Mopani Events

The Annual Marula Festival

events

The Annual Marula Festival

A collaboration of the arts and business

This year the event will be held over seven days in the picturesque town of Phalaborwa . Due to the diverse nature of the planned activities, Impala Park Rugby Stadium will be utilized.

Event dates: Saturday 19.02.2011 - Saturday 26.02.2011
Location:  Phalaborwa

Available Packages:

Nhlamulo Tourism Services - Marula Festival Packages

Legends of the Marula Tree
Legends about marula abound - from its use as relaxation tree, traditional beer, a place of worship, and a food source, magical qualities as a healing ingredient, and the many uses of its bark, leaves, fruit, nut and kernels.

Feast of First Fruits
Throughout Southern Africa, the ripening of the marula fruits from December to March is celebrated. The "great harvest" begins in February/March, which also marks planting season.

The Limpopo people call marula the "food of kings and ancestors," and celebrate the "Feast of First Fruits by pouring offerings of fresh juice over the tombs of their dead chiefs and family.

The Venda people look at the season as a time of festivity. Most time is spent sitting under the shade of the trees, preparing the brew and doing much "quality control" tasting, so do some of the other habitants in the province.

Ngelengele: Banishing the Worms
Ngelengele worms are similar with Mopani worms that served as food to Tsonga people. This two worms are very important to the people of Limpopo, which mopani worms mean food and Ngelengele worms is sign of  marula fruit.

The Sacred Tree
The northern Sotho people believe that the marula tree was given to the people by the spirits and is, therefore, sacred. It has to be dealt with in the way of the ancestors. Often the marula tree will be the only one left standing in field once the field has been ploughed.

Often during the "First Fruits" ceremony, the ritual slaughter of a goat or black bull will take place, known inTsonga as "phahlo" (prayer). This takes place at a  marula tree that most situated in the centre of the family, where an offering of marula beer in a clay pot is made to the ancestors at a ceremony where the local traditional spirits, spirit mediums (Sangomas) and traditionalists in the community are involved.

Sangoma's Dice
The marula stone is used as dice by Shangaan diviners or prophet, who cast their "bones" to foresee the future or help their clients with a variety of problems or maladies.

Fertility Fruit Local lore has it that by eating the marula fruit women are more likely to become pregnant. It is probably not a coincidence that when migrant men come home to their rural villages and their wives greet them with marula beer, that when they leave in January for work, that many of the women are pregnant!

The Family of Nuts
Long years ago the nuts was important food to serve as food to the family. The Tsonga chief  called Mathebula, once sent his brother Mathebula and  his sister to go in the wild too hurt for nuts. Mathebula and sister never pitch back, and the chief decided to send the community to search them in the wild, and when the community bring the respond to the Chief Mathebula, they told him that his sister and brother were maried and blessed with children.

The Chief was angry and call his sister and brothers after the chief's rulling, the chief told them that since to marie your sister or brother is an insult to the Tsonga's community, those two their will never be called the family of Mathebula but the family of Nuts. This is the born of the today's  family of nuts (Mongwe) at Limpopo province.

Preventing Bad Spirits
Traditional doctors or sangomas at Limpopo Province also use this tree to prevent bad sprits to the families from witchcraft and devil.

For more information please contact Moses on : 
Tel: (015) 293 8300