2  /  /  /  THE UNWAVERING VOICE

Affect, Eloquence, and the Moral Anger of Men

26 December 2005, Madulaneni

“Moliva! [Mooi River!]” calls out captain Mlando Zuma, identifying the river
flowing through the valley as he initiates a new section of singing. No one
sounds quite like Zuma. His pitch is high, his throat tight, and his initial vowel,
stretched out, quivers in a trill. You can hardly hear his fundamental pitch, so
prominent are his harmonics and so distorted his high falsetto growl.
“Yizwa! [Listen!]” the dancers bark, their unison sound deep in pitch,
percussive in effect.
“Shiya! [Leave it!]” he rasps back at them in his head register, overlapping
with their outburst.
“Shiya!” the dancers retort.
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I hear the physiological stress in Zuma’s voice as he declaims a longer

phrase warning potential opponents that his team will be armed with super-
natural powers: “Siyabhula isangoma ushaya uvume [We are consulting the
herbalist, who is throwing the bones].”
The team repeats his phrase, again inverting his high register to the bass,
his head voice to their chest voice, his elastic phrase to a steady motivic
rhythm. They sustain his percussive approach, spitting out the fricatives and
plosives of the phrase.
“Oyithi! [You who are the power!]” Zuma sing-­yells, high-­pitched, as
loud as he can. He draws out the opening oyi with a back-­voweled o, hits the
middle yi with an emphatic accent, then drops in pitch and volume as his

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 breath expires with the aspirated thi. What gives his utterance its persuasive
power in the context of ngoma?
“Yithi! [You are the power!]” the team responds.
“Oyithi!” he sing-­yells again. How does the kind of persuasive power that
is cultivated through artistry articulate with the social authority of men?
With what artistic principles does the ngoma team captain sing his leader-
ship into being, instrumentalizing art in the service of sociality, of ways of
being men, together?
Hear Zuma’s striking vocal stamina as he growls. Growling is itself a
strenuous vocal technique; in the falsetto register the stress on his vocal
organs is intensified.1 He further heightens the drama of the moment by
means of his intensifying vocal quality and musical play as he develops the
form of this standard ngoma utterance that he is using to drive toward a one-­
one dancing set.
“Umapunyampunyane inkunzi engenampondo ekade beyithibela zonke
izibaya yithi [We are the hornless bull that will enter any kraal and still con-
quer its bull],” incants the team rhythmically. “Ji!”
“Wathi ntintintintintinti wathi ntintinti! [You have approached some-
thing very dangerous!]” Zuma rasps, still in his falsetto growl, as he runs
through the clipped reiterations.2 Accumulating emphasis with each reitera-
tion, nti-­nti-­nti-­nti-­nti-­nti, he hits the final beat as if with a vocal axe, nti!
“Wathi ntintinti uthi ntinti wathi ntinti!” the singer-­dancers confirm, ad-
dressing their competitors.
“Wathi ntintintintintinti wathi ntintinti!” he rasps ever more harshly in a
fast dotted rhythm.
“Wathi ntintinti uthi ntinti wathi ntinti!” they repeat down below.
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Next Zuma references the rhythm and timbral effect of his opening excla-
mation while he repeats the command “Awuthi! [Say it!]”
“Yithi! [Say it!]” his dancers demand.
“Awuthi!” he orders twice more, each with a response from the dancers in
rapid rhythmic succession. Is he beginning to repeat the form he has just laid
out, simply varying the text?
But Zuma pauses, a pregnant pause, before identifying their home again,
this time with his timbre so distorted that the declamation is recognizable by
its contour, rhythm, and placement in the flow, but barely by its semantics.
“Moliva!” he calls. He stretches out the initial mo, injects extra kick into li,
spits out the final fricative, va! He holds back on the tempo.

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 “Washiywa! [You are being left in the dust!]” the team retorts gruffly, as if
dismissively, to their imagined opponents.
Again Zuma works at the exerted quality of his voice, while controlling
the unfolding of the utterance as a whole and shaping its form. Sibilance and
percussive presence excites the sound. Rhythmic exchange in overlapping
exclamations builds a thicker texture. Rapid motivic repetition initiates a
groove:
Washiywa! [You are being left in the dust!]
Washiywa!
Washiywa!
Washiywa!
Washiywa!
Washiywa!
Washiywa!
Washiywa!
Shiya!
Shiya!
Shiya!
Shiya!
Zuma pauses a moment extra. Agitation mounts as he interrupts the
groove.
“Shiya!” he shout-­chants.
“Shiya!”
By now Zuma has so distorted his voice that his chanting has almost no
specific pitch. Feel the strain on his vocal cords. Hear his internal body work-
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ing. Hear his throat. Where will he take the form?

Zuma begins singing over the team’s declamation, his voice made audible
by its pitch and timbral contrasts to the collective voice of the dancers. Pitch-
ing the phrases high while singing in his chest register and still placing his
voice far back in his throat, his lyricism is edged with gritty distortion. On
sustained tones toward the ends of his phrases his vibrato is wide and fast.
The sound jitters. Hear his effort. Vibrato that is wide and fast and sung with
tension in the throat, neck, and chest stresses the vocal cords. Pushing the
voice to the top of the chest register adds to the strain.
By cycling through a lyrical phrase with overlapping responses from the
team, Zuma sets up a new groove. Once the singer-­dancers are swaying their

64 / / / CHAPTER 2

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 torsos to the rhythm, and some have added upper voices, enriching the sonic
texture with harmonization, he turns to the drummers. He cues them to ini-
tiate their pattern. Soon the groove is steaming, pulsing, ready for dancers
to compete one-­on-­one in front of the seated team. Young Uwudl’umuthi
breaks out of the tightly packed mass of the seated team to steal a kick before
Zuma can mock-­discipline him.

The Eloquence of Anger

Isigqi is an aesthetic principle that is rendered in ngoma’s finest moments,
produced individually as a sense of power danced, and cultivated collectively
as a form of competitive solidarity or brotherhood. It is best rendered when
ngoma singer-­dancers are in control at the edge. One accumulates toughness
by pushing to find that edge, whether in singing or dancing. In finding that
edge, an unwavering voice bears the signs of exertion, and, in Zuma’s case, of
a history of exertion. Sustaining one’s control at the edge is a marker of stead-
fastness. The resulting performance is a sign of intense feeling that in turn is
a provocation to act. Here, in the will to respond, ulaka resides. It is an affect
critical to ngoma’s competition.
Working to be in control at the edge is a way to register vital components
of Zulu masculinity, including ulaka, which is prized among these valued
qualities. A man who possesses ulaka is respected as formidable. In contrast
to being described as udiniwe or ucasukile—upset or cross or frustrated with-
out any specification of the depth of the feeling—when a man possesses
ulaka his anger registers the potential to be violent. It is a deep emotive state,
and a positive quality in men. In the context of men’s singing and chanting
(understood historically to precede fighting), ulaka is a spirit for the better,
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even in the context of fighting. Envy and jealousy, in contrast, can lead to evil
action.3 Ulaka’s positive valence is also gendered: when women are accorded
ulaka, they are being criticized as belligerent.4
Ulaka, moral or legitimate anger, takes its name from the throat, ilaka
(Berglund [1976] 1989, 255).5 By deep Zulu proposition, the throat is also
the site in which eloquence resides. Ngoma’s lead voice sounds out ulaka. Is
anger moral in Zulu terms when it is also eloquently expressed? To Zanaso,
ulaka is a shaking, a grating of the voice. (Touching his neck, he wiggles the
area of his voice box.) He hears a body state in vocalizing, a voice that is
strained, an emotion on edge.
Ulaka, experiencing a depth of feeling almost to the point of being violent,

THE UNWAVERING VOICE / / / 65

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 can of course turn under some circumstances. This possibility is an aspect of
its potency. In artistic performance, ulaka produces drama by its expressive
intensity, as well as by the ambiguity that emerges from its potential to turn.
How much is performance, how much is feeling? On the one hand, ulaka is
rooted in Zulu cosmology. It is simply part of personhood and of a way of re-
lating in the world. On the other, there might be a range of provocations that
evoke a feeling recognized and named as ulaka, a will to act with justification
in a particular moment or performance. Is a dancer riled by the challenge of
outdoing his own performance, through rivalries (real or playful) internal
to team politics, through feelings of personal wrongdoing external to the
team, or through collective experiences exacerbated by histories of struggle
for recognition and equal rights? Variously identified as aggression, rage, pas-
sion, self-­possession and pride, standing up for oneself, deep indignation at
being one-­upped or passed over or at the presumption of being beatable, the
key to ulaka is that it is propriety. It mobilizes unwavering (ethical or moral)
action in specific circumstances, while it is a socially and historically rooted
practice of expression, recognized and named, assigned positive value, and
offered as justification when it is put to use. Ulaka, residing in the throat, is
worked at through the craft of song.

25 December 2005, esiPongweni

With a piercing whistle blast, Zabiwe surges toward the cluster of seated
dancers.
“Moliva,” he sings out, at the top of his chest register. His voice resonates
in the open arena. What volume, what ring, what clarity on his short lyrical
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phrase! This is not Zuma’s falsetto growl, but it is magnificent.

“Shiya! [Leave it!]” the dancers shoot back in a percussive, deep, collec-
tive bellow.
“Siyabhula isangoma ushaya uvume [We are consulting the herbalist, who
is throwing the bones],” Zabiwe sing-­chants.
“Yizwa! [Listen!]” the team incants.
Zabiwe sustains his high pitch and volume levels through a rapid-­fire ex-
change:
Shiya! [Leave it!]
Shiya!
Suka! [Be off!]
Suka!

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 A woman ululates agreement. With nonchalance Zabiwe walks away
from the team. Silence, for a moment. Suddenly he turns, rushes toward the
dancers, and shifts from sing-­chanting to singing, dropping down a tone.
“Father, you are wooing a girl in the mountains where it is cold,” he sings
loudly, with his vowels open wide, produced toward the back of his mouth.6
His melody undulates within the range of about a tone. The team responds.
He references a second song, still circling around the same pitches near
the top of his chest register, accenting the phrase climax on the penultimate
syllable, belting it out with increased volume and extending its duration.
He switches to a third song, holding the same basic pitch and volume
levels and tempo, while introducing variation within the melodic contour,
rhythm, and lyrics. Briefly he dips a little lower into his chest register before
reiterating his high-­pitched energy:
I’ve heard, I’ve heard there,
I’ve heard
I’ve heard there,
I’ve heard, we are pointing over there. We are asking the way, hey girls.
He sings a fourth song fragment: “Hey, brother-­in-­law, why are you not
intervening on my behalf?” Here, after an initial high-­pitched blast on the
opening syllable, he wends his way down melodically into the middle of his
chest register, where he repeats the lyrics weaving his phrase around a central
pitch. He adds information to the story about his in-­laws: “They want cows
[for bride wealth].”
The team cycles through their lilting response. Once the dancers are mov-
ing their torsos to the rhythm as they sing, Zabiwe whips a few team mem-
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bers on their shoulders with his belt, indicating they are first up to dance.
He blasts his whistle. He turns to the drummers. The drummers hit the first
beat, and the dancers begin clapping the pulses. The drums drive toward the
moment of dancing.
Zabiwe’s voice carries. The resonance and clarity of his singing voice
coupled with the register in which he sings produce a sound with sustained
audibility. In conversation he talks of the importance of having a high voice.
Because his voice is high it has power, he says. To sound powerful as a solo
singer in this acoustic environment is challenging. Outdoors, the sound dissi-
pates quickly. The afternoon wind of high summer exacerbates this. The audi-
ence encircles the dance grounds at some distance to facilitate visibility for
all and to utilize the shade of the few trees on the perimeter of the grounds.

THE UNWAVERING VOICE / / / 67

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 Zabiwe’s singing voice is very high in pitch, which makes it distinct over the
bassy full-­bodied chorus. It is also high in its timbral quality, colored by the
strong presence of higher harmonics or sympathetic frequencies. The result-
ing voice is bright rather than dark, adding further contrast to the chorus and
greater audibility in the performance context. These pitch and timbral quali-
ties result in part from his singing technique, for his voice placement is high
in two ways. First, it is placed forward, utilizing the mixed resonance of the
chest and mouth area. Second, while the chorus sings fully in their chests, he
sings right at the top of his chest register, and mostly in his middle register,
in the zone between the two bridge points in a male voice.7
To be an igoso, Zabiwe says, you need a level voice. In addition to being a
signature voice, a voice with distinct and captivating character, a voice is level
when it is audible above other voices. Its audibility, together with its particu-
lar kind of artfulness, lends it power. I gloss Zabiwe’s anglicized description
addressed to me, “ibe-­level,” as an unwavering voice. I use “unwavering” to
represent the stressed quality of the techniques of the vocal production as
well as the focus and commitment required of the singer to produce a power-
ful sound.
There are different techniques a lead singer might employ and a variety
of sounds that ngoma participants value as unwavering. Whereas Mlando
Zuma contrasts his opening growled and vibrated declamation with the sung
melody that follows it, Zabiwe uses the same voice for both parts. However,
he usually pitches his penetrating declamatory call a tone higher than his
lyrical singing. At this pitch level in a male voice in a pulled-­up chest register
(that is, at the top of his chest register in the zone where it is difficult to con-
trol the sound smoothly), every semitone sung higher makes an enormous
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difference to the level of stress on the vocal cords. Aesthetically, the move
produces drama and intensity in the voice, just as Zuma’s falsetto growl does.
Zabiwe could release into his head register. He doesn’t, even though it
would ease the tension. Instead he pulls his chest register up high, produc-
ing a strident and penetrating sound. From dance event to dance event, and
from song to song, he fairly consistently picks the pitch area around the
upper bridge point for the sustained notes of the tops of his phrases. In other
words, he places his most significant and sustained singing in a pitch area in
which it is physically difficult to produce a resonant and powerful tone. To
maintain a consistent sound here requires refined technical control.
Pulling up the chest register as Zabiwe does broadens a singer’s vowels,
thereby straining the vocal cords. This in turn limits the possibilities of dy-

68 / / / CHAPTER 2

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 Khethukuthula Dladla leading the team, esiPongweni, 25 December 2011.
Photograph by the author.

namic variation: you get a relatively steady, dynamically even voice. It also
utilizes the horizontal resonating space (that is, the upper teeth and mouth
area, more than the head cavity), resulting in a bright timbre and spread
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sound (Boytim 2003, 59).8

Voice pathologists and classical singers claim that this singing technique
can have an adverse effect on a singer’s vocal health. It can damage the vocal
mechanism physically. When a singer shifts registers as he or she ascends in
pitch, the vocal ligaments (inner edges of the vocal folds) stretch, and their
mass diminishes. However, when a singer carries the chest voice into the
upper range as Zabiwe does, he or she holds the vocal folds in a dense con-
figuration while raising the pitch. This inhibits vocal-­fold elongation, thereby
increasing the tension on the vocal ligaments (Miller 2004, 152). This is, in-
deed, a physiologically stressful way to sing.
Zabiwe’s singing style, like that of Mlando, requires vocal stamina. It is an
aesthetic in which one hears (and feels) that the internal body is intensely at

THE UNWAVERING VOICE / / / 69

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 work. Sustained, strident, penetrating, and heard as fully committed to the
moment of the utterance, the unwavering voice is the effort of the body made
audible. It is a voice that is pushed to the edge, yet the singer is in utmost
control of its production. This is a highly developed skill, honed over years
of singing.9

26 December 2005, Madulaneni

Ntibane, Zabiwe’s young iphini (vice captain), surges toward the seated
dancers. He leans right over them, pointing over their heads while he sings
loudly at the top of his chest register, pulled up. His voice cracks at the top of
his first phrase, the highest pitch. It breaks again when he repeats the line. It
breaks again, sounding an involuntary squawk, as he punches an accent onto
the penultimate syllable of the third phrase. As he strings song fragments
together, he keeps up his exciting tempo, register, and overall volume. But
his phrases are littered with vocal cracks, that is, with unintended breaks in
the flow of the sound of his voice.
Ntibane’s voice is pitched high, but it is not yet level. In overexerting, he
keeps dropping notes. Dropping notes like this happens when a singer can’t
sustain his chest register yet doesn’t release from his chest into his head reg-
ister at that bridge point in his vocal range. Such cracking occurs through
insufficient or excessive air support.10 The breath flow and glottal closure are
not successfully coordinated (Miller 2004, 166). The result in Ntibane’s case
is an erratic sound full of cracks over which the singer has no control. Nti-
bane isn’t engaging his whole body to get the power he needs to sustain his
pulled-­up chest register. In addition, he lets out too much air too quickly, so
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he is unable to sustain such a long phrase. He doesn’t have the right balance
of air pressure to vocal fold elasticity to voice placement position to avoid the
cracks. As a result, he doesn’t produce a level voice.

27 December 2007, esiPongweni

Mphiliseni, Zabiwe’s iphini who succeeded Ntibane, towers like a pine in the
midst of acacias.11 His lanky build makes for a striking lead figure.
“Moliva!” he calls.
He sets the team chanting back and forth with him.
While his iphini directs, Zabiwe joins the team in their collective re-
sponses.
Next they shift into lilting cyclical singing.

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 Mphiliseni sings the lead with a voice weak from overuse. He is hoarse
on this third consecutive day of hard singing. He lacks breath support. He
strains to produce volume. His pitch is lower than usual, his projection weak.
Zabiwe takes over the lead in the next cycle. His sung call projects out
over the team, over the arena, over the socializing onlookers. The team an-
swers Zabiwe, seated in their midst, back and forth, overlapping, back and
forth. Mphiliseni paces, surveying the dancers, enacting the gestures of lead-
ing while he shifts to sing with the chorus. At the appropriate moment, he
punctuates the texture with a whistle blast. He crouches. His hand shoots out
like a spear hurled toward the drummers as he calls on them to begin their
groove. The drums blast forth. Mphiliseni selects the next dancers, hitting
them symbolically with a cattle whip.
I had never before heard an igoso assist his iphini in this way. By lending
his unwavering voice, Zabiwe bolsters the power of the performance and
tightens the coherence of the group’s singing. He takes responsibility for his
iphini and reasserts his own authority.
Both Mphiliseni and Ntibane display their striving to realize the idea be-
hind the unwavering voice: they are both pushing their bodies to the limit.
Mphiliseni sings even when he has no voice left with which to captivate his
audience. He has gone too far over the edge. Ntibane overexerts himself, but
only from the neck up. He is not directing his efforts right physiologically to
achieve the desired acoustic effect. His voice cracks. Neither young iphini
enjoys the eloquence of being in full control of his voice.
A leader must sustain his hold over the sound, over the dancers, over the
event. His voice must not break; he must not go over the edge. His voice,
located in the throat, artfully sounded, and representing the body, is a source
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of his authority.
At its best, the unwavering voice expresses the dignity of men’s anger,
present, productive, positive, deeply embodied, able to be provoked, on the
brink of eruption but held just in control.12 The unwavering voice is singular
while it resonates with a history of exertion and with a culturally recognizable
sense of why, being so moved, one might be mobilized into action.
While the body is provoked into unwavering action by the voice, the idea
behind the sound of the unwavering lead voice is also reproduced in ways
of dancing. That is to say, the values that are sounded in the vocal style are
also expressed in aspects of the dancing style. If the internal workings of the
body are heard in the voice, the dancing makes dramatically visible the effort
of the body at large. In such times, the dancing body is the voice in motion.

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 Extensive effort is required to dance in a style built around bursts of highly
concentrated energy. That effort is visible in the immense physicality of the
moves, whether in the kick and stamp, the improvised preparatory moves
that escalate in complexity as dancers compete sequence for sequence, or in
the sequence-­ending move.
For the kick and stamp—the focal point of a sequence—the dancer puts
all his energy into a consolidated moment, kicking as high as he can and
stamping as hard as he can. This cannot be achieved without registering signs
of effort, whether in facial expressions or taut muscles, stretched limbs, or in
the look of complete focus.
The residue from the kick, the mode of completing a sequence, by its
contrast brings attention to the dancer’s experience of having just taken his
body to the edge. Having kicked as high as he can, and stamped as hard as he
can, and repeated this in a poetic series of intensifying drama, the dancer has
spent everything. He falls backward, as if throwing away waste. Having used
everything of value, he throws himself, his body, away. He falls backward like
dirty water cast out of a bucket or like vomit purged from the body.13 The art-
fulness of falling dramatizes the demand made on the body by the kick that
precedes it. In playing up the feeling of release, the dancer flies upward, back-
ward, high, fast, furious. He falls to the ground exactly on the beat, no hands
to soften the impact (until the last moment), no feet, no buffer between his
flying body and the ground. Fans, aficionados, and fellow dancers watch the
move with interest, and evaluate the skill of its expression. How does he pre-
pare the fall? How high can he fly before hitting the ground? What are his
symmetries? How is his balance? What is the angle of his body? How does
he time the speed of his fall in relation to the feeling of his sequence? How
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does he recover his posture? When does he choose not to fall, but rather to
saunter off the stage with a flick of the shoulder, a nonchalant backward nod,
a swagger, a wipe of his face to taunt his opponents with the promise that
they will sweat if they meet him again in dance?14
And when is a dancer just finding ways to avoid taking the fall? Designed
to look like wanton abandon (or like the consequence of an opponent’s final
blow; Clegg 1984), this move makes its own strenuous demands on the body.
Without skill and technique, injury could easily occur (as is the case also with
the pushed-­up voice).15 Furthermore, the surfaces upon which the dancers
perform make for daunting landings. In Johannesburg, dancers perform
recreationally in the street, usually outside the men’s hostels. They dance on
the tar. They fly upward, fall backward, high, fast, furious, downward exactly

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Copyright © 2017. Duke University Press. All rights reserved.

EsiPongweni, 28 December 2000. Photograph by TJ Lemon.

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Copyright © 2017. Duke University Press. All rights reserved.

Bafana Dlamini, esiPongweni, 28 December 2000. Photograph by TJ Lemon.

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 Kulula Zulu, esiPongweni, 27 December 2015. Photograph by TJ Lemon.
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Siqhandolo Mzila, esiPongweni, 27 December 2015. Photograph by TJ Lemon.

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 on the beat (or the offbeat), no protective hands, no feet, landing on their
backsides on the tar with a feeling of limbs flailing in the air. One holds the
pose of the fall, breathing heavily. Another bolts up and freezes his glare, then
snaps out of it, stands and saunters off as the next dancer enters the fray. In
rural dance venues, the teams dance on uncultivated ground. Dancers fall
backward without protection from the sharp stones, spiky grass clumps, scat-
tered pebbles, uneven pockmarked earth. To fall as if with wanton abandon is
a masterful performance of expended energy. For a dancer to announce that
he has just pushed his body to its edge in the kick and stamp, he artfully con-
trols the sign of release, even while pushing himself to other physical limits
in the fall.

Belief in the Throat

The moment of being in the dance takes total concentration, the full commit-
ment of the dancer. Siyazi equates two seconds of dancing with three min-
utes of soccer, so intense is the experience. It is an experience, as he describes
it, during which a dancer is so much in the moment that he cannot fully ar-
ticulate what he is doing. He is “paper in a river,” taken away by the dance,
too small to counter its flow. When he saw a dancer that he suspected was
unprepared and unfit to dance break out into the arena to participate, Siyazi
rushed up to him, clamped the dancer’s body down in a firm embrace to stop
his movement, and led him back to join the singing team. Siyazi could see,
he said, the look in the dancer’s eyes. He could see the dancer was already
“out there” in a zone beyond comprehension, a zone of intense body com-
mitment. As a responsible igoso, he had to bring the dancer back. He could
have dropped down dead in the night after that, for example.
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To gather the resources needed to attain this intensity, a dancer draws on

multiple sources at his disposal to optimize his potency in the execution of
the dance. First, he draws on the sound of the voice and the experience of
singing. The lead voice inspires and instructs the dancers. Collective singing
prepares the dancing by stoking the dancers’ affective engagement, cultivating
the cohesion of the collective, and formally introducing the dance-­focused
sections of a performance event. In the lead-­up to a public performance,
dancers sing together indoors, getting themselves into the spirit of ngoma
before they initiate the dance.
Second, preparatory purging rituals that cleanse the body, and other ritu-
als that strengthen the body by ingestion, also help the dancers to prepare

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 their bodies to cope with the stress of exertion and to get themselves into
the feeling. On big dance days, some dancers begin with the private ritual of
purging their body systems through vomiting early in the day. In the seclu-
sion of the house where they gather and prepare for the dance, most dancers
share a bottle of brandy, beer, or mqombothi (traditional millet beer). They
pass their feet and dancing sandals over the fumes of a burning herb. They
drink a kind of muthi, an herbal concoction, that enhances their strength and
instills fear into their opponents. Through this belief, they exploit an exter-
nal source of power, literally taking it into the body in order to enhance their
personal power.16
“We are consulting the herbalist, who is throwing the bones,” calls out
Zuma in his rasping voice.
When the ngoma singer-­dancer goes out to dance, he is at work on mul-
tiple fronts, from courting to self-­representation to fierce competition to sup-
porting his teammates, all of which concern his manhood, and all of which
muthi has the power to enhance. According to Berglund, the reasons for
taking muthi include “to give a young man courage and handsomeness when
he courts, to give a person in a position of authority the dignity he requires
to execute his duties, to give self-­confidence to those who are to face diffi-
cult situations, to give majesty to those who are to represent the nation/clan,
to give fearfulness to those that are to fight and thus frighten the enemy on
sight, etc.” ([1976] 1989, 297n32). In circumstances such as these, “manipu-
lated correctly and morally, the power embedded in material substances can
be used to encourage and support the powers embodied in men” (Berglund
[1976] 1989, 257).17 Dancers call upon external powers to bolster their own
resources so that they might perform to their edge, where ulaka materializes
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best. In turn, through the experience of sensing anger at that deeply emotive
edge, they enhance their sense of power. They are made more formidable.
To believe in the throat is also to trust that, in part, ulaka makes men. It is
a culturally scripted presumption setting up the condition that those possess-
ing ulaka have the right—and the responsibility—to act, whether to speak
out or to hold one’s silent countenance. The demand and passion of ulaka
calls on men’s judgment to know how and when to push to the edge, when
to ride the edge, when to test their control. This pertains as much in the mo-
ment of dance as it does in responding to breaches in the ordinary sociality
in and around ngoma.

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 To Be Summoned into Competition
To dance, Siyazi says, one must be angry. A father would not dance against
his son, for this requires that each activate anger and direct it to the other.
Johnny Clegg tells Siyazi he’s angry, so he wants to dance. He rises at
dawn in Johannesburg on 26 December 2006. He flies to Durban. He hires
a car, drives three and a half hours to Keates Drift, to dance in the afternoon
and to depart early the following morning. He is angry enough to make great
efforts to participate in a two-­hour dance event, during which he (like most
others) dances one-­one only three times.
When Mbusiseni dances furiously well one afternoon, an onlooker praises
him by telling him that the dancing had provoked his anger. Compelling him
to find a way to act, the onlooker gifts Mbusiseni with a cash token.
Part of the skill of the team captain (and vice captain) lies in how he gen-
erates productive affect within the team, controlling the dancers by means
of his voice while using his authority to shape the large-­scale architecture of
the event. By delineating beginnings, transitions, and endings, he decides the
overall proportioning of the performance. By controlling the timing and by
his technique of flowing between singing and dancing, and among full group,
subgroup, and individual action, he plays a key role in stoking the feeling and
shaping the dramatic contours of the event. Essentially, the captain needs
to produce the camaraderie necessary to support individual dancers and to
give coherence to the form of the event. At the same time, he needs to bait
dancers, to roil their competitive spirit, to mobilize their anger. He plays with
the tension between the power of group solidarity and of inspired individual
expression. He pushes the group solidarity to its limits by exciting individual
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dancers, prompting them to break out of the group to express their height-
ened feeling. Both order and outburst are dramatic: the power of ordered
collective action, strained by its containment, is impressive. The outbursts
of individuals challenging that order are exciting and precarious, for their ac-
tions threaten the integrity of the social body.
With the inspiration and aid of his unwavering voice, the igoso works at
building the collective intensity in multiple ways in order to enact a flow
from group singing to competitive dancing.18 Incrementally intensifying the
timbral quality of his voice, the feel of the groove, and the density of the tex-
ture together affect the kinetics of the team. By holding the cohesiveness of
the group very close to the breaking point, the igoso provokes the dancers

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 to challenge his authority. He frustrates them, for example, with a fake be-
ginning to the dancing; they respond with interjections. As he gets ready to
move to individual dancing, dancers burst out of the seated cluster and run
into the arena, and he herds them back with his whip. In effect, the igoso
works at the organizational tension between consolidated energy of team-
work and individual personality penetrating vocally and kinetically through
that collective. A dancer breaking free from the tightly packed group to strut
his stuff bursts the seams of the group; being forcibly recontained by get-
ting disciplined with a whip and herded back into the group formation re-
assembles the group solidarity. In the constant playing at that edge, the cap-
tain reproduces the idea of the unwavering voice in the performance of the
team.
The idea behind the unwavering voice is also stylized in the competitive
practice of trying to outdo your dance opponent in alternating rounds of
dance sequences. A dancer pushes his opponent progressively to his edge
as he raises the stakes in his own dancing, building on the sequences he
has introduced and challenging his opponent to beat him at it. This series
of provocations enhances the dancers’ productive anger. In this way, they
are pushed to do their best, thereby presenting a fine spectacle. At the same
time, other gains can be made: an igoso can make a point by how he directs
a competition; the overall form of a performance event can be redirected;
and the competing dancers can be held to being responsible men, accumu-
lating stature, learning a way of being in the world, and building their mas-
culine personhood.
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15 November 2006, Johannesburg

During a Sunday afternoon dance outside Jeppe hostel in Johannesburg,
Mbusiseni and Khethukuthula are sloppy in their moves. (“We were only
rehearsing,” Mbusiseni said to me later.) Siyazi stops them. He disapproves.
Where’s their commitment? What kind of a show is this for the people who
have gathered to watch? Where is the discipline of these young men, one
of them his son? Neither is Siyazi pleased to see the team as a whole being
lackadaisical. Their leader is even somewhat inebriated. Siyazi, a teetotaler
with little tolerance for the effects of alcohol, says nothing. (Angered, he
holds his silent countenance.) He simply takes over the helm and demands
better attention by introducing a high-­stakes formal procedure. He calls for
two judges from the gathered crowd. He instructs Mbusiseni and Khethu-

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 kuthula to move out to the front of the team. “Ukuzwa, yini?! [Ukuzwa,
why?!]” exclaims a dancer, egging Mbusiseni on in anticipation, calling him
by his dance nickname.
“Moliva!” calls Siyazi, marking a new section in the event.
“Shiya! [Leave it!]”
“Kuyinja, kuyini? [It’s a dog, or what is it?]” bellows Siyazi.
The team repeats this insult. “You’re a nothing,” they taunt their com-
petitors.
The team sings a few lyrical lines. “My brother-­in-­law, why do you not
intervene for me?”
As soon as the drum begins, Mbusiseni and Khethukuthula’s age-­mates
leap out, kick, fall. They posture. While expressing their engagement in the
pending spectacle, they are following the conventions of the form that allows
openings for unsolicited individual expression that in turn serves to build the
dramatic tension of the event.
Siyazi has redirected the event by inserting a judged competition, an un-
usual decision for an ordinary Sunday afternoon practice/performance. In
doing so, he is making a point. First, he picks Mzwenkosi and Mbongiseni
to dance the usual choreographed sequence as a curtain raiser for the staged
competition that is to come. Mbusiseni and Khethukuthula watch, waiting,
from the side. After the curtain raiser, they mark the start of their competi-
tion with a choreographed kick, together, before swaggering off to the sides.
“Wo ye wo ye,” sings the lilting team, clapping along with the drumbeat as
they cycle through the sung vocables.
Mzwenkosi shoots out to kick.
Mbongiseni follows his solo. The drums are pulsing. Siyazi whistles. He
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whistles again, directing the dancers and adding a sonic effect to the texture.
“Mad bull!” exclaims an excited dancer.
“Ye bi ye hhe!” calls another, using vocables that express “Hey, you’re in
trouble!” to the competitors.
“The sun is setting!” interjects another, urging them to pick up their pace.
Siyazi gestures to the team to tighten up their clapping.
With the team engaged and attentive, the form prepared, and the excite-
ment heightened, the competition begins.
Mbusiseni opens with a posturing move to show his style. He knows Khe-
thukuthula’s style and he knows Khethukuthula has some moves that require
a body flexibility he doesn’t have himself. So he jumps in to set the stage so
that his opponent will be the one put in a position of having to react. First he

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 kicks. Then, holding his dancing stick vertically, he pulls it toward his chest,
shifting it from the left to the right rhythmically. This combined with quick
alternating footwork and a back-­and-­forth body motion is signature Mbu-
siseni.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” shouts an onlooker as Mbusiseni hurls his dancing stick
like a spear to the side where Khethukuthula waits and watches. Mbusiseni
kicks and falls.
Khethukuthula moves stealthily into the dancing space in front of the
team to respond with his brief opener that will mark his identity. Swiftly, he
kicks. Then, as if flying, he dives forward, landing on his hands, feet in the air,
torso C-­curved backward. Like a feather, his body floats down to the ground.
The second his feet land, he hurls his stick from his horizontal position on
the ground to the side where Mbusiseni waits and watches. He’s provoking
Mbusiseni, upping the ante on his moves, challenging him to return with a
comeback, thereby forcing his opponent to push himself further to his edge:
can he be more imaginative, more artful, more virtuosic, more strenuous?
Khethukuthula bolts upright, kicks furiously, and slips away from the cen-
ter stage.
“Young boy!” exclaims an onlooker, approving of Khethukuthula’s intro-
duction.
That’s not so dangerous. That’s not the strongest action I know from him, as-
sesses Mbusiseni. So he introduces a more dangerous move from his own
repertoire—more difficult to execute, more elaborate, and more unique—
to see what Khethukuthula will do.19 He edges into the center, as if on the
prowl. He kicks with power and dignity. Then he lifts his knees like a runner
running in place. He steps backward. He skip-­hops a step forward. Standing
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upright, he C-­curves his torso backward, arms outstretched sideways while

crossing his right leg over his left. Then, as if by counteraction, he rolls down
into a forward somersault and suddenly he’s standing again, ready to kick in
the center of the arena. “Gqi!” He falls back, takes the impact, and quickly
gets up to move out of the way.
Khethukuthula doesn’t miss a beat. He’s kicking. He falls with his legs
shooting high into the sky. He flips onto his hands, low to the ground, like a
push-­up in motion, using the flip to get himself into a half-­horizontal back-
ward C-­curve in the air with his feet flying toward the curve of his lower
back. He counters Mbusiseni’s signature standing backbend, not by provoca-
tive imitation but by introducing variation that takes agility and artistry to
execute. Additionally, he plays with direction to introduce another form of

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 variation. For his kick he was facing Mbusiseni. Now, having turned his chest
to the ground, he is facing away from his opponent. Once his feet flip back
around to the ground, he somersaults. The roll takes him away from the cen-
ter, whereas Mbusiseni’s had rolled toward the center. He is in conversation
with Mbusiseni’s performance, making something different of it. Khethuku-
thula shoots up, kicks, still facing away. A flying body, he falls to the ground
at the edge of the arena.
Three styles in one move: a flip, a backward stretch, a somersault! Danger
met with more danger! Ha! You think I’m scared? taunts Mbusiseni with his
body stance. My mind is quick. You’ve thrown this dangerous bomb at me—do
you really think I would have to stop and think what to do? Mbusiseni is ready
with his own bomb, his own heavier, fancier move. He takes to the floor with-
out hesitation, for a delay would be a sign of fear. Besides, he wants to get
Khethukuthula into trouble by leaving him no time to think.
Mbusiseni edges forward. He kicks. He asserts himself by dancing a ver-
sion of his signature action, this time without his stick. He stretches his arms
out forward, bends them to place his hands behind his ears, turning his head
as if nonchalant. Following the beat, he again stretches his arms forward,
then bends them to place his hands behind his ears, all the while keeping the
running-­on-­the-­spot action of his legs and torso in motion to the drumbeat.
He is warning Khethukuthula with his hands-­behind-­his-­ears gesture: You’re
making me crazy [angry]—I’ll need to come with another bomb. Beware, I’m
going to finish off this competition now. Then he pretends to throw something at
his opponent with his right hand, before kicking with a power so intense it is
almost out of balance. Mbusiseni has pushed himself to the edge of balance.
Khethukuthula reacts to the quick warning with an equally brief display.
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He kicks clean and fast, like spitting oil in a pan. Stealing a move Mbusiseni
created, he somersaults while kicking his bent legs in the air like a baby does
when lying on its back. He stands up, kicks high again, falls, springs up, and
leaves the ring with a cheeky bounce in his gait.
Too short a sequence to be dangerous, thinks Mbusiseni, but he’s wasting my
weapons. He calculates that Khethukuthula is aiming to reduce the effect of
his opponent’s moves by introducing them himself while he knows that he
is safe from like retaliation: Mbusiseni can’t do splits, Khethukuthula’s ulti-
mate bomb. Mbusiseni decides to ignore the taunt. He surmises that if he
were to do the baby kick roll, it wouldn’t attack onlookers—have an impact
on them—unless he performed it superbly. Besides, these onlookers from
the hostel would think he was dancing in his opponent’s style, since most

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 are unaware of who owns the move. So Mbusiseni takes another tack: he
presents a bomb made dangerous by its length and complexity. Whereas near
the start of the competition Khethukuthula had raised the stakes by respond-
ing to a one-­style move with a sequence that blended three, now Mbusiseni
challenges him back with a three-­style sequence after Khethukuthula’s most
recent short one.
First, after an opening kick, he dance-­walks, crossing legs over each other
as he steps as though he’s drunk. Then he jumps lightly and flies down onto
his hands, where he balances momentarily with his chest close to the ground,
his bent legs flying up over his back as he curves his torso, floating back down
to the ground as he straightens his torso out again. Then he somersaults in
a flurry of movement. He stands up tall, kicks with power and focus, falls.
“Ukuz’ukuzwa!” yells an impressed dancer, using Mbusiseni’s dance
praise name.
Khethukuthula edges forward, fully focused. He raises his leg to kick.
But instead of stamping down, he introduces his ultimate bomb. From a leg
raised fully vertical he descends into a split. Stretching his balancing leg out
backward, he lowers his body close to the ground and balances on his hands.
“Uyizwile induku! Uyizwile induku! Uyizwile induku!” chants the team,
supporting him with the sound of his praise name. Next he lowers his torso
almost onto his front leg, moving in time to the beat. A formidable move,
he does it again. Then, as if this wasn’t enough, he raises himself to twist his
body around to face the opposite way and to flip the direction of his hands
and feet. He lowers himself into a full split again. Quickly he stands, runs a
few paces, kicks, falls.
Siyazi whistles. He brings the drums to a halt, for the competition is com-
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plete. Ndedezi steps forward to offer a banknote to Siyazi, a token that nulli-
fies the competition before the judges can pronounce publicly on the winner,
thereby identifying a loser and cultivating bad feeling in the team. This leaves
an opportunity for the two competitors to conclude with displays of their
signature virtuosities, each thereafter slipping back into his place among his
teammates. Nkululeko takes the floor to dance.
No one in the team designates a winner. “Hhayi, niyagida! [Hey, you two
can dance!]” they praise. Khethukuthula “is the most dangerous one,” Mbu-
siseni confesses to me. “I’m afraid of him.” Yet he and his friend Khethu-
kuthula would never concede defeat to each other in talking together, even
though each knows that the other is the one that “disturbs” him in dancing.
Matched well in style, age, and ability, each can push the other to his limit,

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Copyright © 2017. Duke University Press. All rights reserved.

Mthobeni Dladla and Baya Dladla trade sequences, Madulaneni, 26 December 2014.
The overlapping entries and exits of their sequences are shown. From video taken
by the author.

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 artistically and physically. The knowledge of the challenge each presents to
the other—a challenge that is never publicly resolved—keeps each on his
edge, at his edge.
Mbusiseni was proud of his performance. The affirmation of being called
out to dance and of living up to the challenge is part of a process of learning
to generate anger that can be used as an expressive resource. It is a compo-
nent of advancing one’s manhood, of accumulating toughness and being in
control of its expression (for there should also be sweetness just as there is
hitting). In staging a challenge, Siyazi obliquely criticized the state of the
team’s performance and improved it. He gained the dancers’ attention and
indicated the degree of his disapproval by raising the stakes unusually for
a Sunday afternoon. He cultivated an opportunity for young men who had
shown laziness, an antithesis of ulaka (Berglund [1976] 1989), to better rep-
resent themselves.
Ngoma’s lead voice sounds out ulaka in stylized singular form. This is a
voice that commands attention. It is appreciated aesthetically; it demands
response, and it calls forth action. Crucial to the politics of the voice, ulaka is
developed further in the kinetics of the dance and mobilized in competition.
Sounded in the voice and experienced in the body, it is made public in per-
formance while it is cultivated as a feeling that is cosmologically coherent—
a recognizable feature of Zulu personhood—but pertaining to the moment.
It is put to work not so much as an “‘inner’ phenomenon,” but as “a way
of being-­in-­the-­world, a relationship between oneself and one’s situation”
(Solomon 1984). It is put to work as a politics in the collective practice of the
dance team, rendering captivating performance, meaningful relationships,
and intense feelings of social well-­being.20
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To Be Angry While Smiling

Dancing as an enterprise provides an arena, a site of play and experimen-
tation, in which a masculine quality locally considered to be innate can be
brought to the surface of the body, developed, and given expressive shape.
It is made public while it is given singular character in the style of a singer-­
dancer. The voice in motion, skilled dancing produces a positive feeling of
being in control at the edge.
“To be angry and smiling,” like Mboneni when he dances, is ideal, Siyazi
says. When a dancer artfully commands this stance, he is respected for man-
aging the vulnerability of his position and revered for his fearlessness. He is
praised as “dangerous” and he is entertaining. His eloquence, or grace, lies in

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 the ambiguity between the simulation of deep affect in performance and the
achievement of that affect itself.
Similar interplay between representation and presentation are evident in
other aspects of ngoma that likewise tie the ngoma body-­voice to the social
world of men. When Zabiwe’s team introduced new uniforms in Decem-
ber 2007, they commissioned isiketi (dance skirts) in new colors. They re-
placed their orange dusters used as headbands with sweatbands striped in
red, yellow, and green. And they bought spanking white amanikhephu (knee
caps or guards), wrist guards, and gauze bandages. Most of the thigh, knee,
calf, ankle, wrist, and foot bandages, and muscle guards and knee guards
that dancers wear are just “styling” (Mbusiseni’s word). They protect fake
injuries. They are signs of bodies pushed to their limit and of commitment
and ability to still dance some more.
At the same time, real physical injury does occur, and dancers can exploit
the effect. See the dancer who kicks, “Gqi!,” and limps back to join the seated
singing team; the dancer who hobbles home with his stylish bandages unfurl-
ing down his calf, the dancer who shuffles on his right foot the day after a big
dance, who sits in the back row of the team at the ipasi (men’s engagement
party) of his friend two days later, who hopes the igoso won’t call upon him
with his whip, who slips out to dance only once, or who participates in the
team choreography while avoiding one-­one competition. There are Mbongi-
seni, Fano, and Philani walking asymmetrically, standing up carefully, at the
ipasi. “No, no,” gestures Mbongiseni to iphini Mpiliseni when he tries to call
him out to dance one-­one. Mbongiseni points to his shin and calf muscle,
wrapped in a bandage. “No, no!” There are Bheki and Mbusiseni, who come
in plain clothes to sing while their injuries heal. There is Mphiliseni, sprawled
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out on the dance ground at the close of an ipasi, turning his head and winc-
ing while three dancer-­friends pull on his injured leg “to correct it.” Young
boys watch.
Displays of injury, when appropriately timed, bring attention to the stress
dancers’ bodies endure and can provide the dancers an opportunity for bra-
vado.21 So too can evidence of fatigue. Shaluza Max, a pop musician, is visit-
ing esiPongweni from Johannesburg. We have all returned from the dance
arena at Madulaneni, the ward across the river on the other side of the val-
ley. Darkness has fallen. A candle lights the house. We are satiated with good
food. Eventually Mbusiseni returns home, having walked the footpaths. He
steps inside to greet Shaluza Max.

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 “Ah!” smiles Shaluza Max. “How are you feeling?” he jokes with the
dancer.
“Eyi, just like a tomato!” Mbusiseni exclaims with belabored exhalations,
while leaning on his dancing/fighting/walking stick. He is proud to have
danced so hard. His exertion has left him as soft as a ripe tomato. He chats
briefly. He washes, eats, sleeps. In the morning, he confesses to me that his
feet are sore, his toes raw. He asks to see my video of yesterday’s dancing.
Mbusiseni’s toes are raw from scraping the stony ground as he kicks up
the dust, but he scoffs at the proposal to take a break by refraining from
dancing at the next day’s event. Limping Fano will be kicking tomorrow at
the ipasi, for sure. Mphiliseni’s leg will be corrected by his teammates, and
he’ll be at the next event. The hoarse lead singer keeps singing. Mbongiseni
comes out to dance anyway, after his emphatic “No, no!” He hobbles into
position, hop-­walking, barely putting weight on his left leg. Then he hits the
dance full on to compete against his brother. He puts all his weight on his
injured left leg to raise the right high. He kicks, stumbles. Khethukuthula
responds with a daunting kick. Mbongiseni, Khethukuthula, Mbongiseni,
Khethukuthula, Mbongiseni, Khethukuthula. They alternate kicks drumbeat
for drumbeat, hard, high, furious. Then Mbongiseni blasts forward further
into the arena, arches his back, balancing on his right leg, full focus in his
face, arms stretched up in preparation. His injured left leg flies upward for a
mighty stamp. The drummer accents the dancer’s hit. Mbongiseni falls back-
ward with all the drama and control he owns. Khethukuthula follows suit. He
lands, wincing. The bravado of going back into the dance is a commitment to
pushing the body to its limit and of demonstrating that you can retain your
artistic form while you ride the pain.22
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Bandages as styling coupled with the public signs of stressed tendons,

torn muscles, and fatigue relay a sense of the accumulation of work a body
has accomplished. A subject of attentive interest, they make visible an in-
visible scar, summarizing a history of body work. As images of exertion, ban-
dages index work that in turn stands in for the manly experience of being a
migrant laborer. At the same time, they raise the stakes on aesthetic ambi-
guity by blurring the lines between pain and styling, and between care for the
body and bravado about its limits.

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 Fanile Zulu, esiPongweni, 25 December 2003. Photograph by TJ Lemon.

Ulaka in Struggle
The unwavering voice sets the dancing body in motion that then reproduces
unwavering principles. It also commands the collective body into unwaver-
ing action. Ngoma performance animates both a metonymic and metaphoric
relationship between voice and body, and between the individual body that
senses ulaka and the collective body that transforms ulaka into action. These
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multiple and various relationships tie the politics of the voice fundamentally
to its aesthetics.

28 December 2000, esiPongweni

At a big interdistrict dance—so big that youths perched in rows on the school
building roofs to get a glimpse of the dancing—the most senior dancers were
captivating the crowds. One by one each danced his best in his most strik-
ing finery. One by one each took his turn for a second round of sequences.
Siyazi crouches, flutters his hands stretched out front, begins to move his
torso and to step. From nowhere, Zabiwe appears, racing. He kicks right in
Siyazi’s path, cutting off his senior’s sequence. In a blink Zabiwe has blended
into his place among the seated dancers. Surprised by this and publicly in-

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 sulted, Siyazi shakes his head and walks off. Zabiwe was struggling for au-
tonomy in a generational handover of the team. By trouncing his senior in
public, he made explicit his struggle, his ambition, and his anger. While he
met with some disapproval from the elders for his action, he also gained po-
litical ground in the process. His action opened up the matter for subsequent
discussion. Veritably insulted, Siyazi retreated holding his countenance, as
was appropriate to the situation. (This was not simply a performance of an
insult, like Mbusiseni hurling his stick in Khethukuthula’s direction to rile his
opponent in the context of their judged competition.) Thereafter he tempo-
rarily limited his investment in the excellence of the community team. By the
time relations were mended, Zabiwe was better established as the new igoso.
To live at the edge is not to live on the surface, but to push to the edge of
awareness through deep and skilled performance. At this edge, where stra-
tegic performance, sensuous experience, and value are momentarily fused,
belief in the throat is realized. The eloquent expression of anger renders that
anger accurate and appropriate. Ulaka maintains its positive valence because
it is kept in control by the requirement that it also be eloquent. By submit-
ting its deeply emotive force to the order of an art form, that force is kept as
potential. As understood in local terms, it is held in check against the trajec-
tory of erupting into violence. At the same time, by having to work at the skill
of expressing ulaka, by having to mold ulaka into a new form each perfor-
mance, ngoma counters laziness. Ulaka is a temporary and contingent source
of power gathered in artistry.
The valorization of the voice in motion, of the authorial body sculpted out
of an idea of anger, of good sociality vitalized by competition, is crucial to
the contemporary formation of Zulu masculinity. The unwavering voice is a
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form of authority that must be worked at in order to be maintained. It is put

to the test in the presence of bodies injured or weakening, in the presence of
the silenced voice. It can dissipate in the high summer afternoon wind, or it
can be compromised through failure in the throat.

25 December 2005
At the celebratory ngoma on Christmas Day, the team is seated in two long
rows facing the dance arena and the gathered crowd. The opening collective
dance has been completed, and the team has just ended a song. An elder
motions to the igoso and to the older dancers that something is to happen.
They wait. The crowd chitchats.

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 Soon the white-­bearded Loli, an austere former igoso who is now a re-
spected community elder, walks up to the front of the team. Mboneni fol-
lows, slowly, falteringly. They kneel, both leaning on their walking sticks. Loli
prays.23 You have to strain to hear his words. Mboneni rests his head on his
hands on his stick. I hear a dancer breathe heavily, sniff. Loli ends his prayer,
lifts his head, explains what they are here to say. He doesn’t mention tu-
berculosis or hiv/aids, though he references “sickness.” He reports to the
dancers that Mboneni is here to retire officially from ngoma dancing. He an-
nounces that Mboneni will speak.
Pause. Silent pause.
Mboneni does not speak.
Instead, his shoulders begin to shake. He doesn’t lift his head from his
hands, from his stick. He wails. In front of his teammates and the gathered
crowd, Mboneni, Sadl’isiwula, so strong he breaks everything in his path, he
who dances angrily while smiling, wails. I had never witnessed a Zulu man
weep in public. Loli helps him up from his kneeling. Each with their walk-
ing sticks, Loli accompanies Mboneni out of the arena, guiding him gently
by the arm.
In the back row, Mboneni’s age-­mates cry quietly, bending their heads
into their hands.
Silence is suspended over the team, except for involuntary voiced inhala-
tions now and then. Wind blows.
The young dancers in the front row sit, wondering, waiting. The crowd
chitchats in the distance.
Zabiwe and his iphini Ntibane confer on how to proceed. They mumble,
then Ntibane walks over to his friend and age-­mate in the front row, Mbusi-
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seni, and taps him on the shoulder.

In a moment of artful sweetness and brotherly care, Mbusiseni initiates
a song. “Kukhona okusidubul’ emaweni [They shoot at us from the cave],”
he sings softly in his upper register. “Maweni,” answer his teammates in the
front row, softly, with vocal ease, in their chest registers.
“Oh you, mother Shabalala.”
“You, mother Shabalala, we received the message you sent yesterday [with
the girls].”
Mboneni’s age-­mates are still. Ntibane hunkers on his haunches, cupping
his face in his hands a while longer.
Soon Zabiwe, igoso, stands and moves to face the team. His voice rings
out over the team as he resumes the lead in song. In making an effort, he

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 pushes his volume. What of his pitch? Zabiwe wavers in the fraught action of
his friend. He can’t reach his usual pitch. He sings about a major third lower
than usual. It is a sign that bears witness: things are not all right.
He leads the dancers through repeated song cycles until the men in the
back row have gained their composure and joined the singing. He signals to
the drummers. Young dancers break out to kick.
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Copyright © 2017. Duke University Press. All rights reserved.

Siyazi Zulu as igoso, esiPongweni, 25 December 2003. Photograph by TJ Lemon.

Meintjes, Louise. Dust of the Zulu : Ngoma Aesthetics after Apartheid, Duke University Press, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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Copyright © 2017. Duke University Press. All rights reserved.

Ma Soshangani Zulu dancing around the team, esiPongweni, 25 December 1997.

Photograph by TJ Lemon.

Meintjes, Louise. Dust of the Zulu : Ngoma Aesthetics after Apartheid, Duke University Press, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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