ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines Lovedu culture and sketches some of the forms of its institutions. The manner in which any particular society defines or handles these themes determines the interests, aims, values, and attitudes of its members; and it is from this point of view that we shall attempt to portray the Lovedu. The queen is more than that: the method of supplicating for rain has merged with the mechanisms of the social structure and has constructed the bonds with the districts, despite political decentralization, securing the unity of the tribe. The weakness of the queen as a woman is also her strength and the source of the prestige of the tribe. The Lovedu tolerate ostentation only on occasions appropriate to exhilaration, quite unlike even such nearly related tribes as the Madala and Phalavorwa, who have institutionalized boasting displays by those famed as hunters or warriors.
