Fashioning sexuality: Desire, Manyema ethnicity, and the creation of the Kanga, ca. 1880-1900

International Journal of African Historical Studies

Volumn 39, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 441-469

  McCurdy, Sheryl ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 67449135772     PISSN: 03617882     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (54)

1. David Livingstone, Livingstone's Last Journals (Hartford, Conn., 1875), 275. He used the spelling "Manyuema." French authors spelled it "Maniema." Livingstone was the first to use the term in writing when he used it to describe the geographical area in the interior and northwest of Lake Tanganyika
2. See Jean Allman, ed., Fashioning Africa: Power and Politics of Dress, (Bloomington, 2004), 13-30, 19
3. Judith A. Byfield, The Bluest Hands: A Social and Economic History of Women Dyers in Abeokuta (Nigeria), 1890-1940 (Portsmouth, N.H., 2002)
4. and Laura Fair, "Dressing Up: Clothing, Class and Gender in Post-Abolition Zanzibar," Journal of African History 39 (1998), 63-94
5. See Laura Fair, "Remaking Fashion in the Paris of the Indian Ocean: Dress, Performance, and the Cultural Construction of a Cosmopolitan Zanzibari Identity," in Jean Allman, ed., Fashioning Africa 13-30, 19, citing "Trade Report for the Island of Pemba for the Year 1900" (London: HMSO, 1901), 15
6. Richard Burton, Zanzibar: City, Island, and Coast I (London, 1872), 434-35
7. Richard Burton, The Lake Regions of the Central Africa (1860; St. Clair Shores, Mich., 1971), 64
8. Livingstone, Last Journals, 283. Both Livingstone and Burton note that these lambas resemble those they had seen the Malagasy wear
9. David Northrup, Beyond the Bend in the River: African Labor in Eastern Zaire, 1865-1940 (Athens, Ohio, 1988), 23-33
10. and Deogratius Bimanyu, "The Waungwana of Eastern Zaire, 1880-1900" (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1976), 68-97
11. Livingstone, Last Journals, 297-98
12. Melvin Page, "The Manyema Hordes of Tippu Tip: A Case Study in Social Stratification and the Slave Trade in Eastern Africa," International Journal of African Historical Studies 7, 1 (1974), 69-84, 75
13. V. Lovett Cameron, Across Africa (London, 1885), 285-86
14. Cameron, Across Africa, 301 (sketch on 302). There is no mention of what Chief Kasongo's daughters were wearing
15. Burton, Lake Regions, 348
16. Cameron, Across Africa, 175
17. Henry M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent II (New York, 1878), 7
18. Walter Hutley, The Central African Diaries of Walter Hutley, 1877-1881, ed. James B. Wolf (Boston, 1976), 184
19. Stanley, Dark Continent II, 129-30
20. Stephen Rockel, "Caravan Porters of the Nyika: Labour, Culture and Society in Nineteenth Century Tanzania" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 1997), 242, 244
21. Thomas Heazle Parke, My Personal Experiences in Equatorial Africa: As Medical Officer of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition (London, 1891), 21
22. Edward Coode Hore, Missionary to Tanganyika 1877-1888
23. Burton, Lake Regions, 1, 348
24. Jameson, The Story, 341
25. Alfred J. Swann, Fighting the Slave-Hunters in Central Africa (London, 1969, first published in 1910), 193-195
26. Audrey Richards, Chisungu: A Girls Initiation Ceremony among the Bemba of Zambia (1956; New York, 1995)
27. Laura Fair, "Identity, Difference, and Dance: Female Initiation in Zanzibar, 1890-1930," Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies 17, 3 (1996), 146-72
28. Margaret Strobel, Muslim Women in Mombasa, 1890-1975 (New Haven, Conn., 1975)
29. Sarah Mirza and Margaret Strobel, eds. and trans., Three Swahili Women: Life Histories from Mombasa, Kenya (Bloomington, Ind., 1989)
30. T.O. Beidelman, The Cool Knife: Imagery of Gender, Sexuality, and Moral Education in Kaguru Initiation Ritual (Washington, 1997)
31. Hans Cory, "Figurines Used in the Initiation Ceremonies of the Ngulu of Tanganyika Territory," Africa 14 (1944)
32. Marja Liisa Swantz, The Religious and Magical Rites Connected with the Life Cycle of the Woman in Some Bantu Ethnic Groups in Tanzania (Dar es Salaam, 1966)
33. Marja Liisa Swantz, Ritual and Symbol in Transitional Zaramo Society (Uppsala, 1970)
34. Mary Ntukula, "The Initiation Rite," in Zubeida Tumbo-Masabo and Rita Liljestrom, eds., Chelewa, Chelewa: The Dilemma of Teenage Girls (Uppsala, 1994), 96-132
35. The prestige associated with the Manyema ethnicity continues today. According to Hassan Zaidi "Bact," one of the original members of a Tanzanian "Bongo Flava" music group from Kigoma, they chose the name the "Manyema Family" because they wanted to name themselves after an ethnic group from that region. See Japheth Kazenga, "Hassan Zaidi 'Bact': From a Group to Solo Artiste," The African (Tanzania), 24 November 2006, 11
36. The Bisa, Songye, and Rua spirit possession associations of Manyema continue to exist today in Ujiji. For the lists of some of the peoples from Manyema, see Sheryl McCurdy, "The Origins of the 1932 Arabu-Congo and Tanganyikan 'War': Understanding Women's Motivations for Inciting Political Unrest," Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue Canadienne des Etudes Africaines 30, 1, 10-31
37. Hutley, Diaries, 206
38. Craster, Pemba, 82-83
39. See Decle, Three Years, 311
40. For a detailed history of the author and the transmission of the prose poetry, see, Alice Warner and William Hichens, eds., Mwana Kupona - the Wifely Duty (Medstead, 1937)
41. Biersteker, "Language, Poetry, and Power," 67-71
42. Her literal interpretation of the poem differs strikingly from others. See, for example, Mwana Kupona, "Utendi wa Mwana Kupona/Mwana Kupona's Poem," in J.W.T. Allen, Tendi: Six Examples of a Swahili Classical Verse Form with Translations and Notes (New York, 1971), 55-75, 59-65
43. Janet Bujra, "An Anthropological Study of Political Action in a Bajuni Village in Kenya" (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1968)
44. Pamela Landberg, "Widows and Divorced Women in Swahili Society," in Betty Potash, ed., Widows in African Societies (Stanford, Calif., 1986)
45. and Patricia Caplan, "Cognatic Descent, Islamic Law, and Women's Property on the East African Coast," in Renée Hirschon, ed., Women and Property - Women as Property (New York, 1984), 23-43: 30-39
46. See J.A.K. Leslie, A Survey of Dar es Salaam (London, 1963), 223
47. Hutley, Diaries, 293, 294
48. Jane Moir, A Lady's Letters from Central Africa: A Journey from Mandala, Shire Highlands to Ujiji, Lake Tanganyika and Back in 1890 (1891; Blantyre, Malawi, 1991), 31-32
49. Stanley took dry-plate apparatus with him on his expedition and the photographs were used to prepare these illustrations. The pictures of the twelve waungwana women were most likely taken in Simon's Town. Commercial photography studios existed in Cape Colony by the 1840s. See David Killingray and Robert Andrews, "An Outline History of Photography in Africa to ca. 1940," History in Africa 16 (1989), 197-208
50. Byfield, Bluest Hands, 27
51. Lionel Decle, Three Years, 306-307
52. See Cameron, Across Africa, 250. Stanley, The Dark Continent II, 118
53. and Livingstone, Last Journals, 259, 283
54. Fair, "Remaking Fashion."