WASHINGTON, DC—In the small landlocked kingdom of Eswatini, women come together at the end of February and beginning of March to celebrate the first fruits of the harvest. They bring fresh fruits, vegetables, and buganu, the wine of the marula fruit, to offer to the royal family. It is a celebration of the harvest, of the culture, and of the woman, who still maintains her traditional role as brewer among the Swazi people.
In many countries around the world, the commercialization of brewing and fermenting has taken the traditional task out of the hands of women and placed it into the business affairs of men. In the West, the woman’s role in brewing is still largely invisible. Yet, Eswatini has not seen the commercialization of its traditional fermented beverages–and it may not want to. While women who brew marula wine, also called amaganu wine or buganu, do sell it from their houses and shops, it is still entirely homemade. Accordingly, at the yearly Buganu Festival of first fruits, where wine is the most prominent offering, women take center stage.
Eswatini is a bit out of the way of my travels at the moment, but passing through Washington DC offers up the opportunity of encountering knowledgeable diplomats who can represent their culture here in the Western Hemisphere. Wanting to explore the yearly celebration of buganu, I called upon the Embassy of Eswatini.
The First Secretary of the Diplomatic Mission kindly received me in their embassy in Northwest DC. Even though the closest cup of homebrewed buganu was 8,000 miles away in southeastern Africa, I was able to get all of my questions answered, and more.
The Buganu Festival which occurs every year, I learned, has been occurring for as long as Eswatini has been a country. Before the first fruits ceremony formed into a national event with the Royal Family, smaller communities might have offered the first drink of buganu of the season to local leaders.
While the festival always occurs towards the end of February, marula wine can be brewed year round. It just so happens that the months of February and March are the peak season for the marula tree. Wine, at this time, is most bountiful.
At the festival, women come from around the country with brewed buganu, fruits, and vegetables. Everyone, including any men involved, wears traditional regalia, with beautifully beaded emagcebesha (singular ligcebesha) around their necks.
The ritual requires the women to present the first fruits to Her Majesty and dance. Underscoring the role of women in the festival, women are the only ones to dance. The Embassy’s First Secretary assures me that the kind of dance that they perform at the Buganu Festival is meant for women. It is one called Kutsamba. One woman might come out of a circle and showcase her ability to the rest.
The First Secretary emphasized that the Buganu Festival is a unifying celebration for Eswatini. People from all walks of life and all corners of the country come from their homes to celebrate. The festival involves programming focused towards women. Women can exchange ideas, start businesses together, or sell their goods to each other.
When I ask if there is any relation to International Women’s Day on March 8, I am told it is purely coincidence. The First Secretary assures me that Emaswati women have been empowered by their traditional roles as providers and brewers for far longer than the international celebration has existed.
In a culture like that of Eswatini, where women still firmly control the production of fermented beverages, those beverages maintain traditional and sacred significance. A study by Simatende et al confirms that the brewing of buganu is a female activity, whereas some men may brew sorghum beer or umcombotsi. It is the Queen who receives the first fruit, although the King is present. It is the women who come together. It is the women who dance.
The number of female-focused beer festivals in the West is lacking. The Bugano Festival never went away.
The traditional wine of Eswatini begins on the branches of the marula tree (sclerocarya birrea.) In the Swazi language, the tree and its fruit are known as amaganu.
To make the wine, Emaswati women gather the mature and ripe fruits from the marula tree or from the ground around the tree. When they intend to make the wine, they wash the fruits and pound them in a container to make juice and pulp.
Many of the containers used by Emaswati women today are made of plastic, but traditional production would have relied on clay and gourds (called ingula.)
They pour the pounded fruit pulp into a drum which they cover for several days to begin fermentation. As the wine ferments, it can be stirred. In some cases, a brewer may add marula juice periodically during the fermentation to boost the available sugar content. She may also add processed sugar directly to the wine. At the end of five days–depending on conditions–the white foamy head of the fermentation is skimmed off and the yellowish wine is ready.
To prepare the buganu for consumption, the brewer might sieve the wine in a traditional grass mesh or a metal one. The finished product, the First Secretary says, can also be buried in traditional vessels underground to enhance its flavor. This step likely also regulates temperature to finish off any secondary fermentation with a high degree of consistency.
While Swazi people take pride and attribute cultural significance to their buganu making, others in southeastern Africa also make a wine from the marula fruit. In Limpopo province of South Africa, the majority of households make a similar product they call vukanyi. (Simatende)
In addition to making wine from amaganu fruits, many people make soap, body oil, hair oil, jams, preserves, and honey.
Women may be the sole brewers of buganu, but it is a drink for everybody. Like many traditional fermentations, the wine is considered to be good for gut health. It also stimulates the metabolism, I am told.
The flavor of the drink is fruity, tangy, and slightly alcoholic. There are never added flavors to buganu.
Normally, Emaswati people drink buganu with meaty accompaniments. The First Secretary says that boiled and grilled goat, grilled beef, and chicken are common snacks to go along with buganu drinking.
Buganu is the closest thing to a national beverage that Eswatini has, but they are well-versed in the fermentation of other drinks too. The Swazi people are also avid fermenters of emasi, a fermented dairy product, emahewu, a fermented cereal porridge, umcombotsi, a traditional sorghum beer, nyawotsi, a traditional millet beer, and papaya wine. They also distill malt beers into a spirit called makanjane. (Masarirambi)
Masarirambi et al state, “In Swaziland, fermented foods have been produced since time immemorial, with little, if any documentation.” Buganu, one of several fermented beverages in Swazi cuisine, may lack documentation and commercialization, but it upholds a true tradition–one that is increasingly rare in the modern world–that of women brewing.
Video from Eswatini Daily News
Masarirambi, M. T., et al. “Common Indigenous Fermented Foods and Beverages Produced in Swaziland: A Review.” Journal of Food Science and Technology, vol. 46, no. 6, 2009, pp. 505–08.
Simatende, Protus, et al. “Methods of Preparation of Swazi Traditional Fermented Foods.” Journal of Ethnic Foods, vol. 2, no. 3, 2015, pp. 119–25.
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