Luchazi traditional funerals and burials

Traditionally, all the fires of the village are extinguished after the death of a member of the village especially a headman. All mourners are required to camp outside the house of the deceased. Funeral songs are sung in memory of the deceased such as:

Vocalist: Oku ku mehia-e, nji ka hiluka

Ku vihilo-e, ka nji kuizako

Nji ka salako lika liange-e

Oku ku mehia-e!

Group: nji ka hiluka

Ku vihilo-e, ka nji kuizako

Cili, nani ntsonange lika liange-e 

Traditionally, the corpse is not allowed to pass through the door of the house. Children are not allowed to see a corpse, and an opening is made at the back of house where the corpse is extracted. The corpse is usually placed on a bier known as vuhango. If all customs are done, the deceased is buried in a grave at a village cemetery with the head placed in the eastern direction. Household utensils used by the deceased such as plates or cups or pots are placed on top of the grave (mbumbo). After the dispersal rites, the house of the deceased is demolished (and the ruins or place is referred to as mbozo) especially if the deceased used to live alone in the house.

Marriage customs determine what is to be done if the husband or wife or child dies. The death of a husband doesn’t seriously affect the situation on ground. But if a wife or child of a Luchazi village dies, it constitutes a very serious offence for the entire village, except fellow bride-price women and their children. As a matrilineal tribe, the children of the Luchazi marriage are presumed to belong to the mother. If a child dies the father pays something in lieu of the dead child to the brother or uncle of the wife. In old days, the reasoning was that since the child was going to be counted in its mother's matrilineal village, a replacement should be made accordingly.

The death is announced to the village of the deceased woman's relatives by a messenger sent from the widower's village who shouts the bad news from the verge of the village and immediately runs back for fear of being harassed or beaten. The mourning relatives of the dead woman will then go in a procession to the husband's village and stop on the verge of that village, with women crying and wailing. A goat is then offered to them which they slaughtered there and then. The first goat offered is known as cisanga-ninga.

The mourning group then enters the village with the slaughtered goat and camp in the front yard of the funeral house. The widower is then confined or was placed in seclusion and supervised during the period of mourning. A series of animal offerings at various stages of the mourning rites follows. A female relative of the deceased is appointed to cook for the widower and to generally serve him routinely by way of giving him water to drink, lighting a fire at night for him to warm himself. Before these services are provided, the widower or his relatives are required to pay for these services. Failure to pay results in the widower being starved, but in any case, the widower is just served water whether the relatives paid or not. During the funeral the widower is not allowed to bathe or touch the fireplace.

After the payment of services for the widower, the male relatives of the deceased demand compensation for the loss of their deceased relative and all relatives of widower are required to contribute something towards the payment. In old times, they would demand a minimum quantity of goods to be made as initial payment by marking a four-sided space with four poles about the height of a man to be filled with goods. Burial cannot be authorized unless a reasonable amount is paid. Once the initial payment has been made, burial takes place at the village graveyard. The widower is not allowed to attend the burial and is taken into the bush where cleansing rituals commence. After burial the widower is returned home.

Sexual cleansing ritual

During the cleansing rituals the widower is required to be personally involved in the sexual cleansing ritual in which he engages in sexual intercourse overnight with a chosen female. Demands for compensation are suspended during the performance of cleansing rituals.

The day after burial and cleansing ritual, demands for more payments and negotiations resume. After reaching an agreement, a reasonable lapse of time is then allowed after which the final payment of compensation should be made. After payment, the case is closed. Then relatives of the dead wife are expected to provide a substitute as a new wife.

If after the deadline the widower and his relatives failed to make the final payment of compensation for any excuse whatsoever, then the relatives of the deceased refer the matter to their chief. The chief invites some headmen to accompany him and visit the widower's village at the throng, camping on the verge of the widower's village, later move to a nearby village after the widower has paid another cisanga-ninga.

Whenever such a case is referred to the chief for his ruling, the action of the dead wife's relatives is always upheld. If the chief is satisfied that the failure to pay is deliberate, he intervenes with more firmness. He orders the widower to pay off the remaining major portion of the compensation in the form of two or three cattle. In old days, a temporary indentured worker known as ntompo would be paid in lieu of cattle, and if the husband and his relatives cannot afford an indentured worker, his nephew or niece or even himself could be snatched in lieu and later be sold as slaves for goods.

Once the matter is settled, the chief is also paid for his intervention. In old days he was given an able-bodied young man called ntungisi to supplement the workforce at his palisade! Gradually this act of heavy compensation led to men having secret affairs with their sister-in-laws (vampuevo zia matemo).

Inheritance

In older times when the father of a family died, one of the nephews inherited his uncle’s estates including his aunties. The Luchazi now practice western patterns of inheritance. There are still matrilineal families in parts of the Luchazi communities, but they are slowly passing due to intermarriages. In modern times, the state has taken over most of the roles and functions of clans in education, protection of members, social and economic help.

Luchazi royal funerals and burials

Whenever a king/chief dies, his death is personified by the breaking of the royal drumheads, meaning that the owner of the royal drums is no more. So, the royal drums are not played. There is usually one special village headman, selected by virtue of his close, and long association with the chief or royal family, who attends to the royal funeral, burial and rites of coronation of chiefs. When a Luchazi chief is dead, a team of selected burial attendants called vitapa is assembled. These burial attendants are into two categories:

1. Vitapa va nkula: these are the royal shamans who take over the role of morticians or undertakers. They paint their bodies with red ochre (nkula) during the royal funeral. These are the fearless men who are brave enough to work on the corpse of the chief and prepare it for burial. During the mourning period, these men do not mingle with other mourners, they cook and eat in isolation of the rest of the mourners. They are feared by the villagers. They are tasked with the responsibility of twisting the dead chief's head until it is severed from the neck. By custom, the chief's head is buried separately. To do this the vitapa obtain a bark of a huge tree in which they place the body, then they start twisting the head each day until, as the body is decomposing, the neck column disintegrates and the head is severed from the neck.
2. Vitapa va mpemba: they paint their bodies white and these go from village to village throughout the chief's territory, announcing the chief's death and collecting tributes towards burial expenses. They also organise the funeral dance.

E-e, Ngonga neza-e!

Va yaya Ngonga neza-e

Suekenu vana venu civala

Ngonga!

This is one of the songs sung during the funeral of a chief, which lasts many days. In the past, villagers believed that the vitapa or the ritual pall-bearers of the chief's corpse sneak into the villages and snatch small children to be killed at the royal funeral rites.

When a Luchazi chief is dead and the body is lying in state, it is a taboo for anyone to travel about in the countryside within the chief's jurisdiction until the body is buried. In Luchazi tradition, all the fires of the palace are put out after the death of the chief. All mourners are required to camp outside the palace according to their respective localities. Fellow chiefs and members of the royal family are prohibited by custom from going near the house containing the royal corpse. Each respective group of mourners are required to offer for slaughter a bull or a goat as ritual of sacrifice to the departed chief.

Burial ceremony

When at last it is time to lay the deceased chief to rest, a bull is slaughtered and its skin is used to wrap the chief's body; the bull's stomach is cleared of its contents and put around the stump of the chief's neck, representing the severed head. The body is buried in a separate place from the head whose burial is known as "interring the pillow of the chief”. Fellow chiefs and other members of the royal family are also not allowed to attend the burial ceremony. They are prohibited by tradition to go anywhere near the graveyard or cemetery.

Rites of cleansing of the king/chief's widows

Some days after the burial of the chief, consultations known as matumbe are held among the chief's advisors and other village headmen regarding cleansing of the chief's widows. Whereas the usual cleansing of the widow of an ordinary man involved, among other things, having sexual intercourse with a selected man during the night before dispersal, that aspect of the ritual is not allowed in the case of a king/chief's widows.

The rite of funeral dispersal

This is followed a few days afterwards by communal hunting called likandzo. Any number of game may be killed during the communal hunt and the meat is brought back to the palace. The liver and heart are offered to the ancestors at the miyombo shrine. Millet beer brewed the previous day is also offered at the miyombo.

The making of Cingina

The Cingina  is a shrine that is specifically erected in the memory of the deceased chief at the verge of the village. When the beer brewed for this occasion is ready, the shrine is cleared and well-trimmed poles of hard wood which are sharpened at the top are stuck into the cleared ground in a semi-circle. A bull is slaughtered and pieces of the liver, lungs and heart are quickly boiled in the pot on a fire made at the shrine and offered to the spirits of the deceased chiefs. The upper portion of the bull's skull is cut out with the horns on it and stuck onto one of the poles. Other items of the departed chief's property like beddings, clothes, pots, plates, etc. are stuck onto the rest of the poles of the shrine.

Succession and coronation

Soon after the last funeral rite is performed, the chief's advisors and village headmen select the successor who is appointed as an acting chief called as Muangana ua makunga. Then arrangements are made to initiate preparations for the coronation of the successor. When making these preparations, the mikupele are revamped in readiness for playing during the forthcoming coronation ceremony and shortly, the acting chief is installed on the throne. It then the new chief's responsibility to make a new fire using the muntelenge method, and it is from this fire all new fires of the village are distributed. This tradition symbolizes a new era in the history of the chieftaincy.

Traditionally, Luchazi people avoided installing women on the throne because they believed that her husband (mukuetunga) would run the day-to-day affairs in the background. However, when there are only women heirs, then there was no way they could avoid a woman ascending on the throne. Sometimes, when a chieftaincy experienced a series of male chiefs who died suddenly or unexpectedly, a woman was installed as an alternative in an effort to avoid the occurrence of frequent deaths.

Funeral of a king/chief's wife (Lisano)

The wife of a Luchazi chief is not, by custom, left to die inside the palisade of the chief. When those nursing her during her illness see that she is about to die, she is taken out of the palisade without the chief's knowledge to a small house where she spends the last hours of her life. It is a taboo for the chief to see her at this stage, and also for him to see her corpse.

Ritual of cleansing

At the time of the lisano's passing away, the state of uncleanliness due to the spouse's death (visako) is transferred from the chief to another man hired from a different village. The ritual of transfer is done as follows: the hired man is told to lie down and the chief bathes his body while standing over him and the water from the chief's body falls on the hired man, thus transferring the visako to the hired man who then assumes the status of ntuluue (widower). The night before the dispersal of the funeral, the hired man is coupled with a woman, usually a relative of the deceased lisano, with whom he performs the ritual of cleansing of the palace by having sexual intercourse. The hired man is usually appropriately paid for his services.