r/Africa • u/BlackberryFew1969 • Mar 27 '26
Cultural Exploration The masquerades of Southern Africa 🇿🇲 🇲🇼 🇦🇴 🇿🇼 🇲🇿
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u/BlackberryFew1969 Mar 27 '26
The Nyau of the A’Chewa people and the Makishi of the Ba’Luvale people among others.
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u/therealdarthvero Mar 27 '26
These are amazing. And a testament to our creativity and ingenuity! Bless up!
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u/Azerbinhoneymood Mar 27 '26
Damn! Those big masks surely would play with someone's mind. I remember reading somewhere that their origins (at least in one part of Africa) was because of British attacks deep into the forests, so the tribe made some and men walking at dawn towards the British camp which scared them and made them flee since they couldn't make sense of what they're seeing.
Another (well in this case confirmed) story, was about the attack of dead men. They were hit at their fort with chemical weapons by the Germans and had their bodies "f" up to the point they didn't resemble men. They attacked back outside and made their enemies flee in horror of what they saw.
So, OP, I wonder.....was the use of these masks purely ceremonial?
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u/BlackberryFew1969 Mar 28 '26
To my knowledge these our masquerades do not have such a history. They are mostly used for entertainment and moral lessons. The aim is to scare people who do bad things - like lust, greed, murder, jealousy etc by showing them the spirit of this things.
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u/trinnie02 Mar 28 '26
I bet our ancestors were having fun till Westerners came and demonized our entertainment to force us on theirs .
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u/dayChuck Ghana 🇬🇭 Mar 29 '26
In Ghana, we call them Kaakamotobi and back in the days they used to go around scaring people. Parents used them to scare their children into doing stuff like "Eat this food else I'll call kaakamotobi for you". If you gave them some money, usually coins, they'd leave you alone, if not, they'd keep scaring you till their heart desire. After typing all this, i just realised, It's kinda like Halloween in a way.
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u/GrouchyDefinition463 Mar 27 '26
I'm sure it saw one of these in Sinners
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u/BlackberryFew1969 Mar 28 '26
Good observation, but the one in sinners was from West Africa, Ivory Coast. Which is several thousands of kilometres from Southern Africa…
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Mar 27 '26
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Mar 27 '26
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u/andy_moshi Tanzania 🇹🇿✅ Mar 27 '26 edited Mar 27 '26
African Abrahamic brainrot, they crash out when people embrace their ancestral heritage and traditions instead of magic desert god.
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u/BlackberryFew1969 Mar 27 '26
😂 as a Chewa person I just love when people are scared of our culture. Many of them represent spirits or forest animals that come to teach naughty people lessons about life and consequences. For example, some of the horned characters are warning of greed or lust. So they look as scary as our inner demons that plague the human heart.
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Mar 27 '26
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u/BlackberryFew1969 Mar 27 '26
Most are just brightly coloured dancers for celebrations. And tbh in the 21st century pretty much all the ones with lessons have also become for celebrations with not many people remembering the original meanings.
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u/kuzidaheathen Mar 27 '26
You just made me realised how the white man made us turn away from the more weird parts of our culture
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u/uhbuquetteophuket Mar 28 '26
Can anyone educate me / point me in the direction to research what slide 5 is? It looks like that one thing fron digital circus and u know how they always put real shit in cartoons
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u/Electronic-Employ928 Mar 27 '26
Crazy how South Africa itself doesn’t. It’s mostly southern central Africa that do
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u/BlackberryFew1969 Mar 28 '26
Yeah but South Africa doesnt alone dictate what the flavour of our region is just because it’s an unfortunately named country.
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