The Sunday News
Cultural Heritage, Phathisa Nyathi
Not so long ago Amagugu International Heritage Centre (AIHC) organised a Traditional Foods and Beverages Expo at their premises in Whitewater. The first such Expo to be arranged by AIHC sought to rekindle interest in traditional foods and beverages and have them not only revitalised but also documented for posterity. Local women from Matobo District’s Ward 17 prepared and displayed various traditional cuisines, with emphasis on ingredients used and methods of preparation.
Some traditional beverages have been produced commercially and, on that note, some commercial companies, notably Delta beverages and Arenel attended the Expo to showcase their products within the broad field of traditional foods and beverages.
Delegates from Great Zimbabwe University (GZU) also attended. It was great fun when visitors sampled the various dishes and got to know about the recipes.
Images of women participants were taken. An officer from AIHC went round recording the ladies’ recipes on display. Our objective was to produce a booklet on the Expo with emphasis on the dishes on offer as a way of documenting and archiving this particular heritage within the field of Gastronomy or Culinary Arts. However, things turned out slightly different from our original plans.
We soon realised that our approach would not be that different in approach from what happens in Zimbabwe’s secondary schools’ Home Economics courses. We did not think there was fun nor much academic challenge in following the beaten path.
It was out of that consideration that we sought to take on a different course and perspective and investigate food as a cultural expression. In any case, the tendency in schools is to go Eurocentric and deal with exotic dishes at the expense of indigenous ones which are by and large looked down upon. Ultimately, the two components will constitute a bigger volume with aspects not generally dealt with in schools.
By merely throwing the inquisitive spotlight on food and related aspects, we end up knowing a great deal more about a particular community. The choice of what to eat, method of preparation, vessels used in food preparation and consumption, sitting arrangements, people allocated to eat together as a group, taboos relating to food for pregnant women, all serve as pointers to a community’s worldview, philosophy, cosmology and fundamental beliefs. Power distribution within a family is brought out through food related cultural and social practices: ideas about gender, about masculinity, about the youth, totemism, spirituality and related symbolism are all expressed through a careful observation of culinary traditions.
It is our argument that to understand a particular people one needs to understand their cosmology and fundamental worldviews which inform their cultural practices and behaviour, which inevitably embrace their culinary traditions. The cosmologies can be gleaned from various artistic genres such as their performances, visual arts traditions, music and dance, decorative motifs on crafts, folktales, among others. Likewise, gastronomy sheds light on the people under study and improves our knowledge and understanding of communities concerned.
Food, in particular its preparation and serving, are regarded as one of the art genres. We wonder whether this holds true with regard to African cuisines. We should also remember that African dishes south of the Sahara are the least adopted worldwide.
That speaks volumes about ideas and attitudes that the world’s citizens hold about black people and their ways of life.
The question that we are going to pose is, “Food for what?” At the most basic level food is consumed for sustenance, to ensure life processes are maintained and sustained. Then, in the process, other purposes are served. It is these secondary considerations that are of interest to us. It is these seemingly less important considerations that can be regarded as cultural expressions resident within Gastronomy. While we shall draw our examples from Ndebele people, some observations are applicable to other African peoples on the continent.
The arts are considered as cultural expressions. They draw their inspiration and content from culture. Another way is to view them as expressive culture. Culture is the all-embracing term. Of late, we have come to the realisation that African culture itself springs from and is inspired by cosmic reality. This is to say African culture is informed by and an expression of the cosmos: the stars, planets and moons and their unique and constant motion within the burgeoning (expanding outwardly) universe. In similar vein, we need the services of Physics, Astronomy and Astrophysics to fully understand and appreciate African culture. In order to understand the cosmos, we make use of, among other subjects, the disciplines given above. If African culture is an expression of the cosmos, or its earthly cultural representation, we need the services of the same subjects to unpack, analyse and interpret African cultural practices.
Through food we see ourselves. Gastronomy is one of several mirrors that reflect a community’s way of life. Are we not what we eat, not so much why we eat it, but how we prepare it, how we serve it, the manner of eating and other numerous aspects.
Food is a mirror of the people. We get to know a lot about the people by just looking at their food habits. The one important observation we make is how Africans seem to revel in mimicking other people’s culinary traditions. Even in schools, colleges and tertiary institutions, cuisines being featured in the curricula are those of Westerners — our former colonisers.
We thus can’t help observing that Africans, long after “decolonisation” are in essence perpetuating neo-colonialism, this time using their own energy and free will. This is apparently the case in all aspects including fashion and fabric. Interestingly, the former colonisers are not appropriating or adopting any aspects of African culture. It’s all a one-sided affair. When there is talk of globalization what that implies is total exclusion or marginalization of African culture. Africans, rather strangely, celebrate their own marginalization.
Forthcoming articles therefore, will deal with food issues from the angle of cultural expressions. Why did only men eat the head of a cow? Here the use of a foreign language, English, betrays the subject we are dealing with. The head is ikhanda in SiNdebele common parlance. Not so when men seek to consume it. They refer to it as inhloko and keep womenfolk away from its consumption. The general rule is that inhloko (the head of household, invariably a man) is consumed by men. Similarly, breast cuts are reserved for women. The meat is called ukanethwa or ungiklane.
The seniority of a man’s wives is reflected in several ways including the order they maintain when walking. The most senior wife walks at the head of the file: she is their head, after all. They walk in a single file. However, when there is dew early in the morning, the order is reversed. The most junior wife leads the way so that she clears the way of dew for the bosses. In terms of food, the same idea gets expressed. The most senior wife has meat brought to her kitchen hut (note that even the arrangement of wives’ huts expresses their seniority). It is the senior wife who cuts up pieces and shares them with fellow wives. Her father would have given her a knife, umhedla that she now uses to cup up the carcass pieces allocated to her kitchen hut. The knife was given to her when she exited the cattle byre following the performance of a ritual known as ukuphehlelwa isithundu.
What all this boils down to is that the entire beast has cuts that are a reflection or representation of various social phenomena such as gender and age differentials, political status, masculinity, spiritual status and much more. A man tasked to slaughter a beast the following day will not be allowed to have sex. Instead, he will be encouraged to consume as much beer as possible in order to thin his blood. The taste of the meat, ukuhlabusa, the Ndebele will argue, depends on several factors one of which is the state of the man that stabs the animal with a spear.
