Mutale Mulenga Kaunda. Postcolonial Imbusa: Bemba Women’s Agency and Indigenous Cultural Systems. London: Lexington Books, 2024. 165 pp. $45. Paper. ISBN: 9781666926248.
Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: Mutale Kaunda is a pioneer on the subject of imbusa, a practice which is revered in Zambia and its diaspora.We are invited into divinity to contemplate a "school that takes root wherever a young woman is preparing for marriage" (16).The author offers a Bemba woman's perspective on a knowledge system and its materiality and philosophical underpinnings.Imbusa is a knowledge system which is constituted of social, political, and sexual ontologies, demonstrating a holistic world view and the transference of cultural norms.Imbusa are "sacred emblems / visual aids handed down to Bemba brides, before the wedding" (11).Beads, pottery, songs, proverbs, and rituals are teaching and learning modalities.Here, imbusa is presented as a site of negotiating and subverting Eurocentric and patriarchal norms which define personhood, sexuality, and cultural expression.Kaunda skillfully chronicles imbusa's evolution from pre-, ante-to postcolonial periods and proposes a postcolonial curriculum.Kaunda provides insight into the influence of colonialism on Bemba gender norms and women's subjugation (109-10).A revelatory account is relayed of how colonial suppression began with the devaluation of Bemba spirituality.Kaunda recounts attempts to Christianize Babemba and imbusa.She critiques the colonial applications of Christianity, unpacking its enmeshment with Bemba cultural practices.Postcolonial imbusa demonstrates the feminist principle that the personal is political, detailing Bemba women's spheres of power.She asserts that the private and public sphere weren't demarcated before colonial and missionary imposition.With the spread of missionary enterprise, women became increasingly confined to the household.Missionaries promoted Victorian ideas of womanhood, emphasizing women's roles as moral protectors and civilizers of the home and society.Imbusa is thus deliberated as a means through which women can, in Nzegwu's terms "respond subversively to [these] … puritanical prescriptions."Imbusa has become confounded as some 'colonized' interpretations are passed down by older women (39).This is epitomized by the contemporary tendency to prioritize men's well-being.Kaunda writes that the transmission of imbusa was tainted by colonial encounter and its patrilineal tendencies.Despite complexities, imbusa retains its power for women by affirming their sexual pleasure.While women undergo extensive training and report back to spouses along with their bana cimbusa (mentors), men are trained on pleasuring women in more informal
Source: African Studies Review
DOI: 10.1017/asr.2025.41
Author: Kgomotso Khetiwe Ramushu
Institutions: University of Cambridge, Stellenbosch University
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Gender equality
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4409401164