The Lemba of Southern Africa

Religious Life

The Lemba do not view themselves as a religious group. To them, “Lemba” is a cultural distinction, a group that follows traditional cultural practices and mores. Lemba live culturally as Lemba, but despite their belief that Lemba culture has ancient Hebrew origin, some live religiously as Christians and Muslims. The Lemba do not practice what Western Jews would identify as “Judaism,” other than those who have come to the religion in recent years, but they do have a large number of cultural practices that they attribute to the ancient Jews.

The Lemba’s unique ritual practices still serve to separate them as a “chosen” group. African tradition has shaded some of their Judaic practices. As Dr. Tudor Parfitt detailed in his book about the Lemba, Journey to the Vanished City, Lemba observances are diverse and intriguing, and differ from urban to rural followers of the religion. Some Lemba claim that while they used to circumcise their males on the eighth day, they now wait until the eighth year or later as other African tribes do. Lemba funeral rituals, while following ancient Jewish customs, are also distinctly African. When a Lemba man dies the other Lemba wrap him in an ox skin and lay him on his side or back in the ground, placing his tools and farming implements beside him. The relatives of the deceased shave their heads and mourn for seven days during which time they do not work. On the seventh day there is a feast at which the community’s spiritual leader sacrifices an ox, a sheep or a spotless goat and sprinkles the blood of the animal over the heads of the assembled or passes it around for them to drink. The priest then calls the Lemba ancestors by name as the men kneel and call out the word “Hundji” which is supposed to be one of the Lemba places of origin. The Lemba rituals for female conversion into the tribe are also a jumble of Jewish purification ritual and African custom. To join the Lemba through marriage, women endure exhaustive purification ceremonies during which they crawl on ant-hills to have the ants bite off their “pig skin,” have fire set upon them to burn off their gentile impurities and eating raw ox so that they vomit out their previous soul, after which they stick their head through the hole in the wall of a hut, have their head shaved, crawl through the hole and become Lemba. When a Lemba girl reaches puberty, in order to become pure the Lemba require her to sit up to her neck in river water for two weeks with a gourd on her head to teach her humility. They also give her a sharp, conical wooden object decorated with a red tassel upon which they expect her to impale herself in the river for three more days. In another Lemba ceremony that appears to weave Jewish tradition with African, the Lemba conclude Utungara, a harvest festival in part reminiscent of Biblical harvest festivals like Succot, by reciting the names of their ancestors then drinking beer and drumming as some members of the tribe become “possessed” with the ancestral spirits, dancing nude until the sun rises.

The Setting

There are about 80,000 Lemba today, most of whom live around the city of Louis Trichardt in the Northern Province (formerly Transvaal) of South Africa, and in villages in the southwestern region of Zimbabwe. Some Lemba live in the densely packed black township of Soweto, in the shadow of the South African capital of Johannesburg.

Soweto teems with more than two million black workers, many of whom are poor by South African standards. Most houses in Soweto are squat, square and hidden behind barb wire security fences that are ubiquitous in contemporary South Africa.

The land of Northern South Africa and southwestern Zimbabwe rolls with green, rocky hills. There is a lot of rich farmland in those hills, but Lemba who are farmers, especially those in Zimbabwe, are wary of droughts that threaten to plague the area. Even the most fortunate Lemba farmers struggle to bring in their crop, fighting the element (and occasional political unrest) to maintain their traditional Lemba way of life.

History

According to Lemba lore, the Lemba have always occupied a special role in Southern African, particularly Vendan culture. The Lemba claim that they met the Venda during the time of Great Zimbabwe, an impressive civilization that flourished between 1240 and 1450 in a tremendous stone city built on a Zimbabwean plateau. The Venda respected and feared the Lemba because the Venda thought them to be sorcerers who could change form at will to masquerade as leopards or to disappear into the wind. The Lemba also had lighter skin than the Venda, so the Venda often called them valungu, which means “white men,” “spirits of the dead,” even “gods.” (Even today, occasionally Venda will kill Lemba artisans because they fear that they are possessed.) The Lemba assert that they were with the Venda when they came south from Great Zimbabwe to the Soutpansberg Mountains where they now both reside, carrying with them the ngoma lungundu, a sacred drum that was supposedly filled with magic objects. They then claimed to have served as the generals of the Venda army when the Venda fought the British at the turn of the 20th century.

Researchers like Orientalist Tudor Parfitt have validated some of the Lemba claims. The Lemba were, in fact, once the extension of the Royal Vendan court. Historically, the Lemba were medicine men and musicians, iron workers and artisans. When Europeans opened diamond mines in Vendaland they chose the Lemba to work there. The Lemba therefore had access to money and, when they decided to fight against their Europeans bosses, guns. Even after the Venda lost the war, the lighter skin and legendary magical powers of the Lemba set them apart from most Venda
A recent study of Lemba chromosomes, published in The American Journal of Human Genetics, (Spurdle and Jenkins. Volume 59, Number 5, November, 1996), further validates their Judaic claims by comparing their genetic patterns favorably to those of other Semites. The Lemba have since received a substantial amount of publicity as of late, being featured in a New York Times article and more recently on PBS’s NOVA. Kulanu member Yaakov Levi has gone to the Lemba to teach Judaism, and the influx of new visitors is expected to increase the community’s profile among Jews around the world.

©2000 Jay Sand