Ndlovukati

Ndlovukati (pl. Tindlovukati) is a Swati title (Indlovukazi in Zulu) that roughly means Queen Mother or Senior Queen, and is given preferentially to the mother of the King or another female royal of high-status if the King's mother has died.

Origins

Ndlovukati literally means She-Elephant. She is formally the joint head of state with her son, the Ngwenyama or Lion of Swaziland. Her son however is seen as the administrative head of state, while the Ndlovukati herself is seen as the spiritual and national head of state. She controls important ritual substances (sometimes called medicines) and knowledge necessary to the inauguration of the rule of an Ngwenyama, to rainmaking,^{[citation needed]} and to the renewal of national and kingly strength each year in the Ncwala national-royal rituals, which link royal and national well-being through invocation of the powers of royal ancestors.

History

Historically there have been a number of tindlovukati with great substantial power as well as influence, especially though not exclusively in periods of regency. The power of the ndlovukati was explicitly understood as a counterweight to that of tigwenyama (kings) and also to potentially rival princes of royal blood. Like royal governors who were not from the royal Dlamini lineage, the ndlovukati could not succeed to the kingship, thus offering an alternative source of power to rein in overweaning tingwenyama who could not challenge directly to be the ngwenyama.

During the long reign of the Ngwenyama Sobhuza II, (1899-1982), his grandmother the Ndlovukati Labotsibeni Mdluli (also known as Gwamile) was the last great ndlovukati, being the primary Swazi political power from Sobhuza's succession as an infant in 1899 until his accession to full power in 1922. However, over the following 60 years the practical power and influence of the office of ndlovukati became greatly overshadowed, in part because the British chose to recognize the powers of the king (whom they called the "Paramount Chief") over those of the senior, in part because of the force of Sobhuza's personality in contrast to the tindlovukati who succeeded his own mother after she died in 1938, and in part because of conservative aristocratic Swazi male reactions to colonialism, which created a new and more rigid form of patriarchy now called and argued by some to be mischaracterised as "traditional." The office of Ndlovukati suffered a further blow after the death of Sobhuza II, when a holder of the office was implicated in the political machinations of Prince Mfanasibili aimed at usurping the kingship. Thus the political-cultural ideals and historical meanings of the office expressed above do not really characterise the Ndlovukati today (2006), whose position has become much weaker than that of the Ngwenyama.

At any time where there is both an ngwenyama and an ndlovukati, which is most of the time, there are two royal headquarters villages. Even during a regency when the king is a minor, a proto-form of his headquarters is prepared. The King's headquarters is where he carries out his administrative duties; the Ndlovukati's, which is called umphakatsi, (meaning "the inside," and a term also applied to the royal insiders and close allies as a group) is the national capital and spiritual and ceremonial home of the nation.

References