Orality Indexing: Cultural Benefits of Male Circumcision

Abstract

Various writers have demonstrated that the core of the black African cultural practice of initiation defies state, ethnic, tribal, chieftaincy, and kingdom boundaries. However, circumcision practices of the Northern Ndebele and other South African tribes have so far been studied without adequate nuance. This is partly why writers such as Krige and Krige (The Realm of a Rain-Queen: A Study of the Patterns of Lovedu Society. Oxford University Press, London, etc., 1943, p. 115) fail to make sense of the songs among BaLobedu initiates, to the extent of misconstruing their content as “nonsensical” and as disconnected from other social practices of the people. In this chapter, I explore evidence of sense in the orature of circumcision schools through a case study of one Ndebele initiation center, among many like it continuing the institution of male circumcision among the Northern Ndebele people of the Mokopane Kekana (Ghegana) tribe in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. Cultural lore indexed in initiation teachings of the Ndebele is a mere variable of a constant of circumcision oral lessons practiced similarly yet not identically among other African cultural groups on the continent. I assert that the addition of this other tribe among those whose initiation practices have been studied clarifies the nature of this cross-tribal practice in ways that enrich knowledge about this aspect of African cultures. This is in keeping with the premise of my study asserting that similarity of content and modes of teaching among performances of initiation across geographical and ethnic identity points to an identifiable common core worthy of characterization. In addition to fieldwork using oral history methods, I analyzed texts on the subject qualitatively in order to frame my findings within a germane theoretical and conceptual context.