The Eswatini Kingdom, also known by its international name of Swaziland (land of the Swazi people), is by extension a miniature state, perched in the mountainous heights on the border between South Africa and Mozambique, but although small geographically, it is also a rich repository of Swazi culture, strongly identified and deeply attached to its ancestral traditions.
Settled between the 18th and 19th centuries on the Veld highlands, geographically protected by the Lebombo Mountains, the Swazi people persisted in a traditional society, centred around a Sovereign and his Royal Court, based in the Lobamba village. From these mountainous lands, the Swazi people resisted for centuries the pressures of the Zulus and, later, of South African and British colonialism, holding firm to their monarchical identity and keeping alive their ancestral customs, still characterised today by events aimed at perpetuating their general subservience to the King, or by ceremonies linked to ancestral animist spirituality.
If the Ncwala is considered the most sacred ceremony to the Swazi people, the Umhlanga Dance (Reed Dance), on the other hand, is the most characteristic event of the colourful local culture, known internationally.
The first, the Ncwala, or First Fruits Festival, follows a lunar calendar and generally takes place in December, just before Christmas, but its festivities last a whole week, depending on the progress of the agricultural harvest, and centred on the permission that the ruler (currently Maswati III) will give the population to consume the first seasonal fruits. Linked to the Swazi ancestral universe, it is an event invested with great animist sacredness, which has been perpetuated for centuries and involves the highest spiritual and notarial representatives of the royal court, who actively participate in the ceremonial, together with the king, who will symbolically sanction the coveted permission, first eating a freshly picked pumpkin.
The second, called Umhlanga, or reed dance in the local language, while not a sacred event, is definitely the most traditional and representative of the power of the Royal Court. It is a kind of local debutante ball, during which young girls, just starting out in adult life, appear before the King at Ludzidzini, the historical palace of the Queen Mother, in the royal village of Lobamba, not far from the current political capital of Mbabane.
A jubilation of dances and songs, in which the young girls exalt their femininity, adorned in colourful vestments, and their purity through the nudity of their bodies, obligatory by tradition, bringing as a gift to the Sovereign and the Queen Mother, long bamboo canes that will then be used for the annual restoration of the palace. The event, which lasts eight days, attracts subjects from all over the kingdom every year between August and September and is extremely participatory and enthralling, culminating in the dancing of the young girls at the Ludzidzini court.
Traditionally animist and historically converted to Christianity, the Swazi people do not disdain alcoholic beverages, especially if they are handcrafted and linked to their ancestral customs. It is precisely around the production of the alcoholic beverage called buganu that the traditional ceremonies most favoured by the Swazi people are organised every year. Between the months of February and May, the fruit of the marula tree ripens, is harvested and hand-fermented by Swazi women, resulting in a high alcoholic distillate, which will delight the local population during certain official events, real ceremonies, organised between the various palaces of the royal family, during the entire harvest season of the fruit.
