Kathanga Cultural Ceremony

The Kathanga cultural ceremony is an annual event is one of Zambia's oldest traditional ceremonies having been celebrated by the Nkoya people for over 500 years. The ceremony is a two day event that is usually held between the last two days of June and the first two days of July. The Ceremony is usually held on a weekend (Saturday and Sunday) around that time of year between June and July.

At the event, crowds wait in anticipation, two pubescent nkoya girls called tunkhanga (guinea fowl) accompanied by women and several male drummers make a solemn entrance into the arena.

The girls are clad in flimsy knee-long wrappers while their bare chests expose breasts that are as sharp pointed as firm guavas. They come out as women and will not have to hide themselves in a blanket anymore; save for covering their thighs with chitenge wrapper in public.

No longer will they be called kankanga, a novice, trainee-woman possessed by kanga, but mbereki, ‘woman’ and member of a solidary group of women, well informed about social and physical details of her role as wife, daughter-in-law, mother and mistress, and well aware of the rights and duties these roles demand.

The girls are draped in long strings of beads, across their chests, over their shoulders and under their arms, accentuating their uncovered young breasts in all their glory. After their solemn coming-out dance, the two girls involved show their dexterity in a lively and playful musical performance, which however strikingly resembles the Nkoya sacred makwasha dance strictly reserved for the elderly of both genders.

The Nkoyas and people from other parts of the country converged at the festival grounds. On the eve of the first day performers, mainly villagers and school children from all over Nkoyaland, converged at the Kathanga site to spend the night there, and prepare for their imminent public performances.

The best of the Nkoya traditional dances, makwasha, lunhwa, kamunyelele, and ntomboke, the chief’s royal dance are performed. Dancers slowly make their appearance in single file in front of a lead singer next to the drummers and shilimba (xylophone) player.

Towards the end, they dance while seated on the ground alternating with the virtuoso movements of hips and buttocks of which Nkoya girls (all of whom have received extensive puberty training to actively and independently move their abdomens in view of their prospective sexual roles).

They respectfully clap their hands while seated in reverence of the chiefs, who have come to be part of the ceremony. The first modern Kathanga Ceremony was held in 1988 at the palace of Chief Mwene Mutondo, and it then consisted of a veritable inventory of all the varieties of Nkoya musical and dancing expressions, from all spheres of community and individual life.