Medicine and ritual vessels known as nhungubani (plural, tinhungubani) in Tsonga and gona in Shona have been found throughout the northeastern region of South Africa and into the adjacent areas of Zimbabwe and Mozambique, in the places where the Shona and Tsonga peoples reside. These special containers were made from horn, wood, and shaped calabashes, which diviners decorated and individualized. Although most healers have their own sets, all the vessels—whether old or new—are considered to belong to the ancestors (shikwembu), an ownership that added potency to the medicines stored in them.

The opening at the top of many vessels is plugged with a carved stopper, called nhlotswa in Tsonga. One end of the stopper is long and tapered to stir the medicine; the other end often terminates in a figurative image, usually the head of a man, sometimes a complete human figure or animal. Many of these stoppers are made from a medicinal wood such as xitzalala, which is believed to have a curative effect.1

The medicine vessel in figure 1 is one of eight gona obtained in March 1993 in the Bieni area of Mozambique from renowned herbalist and diviner Chivange Nbanyere. Nbanyere was born in 1914 and inherited the gona in 1963. They were carved by a man of the Hlengwe (Tsonga) group and had been passed down over four generations from the first healer (nyanga), a woman of Nbanyere's clan line, who, it was said, received her power from white beings living under the sea. Nbanyere believed that the set dates from the end of the nineteenth century, although the collector who obtained it suggested that it is from the early twentieth.2

When the "medicine" inside the gona dries, the spirit leaves and the gona is no longer considered active. Thus, after inheriting the vessels, Nbanyere had to call on another nyanga to reactivate them. Mposi Chali was brought in to fill the vessels with a substance that emits a vapor in which the ancestral spirits reside. As a sign of the reactivation, Nbanyere applied green paint to some of the gona. He used the vessels until the early 1980s, by which time the substance had evaporated. As ancestral items, the gona could not be sold; however, through an exchange of "medicines," a dealer acquired them, a transaction that could only occur after deliberation with Nbanyere's son, who would inherit his powers and was serving his apprenticeship at the time. The medicine vessels that Nbanyere now uses are horns with plastic lids. He is apparently uninterested in the particular forms of the old or the new gona; what was and remains important is the ancestral spirit and its associated powers.

The vessels were referred to as gona by the Shona-speaking interpreter (not by Nbanyere, who speaks Tsonga). This term may be incorrect, as the vessels "held" the spirits of various ancestors and served as vehicles through which the ancestral spirits were contacted—that is, they functioned as repositories for ancestral spirits rather than as medicine containers. However, the forms of these vessels are strikingly similar to the forms of traditional medicine gourds (see figs. 1–4). The vessels were kept hidden in separate baskets covered with feathers, and the spirit "residing" in the vessel was called upon during divination. Each vessel represented a different ancestor and served different purposes.

The imagery featured in all three tinhungubani shown in figures 2, 3, and 4 is figurative (although in the one at the right it is less explicitly so). The stopper of the vessel at the left is in the form of the upper torso of a man wearing a Western-style suit, while the vessel itself is decorated with a human face. The stopper of the vessel in the middle represents a human head. Although the decoration of tinhungubani is a long-established practice, the inclusion of figurative imagery on these vessels—and in most aspects of the religious/healing context in South Africa—is relatively new. No descriptions of carved figurative stoppers appear in records from the late nineteenth century, and no objects of this kind exist in the collections of medicinal apparatus from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Henri Alexandre Junod—who recorded in detail the social and religious life of the Tsonga (Thonga) in The Life of a South African Tribe—referred to gourds in connection with protection in battle, but did not mention any figurative element.3 For example, a photograph in his book shows the "great exorcist" Hokoza with several medicine gourds hanging around his neck, all of which have stoppers, but none featuring a representation of a human head.4

The introduction of the figurative element in the healing context in South Africa in the early twentieth century can be traced back to an influence from the north—to the Shona and, in particular, the Ndau (one of the five Shona groups). The healers who use these vessels are often exorcists associated with a "possession cult" that arrived in South Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. Contrary to local custom, these diviners are inhabited by a spirit who is not a family member. Hammond-Tooke suggested a Zimbabwe origin for this cult, because it is more typical of the belief system as practiced among the Shona.5 The word for "exorcist" used by Tsonga-speakers is nyamusoro, which is Ndau,6 and a number of Tsonga diviners interviewed in the field in the late 1980s asserted that they were possessed by Ndau spirits. One of the beaded, decorated bands (timpandu) worn across the chest was an outward physical sign for this spirit. In the gourd at the right, the figurative element is not in the carving but in the beadwork.7 Attached to the sides of the upper bulge of the shaped gourd are several loops of stringed beads, recalling the design of earrings worn by women from the Northern Province. This feature is also found on some beaded dolls—more accurately, child figures (nwana, "child" in Tsonga)—a form associated with women.8 The inclusion of the looped rings would suggest that this gourd is female, and that it would have contained female "medicines." "Medicines" among the Tsonga are gendered, a typical aspect of the social structures and gender relationships in Tsonga communities.

Despite the division of labor between Tsonga men and women that commonly takes place in performing tasks such as building a house or clearing the fields, there are as many instances of reciprocal involvement for the completion of such projects among the Tsonga. Numerous instances of mutual interdependence were described by both Junod and Luc de Heusch.9 Both authors interpreted these in terms of a principle of "sexual complementarity" that maintains "the symbolic conjunction of the sexes [as being] essential to success in any field."10 Among the several practices involving healing and rituals that De Heusch observed as examples of "complementarity" in everyday Tsonga life are the following two: when a girl was ill, a boy brought medicine to her, and vice versa; and if a woman carried out a rite, she had to offer a he-goat or a male bird, while a man had to sacrifice a she-goat or hen. It is a complementarity echoed in Junod's earlier explanations that "medicines" have a gendered character: "The female drugs are used principally for sprinkling the army and the assegais, the male for treating diseases."11 Junod also described the well-established behavior rituals between a hunter and his chief wife and the many protocols and taboos that conditioned the wife's behavior.12 Husband and wife were inextricably linked through their union to ensuring the success of the hunt and his safety.

The third gourd's reference to the female is unusual, since most carved stoppers feature male forms. Some of these male figures are wearing head-rings, an old form associated with leadership, maturity, and wisdom; they may be interpreted as denoting status and indicating that the "medicines" in those vessels are reserved for male leaders or elders or for issues around them. The suit featured on the stopper at the left, while more modern than a head-ring, could also indicate the status of the medicine vessel's owner; suits were worn by wealthy men or migrant workers, as they were the only people who could afford such attire. Animals on stoppers refer to the contents in the containers and to qualities associated with these animals. At one level then, these carved stoppers serve to identify a gourd's contents, like the labels on the bottles in orthodox, allopathic dispensaries.

Beyond their function as lids and labels, the stoppers have a deeper significance in terms of their ownership and association with an ancestor, the spirit through whom the healer works. While the images remain partly associative, they, like so much else of Tsonga manufacture, are complex and multiple. There is no simple one-to-one correspondence between form and meaning. Meaning lies as much in what is represented as in ownership and the context in which the objects were used. The figurative element is but one aspect of a whole complex of decoration and enhancement that acknowledges the presence of the ancestor in the ritual spaces where communication and healing can take place.