ZAMBIA LETTERS, 10

Detail from a concrete wall at LuCAC

11/06/2025

Victoria Phiri is the director of the Livingstone Museum. Yesterday she had some errands to run in Lusaka and in connection with that she took the time to meet me, Hanna and Naoko at LuCAC. Naoko is a freelance curator who lives in Scotland. She is originally from Japan and I will return to her in a later post.

We had asked to meet Victoria because her museum runs an exhibition on Zambian masks and because, according to Victor, she possesses a great deal of knowledge on the subject.

Our conversation quickly became a discussion about gender. After our meetings with Mr Gankhanali and Mr Makashi, we already knew that only men are allowed to wear the Makishi masks. Mrs Phiri also told us a few other things. To begin with, women who have gone through menopause can also become members of the secret society. The reason for this is that according to the traditional Zambian view of gender, they are no longer women, they are men. They cannot wear the masks, but they can join the societies and learn their secrets. They can gain insight into the traditions, participate in their preparations and help out in the construction of masks.

I asked her to explain the reason for this in more detail. She said that in these cultures gender is fluid. A man or a woman can have several roles. She can be a man in some situations and a woman in others. The reverse also applies to men. For example, her maternal uncle is her mother, since he is the brother of her mother. According to her, this results in him immediately taking on a feminine, maternal role towards her. He is the one who comforts her when she is sad, who hugs her and gives her loving words. He kisses her, pats her on the forehead and performs all kinds of actions she associates with the maternal role. But in relation to other people he would not necessarily exhibit that behavior.

She herself is the father of her brother's children and she notices that this makes her apply a more masculine behavior towards them. In addition, she calls her father's wife ”father”, also when they meet in the streets, and in those situations, everyone else immediately knows what kind of relationship they have, because of the words they use when they are greeting one another. She is also the wife of her brother's wife. 

So, as I understand it, all these roles are taken seriously, both in relation to to physical interaction and alson semantically. People go to great lengths in following these roles and the behaviors associated with them.

According to Phiri, this has a great significance for the societies that practice mask. Here we find the explanation for their origin. Mr Makashi told us how the masks arose as a way for men to gain more influence in relation to women. Mrs Phiri was able to give us more background information about why they experienced such a need to begin with.

Among the people who practice mask, it is the women who give power to men. The societies are matrilineal and this is expressed in the fact that the man moves to the woman's home after their the wedding. He moves to her village. As he stays there, he is scrutinized by her village. Is he a good father and husband? Does he treat his wife and children properly? After a long time, sometimes up to ten years, the village may decide that he has proven himself. They will then throw a surprise party for him and let him know him that he now has the right to move back to his own village again, with his family. This doesn’t always happen, but if it does, he also gains the right to take on a leading position in that village. Only those men who have returned home, after having lived in their wife's village, can become leaders. 

This means that it is indirectly women who give the male leaders their power and according to Mrs Phiri they can also take it away from them. A leader in these societies must always get along well with the women in order to maintain his position. Therefore, the conclusions colonizers, anthropologists and missionaries often make, that these cultures are patriarchally structured and male-dominated, are incorrect. They do not have access to the whole story so they do not see the nuances in the structures they are facing.

Mrs Phiri also believes that one of the reasons why men invented masks is so that they will be able to have a voice. Men do not have the right to speak freely in everyday life, in their societies. When they put on a mask, they can say what they really mean. They do this by singing and by disguising their voices, as they perform.

These structures are being threatened today, under the pressure of Christianity. With missionary activity comes patriarchal structures that are alien to these cultures and in conflict with their traditions. It threatens the traditions of masks, the traditional identities of these peoples and the knowledge connected with their way of life.

As for that knowledge, it is often linked to a traditional medicine which is rooted in an understanding of different animals and plants and how they can be used for health-giving purposes. When I ask her if she sees any direct connection between the climate crisis and traditional culture, she answers immediately by giving a concrete example. 

The camps that these communities organize for young men, Kulumba, as part of their initiation rites, are traditionally located in remote areas in the forested areas. They often lie near a burial ground. These burial grounds are, as mentioned before, the place where the masks exit from. The remoteness of these areas, in the bushes, are necessary because that is where the spirits of the dead can be resurrected, as these spirits also are spirits found in nature. 

The place must be wild and more or less untouched by human influence. When the boys receive their training in these camps, this is an important conditions for their education. They must learn how to conserve nature and interact with it in a sustainable manner. This includes how to take care of trees, as well animals and other plants, in their context. They must in other words study plants and animals in their natural, wild, habitat. In this way, they can see how healthy animals move, how sick animals move, and what animals eat when they get sick. This inspires medical practices. Through this they can enter into the essence of animals and merge with them. This intimate form of empathy is a precondition for their ability to become one with their masks. That is; to act like the animals and to dance their spirits. All this knowledge disappears when wild nature is wiped out because the opportunity to study these topics goes away.

Parallel to this exploitation, the boys in the villages are exposed to a strong cultural influence by the missionaries. They are told that the masks are evil devilish beings. Therefore, young boys' interest in learning the masks has decreased in modern times. This is partially due to them no longer having experiences of nature, but it is also because they are becoming more and more afraid to be associated with something that is being labelled as evil. According to Mrs Phiri, there is thus a close connection between Christianity, the climate crisis and the alienation that is arising as a result from the loss of traditional culture.

I ask her if she has ever curated any exhibitions based on these perspectives. Her answer is negative. ”It is completely impossible”, she says. She goes on to tell an example from an experience with a museum in the North-West Province. She was hired as a guest curator to do an exhibition about masks. At that time, missionaries preached that there was a connection between HIV and masks. She chose to do an exhibition that explained that such a connection doesn´t exist; that the traditions of mask instead teaches sexual responsibility to young men and prepares them for their roles in society. She was told that she had to change her perspective, and present the missionaries' perspective, which she refused. The episode ended with her leaving her assignment. She has, at other occasions, also been directly approached by ministers who have exerted similar pressure on her. She has been informed that unless she presents masks as a problem for society, authorities will not fund her exhibitions. 

There is an insidious economy tied to these pressures which is linked to well intended aid. In order to get money from aid organizations, Zambian authorities have to point at problems in their society. For example, authorities can apply for money if they can argue that women live under patriarchal oppression. According to Mrs Phiri, this has on several occasions led to authorities, such as the police, fabricating stories of oppression. They subsequently receive funds to counteract it. 

It leads to Zambians beginning to present their own culture as problematic, when it at times really isn’t. This has, in its extension, led to Zambians beginning to perceive their own culture as problematic. The tendency is linked a larger, colonial, problem that is rooted in the history of Christian influence in Zambia. It shapes the conditions for aid activities in the country and accelerates an experience of alienation in the rural communities.