The Sunday News
Cultural Heritage Pathisa Nyathi
STORK birds, black and white in colour that fly in a V-formation. These are migratory birds that are arriving back in Zimbabwe from Europe. When winter approaches in this part of the world, in Europe summer is approaching. These birds seem to be chasing after a warm climate.
More importantly, their arrival precedes the onset of the rainy season. To the observers in this part of the world, the appearance of the stork birds coincided with the onset of the rains. You see those birds; you expect the rains behind them. It is as if they are summoning the rains after themselves.
The traditional Africans were keen observers of nature: the presence of the birds, their colour scheme (black and white) and their flight orientation (a V-formation).
Behind the birds follow the rain-bearing clouds — black and white cumulus clouds. They advance in a convectional way, twirling up and down as if rising and falling. In no time the sky will be darkened. The rains are about to fall. There is a deep rumbling sound of thunder.
Lightning may crackle through the sky.
Pattering sounds are soon heard as the rain drops hit the dry ground and later the small puddles of water that have collected on the ground. Frogs that had been hibernating in the dried ponds during the dry winter months emerge to welcome the rains through their shrill voices that permeate the entire area. It is the pattering raindrops and the shrieking frogs that mark the pouring rains.
It is time for jubilation. The rains signal the start of a new season, a season for growth and regeneration. Life, hitherto, reduced to a bare minimum, starts all over again. Lush grass sprouts and the trees take on a new appearance as their leaves break out of the buds and give a green cover. For the animals it is time for calving so that the young find plenty of food and water.
For the humans it is time for hope and promise. The ground is wet and provides ideal conditions for agriculture. There is promise of new crops and sustenance when the ripened crops are harvested for human consumption. The ultimate human goal is within reach — the continuity, perpetuity and unendingness of the human species.
The importance of the rains for the ultimate welfare of all living organisms cannot be over-emphasized. Humans will do all within their power to induce the rains to fall. In Western science, read culture, there is cloud seeding which induces the water vapour in the clouds to coalesce and form large droplets which, as a result of gravitational pull on them, fall to the ground as rain. Silver Iodide forms the aggregate around which droplets form.
We have time and again said nature is never understood as some universally understood reality. Each community understands it on its terms, on the basis of its worldview and thought. Environmental intervention and manipulation are informed by what the community makes of the nature of the environment. Environmental intervention is then informed, conditioned and guided by the community’s understanding of the environment.
For the people within the Matobo Hills their intervention to induce rain was based on their own worldview, thoughts and beliefs. They resorted to song and dance and ritual manipulation to induce rain. What is important here is that both Western and African communities resorted to cultural interventions to induce rain to fall. Inevitably, their strategies were in line with their understanding of nature and how it can be manipulated.
Cloud seeding should be seen as a cultural intervention, no more no less. Here we are concerned with yet another cultural intervention, that of the BaKalanga and Banyubi in the Matobo Hills.
We seek to demonstrate how, in their cultural endeavours, they induced the rains to fall. The medium for that was song and dance undertaken at the rain-making shrines, the most pre-eminent of which was Njelele. The song and dance that we are concerned with here is called hoso.
Only last week when we gathered at Chief Malaki Masuku’s residence for some function, did I learn that hoso as a song and dance form was introduced from VhaVenda. There are families in the Matobo Hills which are associated with the dance. Notable names are Mdinwa Ncube and Bazwedla Ndlovu. Even today hoso song and dance is very much alive in the Silozwi area where the descendants of Bazwedla Ndlovu are still to be found. Interestingly this tallies with claims that the rain shrines were introduced into the Matobo Hills by people coming from VhaVenda across the Vhembe/Limpopo River.
When we look at the dance we should see it first at face value and then at the symbolic level. The two are inter-linked. There are certain principles at work that we need to unravel from the perspective of the theorists and practitioners in order to appreciate the philosophical underpinnings at work.
The first principle is “like produces/ induces like”. A particular natural or cultural phenomenon can be used to produce its mirror image on a different front. The resulting movements can be from nature to culture or nature and also from culture to nature or culture. Let us refer to the shrieking of frogs that we made reference to. The use of a whistle that produces the shrieking sound during the dance is akin to the shrieking of frogs. But the frogs only do so after the rains or when there is water in the locality. Like, in the form of whistle sound has produced a like in the form of sound from frogs. Through association, frog sounds come after or during the rains.
There is further evidence of association. The stork birds appear in the sky at the time when the rains are about to come. They are black and white in colour and fly in a V-formation. The dancers imitate the same phenomenon. Their headdresses of ostrich feathers are black and white. The two long white feathers on either side approximate the V-flight formation of the stork birds.
By so doing, the dancers are creating, through associational “liking” the presence of stork birds. Yet we do know that when the said birds appear, the rains are about to come. The two are associated through likeness in terms of colour, movement and flight orientation. Invoking one through the use of the other is what we term symbolic manipulation.
So far we have demonstrated just two aspects of the hoso dance which create the necessary rain ambience. But in order to enhance the chances of rain to fall, the ambience should be imitated or symbolised as fully as possible. The full picture of the rain falling is what we started off with. How does the dance capture all the various aspects that were described in the opening paragraphs? That will be the subject of the next article.
