The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
FOR very long, some of us have been incessantly making impassionate pleas for chiefs’ official regalia to be decolonised. Sadly, our pleas have been falling on very deaf ears.
It was thus heartening to observe that one who holds a high political office on the land shares our concerns and aspirations. We are here referring to Vice-President General Constantino Chiwenga (Retired) who last week made similar calls regarding chiefly regalia whose alignment with our culture and political ethos is long overdue.
Chiefs are regarded as custodians of our culture. The institution has been part of African governance for centuries.
As I have often said, it is an institution that is still very much with us although, I am almost certain, it will face demise in centuries to come. It will be swamped by elective processes when it is perceived to be an undemocratic institution. This is to say the bifurcated state, as Ugandan academic Mahmood Mamdani calls it, is very much a feature of our governance for now.
Regalia or dress expresses a people’s culture in more ways than one. It expresses their historical experiences, their view of the world, ideas about gender issues, socio-economic and political standing, among other considerations. If this be the case, what exactly is expressed by the current regalia which is donned by chiefs? It is difficult, near impossible, to justify the regalia from an Afro-centric perspective. Precisely, what aspects are not in line with African culture?
Those who think in ethnic terms will scream at the possibility of coming up with a regalia that is African and common to all chiefs.
The argument will be that the VhaVenda had their own traditional regalia for their chiefs, so did the Shona, Ndebele, Nambya, Tonga, Shangani, Xhosa, Sotho/Birwa and BaKalanga, among the myriad of diverse ethnic groups found in Zimbabwe. Chiefly regalia, like the institution itself and its attendant cultural attributes, carries the signature or identity of a people among whom it operates. The deeply and indelibly impressed footprints of colonisation are difficult to erase, particularly from a people’s minds.
The flowing gown and its colour hardly tell an African story. If anything, the story is one of colonial experience. It is unsuited to the climatic conditions obtaining in Zimbabwe. Chiefs deep fry within the long gowns that are suited for cold climates where the colonizer came from. Colour certainly does express power and glory and is community specific.
Hardly does the purple colour of the long gowns express African ideas of power and authority. It is possible to do elementary research in order to come up with ethnic-specific colours that used to be associated with authority.
Next after the gown is the helmet which is distinctly rooted in European attire at the time of explorers, expeditionists, colonisers and others of a similar persuasion. The helmet, ikhowa as it is known in IsiNdebele, conjures up pictures of people such as Dr David Livingstone, Henry Morton Stanley and early native commissioners. Once again, there is a refrain of colonial past as expressed in the enduring regalia of chiefs.
What pride can be derived from regalia that expresses a past that sought to supplant African independence and African ideas and values? Whose culture are chiefs custodians of, in terms of the official regalia that they don during national events such as opening of Parliament? Certainly, their regalia do not express our culture.
We need not belabour the point here. What requires more attention is how to proceed. As indicated above, to those who have fallen for the idea that we are different, will not see beyond pride and prejudice.
Negative perceptions have been swallowed hook, line and sinker, thus blocking some progressive way forward. I will argue that there is something Pan-African, something that we may term an African Worldview, an African Cosmology, an African Spirituality and indeed, African Philosophy.
At that level, there exist phenomena, be they political, cultural, social or ideological, which characterize us as Africans. We are not Africans because of our colour as US President Donald Trump may want us to believe. It is imperative therefore that when chiefly regalia are designed the designers operate at this level.
The common denominator among all of us as ethnic groups is found at this level. Africans always expend a lot of time, energy and effort seeking to replicate the heavens on earth.
The cosmos, with important traits of endlessness, eternity, continuity and fertility, provide the best source of the necessary commonality when designers seek to fashion indigenise regalia for chiefs. “As above, so below,” says Dr Mathole Motshekga when he, like other Africanists, expresses Africa’s preoccupation with attaining of eternity.
That idea is actually expressed in several ways such as the circle and circularity, curvilinearity, chevron, herringbone, dentelle, chessboard, spiral etc.
Among the Shona the spiral conus shell, known as ndoro was part of chiefly regalia. It was passed down from one chief to the next. The message conveyed by the ndoro is that the institution of chief resident within a specific family is eternal or endless. A ndoro has a beginning but theoretically no end (see Nyathi and Chikomo 2016 for a fuller rendition of these ideas).
On the other hand, the BaPfumbi chiefs of Beitbridge District make use of a stone originally removed from the belly of a crocodile. When their chief dies his corpse is kept in a house and closely guarded till it rots sufficiently and releases the much sought after stone which has been passed down from chief to the next chief for a long time.
The stone is special in that it was ingested by a crocodile, their totem, an animal that symbolises the very ideas of continuity and endlessness on account of its chevron character. The BaPfumbi chief is a Ngwenya/Kwena/Ngwena/Garwe.
Great Zimbabwe is arguably the best cultural edifice that captures the one single idea of endlessness and continuity.
The idea is embedded in its architecture and its features, its sculpture (represented by numerous figurines that were excavated on the site) and the iconography related to expressed aesthetics (expressed in architecture and crafts). When chiefly regalia are being designed, the Pan-Ethnic symbolic icons should light the way.
It would be naïve to think an edifice such as Great Zimbabwe, in terms of deeper meanings it expresses, is associated with one ethnic group. Its aesthetic rendition is both Pan-Ethnic and Pan-African. Its builders aptly captured African ideas relating as relating to continuity and endlessness.
Which ethnic group in Zimbabwe does not embrace the circle, the chevron, the dentelle, the chessboard and herringbone? Even the earliest group to set foot in southern Africa embraced these very same ideas. The San were first and foremost an African peopleose art should be interpreted in African terms.
The real essence of African culture lies at the level of professed and practiced African Cosmology. Cultural practices flow out of and are informed by this highest level source of African culture.
This is the level that makes it possible and practical to come up with common regalia for chiefs regardless of their ethnic backgrounds — common backgrounds at the ideological, cosmological and philosophical levels.
