Isidwaba

What it is

The isidwaba is a skirt of dressed animal skin, also called isikhakha. Cowhide is the usual material, though goatskin is used in parts of the Zulu nation where goats are more numerous than cattle. Women wear it from the time they are betrothed and all through marriage, and it marks them as married. Only after her first child is born is a wife counted as a full member of her husband's family. The skirt is described as having changed very little since the 19th century, while other traditional objects have altered in shape and material. It comes in different designs and patterns, and people read those differences in society. A woman stops wearing it at menopause.

Making the hide

Work on a cowhide begins after the animal is killed. The hide is stretched out and dried in the sun for about three days. It is then soaked in water for seven days so that it softens and begins to break down, and the hair is scraped off. Drying follows again, this time with the milkwood tree, known as umbhobe. A brush is used to scrub the surface until it feels like suede. A day before it is handed to the people who will work it, it comes in from the sun. They squash, straighten, soften and dye it. Oil mixed with wood ash or charcoal gives the black colour.

Dress and objects

The skirt is folded over the waist and falls to the knees. Its side ends overlap so that the wearer stays covered, even when she dances. A grass belt, the isifociya, is tied at the waist to hold it in place, and a second belt, the impempe, hangs at the side as ornament. One example measured 61 cm in height before the top was folded for the belt, weighed about 1.8 kg, and had pleats 1 cm to 1.5 cm wide. Beaded panels decorate some skirts. Zulu beadwork gives each colour meaning, and the patterns on a belt can show style, status and social display.

Beliefs around it

Izidwaba, the plural form, are treated as ancestral garments rather than personal property. People say a skirt belongs to the ancestors, not to the woman who wears it. When she moves from her father's homestead to her husband's, it is the skirt that shelters her, since his ancestors have not yet accepted her as one of their own. Without it a woman is thought to be figuratively naked, and if she stops wearing it, illness or death is believed to follow. That transgression is put right by slaughtering an animal from her own family's homestead to appease her husband's ancestors. The Amadlozi, or ancestral spirits, are said to prefer darkness, which is why the skirt is blackened, and they are asked to keep the bride fertile.

Today and change

Members of the Nazareth Baptist Church wear their own versions of the isidwaba. One reaches just below the knee and has broader pleats than the usual skirt, at about 4.5 cm, and a sample measured 100 cm in height and roughly 2.5 kg. A second, uncoloured version in natural cowhide is shorter and worn for daily use as an under garment, with a tube-like lace garment called itete over it for protection and hygiene. Skirt fashions also travel. The designer Sindiso Khumalo used the isidwaba in her Autumn/Winter 2013 collection, Umabo.

How Isidwaba is kept

The skirt is part of a marriage. A woman receives cattle from her family, and at her Umemulo, her coming of age, her father sets aside a cow for her. One beast, given during ukwendisa, travels with her to her new homestead, and its hide is sewn into the isidwaba she will wear. On the wedding day her father dresses her in it inside the ancestors' hut. Sometimes he asks his eldest son to do the dressing instead, so that the custom passes to the next generation. After the wedding she keeps wearing the skirt until menopause.

When and where

The isidwaba is worn from a woman's wedding day for the rest of her married life, up to menopause. It is put on for the wedding itself, for holy events such as marriage, and for a sacred dance. There is no single date in the year for it; it belongs to the stages of a woman's life rather than to the calendar.

It belongs to the Zulu nation in South Africa. In parts of the country where goats thrive on the local vegetation and outnumber cattle, other Zulu subcultures make the skirt from goatskin. Members of the Nazareth Baptist Church wear their own versions. Men who leave home to work in the cities are said to feel more secure knowing their wives wear the skirt.

What Isidwaba means

The skirt is a sign that a woman is married, and people speak of it as bringing her respect. Some accounts say the cattle exchanged in marriage matter more to women than the skirt does. It is described as an ancestral blanket that folds around her and protects her. Because the ancestors are understood to travel with it, wearing it is thought to guard her in her husband's household. Its powers are asked for through the hide, and the skirt is buried rather than thrown away.

Questions people ask about Isidwaba

See also

Southern African traditional healingAncestral divination, herbal muthi, and spiritual care across Southern AfricaLoboloA customary practice in Southern Africa where the groom's family provides assets to the bride's family.Day of the VowA religious public holiday in South Africa kept by Afrikaners to honour a vow made before the Battle of Blood River.Rama NavamiA Hindu spring festival marking the birth of Rama with prayer, fasting and processions

Good reading and sources

• Isidwaba on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-10.