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Zulu Virgins
- Thread starter TheBigOne
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Umhlanga [um̩ɬaːŋɡa], or Reed Dance ceremony, is an annual Swazi event that takes place at the end of August or at the beginning of September. In Eswatini, tens of thousands of unmarried and childless Swazi girls and women travel from the various chiefdoms to the Ludzidzini Royal Village to participate in the eight-day event.
Today’s Reed Dance is a revival of the older “umcwasho” custom. Under that practice, unmarried girls were grouped into age-regiments. If a woman had become pregnant outside marriage, her family paid a cow to the local chief.
All girls are required to undergo a virginity test before they are allowed to participate in a royal dance.
The girls wear traditional attire, including beadwork, izigege, izinculuba and imintsha that show their bottoms. They also wear anklets, bracelets, necklaces, and colourful sashes. Each sash has appendages of a different colour, which denote whether or not the girl is betrothed.
As part of the ceremony, the young women dance bare-breasted for their king, and each maiden carries a long reed, which is then deposited as they approach the king. The girls take care to choose only the longest and strongest reeds, and then carry them towering above their heads in a slow procession up the hill to Enyokeni Palace. The procession is led by the chief Zulu princess, who takes a prominent role throughout the festival.If the reed should break before the girl reaches that point, it is considered a sign that the girl has already been sexually active.
The reed dance videos were once classified as age-restricted content by YouTube, which angered the users who had uploaded them. This included Lazi Dlamini, the head of TV Yabantu, an online video production company that aims to produce content that "protects, preserves and restores African values". Working with more than 200 cultural groupings across the country and in neighbouring Eswatini, Dlamini organised a series of protests against Google to force them to rethink their position. YouTube apologized, and allowed the showing of genuine African traditional videos. According to a representative for the company, they lifted the restriction, as it is not Google's policy to "restrict nudity in such instances where it is culturally or traditionally appropriate".[13][14]
Umhlanga (ceremony) - Wikipedia
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