[In pre-modern Shona states, celibacy] as well could be a public demonstration of difference that commanded respect by so dramatically breaking both the rules of normative society and the dictates of economic common sense. Parents would be the first to notice if a child were developing in this abnormal way–an effeminate boy, for example, or a girl who preferred to play with boys rather than girls. Efforts would be taken to “cure” the problem, first by shaming and perhaps by a beating or two, later by consultation with n'angas [traditional healers] and appropriate sacrifices. If, after all this, the child still did not change, it could be interpreted to mean that he or she was possessed by a spirit of the opposite sex. A child in such a case would likely to be apprenticed to learn the arts of divination. As time went on, the female spirit who occupied a male body would manifest itself in increasingly feminine characteristics in the man and even, as Gelfand noted in one case, insist that the man wear women’s clothing (1964, 84-5). Some informants attest that the more flamboyant the effemininity, the more efficacious the n'anga.[26]
A male ancestor or water sprite (njuzu) whose spirit occupied a female body, meanwhile, could hardly be expected to tolerate that body having sex with a man. Aschwanden (1989, 161-4) describes such a case of a woman, Angela, being inhabited by an njuzu whose increasingly violent possessions made it impossible for her to have sex with her husband and eventually even to have fantasies about sex with men. Women in such cases would be assumed to be celibate, although they could be married to a succession of young girls who served them, in public, as a regular wife would a husband. These female wives as they reached puberty would be replaced and married off to men in the proper fashion. The celibacy or virginity of the woman so possessed could become a valued spiritual asset to a community, as one informant explained:
“There are no lesbians in our culture, but we have special women who will be given powers by strong n'angas to act as mbonga [guardians] for the chief. The woman will not marry for the rest of her life [but instead] will be pledged to a spirit that acts as guardian for the chief. For the spirit to guard the chief properly, it needs a wife, because it is obvious that a strong bodyguard must be a man. The mbonga is given the woman as his wife. She will be used as his wife without her knowledge when she is asleep. In return she is given all the favours of the chief. The mbonga will be treated as if she is someone else’s real wife because if any man tries to court her, the spirit will cause bad luck for him. That is why she will never have sex with a man.”[27]
Mbonga were often the actual sisters or aunts of the ruler. Kings depended upon them for advice as well as muti (medicine) to such an extent that “in war the mbonga was supreme” (Shire 1994, 154). Women who fulfilled this role are revered in praise poems as being among the most important founding ancestors of the clan or nation (Fortune and Hodza 1974, 70).
No historical case illustrates this role more famously than that of Nyemba, also known with the masculine honorific as VaNyemba. VaNyemba lived in the eastern part of Zimbabwe in the early to mid eighteenth century. According to senior male informants interviewed in the late 1970s, she was variously an actual lesbian, had both female and male sex organs, and was “normal” except that she kept real bullets in her vagina.[28] Accounts recorded by colonial officials remember her simply as a beautiful maiden, while among the Chihota people she is revered as both mamuna (literally, “man or husband”) and mbonga.[29] Her muti was defiled with political consequences that are still celebrated to this day.
The tradition goes as follows. VaNyemba was accompanying her brothers on an elephant-hunting expedition, providing by her abstinence from sex the muti necessary to protect them from danger. At one point the brothers entrusted her to the care of a local headman while they tracked the elephants. That headman broke the trust by raping her. Shamed, and fearful that her brothers’ lives were now in danger, VaNyemba killed herself. So heinous was the headman’s crime that an army was raised against him and he fled in ignominy. VaNyemba’s elder brother, Chihota, established his family as a new and powerful dynasty in the area.
“Hungochani: The History of a Dissent Sexuality in Southern Africa,” Marc Epprecht, 2013.
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