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African Archaeological Review, Vol. 18, No. 4, 2001 (°
Forbidden Images: Rock Paintings and the Nyau
Secret Society of Central Malaŵi
and Eastern Zambia
Benjamin W. Smith1
This paper examines the rock art of the nyau secret society of eastern Zambia and
central Malaŵi. The art dates principally from the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. It has been known to researchers since the 1970s but has given up
few of its secrets. I examine the questions of why the art was made and why the
tradition ceased. Key to answering these is the realization that the art belonged
to a specific historical and geographic context: the era and area where nyau was
forced to become an underground movement because of its suppression by Ngoni
invaders, missions, and the later colonial government. The art provides us with
detailed insights into the way nyau has served in the process of overcoming and
manipulating the traumatic social changes faced by Cheŵa society in the last few
centuries.
Cet article examine l’art rupestre de la société secrète de nyau au est du Zambia
et Malaŵi centrale. L’art date principalement aux dix-neuvième et bas vingtième
siècles. Recherchers ont su l’art depuis les années soixante-dix, mais ils ont appris
peu de ses secrets. J’examine les questions de pourquoi l’art était fabriquer et
pourquoi la tradition a cessé. Pour résoudre ces questions c’est important à réaliser
que l’art était à sa place dans un milieu spécifique d’histoire et géographie: au
temps et place où nyau était forcer à devenir un mouvement clandestin à cause de sa
répression par les envahisseurs Ngoni, les missions et, plus tard, le gouvernement
colonial. L’art nous donne les aperçus détaillé sur comment nyau a servi dans
le procès à surmonter et manipuler les changements traumatiques que la société
Cheŵa a bravé dans les siècles récents.
KEY WORDS: Malaŵi; Zambia; nyau; secret societies; masks; rock painting.
1 Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, P.O. Wits 2050, Gauteng,
South Africa; e-mail: [email protected].
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PAINTINGS OF SECRET MASKS
It has been recognized since the 1970s2 that certain rock paintings in eastern
Zambia and central Malaŵi depict the masks of nyau, the so-called secret society3
of the Cheŵa (Phillipson, 1976; Schoffeleers, 1976, 1978; Fig. 1). At that time
it was stated that much more research would be needed before any detailed interpretation of the paintings would be possible. Some 20 years on, the nyau association has been subject to a number of intensive research programmes (Birch
de Aguilar, 1994a,b, 1996; Kubik, 1987, 1993; Yoshida, 1992). This work provides the basis for us usefully to return to these paintings for the first detailed
assessment of the art since the pioneering work of David Phillipson and Matthew
Schoffeleers.
Although the rock painting tradition ceased early in this century, the nyau
society and many of the masks depicted in the paintings are still used. Nyau
continues to be both popular and significant within the ritual life of Cheŵa people
across all age groups. It has become a popular attraction for tourists and roaming
anthropologists: its secrecy offers mystery, while the colorful masks and costumes
make it the picture-perfect dance. A flood of glossy articles have been featured in art
magazines, pictorial edited volumes, travel programmes, even in airline magazines.
The face of nyau is now widely seen and widely known. Rather than undermining
the secrecy of nyau, this seems to have enhanced its power; as more and more
people become aware that they are excluded, the withheld knowledge becomes
increasingly desired and desirable. Perhaps the advertising of the withholding of
information is integral to the nature of ritual secrecy, the knowledge itself being
less powerful than the process of exclusion (for a detailed study of the power of
secrecy in African art see Nooter, 1993). As a Ghanaian elder remarked, “What
I know, that you ought to know but do not know, is what makes me powerful”
(Quarcoopome, 1993, p. 114). Certainly the parading of excluded knowledge is
an element integral to most nyau activity.
But the nyau rock paintings stand outside of normal nyau activity. Secluded
in hard to access rock shelters, the paintings must have belonged to a more private
than public form of consumption. Without doubt they withhold secrets, but over
the years these have been flaunted at few besides the intrepid rock art researcher.
Today the paintings are largely forgotten by the descendants of the people who
made them; they are now part of history rather than the living ritual landscape. In
this paper I seek to unravel the unflaunted secrets contained within this historic
art. I examine why people chose to paint nyau masked imagery on the walls of
rock shelters and what caused this practice to cease. I will show that the paintings
served an important historical and political role. They provide us with an inside
2 Nyau
designs were recognized in rock art at roughly the same time in Zambia (Phillipson, 1976) as
in Malaŵi (Schoffeleers, 1976). This discovery seems to have been made independently in each area.
3 Although usually described as a secret society, nyau is more properly a closed association. Its secrets
are withheld only from outsiders. All those within the society are privy to all secrets.
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Fig. 1. Map of south-central Africa showing the distribution of nyau rock art.
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view into a less emphasized realm of nyau activity: its important role during the
last few centuries in overcoming and manipulating the traumatic social changes
faced by Cheŵa society.
THE NYAU ASSOCIATION
Nyau is a closed association of the Cheŵa, Nyanja, and Mang’anja peoples of eastern Zambia, central and southern Malaŵi, and neighboring parts of
Mozambique. Nyau is a men’s association, open to initiates only. It is thought of
as a religion, though includes little which we would recognize as religious activity (Schoffeleers, 1978). All nyau public ceremonies involve masquerade performances, usually in a dance format. In the past every boy would have been expected
to go through nyau initiation; nowadays it is by choice. A young man is not considered to have become an adult member of society until he has completed the
initiation. This usually takes place between the ages of 12 and 15, although there
has been a tendency to take boys at increasingly young ages (Rangeley, 1949). Initiation takes place in the dambwe, which today is usually a graveyard (see Table I
for a glossary of Cheŵa words discussed in the text). It is undertaken by a group
of boys together. During the process they are punished for past misdemeanors,
taught the secrets of nyau, including a secret vocabulary, taught how to make the
nyau masks, and instructed how to behave as an adult. During entry to nyau, along
with social and sexual education, a boy learns many skills. Learning to make the
nyau structures teaches the use of knots and ties as well as familiarity with various
Table I. Glossary of Cheŵa Words Referred to in the Text
Bwalo
Chikumbutso
Chilembwe
Chimkoko
Chinamwali
Dambwe
Edzi
Galimoto
Kalulu
Kapoli
Kasiyamaliro
Kudzudzula
Maliro
Manda
Mdondo
M’meto
Ng’ombe
Ngoni
Njovu
Nsitu
Nyau
Thunga
The village gathering place where nyau village performances take place
A commemorative celebration for the deceased
A large antelope (roan?)—here referring to the nyau mask structure
The largest nyau mask structure (original subject uncertain)
The Cheŵa girl’s initiation ceremony
The place of nyau initiation instruction
Nyau mask representing AIDS
A car—here referring to the nyau car mask
A rabbit—here referring to the nyau rabbit mask structure
A nyau face-mask character with a distinctive high-pitched voice
The primary nyau animal mask structure—literally “that which follows the funeral”
To correct behavior
The funeral
The graveyard
Snake (?)—here referring to the nyau mask structure
A commemorative celebration for the deceased
A cow—here referring to the nyau cow mask
An Ngoni person—here referring to nyau mask called ngoni
An elephant—here referring to the nyau elephant mask
A screened enclosure near bwalo where nyau wait to dance
The men’s closed association of the Cheŵa people
The snake god—here referring to the nyau mask of Thunga
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building materials. Effectively, the initiate is provided with instruction on many of
the processes that will be required later in life, in activities such as house or fence
construction.
Nyau characters dance at three main ceremonies, the funerary ritual, maliro,
the commemorative celebrations for the deceased, m’meto and chikumbutso,4 and
the girls’ initiation ceremony, chinamwali. In recent times they have also performed at public political ceremonies, and now one may even find nyau characters
performing at some of the more luxurious Malaŵian tourist hotels. These new
developments highlight the entertainment value of nyau performances—surely
one of the factors that have ensured the survival of nyau over so many centuries.
They also reveal an important dynamic of the society: a remarkable ability to
react to and exploit changing social circumstances. In its traditional setting (and
even in some of the new settings) nyau performance was and is far more than
entertainment—the masks, dances, and rituals are infused with symbolic, often
instructive, messages—some explicit, others implicit. Nyau characters appear at
all important rites of passage. They oversee the transformation of girls into women
and the dead into ancestral spirits. Their function no doubt goes beyond symbolism:
nyau plays a crucial role in the process of these transformations.
Although entry into the society is largely restricted to men, women play a
pivotal and symbolically important role in nyau activity (Yoshida, 1992). Women
lead performances by singing, clapping, and dancing. Moreover, they function as
the focus—the audience—for the performance. It is women who provide many of
the materials needed for nyau ceremonies: they cook any food that is required, such
as for the initiates during their period of seclusion, they also (often unknowingly)
collect many of the materials used for making nyau masks, such as grasses and
maize husks. Women’s absolute control over the timing and process of beer brewing ensures that major nyau ceremonies cannot occur without prior discussion,
consent, and active participation from women. Peter Probst argues that without
women there is no nyau; that the audience and performance stand in a relationship of mutual dependence and interaction (Probst, personal communication). And
yet, despite this, women are excluded from the privileged information of nyau—
openly kept outside of the publicly paraded wall of nyau secrecy. The power
derived from this secrecy provides men with a counterbalance to the dominating
position held by women in the matrilineal Cheŵa society (Schoffeleers, 1979,
1992).
At the heart of nyau and its secrecy are the masks. Today, there is an enormous variety of mask types. Each is a separate character, with its own song and
meaning. It appears that this multiplicity of masks may be a comparatively recent phenomenon, with a great amount of proliferation having occurred in the last
4 Although these ceremonies occur after burial, and are therefore not a direct part of the funeral (at least
in the European sense), they play an important part in the funereal process—the leaving of the spirit
and its separation from the village.
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Fig. 2. A typical nyau face mask character.
50 years (Schoffeleers, 1976; Van Breugal, 1976). There are, essentially, two types
of masks: face-masks (Fig. 2) and mobile structures (Fig. 3). Face-masks take a
number of forms: most commonly they are made of wood, but a few are made
out of cloth, feathers, or even mud, depending on the character. The rest of the
body is covered with bits of cloth, grass, and leaves. Where skin can be seen, it
is disguised with white ash. The structures are made of a wickerwork of twigs,
covered most commonly in maize husks, but sometimes with grass or pieces of
cloth. They are usually carried by dancers concealed inside them; the number of
dancers is determined by the size of the figure. A few small structures, such as
kalulu (the rabbit), may not be large enough to contain a person. In such cases they
are maneuvered by a network of strings (Boucher, personal communication).
The subjects portrayed by the face-masks and structures are numerous and varied. Perhaps the most common subjects, particularly for the structures, are species
from the animal kingdom. Father Claude Boucher, at Mua Mission, Malaŵi, has
recorded the use of 27 types of mammal figures, 15 birds, 8 reptiles, and 7 insects (Boucher, personal communication). In addition there are figures to represent
other peoples (Europeans, Indians, Ngoni), plants, conditions relating to climate
(hunger, rain, strong wind, the sun has gone down), modern items (car, bicycle,
train, imported cloth, school), individual people (Pope, colonial officer, famous
traditional healers, King George, Dr Banda, Bakili Muluzi), and things relating to
witchcraft. Some masks contain a political element; others a touch of comedy
through parody. It is clear from the subjects portrayed that many of the masks are
modern. People identify the character of a mask by means of its name and the content of the song that is sung when the mask dances. Some have recognizable visual
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Fig. 3. Mobile structures (photographed by Father Claude
Boucher) and a rock painting of the same structure. The relationship between the rock art and nyau is unquestionable, but,
the purpose of the paintings has, until now, eluded us.
characteristics, but many do not. Most masks are instructive and are intended to
correct behavior (kudzudzula).
Both face-masks and structures are shrouded in secrecy and considered to
be dangerous things (Probst, personal communication); they are made and stored
in a place sealed off from noninitiates (now usually the graveyard). Originally,
a figure would have been made for a particular ritual and then burnt afterwards
(Rangeley, 1949). Today, they are sometimes stored and used on a number of
occasions. Noninitiates are meant to believe that the characters are real animals
and spirits; the fact that they are not is the greatest secret of nyau.
NYAU ROCK ART AND ITS DATING
The nyau paintings make up one of two later rock art traditions in this region which, like many parts of eastern, central and southern Africa, has rock art
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traditions of Bantu-speaking peoples equally rich as the better known, older traditions of hunter-gatherer groups (Smith, 1997). The traditions of Bantu-speaking
peoples have become popularly known as “late-whites” (Cooke, 1969; Prins and
Hall, 1994; Smith, 1997; Willcox, 1984) because of their comparatively late date
and their use of white as a principal color (in contrast to the use of red as the common primary color in earlier periods). While the label may be convenient, “late” is
an unfortunate term for traditions which may have a history stretching back some
2,000 years. “Late-white” also has a pejorative ring unfitting for such important
and striking rock art traditions. In this paper, I therefore use the term “nyau art”
for the art under discussion and prefer to use the phrase “the art of Bantu-speaking
peoples” when referring to the broad artistic genre of which “nyau art” is one part.
Nyau art, fitting the pattern of rock art traditions of Bantu-speaking peoples, is
principally executed using white5 clay pigment (Fig. 3). Its manner of application,
typically, is by daubing. Each nyau rock art site contains a collection of paintings6
depicting different masked characters. Rarely are there more than 20 paintings at
a site, and there are only a handful of instances where one painting is placed on
top of another in an overlay sequence. This makes a striking contrast to the other
later rock art tradition of this region, chinamwali art, for which one often finds
hundreds of paintings at a site and in complex overlay sequences. The contrast
seems to imply that nyau art had a comparatively short duration. An examination
of the relative states of preservation between the two later traditions supports this.
The chinamwali art sequences show a full spectrum, from fresh art in surface layers
through to scarcely visible faded remnants in the oldest layers.7 Nyau art does not
show the same variability; except where exposed to a high degree of weathering it
has the appearance of only the most recent layers of the chinamwali art spectrum.
Since both nyau and chinamwali arts are linked to a Bantu-speaking farmer
group, they have a maximum duration of 2,000 years. Their particular link to ancestors of the modern Cheŵa reduces this potential duration by at least another
500 years. The Cheŵa are a Western Bantu-speaking matrilineal group. The arrival of such groups is recognized in the archaeological record by the appearance of
Luangwa pottery (Phillipson, 1993). Using the pottery evidence, the earliest possible date for the arrival of these groups is placed in the fifth or sixth century A.D.
(Huffman, 1989; Katanekwa, 1994). The older of the two arts, chinamwali, with
its long overlay sequences and high degree of fading, may span the bulk of the
1,500-year potential antiquity. By comparison, the shorter nyau art duration can
only span the last few hundred years. Confirmation of this recent date comes from
5 As in most traditions of Bantu-speaking peoples, white is not the sole color used in nyau rock art. Red
and, more rarely, black are also used on occasion.
be correct, the images should be called daubings not paintings. Here I use “painting” because it is
more familiar.
7 Certain chinamwali sites were recorded as early as the 1920s. Examining the deterioration between
the time of early photographs and the present allows us to make approximations of typical rates of
deterioration in certain types of shelter conditions.
6 To
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Fig. 4. Procession of nyau characters at Namzeze including
galimoto—the car (leftmost) and kasiyamaliro (rightmost).
the subject matter of the art—a section of the masks depicted in the art can be
dated. Certain mask forms can only derive from the 20th century; for example,
the nyau automobile mask galimoto (Fig. 4), the Pope, and the colonial officer.
These unambiguously recent designs are no fresher than others whose dates cannot
be known from observation of their subject matter.
The various strands of dating evidence show that nyau art is a comparatively
recent tradition with a history stretching back at least to the start of the last century
and perhaps, but not necessarily, further. The few overlays that exist allow a partial
reconstruction of the development in manners of depiction and the nature of change
in form over time. This provides a history for the art form and a history of nyau
mask types. Extrapolating from these observations of change, one can thus assign
designs an approximate age even at sites where there is no overlay sequence.
Unusually, therefore, this is a rock art tradition where, even in the absence of
absolute dating, uncertainty over age is not a concern. The problem is how to
explain the production of the paintings in the context of our knowledge of nyau.
NYAU CHARCOAL DRAWING—“GRAFFITI”
Ironically, it is this knowledge of age that produces difficulties in the interpretation of nyau art. It is hard to reconcile the practice of painting with the activities
of nyau, especially in the past. The visible and accessible nature of the paintings
defies strictly held taboos—breaking the secrecy towards outsiders that is fundamental to the association. Today one sees these taboos being flouted in the form of
“graffiti” which include nyau designs. Whilst visiting a village in Dedza District,
Malaŵi, in 1994, I observed that someone had scratched some nyau designs into
a hut wall (Fig. 5). In response to my inquiry about the designs, the owner of the
hut, a man in his midseventies, told me that they had been made by his youngest
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Fig. 5. Nyau designs scratched into a hut wall.
grandson and apologized to me for the behavior. He explained that “young people of today no longer know how to behave.” His comment may seem typical
of his generation, but it is of great importance. His shock was not that someone
should place graffiti on his hut, but that a young man should show such obvious
disobedience by drawing a secret nyau mask in a public place. Such behavior was
shocking to him because, during the period of his youth, behavior like this would
have been unthinkable—not least because the punishment would have been too
great. It is commonly stated by nyau informants that, in the past, anyone revealing
the secrets of nyau would have been punished severely—perhaps even by death
(Rangeley, 1949; Rita-Ferreira, 1968). This seems not to be an exaggeration; District Commissioner records from Zambia and Malaŵi in the first half of this century
provide a number of instances of people who were killed for flouting nyau secrecy
laws. Nyau “graffiti,” by its nature, would therefore seem a recent phenomenon,
a product of the modern changes in Cheŵa society whereby values and authority
structures have shifted away from those that were fundamental to society in the
not so distant past.
Nyau “graffiti” are also found in some rock shelters. They consist of charcoal
drawings of nyau masked characters accompanied by name scrawling and other
writings. People working with me in Dedza District recognized many of the names
as teenagers living in nearby villages. A few of the names are accompanied by
dates, which presumably record when the names were written. None of the dates is
earlier than the 1970s, and the early ones have become faint. Schoffeleers (1978,
p. 43) has suggested that some of these designs may be symbols to warn people
away from hiding places of nyau structures. In support of this he cites the fact
that Lindgren discovered a cache of six large nyau structures in the neighborhood
of a series of nyau drawings. My experience contrasts with this. I came across
nyau structures concealed in three separate shelters during my fieldwork (Fig. 6).
In none of these cases were there nyau drawings nearby. Nyau charcoal designs
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Fig. 6. Nyau structure concealed in a rock shelter. Note how
even if nyau designs had been placed on the rock as warning
signs, these could not have been seen before the structure.
are small and, being black, are not particularly visible. They would seem poorly
suited to act as warning signs. Their positioning also points against this function;
most are placed on the back wall of a shelter, where, had a structure been hidden,
they would be noticed long after the structure itself. A good published example
of this is Makwe, in eastern Zambia (Phillipson, 1976); here one has to walk to
the very back of the shelter before the drawings can be seen. In the case of two
caves on Chencherere Hill in Malaŵi, which are full of nyau charcoal drawings,
it is extremely unlikely that they are ever used as hiding places for structures
because both are declared National Monuments and are therefore visited regularly
by tourists.
Without other supporting evidence, the proximity of nyau drawings to certain hidden structures found by Lindgren seems likely to have been coincidental.
Where the drawings are associated with scribbled names of teenage boys from local villages, there is the opportunity to consult the “artists” themselves; however,
when approached about the art, most, understandably, chose to profess a nervous
ignorance of it. These boys are regularly sent into the forest and hill areas, where
the rock shelters are found, to graze cattle and goats belonging to their family.
The young herders use the shaded shelters as resting places. Most of the boys are
(or would have been) at an age at which they have (or had) recently undergone
nyau initiation. Their portrayal of this secret imagery, no doubt partly a result of
teenage prankster behavior, seems to derive principally from a desire to demonstrate access to privileged knowledge; knowledge that for their society signifies the
status of adulthood (Fig. 7). The motivation behind the associated word-scribbling
may be much the same, in this case parading the literacy gained at school. Both
the visual and written symbols mark the young man as someone with privileged
knowledge and therefore serve to establish and cement his growing status within
his peer-group and beyond.
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Fig. 7. Here we see a flaunting of access to privileged knowledge. In the graffiti on the right we see the betrayal of a great
secret—a man is shown inside the nyau structure.
The nyau masks chosen for depiction within the “graffiti” are interesting—
they are highly selective. Despite the hundreds of masks used today, one—
kasiyamaliro—is the subject of over 70% of the drawings. The kasiyamaliro
(see Fig. 3) was the figure that the young grandson had scratched into the old
man’s hut wall. This choice was carefully calculated; no other figure would have
shocked so successfully. The figure of kasiyamaliro lies at the heart of nyau. It is
instrumental in the boys’ initiation into the association. It dances up to and around
the initiates, extremely frightening within the context of the graveyard (Fig. 8). The
initiate is usually then blindfolded. When the blindfold is removed, the greatest
Fig. 8. Kasiyamaliro approaching the initiate. Here we
see a local variant in mask form—a kasiyamaliro with a
flat back. This form is common around Dedza in Malaŵi
and is also depicted in the rock art of that area.
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Fig. 9. Kasiyamaliro lifted up. Shortly after this initiate will learn some of the most important secrets of his
initiation.
secret of nyau is revealed—nyau is not an animal but a man-made structure with
a man (the initiate himself) inside (Fig. 9). The shape of kasiyamaliro, when it is
lifted up for the initiate to enter, is that of the womb (Birch de Aguilar, 1996, p. 202;
Boucher, personal communication). While inside the figure, the initiate learns the
secret names for the parts of the body of kasiyamaliro. The names used are those
for parts of a person’s body, more particularly a woman’s body, thus emphasizing
the symbolic link. When the initiate comes out of the figure, in a sense out of the
womb, he is reborn as an adult. Even more important than its role in initiation is
the role played by kasiyamaliro in the funerary process. In the maliro it transports
or accompanies the body from the village to the graveyard, and later returns at the
m’meto to ensure the departure of the spirit from the village so that it cannot linger
and become troublesome. The process is linked conceptually; the figure oversees
the transformation of the dying man to spirit as it oversees the transformation of
boy to man.
The secrets of kasiyamaliro are those of nyau that are most closely guarded.
The figure will normally appear only during hours of darkness to ensure that no one
can see its construction and the person inside (e.g., see Fig. 3). The secret words
used for parts of its body are those used as a code to test whether a person is a true
member of nyau. The choice of the kasiyamaliro in the graffiti is therefore highly
significant. It confirms that the artist is privy to the very innermost of the society’s
secrets. As an expression of disrespect for traditional values, a Cheŵa teenage
rebellion, little could be more shocking. Drawing an image of kasiyamaliro in a
public place openly betrays secrets and flouts the lessons of good behavior instilled
as the basis of teachings at both girls’ and boys’ initiation schools (and even at
church and government schools).
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THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ROCK DRAWN
“GRAFFITI” AND THE ROCK PAINTINGS
In the paintings, it is again kasiyamaliro that predominates in the imagery
(see Figs. 3 and 4). Should we therefore see the charcoal drawings as the modern expression of an older rock painting tradition? The Malaŵian Department of
Antiquities clearly thinks not because the paintings are protected by law whereas
the charcoal drawings are carefully cleaned from painted walls along with other
“graffiti.” I concur that the distinction between the drawings and paintings is valid,
although I am uncertain of the ethics of “cleaning” the drawings away—regardless
of the fact that this practice pleases both community elders and tourists.
The variation in the choice of material, between the use of pigment and
charcoal, suggests an important difference between the paintings and drawings.
The use of pigment shows that the decision to make paintings was premeditated:
pigment would need to have been collected, processed, and then taken to the shelter
(often some kilometers away). By contrast, the drawings use charcoal, requiring no
preparation and which can be found in abundance in most shelters. Many aspects
of the drawings suggest they are more spontaneous—though no less significant—a
product of an immediate means and opportunity.
In addition to the premeditated nature, the time depth within the painted
tradition firmly separates it from the charcoal “graffiti.” The charcoal drawings are
a modern phenomenon, a symptom of changes in Cheŵa society that we know are
recent. The type of brazen behavior that has led to the charcoal drawings had no
place in the past (at least on any widespread scale). The punishment and shame
of such bad behavior was so severe that it was simply unthinkable. In contrast
to the modern drawings, the nyau paintings, dating from the early part of this
century and before, can only have been made in the context of some officially
sanctioned nyau activity. The paintings are too numerous to be the result of what
would, in those times, have been highly exceptional instances of taboo behavior.
The realization that the paintings must relate to sanctioned nyau activity creates
an intriguing interpretative problem. There is no nyau activity today that involves
the creation of images or models of nyau figures. When asked about images and
models, informants answered by questioning why they should need such things
when they were making and using real masks? They also pointed out that the use
of images fixed on rocks would be problematic as they could not be hidden.
Another aspect to the art makes it curious to modern informants. The painted
shelters occur outside of the part of the landscape in which nyau functions today.
Nyau operates in the graveyard, in the village, and the space in between—this
restricted area is the full realm of nyau (see Fig. 10). There are three main nyau
venues and it is in these, and between these, that nyau activities occur. Initiation takes place in the dambwe, a forest thicket, which today is usually within
the graveyard—manda. Manda is also important as the focus for nyau funerary
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Fig. 10. The Malaŵian countryside that makes up the realm of
nyau today. The patches of woodland are the graveyards, and
the villages can be seen clearly. The hills in the distance lie far
beyond of the modern operations of most nyau activity.
activities. Today the graveyard is usually the only piece of forest remaining near
to the village. In the past, when more forest survived, manda and dambwe may
have been more clearly separated, but, just as today, it would have been impractical
for either to have been too far from the village. Nyau performances take place in
a specially dedicated space within or near to the village called the bwalo. Nyau
masked characters waiting to appear in the bwalo are concealed in a screened
enclosure known as nsitu. For practical reasons nsitu must be directly adjacent to
the bwalo. The painted shelters are clearly impractical as dambwe, manda, bwalo
(or nsitu) because they are too far from the village, and they are thus not used
as these venues today. On occasion larger nyau structures have been discovered
hidden in rock shelters for storage (Lindgren, 1978; Smith, 1995; see Fig. 6), but
this is rare. The usual place for storage is in a purpose built hut constructed either in the village or graveyard. Any relationship to storage seems unlikely. The
paintings would have made as unsuitable warning signs as the charcoal drawings;
in addition, it is clear that storage of masks was less common in the past—rather
masks were used on a single occasion and then burnt (Rangeley, 1949).
The rock paintings do not fit well with nyau activity as we know it today. This
is important to interpretation and no doubt explains why the tradition of painting
ceased. It seems that the tradition formed part of some special nyau activity of
the past. We can see from elements in the subject matter, such as the nyau car
mask, that this tradition continued at least into the early part of last century, and
therefore this special activity was still occurring even quite recently. Here some
observations made by Phillipson in the late 1970s are highly pertinent and, although
it was not realized at the time, they may be of great value to the study of the rock
paintings. In Cheŵa areas of eastern Zambia, Phillipson observed a range of nyau
designs “on house walls in rural areas and . . . bus shelters and bar toilets in the
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towns” (Phillipson, 1976, p. 185). These observations have always stood out as
anomalous. It is very rare either in Zambia or Malaŵi to see nyau designs in such
places today; to display nyau images in public is still shocking, as we saw in the
example of the figures scratched into the hut of the old man in Dedza District. The
nyau charcoal graffiti discussed above are kept secret within rock shelters—they
do not appear in public places—and yet they still offend traditionalists. When,
in the late 1980s, some murals, which included nyau figures, were painted on an
exterior wall at Kungoni Arts Centre, Mua Mission, Malaŵi, there was something
of an uproar (Boucher, personal communication).
The nyau designs seen by Phillipson, just like the rock paintings, seem to
flout the established code of secrecy. A solution to the puzzle as to why people
in eastern Zambia drew nyau designs on hut walls, in bus shelters, and in bar toilets became clear when I had the opportunity to look through David Phillipson’s
and Jim Chaplin’s slides. From the slides, one can see that the designs were of
some age when they were recorded by Phillipson—they were already becoming tattered. Some had been scratched into the paintwork of buildings and were
thus not erasable—they could only be covered over by repainting. Although reported in the late 1970s, the designs had been seen in the late 1960s and had been
made at least by the early 1960s probably even before this time. Chaplin recorded
examples in the mid-1950s. The designs were thus created prior to Zambian independence in 1964 and so need to be seen within the context of colonial occupation.
Up until independence, nyau was banned by the Northern Rhodesian colonial
government, and it therefore became a symbolic focus for nationalist resistance.
The drawing of nyau motifs in public places during the 1950s and early 1960s
can thus be explained. As forbidden images, the designs acted as statements of
resistance, taunting colonial law. What makes these designs important for the
study of the rock paintings is that they are images of nyau, forbidden images, but
ones which were allowed to be made in the most public of places. The historical context meant that the making of the designs did not offend; in fact, judging
by their common use on exterior hut walls, the act seems to have been actively
encouraged.
Phillipson’s observations do not help us directly to understand the rock art;
remote and inaccessible rock shelters would have been amongst the least suitable
places in which to make any public statement of resistance. They do, however,
provide an explanation as to why rock shelters might have been used by nyau.
Shelters secluded in the hills would have made ideal refuge sites and storage
places for the association when it was forced to hide away during the time of
the colonial government ban. A link to the ban may well explain the later use of
shelters by nyau but, from our knowledge of the antiquity of the rock art, we can
see that nyau was using the shelters even before the colonial government came into
being, long before the ban. The explanation for the bulk of the painting tradition
must therefore lie further back in the past.
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THE POLITICS OF THE PAST: READING THE ART IN CONTEXT
Even before being banned by the Northern Rhodesian Government, in what
is now Zambia, nyau had been in open conflict with early missionary groups. The
struggle between nyau and the missions in Malaŵi has been well documented
(Schoffeleers and Linden, 1972). The missions in both countries were amongst
the strongest voices encouraging the colonial government to ban nyau. The missions and nyau openly competed for the hearts and minds of the youth, each trying
to outdo the other by taking boys at an increasingly young age. While missionaries sought to win the hearts of children at mission schools before nyau could
“demonize” them, nyau leaders tried to see that boys became included within
Cheŵa society before they were turned against traditional matters and “polluted”
by Christianity. The missions utterly failed to eradicate nyau, but in some places
they forced it away from their immediate environs.
Prior to the arrival of the missions, another group, the Ngoni, were also in
direct conflict with nyau. The Ngoni, led by Zwangendaba Jere, were a group
who split off from the southern Nguni in the nineteenth century. As with many
groups, the Ngoni fled to escape the violent upheavals associated with the Mfecane
period. Oral traditions state that their crossing of the Zambezi coincided with a
solar eclipse; if correct, this dates the event to 1835 (Langworthy, 1969, p. 295).
They were already divided into groups when they arrived in eastern Zambia and
Malaŵi, and they started to raid and then settle in the 1840s and 1850s (Linden,
1971). In the latter half of the nineteenth century in eastern Zambia, nyau was so
severely suppressed by a particular group known as Mpenzeni’s Ngoni that it was
forced underground (Schoffeleers, 1976, p. 64). Although less well-documented,
nyau also seems to have been forced underground in parts of Malaŵi: we know
that it was banned within all areas under direct Ngoni control (Rau, 1979, p. 140).
In Dedza district, informants tell how the Maseko Ngoni executed anyone found
masquerading in nyau dress.
The Ngoni sought to suppress nyau because it stood for local interests and
local autonomy, and in addition it acted as a guardian of Cheŵa traditions and
identity. It was no doubt these same features of the society which concerned the
colonial government. Nyau stood in direct opposition to the practices by which the
Ngoni sought to dominate the groups amongst which they settled. Although their
raiding practices had a devastating economic impact on the Cheŵa, their attempts
to impose Ngoni society and culture almost entirely failed. Margaret Read has
shown that in fact the reverse occurred; the Cheŵa were able to impose their
cultural traits upon the Ngoni (Read, 1956). The Cheŵa matrilineal principle was
a key factor, but so was nyau. So long as nyau operated, it ensured that all boys
grew up schooled in Cheŵa traditions and values; this is what made it such a threat
to the Ngoni. This is also what annoyed the missions. Attempts to suppress nyau,
although forcing it underground, merely served to enhance its importance. It was
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transformed from an agent of passive opposition into a focus of active resistance.8
The anonymity of members, hidden behind their masks, and their immunity from
the judicial system made nyau ideally suited to play such a role. Its organizational
structure, peaking at village level, with no form of centralized authority,9 made it
impossible to control. A single nyau group could be stamped out, but others would
continue and new groups would be formed to fill any perceived void.
The first president of Malaŵi, Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, manipulated nyau
for his own party political purposes by having masked dancers perform at his public rallies, and it appears that, on a number of occasions, the state used people
wearing nyau masks to punish and eliminate dissenting voices (such as in the notorious elimination of Malaŵi’s Jehovah’s Witnesses shortly after Independence).
Dr Banda succeeded in manipulating nyau, but, in spite of his absolute control
over the media (silencing almost every voice of dissent within Malaŵi and many
outside as well), ultimately he failed to control nyau. In the 1980s and early 1990s,
nyau became one of the only mouthpieces through which public dissatisfaction
with the one-party system was voiced. A large number of nyau political masks
grew up at this time and appeared regularly at dances. Dr Banda, his official
consort Mama Kadzamira, and her uncle, the Minister of Finance, John Tembo,
were especially lampooned. The songs that accompanied these masks were highly
critical, mocking the bad behavior of the leaders, just as older masks mock bad
behavior in other sectors of the community. Figure 11 shows one of the later masks
of Dr Banda. This mask was made during the preparation for the 1993 national
referendum to decide whether Malaŵi should return to multiparty democracy. The
sad look on the face of the mask is explained in the accompanying song wherein
we learn that this is Dr Banda after he has looked in the “no to multiparty” box and
found it empty. Although the prediction of a vote in favour of multiparty politics
may not seem radical today, the act of airing such a thought in Malaŵi at that
time was at the extremes of political dissent—it was an incitement to vote the
unthinkable: yes.
The important political and cultural role of nyau is, then, of considerable
time depth, extending far beyond the period of colonial occupation. Long before the imposition of the colonial government ban or the impact of Dr Banda,
nyau was facing and opposing both political and cultural/religious suppression.
Schoffeleers has provided strong evidence that nyau was upholding proto-Cheŵa
interests as early as the fifteenth century (Schoffeleers, 1973, 1992), at that time
against intruding Maravi groups. In certain areas, we know that nyau took on the
status of an underground movement for a long period—in eastern Zambia from the
8 As
seems typical of Cheŵa resistance at many points in history, the resistance was a war of wills
rather than of violence; a form of resistance almost all outsiders have proven unable to overcome.
even falls outside the jurisdiction of the chiefly system. The top level of nyau authority is at
village level. Nyau in neighboring villages often communicate and cooperate, but individual groups
remain independent (Schoffeleers, 1976, p. 64).
9 Nyau
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Fig. 11. A nyau mask representing the
former Life President of Malaŵi, Dr H.
K. Banda. From the collection of the Kungoni Arts Centre, Mua Mission, Malaŵi.
Reproduced by kind permission of Father
Claude Boucher.
mid-nineteenth century up until Zambian independence in 1964. Importantly, it is
in those areas where nyau was most heavily suppressed (and those areas only), that
the nyau rock paintings are found. The paintings must be a product of the period
and context of suppression.
Associating the art with this period fits easily with, and helps to explain,
the observed time depth for the painting tradition. It also helps to explain certain
elements in the painted content. Ng’ombe (the nyau cow mask) is particularly well
represented in the paintings (see Fig. 12), in contrast to the charcoal designs where
it is all but absent. The Cheŵa neither kept nor placed significant emphasis upon
cattle prior to the coming of the Ngoni. The Ngoni, like other Nguni groups, placed
great cosmological importance on cattle. The cow is thus an obvious choice for a
mask to lampoon the Ngoni. The time of the Ngoni conflict is therefore the likely
time when this mask grew up or at least enjoyed the greatest popularity. Ng’ombe is
thus a mask of some age which reflects elements of historical conflict and contact,
just as has been shown to be the case for a number of other masks (e.g., see Birch
de Aguilar, 1994c). Its prevalence in the art provides strong support for the link
between the paintings and the period of Ngoni suppression. The few examples of
galimoto (the car mask, see Fig. 4) and other later masks confirm our expectation
that the use of shelters and rock paintings continued, at a few sites, through the
period of mission and government suppression.
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Fig. 12. Two examples of ng’ombe, one of the masks most
commonly represented in the paintings. Here we see a painting
in red—one of the very few nyau paintings not executed in
white.
We noted earlier that the paintings must have formed part of some special nyau
activity in the past; we can now be more specific—an activity that was adopted
during the difficult period in which nyau was suppressed and which related to the
need for the association and its activities to be hidden from outsiders.
THE PURPOSE OF THE PAINTINGS
Now that we have examined who made the paintings, what they depict, and
when they were made, we can turn to the difficult question of why the art was
made. We know that the production of the paintings is related to the suppression of
nyau, since it is in this historical context only that nyau images were painted in rock
shelters. As well as this historical context a number of other sources of information
are open to us: surviving local knowledge of the art, relevant ethnographic data,
the choice of site location, and the choice and form of images used.
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There is no direct evidence concerning the motivation for paintings either
in modern knowledge or the older ethnographies. Painted images (other than the
masks themselves) play no part in nyau activity today, and there is no record of
their use in the past. The painting of rock art by nyau is thus unexpected and
strange. Old men from the local villages acknowledge this; I have participated in a
number of long and sometimes heated discussions about the art. Local people are
interested in, but openly puzzled by, the art. This is somewhat surprising given the
comparatively young age of some of the art, but it is my impression that the lack
of knowledge is genuine. With the other later art, that of chinamwali, old women
do not hide the fact that they hold knowledge, they are just unwilling to share it
(Smith, in preparation).
Given the lack of ethnographic data, it is fortunate that there is enough evidence in the choices that were made by the artists during the process of painting,
especially when these choices are connected to our knowledge of the historical
context, to allow us to propose why the art was made. The choice of sites is telling.
Nyau art is found only in remote shelters secluded high up on the larger hills. Such
shelters are rarely, if ever, used by nyau today because they are too far from the
village, unnecessarily far to carry mask construction materials, large completed
mask structures, food, etc. The nearby graveyard is altogether a more suitable
venue. This choice is, however, made in the context of today’s conditions. During
the time of the Ngoni conflicts, the graveyard would have been far less suitable.
The Ngoni undertook repeated surprise raids and were probably on the look out
for nyau and nyau members. Very likely, they would have undertaken searches of
graveyards to seek out nyau, especially at the traditional time for initiation. The
hills and shelters would thus have become very appealing places, as the seclusion
they afforded would have allowed nyau activity to continue unseen. Even if nyau
masks were found concealed in hill shelters, it would have been difficult for the
Ngoni to link these to any particular village. We know that the Cheŵa retreated to
the hill shelters when they saw Ngoni raiders approaching. A number of shelters
are specifically remembered as places where the Cheŵa went to hide (e.g., see
Mgomezulu, 1978). There is some evidence to show that nyau used the shelters as
retreats. In the 1970s, debris recognizable as remnants left over from mask construction was still visible in a few of the larger painted shelters (Franzen, personal
communication).
The manner in which the paintings are executed and the choice of masks for
depiction is equally informative. The paintings are executed by daubing, sometimes
in outline but usually filled. The choice of daubing implies that the overall form
was the key concern, rather than internal and external traits, since daubing does
not allow the depiction of details. The omission of all but the largest external
features means that the art could not have been used for instruction in the methods
of construction. It also means that the art could not have been used in the key
instruction on the symbolic names and meanings of the particular body features:
most of these cannot be seen. The paintings are unlikely therefore to have been
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used for initiation instruction since learning the methods of construction and the
secret names of the internal features are key parts of the instruction. The size and
placement of the designs would have made them impractical as warning signs; in
any case warning signs could not have been used at the time when the art was
made since they would have led the Ngoni and later suppressers directly to nyau
hideouts.
The range of masks chosen for depiction is considerable. Kasiyamaliro predominates, but not to the massive extent seen in the charcoal drawings. We have
mentioned that ng’ombe is reasonably common, and other masks depicted include
chimkoko, chilembwe, galimoto, mdondo, njovu, thunga, kapoli, ngoni, and various other animal and bird masks (not all of which I was able to recognize). Larger
animal structures are the most common subject; face masks are surprisingly rare.
It is the particular focus on, and range of, very large structures that is telling. These
are exactly the structures that could not or would not have been made during the
troubled times. They are time consuming to produce, involve the use of much labor,
agricultural and other refuse materials (all of which would have been scarce during
the Ngoni raids), and they would have been difficult to conceal. It would also have
been dangerous to use these large masks since, unlike face masks, they cannot be
removed quickly and hidden with haste. The large structures are unwieldy, slow
to move, and hard to conceal within the village context. It is thus probable that
during the period of the Ngoni conflict, and later in areas where nyau was actively
suppressed by missions and government, that construction of the larger structures
would have ceased. Some of these structures are of primary symbolic and practical importance to the association and elders would have been all too aware of the
dangers and consequences if memory of them were to be lost.
A didactic role for the art can be seen in a set of paintings at Namzeze in
Malaŵi (Fig. 13). The figures depict one of the large animal mask structures, but
one rather different to any mask found today, and so we are able to see how mask
Fig. 13. Details in the paintings betray a didactic role for the art.
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types have changed over the last century. From the four legs we observe that this
mask was carried by two men. Note how in the figure on the left the feet point in
the correct direction, forwards. However, in the other two, the feet point into the
centre. The man at the front is therefore standing the wrong way around, facing
towards the man at the back. This would be disastrous. It would mean that the
heads of the men would bang together as the figure moved and probably lead
to the figure falling over, especially if rapid movement was attempted. Nothing
could be worse than a figure falling over and the carriers being revealed; it would
betray the greatest secret of nyau. Such a problem would only need to be depicted
at a time when people had not had direct experience of carrying a large mask
structure. Anyone who had carried such a mask would know that there was only
one correct way to stand and the importance of adhering to this. These paintings
thus confirm the link between the art and the cessation of construction of the larger
structures.
It thus seems that the paintings were made to fulfill a particular and key
historical role. They served to record the form of important structures in order
that the young could recognize and learn about them during the period in which
their construction became impossible. In the absence of the real structures it was
necessary to make a painted record to ensure ancient traditions could be continued
at an unknown point in the future. This need was pertinent only to certain areas
and particular times. Hence the art has a limited geographic distribution and a
restricted time framework. Only during the uniquely troubled period of suppression
by outsiders, when normal nyau activity had to be suspended, did the process of
recording and teaching through painting become necessary. At all other times it
was better to teach the youth by letting them see and make the important structures
with their own eyes and their own hands.
CONCLUSION
Tying nyau art to a specific historical context and recognizing its political
dynamic has allowed us to get close both to the artists and their intentions. This
has brought us to a far greater understanding of the art than was possible at the
time of the pioneering work of Phillipson and Schoffeleers. Unusually perhaps,
this rock art is a product of exceptional rather than traditional practices. It is an
art tradition that had value and purpose only within a specific historical context,
despite its obvious relationship to a closed association that has a time depth greater
than a millennium. The art is important as a visible marker of change. Nyau is
remarkable in its ability to adapt to and manipulate changing social and political
circumstances. We can observe this in recent times, but the rock art shows this
is not only a recent phenomenon. Change is not merely a reaction to pressures
from intruding European cultures; it is an ancient and essential dynamic within
Cheŵa culture. For nyau, dangerous and unwanted intruding elements have long
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been counteracted and diffused by subsuming them within traditional structures.
Nyau rock art provides just one example of this. This process has made nyau
the important and rich institution that it is today. While early ethnographers (e.g.,
Rangeley, 1949, 1950) saw many African cultural developments (in this case within
nyau) as degeneration, we are now able to appreciate them as recent manifestations
of a process that has been in progress for millennia. Rock art, in many areas, played
its part in this process and is one of the best records of it.
In a sense, the nyau paintings continue to fulfill the purpose intended by
their makers more than a century ago. The context is different. Thankfully the
suppression of nyau has largely stopped. Many missions, in particular Catholic
missions, have transformed their outlook and now coexist alongside nyau. At
Mua Mission, an extreme example of reconciliation, a new cultural centre has
been constructed in which one building is dedicated to informing people about
and celebrating nyau. Nyau even attend some funerals administered by fathers
from the mission. In most Cheŵa areas, the large mask structures are once again
being made and are dancing in the bwalo. The forms taken by the structures
continue to develop. The animals in particular are becoming increasingly stylized
representations, no doubt partly because few Malaŵians today have the chance to
see the real animal that is portrayed. The number and variety of masks increases
all the time in response to new needs and concerns. A recently devised mask is
edzi (AIDS; Probst, 1997). One of the most obvious instructive messages of this
mask is its warning to people about the dangers that this disease represents to those
who continue to practice bad behavior. As nyau adapts and changes, the paintings
remain a record of the range and form of masks identified as important enough to
require recording during the troubled period in which nyau was suppressed by the
Ngoni, the missions, and the colonial government. This record, as intended, is a
rich source of information for future generations, now an archaeological record,
holding invaluable information on the history of the land, the people, and their
culture.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Rock Art Research Institute is funded by the National Research Foundation and the University of the Witwatersrand. Field research for this project was
funded by the Swan Fund, the Smuts Memorial Fund, the Anthony Wilkin Fund,
and the British Institute in Eastern Africa. The views expressed in this paper are
my own and may not reflect those of the funding institutions. My field work was
undertaken with the support of and in close collaboration with the Department
of Antiquities in Malaŵi and the National Heritage Conservation Commission in
Zambia—I thank all those who assisted me from these institutions, in particular
Jusuf Juwayeyi, Willard Michala, Nicholas Katanekwa, and Donald Chikumbi.
The informants and field assistants who made the work possible are too numerous
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to mention, I thank them all, but must note special gratitude to the people of
Mphandu village. I am grateful to Peter Probst, David Lewis-Williams, and Geoffrey Blundell for their comments on drafts of this paper and to Father Claude
Boucher for our long discussions which shaped my thinking on many of the issues
discussed here. All errors are my own.
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