Reed Dance

Monarch’s nearly five-decade reign bridged apartheid, democracy and modern South Africa, leaving a lasting mark on Zulu cultural identity and traditional leadership

The multinational’s restrictions on videos of Reed Dancers sexualise cultural practices, say critics

The disturbing trends run counter to the country’s constitutional and legislative advances.

The reintroduction of the annual reed dance has decreased the spread of Aids in the country, the IFP’s Mangosuthu Buthelezi has said.

Debates around cultural practices like lobola will always become a spectacle if they don’t address its relevance to the people who practise it.

Swazi unions are calling on the government to pay out a 4.5% salary increase and end the teachers’ strike or risk a boycott of the reed dance.

A piece at this year’s Dance Umbrella interrogates the annual reed dance, in which young virgins are presented before King Goodwill Zwelithini.

Fikile Khubone was one of the 26 000 Zulu maidens who turned out for uMkhosi WoMhlanga — the Reed Dance — on September 11.

A girl participating in the reed-dance ceremony at King Goodwill Zwelithini’s palace on the weekend was gang-raped, it was reported on Tuesday.

The women participating in the reed dance in KwaZulu-Natal must not expose themselves in public, the African National Congress Women’s League said.

Swaziland’s King Mswati III on Thursday sent more than 50 000 young women into the fields to cut reeds for an annual ritual next week.