
[32] Control was exercised by drawing up rules of conduct and staging performances as
entertainment for miners and tourists.
[33] It is principally through musician Johnny Clegg that ngoma dancers have had access to
national and some international stages. Cleggs band Savuka incorporates ngoma
singer-dancers from the Msinga area. Clegg continues to make performance opportunities
available to ngoma dancers.
[34] See also Umzansi (1998) where a version of the song appears as Umhlaba.
[35] See also Umzansi (1998) where the song is titled Ifa.
[36] See also Umzansi (1994) where a version of the song is titled as Ibhanoyi.
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