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Pilgrims of progress and acts of faith
Barefoot and dressed in white, thousands of pilgrims gather on a hilltop overlooking Durban blowing on long metal ‘imbomu’ tubes, forerunner of the vuvuzela.
Barefoot and dressed in white, thousands of pilgrims gather on a hilltop overlooking Durban blowing on long metal ‘imbomu’ tubes, forerunner of the vuvuzela.
Every year, faithful from the Nazareth Baptist Church make a pilgrimage to Ebuhleni Mission, where their church’s founder Isaiah Shembe lived in the southeastern part of the country.
Pilgrims will make the journey over the course of July to walk along the dirt roads of the poor settlement that lies within sight of Durban’s World Cup stadium. This year’s pilgrimage is especially poignant, coming as the church is finalising a deal with the manufacturer of the plastic vuvuzela trumpets that now symbolise South Africa’s World Cup.
Under the agreement, Shembe will be recognised as the inventor of the vuvuzela, an instrument his followers say he created a century ago using antelope horns.
“We saw Bill Clinton blowing in a vuvuzela in a stadium. It makes us very proud,” said Enoch Thembu, spokesman for the evangelical church, which claims 5.2 million followers across southern Africa.
The pilgrimage in their holy month of July is far removed from the World Cup celebrations in Durban, where spectators relentlessly hum vuvuzelas — a noise seen either as joyous or maddening.
In this settlement, the sound is harmonious. “It’s all in the blowing,” explained Thembu. “We don’t blow it for 90 minutes. You have to stop and you sing. It must entertain people, not irritate them,” he said.
Despite their traditional beliefs, the Shembe have big ambitions for their newly recognised claim to the vuvuzela. They want to claim intellectual property rights to the instrument and cash in on its manufacturing.
“Our aim is to make jobs for South African workers and to generate some income for the church to look after the widows, the orphans and the destitute people,” Thembu said.
