Divining the siege of Mugombane

This paper tracks between oral histories, historical documents, early ethnographies and the testimony of a modern traditional healer in order to understand and interpret archaeological evidence for divination and ritual activity practiced during a siege event that took place over 150 years ago. This spiritual dimension, taken together with physical evidence for the death and defeat of the Kekana, when interpreted against the nineteenth century socio-economic landscape, proffers an explanation for the apparent silence in the Kekana oral record about the siege. Contrary to prevailing interpretations of this silence, this paper considers the social and spiritual obligations of the chief towards his subjects and argues that the impact of the siege was so profound that it rendered the chief of the besieged, Mugombane, socially and spiritually bankrupt. This situation would have provoked the removal of the chief and the manufacture of a suitable history to give the new chief legitimacy and the chiefdom continuity.