Mandeni Reed Dance maiden champions virginity through traditional Zulu values

Keeping your virginity and walking tall is hard for young women today, but there are still some who stick to the traditional Zulu values.

24-year-old Brigton Shandu from Mandeni, Emacambini said the many insults she has had to endure for her standpoint have given her a thick skin and she no longer worries about what other people say.

Shandu is journalist by day and writes poetry as her passion, performing poems and praise singing whenever she can.

She has attended the annual Reed Dance ceremony at the Enyokeni Royal Palace in Nongoma every September since 2016 until the start of the pandemic.

The Reed Dance was reintroduced in South Africa in 1991 by King Goodwill Zwelethini as part of his campaign to reduce the spread of HIV and the high numbers of teen pregnancies.

Pre-covid the Reed Dance would see up to 50 000 maidens from KZN, Mpumalanga, Gauteng and Swaziland carrying a reed from the Nongoma River to the palace to present to the king.

According to Zulu mythology if a young woman who is not a virgin takes part in the ceremony, her reed will break and embarrass her in full public view.

Shandu says she is often judged harshly, with the gossip mill eager to report that she is no longer a virgin.

“Ubuntombi (young womanhood) is a stage every Zulu girl goes through and it is entirely an individual’s choice to keep it as long as she wants. I chose to keep mine and I will gladly advance to the next stage of my life when the time is right for me, preferably when I am married. This does not mean my peers who are already parents or sexually active are less important than me. It all comes down to personal choice and I am currently enjoy ubuntombi and will keep on doing it,” said Shandu.

According to Zulu tradition an intombi is a young woman who has passed the pubescent stage and has, through communal recognition, officially entered a stage of ubuntombi before marriage. In this context, intombi or izintombi refers to women who go for virginity testing or who maintain abstinence. Women who are still at the same stage of ubuntombi but have children are referred to as young mothers or non-izintombi.

Shandu said she was not forced to go for virginity testing and started doing so with pride when she started attending the Reed Dance.

“I was at a traditional event and virginity testing was being conducted. I decided to go in and get tested. Since then, I started regularly attending events and embrace my virginity.”

She said she chose to keep her virginity until marriage because she wants to honour her father.

“I believe the dignity of a man is upon the behaviour of his children. I want to keep my father’s dignity and make him proud.”

She encouraged young women to get support from the elders in their communities, because society was not kind to women who chose this path.

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