Reed dressing

This is a long article about a rather short thing…

In the days leading up to Umhlanga, the Reed Dance, and certainly for many weeks after it, there were many voices saying that tradition is good but it is time that some things were changed. In particular, there were many who said that the days of indlamu should be over. According to these critics, the girls’ traditional skirt is just too short, skimpy and revealing for the 21st century. We are currently, they say, living in an era of the three Ps—promiscuity, pornography and paedophilia. There are men out there on the prowl and our girls are showing far too much flesh and we should be thinking of covering them up.
They have a point worth considering and so I sat down and considered it.
The first thing that came to mind is, I suppose, the least obvious of all but the best place to start: where did the traditional attire come from, and why was it introduced in the first place? Well, indlamu is obviously sexual in origin, since it covers the sex parts. But there are three theories about why this clothing was worn to cover the sex parts. The first is that, like the fig leaves of Adam and Eve, indlamu is designed to hide things. The second idea is that indlamu is there to protect the private parts (from dirt, accidental injury, and so on). The third idea—and for me the most intriguing—is that indlamu was originally designed so that various special charms and medicines could be worn near the sex parts to enhance fertility. Over time these special charms came to be replaced by beads and buttons acquired from the shops of the European traders. I find this suggestion intriguing, since it also explains the origin of emajobo. Whichever of these suggestions we accept, it is clear that indlamu is an outfit passed down from hundreds of years ago. But that doesn’t mean that it must therefore be abandoned now. In addition, it is well-known that most missionaries were horrified by indlamu and other traditional clothing when they first arrived in southern Africa and spent much time trying to get the girls to cover up. The missionaries were largely unsuccessful, although they did achieve a transformation with the Herero, whose neck-to-toe now-traditional dress is unmistakably mission-designed. The fact that the missionaries didn’t like it is also not an argument for abandoning it.
Secondly, the outfits worn today are in fact considerably more covering than they used to be. Amongst the photographs held in the national archive are ones that show what the girls were wearing for umhlanga back in the 1880s, and the outfits in those photographs are much closer to the ones worn today by the Zulu maidens—outfits that I have heard Swazis laugh at for being too revealing. The Zulu Reed Dance was in fact discontinued for many years (a lot of traditional celebrations were banned after the Anglo-Zulu wars) and when it was reintroduced it returned in some ways as more ‘traditional’ than ours is. Another way of saying this is to say that our Umhlanga has actually evolved over time. Grass and skins have been replaced by cloth and beads and buttons rather than shells and grass knots and the like have become commonplace.
Thirdly—the bottom line, so to speak—is that, just as beauty is said to reside in the eye of the beholder, so does lust. Evil doesn’t come through the eye but arises out of the heart. A man can lust after a fully-clothed girl just as much as he can after a maiden wearing tassels and indlamu. The question to answer is whether or not indlamu encourages or provokes lust and desire. Certainly many rapists would claim this is the case: for it is an old, old, argument that women who wear ‘revealing’ outfits are ‘asking’ for rape. This so-called argument is rubbish of course, just an attempt by men who are out-of-control to justify their wrong actions. The truth is that it is not what you see that defiles you, but how you react to what you see. Seeing a maiden dancing in indlamu can be a beautiful, colourful, sight or it can be a turn-on. It depends on you, the beholder. And even then, even if what you see turns you on it doesn’t mean that you have to stalk the girl, yell ‘Sisi, you are so sexy I’m proposing love’ and plan to rape her as soon as you can get the chance. No, we can all see a beautiful sunset without wanting to own it. There is no intrinsic problem with indlamu or women wearing trousers or even going naked if that happened to be the case. The problem is not in the clothing or even the wearers, but in the eyes of the beholders. Unfortunately we live in a world that sells sex as merchandise and far too many men have never learnt the discipline of self-control. By nourishing rather than rejecting the wrong that is in their hearts they cannot resist the temptation; indeed, they look for it. Indlamu might be an outfit hundreds of years old, but there is really nothing wrong with it. Saying that the outfit encourages rape says more about the heart of man than it does about the costume.