From around the time when the Shona developed the state and a Tribu- tary Mode of Production, evidence on religion is slight, although it is consistent in giving a simple picture of how things could have been like. Ideologically, it seems this model vested the king with powers, rather than the fathers of the households, to become the priest whose media- tory capacity between the dead ancestors of his and the living under his control sustained the political organisation and guarantees its security and perpetuity. The relative development of technology and labour or- ganization in the tributary mode of production necessitated the end of the dominance of kinship which although it continued to exist it was radically reshaped for it was dominated by another rationality that re- quired dependence on the chief. The forms of property corresponding to this second step are those which enable the dominant class to control access to the land and by means of this to extract tribute from the peas- ant producers. The extraction of this tribute itself is controlled by the dominance of an ideology, which always takes the same forms: state
66
Cf. Beach, The Shona and Zimbabwe 900-1850. Gweru: Mambo Press, 1980, p.109; Cf. Beach, Zimbabwe Before 1900, p. 28.
religion or quasi religion.67 That is, in as much as the Communal Mode of Production could not survive without family ancestor ideology which was a weapon of the struggle against nature, the tributary economic system adapted and appropriated the communal ideology of ancestor veneration to sustain a different socio-economic set-up.
The older system of ancestor veneration is thus, stratified depending on the social and political position of the living. We thus have in ascending order the family ancestors, village ancestors, ward ancestors and territo- rial ancestors. In that order, all the ancestors are juniors and responsible to the ancestors of the king. Consequently, all the subjects of the king- dom were bound to recognise the ancestors of the king. In fact, the ide- ology of the ancestors is ‘royalised’ in such a way that its basic character as a symbol of how a communally structured society lived its relations to its material conditions is fundamentally eroded. Instead, what emerges
is a new ideology (called by an old name).68 Because of this newly estab-
lished system, new struggles were also introduced between the various classes. While under the Communal Mode of Production ‘the central contradictions were between elders and juniors and between elders and women’, under the tributary system the contradictions are between the chief, nobility, and retainers on one side, and the elders, commoners,
foreigners, and slaves on the other.69
The centre of the struggle has shifted from struggle with nature and environment to struggle between humans in different social and eco- nomic classes. And according to Mosala, this is reflected in a wide- spread belief in uroyi or witchcraft. While in the Communal Mode of Production all misfortunes were understood as divine communication which could be dealt with at household level, in the tributary system the interpretation has changed. Misfortunes were understood to be caused by witches and to combat witchcraft; the services of a specialist-n’anga or diviner were required. Hence during the tributary system, medical and psychiatric activities were also removed or transferred from the house- hold to a specialist group of n’angas (traditional medicine men/and women) who became responsible first of all to the chief, although not
67
Cf. Amin, Class and Nation, p. 49; Mosala, Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology, p. 81.
68
Cf. Mosala, Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology, p. 84.
69
Cf. David Cooper, ‘An Interpretation of the Emergent Urban Class Structure in Botswana: A Case Study of Selebi-Phikwe Miners’. Ph.D. Diss., University of Birmingham, 1982, p. 65; Cf. Mosala, Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology, p. 81.
always. They were the source of the power of the chief in as much as they were also dependents of the chief. It was only in the Tributary Mode of Production that the roles of n’anga became specialized roles. Accord- ing to Michael Gelfand,
European society has no one quite like the n’anga, an individual to whom people can turn in every kind of difficulty. He is a doctor in sickness, a priest in religious matters, a lawyer in legal issues, a policeman in the de- tection of crime, a possessor of magical preparations which can increase crops and install special skills and talents into his clients. He fills a great need in society; his presence gives assurance in the whole community.70
In the previous Communal Mode this function was not a specialist activ- ity as we have seen. It was one of the tasks of each household. There was no specialist of the ancestors since every household venerated its own ancestors. The existence of specialists in divine matters suggests the existence of greater spiritual forces responsible for greater religious, socio-economic and political issues than the household set-up. Thus, religion has begun to take shape of the social hierarchies. And this cor- responds closely with evidence available so far regarding the religious system of the Shona of the north-east. Archaeological evidence shows that from about 1500 A.D. to 1700 A.D. the society was now based upon
ancestral spirit ‘cults’, based on the ancestors of the ruling lineage.71