The Mbona cult (also spelled M'Bona) is a system of religious beliefs and rituals which is currently restricted to the most southerly parts of Malawi, but which probably extended more widely, both in other parts of Malawi and adjacent parts of Mozambique. The cult is found mainly among the local Mang'anja people and its former extent reflected that people's wider past distribution. It aims to secure abundant rains at the appropriate season through the making of propitiatory gifts at cult shrines, and includes rainmaking rituals in the event of drought. It has been related to a number of other territorial cults among the Maravi cluster of related African peoples which aim to secure the well-being of the people of a particular area secure from drought, floods or food shortages. The cult is believed to be a long established one, although estimates of how long it has existed are speculative, as the earliest definite record of its existence dates from 1862.
There are a number of debates about the sect. The first is what the essential nature of M'Bona is, whether a natural spirit, a deified single human or combination of several such people, a priest or other human intermediary with a god or even the personification of the suffering of the conquered people, whether this identity has changed over time, and whether the name M'Bona has been applied to what were originally different entities in different places. The second is whether the current stories about M'Bona are myths, created to explain the cult after it was formed, oral traditions with possibly a much distorted factual basis or a form of oral history from which actual past events can be recovered. The third is about the exact historical role of the M'Bona cult and whether its ritual practices as recorded in the 20th centuries are a continuation of those of earlier times.
Much of the study of M'Bona was undertaken by Father Jan Matthew Schoffeleers (1928 – 2011), an anthropologist and researcher into African Religion, who was a Catholic missionary in the Lower Shire valley from 1955 to 1963 and then followed a largely academic career in Britain, Malawi and the Netherlands until his retirement in 1998. His extensive study of the cult began in the 1950s and he published eight books or papers on it between 1972 and 1992, besides two academic theses.van Binsbergen (2011), pp. 456, 462-3
Historical background From early sources A number of speculative reconstructions of the origin of the Maravi cluster of peoples suggest that they entered the area of central and southern Malawi in relatively small groups from the 14th century, and that the trade in ivory they developed with the Muslim traders based on the coast of Nampula and Zambezia provinces was central to the rise of centralised Maravi states in the late 16th and 17th centuries in an area they had long occupied. The later conflicts between these states. The political changes in the area between 1570 and 1640 were said to result from the disruption of that trade by the Portuguese, who had been excluded from that trade, and their African allies.Alpers (1975), pp. 46-9, 53
However, there is no documentary evidence for a Maravi movement into the Lower Zambezi and Lower Shire river valleys before the late 16th century, let alone their forming organised states in that area before the 1570s, or for any substantial ivory trade between that area and the coastal Muslims.Newitt (1982), pp. 147-8 The earliest European account of those river valleys and its people relates to an expedition of 1569,Newitt (1982), pp. 152-3 which places the Makua people along the Lower Zambezi valley and the related Lolo people around Tete, with no indication of powerful Maravi states in the area. According to a further account of 1590, the Makua had recently lost control of the south bank of the Zambezi and the Lolo had been displaced eastward: these two groups then occupied roughly the same area of Zambezia province as today.Newitt (1982), pp. 154-5 There are also several contemporary or near-contemporary accounts which indicate a Portuguese involvement in a rather limited Zambezi ivory trade in the mid-16th century, probably involving the Makua people rather than the Maravi.Newitt (1982), pp. 147-9
Although these sources do not specifically name the invaders that displaced the Makua and Lolo, it seems that they came from the north and are plausibly interpreted as being Maravi and as forming the Lundu state, although the chiefly title of Lundu and the name Maravi are not recorded until 1616, and the title Kalonga, that of the most senior Maravi ruler, is recorded only from 1660.Newitt (1982), p. 157 Rather than a Maravi empire being formed well to the north of the Zambezi and expanding southwards, as in several accounts, it is more probable that a number of related but rather small groups from north of the Zambezi entered Zambezia in the 16th century and coalesced into loosely connected Maravi chieftainships which were forced, when their further advance was prevented by the Portuguese, to recognise one or more paramount chiefs.Newitt (1982), pp. 158-9
In the early 17th century, according to Portuguese accounts recorded in 1648, an individual named Muzura, who had worked for the Portuguese, established himself as the overlord of the Maravi chieftainships on the north bank of the Zambezi with Portuguese support in 1608, and he retained this position until around 1635, defeating an attempt of the Lundu chief to revolt in 1622.Newitt (1982), p. 159Schoffeleers (1992), p. 127 One theory is that Muzura's successors adopted the title of Kalonga and ruled what came to be called the Maravi Empire,Newitt (1982), p. 160 including three other substantial kingdoms or paramount chieftainships: Lundu along the Lower Shire, Kaphwiti in the Shire Highlands and Undi to the west of the Shire valley, in the area of what is now the Mozambique-Zambia border.Schoffeleers (1992), p. 42 Another is that the Kalonga state, whose main seat is believed to have been south of Lake Malawi,Phiri (1979), p. 9 already existed but did not take part in the expansion into Zambezia so was unknown to the Portuguese in the early 17th Century. In this reconstruction, Muzura formed a state in the Mwanza area of the mid-Shire valley, between Lundu and Kalonga, which Kalonga took over by on his death, only then gaining paramountcy over the three chieftainships to the southSchoffeleers (1987), p. 339
The people of the Maravi cluster diversified over time to become, from north to south the Tumbuka, Chewa, Nyanja and Mang'anja, although these successors retained certain common beliefs.Newitt (1982), pp. 147-8
Pre-colonial 19th century At the end of the 18th century, the original Lundu kingdom among the Mang'anja people was based in the Lower Shire valley, but was vulnerable to aggression from Portuguese slave-traders. Over a half -century beginning in the early 19th century, an individual named Mankhokwe, who already controlled the Katchsi shrine in Thyolo District in the Shire Highlands, gained control of the Middle Shire and western Shire highlands He then claimed the paramountcy and title of Lundu, and attempted to gain control of the Khulubvi shrine. In the Lower Shire, another chief with the title Tengani built up a force able to resist the Portuguese threat, at least temporarily, and the original Lundu state and its title holder descended into obscurity.Schoffeleers (1972), pp. 74-5
The situation of the Mang'anja in the 1860s, as described by members of David Livingstone's expedition or the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, was that there was a hierarchy of chiefs and headmen of varying power and influence. Theoretically, the paramount chief with the title Lundu was at the apex of this hierarchy, his prestige deriving from his control of one or more rain shrines, but his power over other major chiefs was limited. In practice, Mankhokwe, the pretender to the Lundu title had more power than the hereditary title-holder.White (1987), pp. 46-7 Senior chiefs controlling significant areas were in theory appointed by the paramount but they had followings in the areas they controlled and, in some cases, also controlled rain shrines: as the provision of rain was central to Mang'anja religion and daily life, being the patron of such a shrine was a source of significant power.White (1987), p. 60 The nature of one shrine was described in 1862, when it was claimed that the spirit of a former chief, M'Bona, communicated with a prophetess in dreams.Rangeley (1953), p. 17
Although an Afro-Portuguese slave-trader, Paul Mariano II, managed to defeat Tengani, capture many slaves and destroy the Khulubvi shrine in 1862,Schoffeleers (1992), p. 96 Tengani survived with a reduced chiefdom and was later recognised by the colonial authorities as the senior Mang'anja chief. However some of the Kololo that Livingstone had brought from Botswana as porters for his Zambezi expedition, and left in the Shire Valley at the end of his expedition in 1864, established chieftainships along the Middle and Lower Shire valley outside Tengani's influence. Mankhokwe had to face Kololo pressure on the Middle Shire and Yao attacks in the Shire Highlands, so he and his people later migrated to the hills west of the Shire River, deserting the ancestral Mankhokwe rain shrine, which fell into disuse once its Mang'anja devotees had left the area.Schoffeleers (1972), p. 85 Paul Mariano II died in 1863 and was succeeded by his young son, Paul Mariano III. After Paul Mariano III reached adulthood, he reached an agreement with the Portuguese authorities in 1879 which left him in control of the Lower Shire Valley as far south as its confluence with the Zambezi, until a subsequent Portuguese governor attacked Mariano's stronghold in 1884-85, following which many of Mariano's chikunda, or native soldiers, moved into the area around the Khulubvi shrine, destroying villages and taking slaves until when, from 1889 onwards, first a Portuguese expedition led by Alexandre de Serpa Pinto and later a British one under Henry Hamilton Johnston entered the area to quell the disorder. The Lower Shire Valley was divided between the two powers by an 1891 Anglo-Portuguese treatySchoffeleers (1992), pp. 97-8 The British Central Africa Protectorate that was set up in 1891 protected the Mang'anja people from further attacks by Mariano's former chikunda or the Kololo chiefs of the Middle Shire, and the protectorate authorities later recognised Tengani as protector of the Khulubvi shrine.Schoffeleers (1992), pp. 98-9
The M'Bona cult The nature of M'Bona The history of the M'Bona sect is closely bound up with that of the Mang'anja people, who currently live mainly in the north of Nsanje district and south of Chikwawa district in the Lower Shire valley of Malawi, and also in adjacent areas of Mozambique. However, before the migrations of the Yao and Lomwe into the north-western part of their former territory and the Sena in the south, all of which began in the mid-19th century, they had ranged from the mid-Zambezi valley near Vila de Sena through the Lower and Middle Shire valley and into the western part of the Shire Highlands.Schoffeleers (1972), pp. 81-3