Illuminated Signs:
Style and Meaning in the Beadwork of the Xhosa- and Zulu-speaking Peoples
By Gary van Wyk
This article was first published, with footnotes that are omitted here, in African Arts, vol. 36:3 (Autumn 2003), pp. 12-33, 93-94. For citation purposes, please note that figure numbers, placement, and captions have been altered here.
Among Zulu-speakers, the identity question is much more complex than for the Xhosa peoples. The rise of the Zulu Kingdom under Shaka in the 1790s and early 1800s catapulted the minor Zulu chiefdom into the dominant regional power among hundreds of others. Shaka coerced the incorporation or dispersal of neighboring North Nguni chiefdoms, which, though they had a broadly similar culture, were descended from distinct Nguni branches. Cultural difference was both effaced and preserved within the kingdom-and certainly asserted on its borders by those who resisted its power. After the British defeated the Zulu Kingdom in 1879, they installed to prominence chiefs who had been subordinates within it, further altering the distribution of power among regional chiefs. By then the label "Zulu" had seized hold as colonial shorthand for the diverse North Nguni peoples of the region, including those who had never been amalgamated into the kingdom, and subsequent administrations further standardized the Zulu language and entrenched the label, which continues to overarch differences today.
21. Map of Zulu-speaking chiefdoms around Durban (Van Warmelo 1935).
In traditional rural settings, North Nguni societies followed a historical pattern of settlement, aggregating in clans or chiefdoms that could be widely dispersed and interspersed. This means that identity cannot be as neatly mapped as among Xhosa-speakers, which is reflected in the ethnographic survey carried out by Van Warmelo (1935) (Fig. 21). Such surveys were grist for the "homeland" policies of apartheid. Difference, thus defined, helped divide up the land, but white interests remained an overriding consideration: what constituted black "homeland" was largely what was strategic to recognize as such.
22A-E. Examples of some major beadwork styles among Zulu-speakers. Photos: Gary van Wyk, Axis Gallery.
22A. Detail of a Msinga anklet with classic seven-color Isishunka palette, ca. 1930. See also Fig. 27, far left.
22B. Detail of Nongoma apron, ca. 1960, worn by married men and unmarried women. The basic Nongoma palette (red, white, black, green) is extended with the blue and yellow that signify the territory of the Buthelezi clan in the region between Ceza and Mahlabatini. See also Figure 1 for a similar motif.
22C. Detail of a Ndwedwe panel from the New Hanover area, ca. 1930. It shows the distinctive use of multicolored, black, and striped beads, including the blue-and-white-striped bead named after a type of grasshopper noted for its mating habits. Such panels could be worn over either the shoulder or rear skirt. See also Fig. 24A-D.
22D. Detail of a married women's cape from the Maphumulo region, ca. 1950. The characteristic lacy technique and a color sequence typically of white-green-black-navy-deep turquoise are accented in this case with orange. See also Fig. 23A-C.
22E. Detail of a Ngweni married woman's cape from the Drakensberg region, ca. 1960. The Ngwane, Ngweni, and Hlubi peoples settled in this region today were dispersed by the rise of the Zulu Kingdom (the main Ngwane group conquered Sotho-speaking peoples in present-day Swaziland, and today are known as Swazi). The capes are constructed of several beaded strips of differing ages. MaZulu Ntuli reports that strips are contributed by the bride's female relatives (Wood 1996:167). They thus provide a cross-generational history. The older versions of these capes have a predominance of white and turquoise beads. Strips that are mainly black probably date to the 1970s or later. These capes are now being faked extensively for the market (Frank Jolles, personal communication, 2000).
Despite this territorial complexity, clan or regional identity is flagged in several distinct mid-twentieth-century (ca. 1920-1970) Zulu beadwork styles (Fig. 22A-E). These include the styles from the regions of Nongoma, Msinga, Maphumulo, Ndwedwe, and the Drakensberg foothills, where Ngwane, Ngweni, and Hlubi peoples scattered by the rise of the Zulu Kingdom are settled today. Each is identifiable by its palette, often by the conventional form or texture of the beaded object, and sometimes by distinctive motifs-although these all vary historically. These diagnostic features, which visual comparison reveals sufficiently for present purposes, combine within a gestalt that seldom leaves any question of origin.
23A-C. Zulu items from the Maphumulo region. Photos: Gary van Wyk, Axis Gallery.
23A. Married man's ceremonial back apron, Mtulwa clan, 1940. Height 66cm (26").
23B. Woman's anklet .14cm x 22.2cm (5.5" x 8.75").
23C. Anklet. Oyaya clan, 1950s. 20.3cm x 43.2cm (8" x 17").
Items 23A&23B show the color sequence white-green-black-navy-deep turquoise, accented with red and yellow. Accents of orange and pink are also used. In the nearby Eshowe region, this style varies slightly, such as through the inclusion of opalescent beads at the very center of the anklet in Fig. 23C. See also Glass Lace.
Because the styles of the Maphamulo and Ndwedwe regions have been less often published than the others, further illustrations of those styles have been provided here. (Unfortunately, the styles of the South Coast and North Coast of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and the Zulu-speaking Bhaca of southern KZN must remain beyond the scope of this article.)
24A. Woman's front apron, with beadwork on toweling. Height 48.3cm (19"). Photo: Lisa Brittan, Axis Gallery.
24B. Married woman's hat with oblong ornaments constructed on a wire frame. Diameter 33cm (13"). Photo: Lisa Brittan, Axis Gallery.
24C. Cloak from a bride's outfit, ca.1965. Photo: Gary van Wyk, Axis Gallery.
24A-D. Zulu items from the Ndwedwe region, characterized by a prominent use of black beads within a multicolored palette that includes striped and multicolored beads (see Fig. 22C), and often embellished with metal rings and conical buttons. Plastic beads became widely used in this region from the 1960s onward.
Social identity, or status, is also reflected in dress among Zulu-speakers. Barbara Tyrrell's 1971 book on the Zulu-speaking Bhaca of the Richmond region, Suspicion is my Name, provides a perfect example. Tyrrell illustrates and describes sixteen social "types" (pp. 169-84), much like Broster's work. Her meticulous color drawings also record Bhaca style between 1945 and 1970.
Zulu Color Symbolism
The broad outlines of what meanings could be conveyed by North Nguni beadwork styles are best understood against the background of Zulu spiritual concepts and the historical record of communication through bead symbolism in the Zulu Kingdom during the late 1800s. Red, white, and black are the main sacred colors in Zulu symbolism. In combination, as particularly in the clothing of diviners, who also code medicines as white, black, or red (Ngubane 1977), these colors suggest an understanding of the universe and the cycle of life within it. White is associated with the ancestors, concepts of purity, calm, and good intentions, and light and divine enlightenment. In some contexts, black represents darkness, evil, death, and defilement. In other contexts, black is linked to the ancestors and carries positive connotations-it evokes the dark rain clouds necessary for the sustenance of life, for example, and Zulu pots, some sculptural objects, and the leather skirt of marriage are blackened to please the ancestors. Red is the color of blood, menstruation, and fertility, and red ochre is strongly associated with the earth and women and their fertility; white clay is associated with the ancestors (Berglund 1989).
Within the Zulu Kingdom in the late 1800s, an elaborate system of bead language was used, mainly to communicate messages about courtship in love tokens. In 1963 Princess Magogo, a daughter of King Dinizulu (1868-1913) and the mother of Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, provided a window into this semiotic system (see Grossert 1968, vol. 1:148-64). Raised among the wives of King Cetshwayo (1826-84), she had a detailed knowledge of Zulu history and customs at the royal court. She interpreted the meaning of an elaborate message conveyed by a string of sixty beads consisting of twenty-five different types. In her reading, for example, translucent red beads implied a heart inflamed with love, and pink implied poverty. The meaning of each bead, however, depended on its syntactical placement between neighboring beads. Thus, in one grammatical arrangement a white bead could imply a "white heart," calm and full of love, but in another it questioned why the lover was laughing. The princess pointed out that the reading of such messages depended on in-depth knowledge of Zulu customs, proverbs, and associations related to flora and fauna. She criticized contemporary women who deviated from these conventional rules in their beadwork for not respecting Zulu custom. Apparently, by this time the courtly language of love conveyed in beads had atrophied. The dissolution probably proceeded from about the 1920s onward, as regional beadwork styles developed, because their flag-like palettes contained few colors compared to the twenty-five types of beads that Princess Magogo
interpreted.
This courtly language evidently was legible in the early 1900s far beyond the borders of the kingdom. The missionary Franz Mayr, stationed close to Pietermaritzburg, recorded the following reading of the color sequence white-yellow-blue-black-pink-black-yellow-red-white-red-white:
Here is my letter to you; I know you have two oxen (=two neighbouring beads) for my father [to pay the bride-price to marry me]; if I were a dove (blue), I would fly to you; but darkness (black) prevents me; you are still poor (pink); and the dark night (black) disturbs me; your cattle are only two, work to get more; my eyes are red looking out for you in vain; but my heart is white as the long days go on; I have looked out for you, my eyes are red.
(Mayr 1907 in Wickler & Seibt 1996:33)
In this message, for example, the signification of pink (poverty) and white (symbolizing a "pure heart") corroborates Princess Magogo's reading.
A Beadwork Convention: Mchunu Style
Meanings remarkably consistent with Princess Magogo's applied among the Mchunu people of the Msinga region, despite their adoption between circa 1920 and 1960 of a beadwork style known as Isishunka.
Ishishunka was based on a restrictive seven-color palette (Jolles 1994) and applied to most beadwork items, not just love tokens (Fig. 22A and Fig. 27, far left). These meanings were provided for the Natal Museum around 1970 by an informant named Salafina MaMchunu, who was born there in 1921, and were corroborated by Mchunu elders in the 1980s (Wickler & Seibt 1991:309). White represented all that is good (love, spiritual purity, happiness, truth). Black was the opposite (evil, misfortune, sorrow) but could also refer to the black skirt of marriage. Translucent red represented hot-blooded passion (the name for this white-cored bead, sometimes incorrectly called "carnelian," is umgazi, meaning blood). Vaseline yellow represented gossip; pink symbolized poverty, particularly the inability to pay the bride-price for marriage; turquoise represented fidelity; deep green represented youthfulness or pining away like a withering reed (see, e.g., Wickler & Seibt 1996:30). Green is the dominant color in the palette, followed by black. When combined, the two colors suggest readiness for marriage, and in this context green means new growth, young life, while black stands for the black leather skirt of marriage (Jolles 1994:53).
According to Frank Jolles, in full expression, Isishunka employed seven colors in a fixed sequence of seventeen bars that included several stable triads: translucent red-black-translucent red; green; pink-turquoise-pink; black; green-Vaseline yellow-green; turquoise-black-turquoise, green-white-green (1994:47). The central color in a triad was called isiqaba (pl. iziqaba), meaning "field," with those on the sides being called "boundaries" (iminqamulo, sing. umnqamulo) (Jolles 1993). These terms inscribe the idea of boundaries, territorial markers, and link the beadwork to agriculture, which, together with concomitant ideas about fertility, is otherwise absent from the symbolism described for the Isishunka palette.
The existence of a fixed sequence within Isishunku would seem to inhibit its semantic potential, because the same symbolic meanings would be repeated continually. It is feasible, though, that symbolic messages still could be conveyed. A beadwork maker could: a) select only a limited color sequence that best condenses the message, b) repeat or increase the compositional size of key symbolic colors, c) make conspicuous omissions, or d) put the key symbolic meaning in a prominent position within the beadwork article, such as at the beginning (Wickler & Seibt 1991:339). The less rigid the sequencing rules, the greater the possibility for variable messages within this restrictive palette.
25. The Msinga-region color conventions of the Isilomi.
Photo: Gary van Wyk, Axis Gallery.
Dynamism and Continuity
The Mabaso and Mthembu (also known as Thembu, or Tembu, and not to be confused with the Xhosa-speaking Thembu) clans who were neighbors of the Mchunu in the Msinga region signified their respective identities through different palettes and through patterns composed of graphic shapes rather than fields of colored bars (Jolles 1994:58-59). In the 1930s and 1940s they adopted the Mchunu field pattern, but they maintained their own palettes. The Isilomi style of the Mabaso (Fig. 25) sequenced navy, turquoise, sap green, white, opaque red, and black.
The similar Isiphalafini style omitted the turquoise (Fig. 26 below). The Mthembu used sap green, yellow, red, black, and turquoise (Fig. 27, below). Reciprocally, these adjacent palette developments migrated back into Mchunu areas, where Isishunka had originated. The Mchunu, Mthembu, and Mabaso had long been neighbors, "shared similar fates at the hands of Shaka," and then started occupying the Msinga region in the late 1830s; by the 1930s the distinctions between them were becoming less important (Jolles 1994:51). This allowed the Mchunu field pattern to be adopted regionally, although at first the neighboring clans preserved palettes different from Isishunka. In the northern Msinga region, around Nqutu, beadwork employed the Isishunka colors minus white and Vaseline yellow, and favored larger, heavier beads combined with smaller ones to provide richly textured objects. Another change in the regional palette was the adoption of an opaque red bead to replace the translucent red (white-cored) bead. Mussolini halted its production to hoard the gold required in its manufacture, and supplies probably ran out shortly after World War II (Jolles 1994:54, n. 10).
26. The Msinga-region color conventions of Isiphalafini (left), and Umzansi (right) styles, shown on pendant neckpieces. Height of detail 26.7cm (10.5"), entire pieces 63.5cm (25"). Photo: Gary van Wyk, Axis Gallery.
27. Variants of Msinga patterns. Left to right: Belt with field pattern in Isishunka colors (pink not visible), ca.1930; belt with barred, or "field," pattern in Mthembu colors (note primary yellow), ca.1950; belt with Umzansi colors and stylized letters reflecting "modern" style, 1960s; two chokers with Isinyolovane colors that depart from previous conventions. Photo: Gary van Wyk, Axis Gallery.
In the late 1950s some Msinga people moved southeast into lowland areas, where they applied a new palette, called Umzansi (sap green, white, opaque red, and navy), to the Mchunu barred pattern (Fig. 26). "Umzansi" means "people from the lowlands," and this style reflected both territorial and generational shifts (Boram- Hayes 2000:152).
By about 1960 (Jolles 1994:50) the Umzansi palette formed the basis of a new, modern style, Isimodeni, which departed from the field pattern by incorporating a wide variety of graphic patterns (Fig. 27). Isimodeni later abandoned the Umzansi palette by substituting black for navy and/or orange for red, departures from convention that were admiringly termed Isinyolovane (Jolles 1993:43) (Fig. 27, two belts farthest right).
Elders, like Princess Magogo, disparaged Isimodeni (Morris & Preston-Whyte 1994:49), but it became convention-much as slang is first corruption but settles with use. Isimodeni defined a fashion, imfeshini, that united the clans of the region at a time when "the growing impact of the modern State in a time of rapid economic expansion was beginning to erode the traditional social order" (Jolles 1994:51). This was also a period when both the apartheid government and Zulu traditionalists (particularly the Inkatha movement) were manipulating constructions of identity. In other words, the beadwork in the Msinga region shifted away from signaling traditional clan distinctions and toward signifying regional identity and contemporaneity. These changes exemplify the dynamism that "finds a way forward" within a signifying system.
An example of both the divergence and continuity of bead symbolism is the blue-striped white bead known as iNtothoviyane (see Fig. 22C). It is named after a species of multicolored grasshopper associated with love, marriage, and fidelity: after mating the male stays on the female for weeks until she dies. In one context Princess Magogo read this bead to mean "Happy are the grasshoppers because they are at least sure to die on each other's backs." In a different syntactical context she interpreted it as "I now heard that I stink to you like a grasshopper" (Grossert 1968 in Wickler & Seibt 1991:321-22). The association of this bead with fidelity was still in evidence among some Zulu communities in the 1940s (Twala 1951), but it was also incorporated into diviners' regalia to represent a particular type of spirit (Wickler & Seibt 1991:322). Among the Khuze of southern KwaZulu-Natal, this grasshopper and concepts of pairing were associated with the color combination of white-red-black-green (Winters 1988:48), which also had become the palette that defined the Nongoma regional style for most of the twentieth century.
Nongoma Colors and Motifs
28A&B. Details of a Gujerati textile (Fig. 28A) and a Nongoma bead fabric with stepped-pyramid designs (Fig. 28B). Gujerati panel: photo courtesy of Robert Papini. Photo: Gary van Wyk, Axis Gallery.
The Nongoma region is associated with the region of the Zulu royal court and the attendant ancestral Zulu clans. In Nongoma beadwork, the sap-green color added to the primary Zulu symbolic colors (white-red-black) is associated both with the food of cattle, which were the core of Zulu traditional life and a physical link with their ancestors, and the gall of animals sacrificed to honor the ancestors (Ngubane 1977:125). A Nongoma variant that adds or substitutes blue or yellow or both is associated with the region between Ceza and Mahlabatini, the territorial base of the Buthelezi chiefdom, long allied with the Zulu. Chief Gatsha Buthelezi is the cousin of King Zwelethini and the leader of Inkatha, the Zulu nationalist party, whose colors black-green-yellow-red are frequently seen in patterns set on white backgrounds from this area.
These related palettes are used to create dazzling geometric designs. They vary from simple patterns, such as alternating checks, triangles, or diamonds, to complex combined motifs. The diamond shape represents a shield, symbolizing protection (Morris & Preston-Whyte 1994:51). Researchers record that an upward-pointed triangle connotes the male principle, a downward-pointed triangle or "V" represents the female pudenda, two triangles joined in an hourglass shape represent a married man, and two diamonds joined top to bottom represent a mature woman (Fisher 1984; Winters 1988; Wickler & Seibt 1996:25). The triangle may also be associated with the heart because they share the same word in Zulu, inhliziyo, and when combined with the diamond-shaped shield may imply protection for a loved one (Boram-Hayes 2000). Wolfgang Wickler and Uta Seibt suggest that a profusion of small diamonds, triangles, and other motifs celebrate fruitfulness (1996:25).
Some Nongoma pattern motifs echo stepped-diamond motifs in Asian weaving, which combine triangles and diamonds. It is possible that Zulu beadworkers adopted these from members of the Muslim community in colonial Natal, particularly Gujerati immigrants from Pakistan and India whose fabrics employed identical motifs, and grafted onto them their own symbolism (Papini 1994) (Fig 20). Gujerati fabrics adopted this motif from kilim rugs, where the motif is widely used from Turkey to western China, but most consistently in neighboring Afghanistan (Papini 1994:35-36). The dispersion of this distinctive motif to communities as widely separated as the Zulu and Native Americans also could have occurred directly via Central Asian rugs seen in white homes and interiors during the 1800s. Navaho weavers, for example, were instructed to copy kilim designs hung up in trading stores (personal communication, Allen Roberts, 2000, 2002), and before long such designs were regarded as quintessentially Navaho.
Symbolic colors and patterns thus enrich the symbolism of Zulu peoples' regional palettes. Christian and Western motifs are also incorporated. A notable example is the beadwork of members of the Shembe Church, a Zulu Christian sect founded in about 1910, which incorporates stylized crosses into another remarkably consistent beadwork style that has been extensively documented (see Morris & Preston-Whyte 1994:60-73). The meaning of motifs can vary regionally, however. A cross motif from the Estcourt region, for example, was identified as isiambolosi, meaning "ambulance" (Morris & Preston-Whyte 1994:30).
Slippery Words
The adoption of Western letters (both upper- and lowercase) to spell out messages in Zulu is, like the symbolism described by Princess Magogo, surprisingly ambiguous.
Among the examples provided by Wickler and Seibt (1996:54, 59, 60), for example, the message "ISAKUHLE" can be interpreted either as "It is going fine" or "She comes willingly." Likewise, a woman read the necklace message "ngiLikHU ningObAAnginAKi" to mean "Hold everything inside (Ngilikhuni) because (ngoba) I do not care (anginaki)," which implies that the girl knows that her boyfriend is having affairs with other girls. Another informant, however, translated this from a male point of view: "I am very strong because I am careless," like a bull in a china shop. Vive la différence.
Similarly, one reader understood the beaded message "wAXALAU mASAniBOnAmAnYA mBAnEPni IA n" as "Wazala umasanibona manya mbanephila," a slang way of saying "Salani sonibona umanxa sisaphila," which means "Goodbye, we will see you if we are alive." Another reader interpreted the same message as "Wazala, uMa! Sanibona manyamba na ephila," suggesting it read "Congratulations (Wazala), mother (uMa); live, be in good health (phila); they, them (bona); [unknown word-to have twins?] (manyamba). A more accurate reading suggested to me might be one between those offered by Wickler and Seibt: "Congratulations, Mother [on a good thing, implying birth]. We will see you all in the future if they/you are well." Two other fluent Zulu-speakers told me the message could not be interpreted because "it is written and spelt badly" and "not enough information was given to conclude anything" (Khonya Rauri Alcock and Jupana Dladla, personal communication, 2001).
One thing, then another, and, and, and then…becoming undecidable. Language become abstract, mad; in this case language itself becomes unraveled by written words that are much clearer signifiers than are the constituents of visual signs-color, shape, pattern-in most bead language. How then, finally, to view, to read, the significatory systems in beadwork? As duck, rabbit, or elephant, white elephant, or pink elephant, or all of the above, simultaneously?
For Wickler and Seibt, who are experts in the study of birdsong, the patterns of Zulu beadwork are like songs or chants, sung in different dialects that echo the rhythmic systems of poetry, music, and nature. "Like sound strings in birdsong, here colour strings with encoded messages are used in averbal communication; another striking parallel is the genetic code incorporated in macromolecular strings of nucleotids in DNA or RNA, or of amino acids in proteins" (1991:340). The principle of self-similarity that underlies fractal geometry, crucial to the scientific understanding of nature, is reflected in much two-dimensional South African art, including beadwork and mural arts among the Basotho (Van Wyk 1993b, 1998). So complex are many Basotho patterns that the figure/ground relationships of their elements are unstable. First one element seems to dominate and serve as the seed motif that generates the composition; then the interstitial element takes over and proclaims its dominance, and the pattern then reads entirely differently. If one attempts to hold both readings simultaneously, like the problem of the "rabbit-duck" drawing, the eye dances back and forth, the rationale becomes undecidable. The abstract animates without being animal. Instead of ending up with a duck or a rabbit, one senses a visual metaphor of the mysteries of life and beyond. Eye moves, mind moves, spirit moves. Two dimensions flower into the manifold.
These patterns surely make our eyes dance, but semiotics is slippery, in color, pattern, or word. Meaning is invented and preserved or shifts, or it slips away, to die or return. In semiotic theory the relationship between the signifier and signified is arbitrary, but in figurative, mimetic sculpture the signifier mimics the appearance of the concrete signified, and recognition is easy if the representation is good enough: "elephant." Where the signified is abstract, we find ourselves in much more open terrain and we must sniff the wind for direction. The wind shifts, too; it is its nature, wedded to time, embedded in it. Such things as the wind and time, grand abstractions, are bigger than us,18 and elephants. They are of the order of spirit. In southern African languages, they share a special category of sacred nouns; in Sesotho, for example, wind, smoke, mist, fire, and lightning and spirit all carry the "me-" or "mo-" sacred prefix, together with the Creator, named Molimo, who is also hailed as Motlhodi, the source of all divinity, presence or being, and of the cosmos (Setiloane 1976:77-78, 266 fn. 11, 269 fn. 3). The Creator is also cosmic Lesedi, light and enlightenment. Philosophically, these sacred nouns point to the "ontological gap" in metaphysics between being and Being. In the slippage of this metaphysical gap they point to something eternally Other, beyond direct experience and human assimilation (Van Wyk 1996:120-21).
Beadwork and mural patterns in southern Africa are the artistic equivalent of these sacred nouns. Even their media are sacred and powerful. Why else offer red beads when the elephant is dead, pray for rain in paint, and dance for the spirits dressed in beads that reflect and refract the light?
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