The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
THE one phenomenon that the Reverend Doctor Robert Moffat observed at King Mzilikazi Khumalo’s royal town was the administration of justice, in other words legal proceedings presided over by the monarch. As always, the London Missionary Society (LMS) evangelist provided glimpses which when expanded upon provided useful insights into Ndebele cosmologies including how these informed and impacted upon cultural practices.
The first thing that Reverend Doctor Moffat observed was that court attendees did not bring their shields and spears to the court. All that they brought were small sticks or switches. The court was perceived as a cultural or legal arrangement that sought to make peace among warring individuals or belligerents. What the Ndebele people acknowledged was that relations had soured between individuals or groups of people. For the Ndebele and indeed other African people, a healthy, well functioning society was one where diverse individuals and communities enjoyed positive relations that allowed for group interaction and cohesion.
When conflict erupted the esprit de corps within a group was disabled if not completely shattered. Social cohesion was diminished or completely negated. For a people who cherished collaborative work, the emerging situation was injurious to healthy intercommunity and interpersonal relations.
Efforts were thus made to restore the lost equilibrium. The court sought primarily not to punish offenders but to restore shattered interpersonal and intergroup relations.
When a man stole my goats, there was acknowledgement that relations soured between me and the accused. What was needed was to restore relations and that was done if the culprit compensated me for my stolen goats rather than serving jail term. This was restorative justice which was concerned more with the restoration of damaged relations. This was particularly important for a group-based people where solidarity and collaboration were cherished values which enabled the community or extended family to tap into available human resources. This idea is perhaps brought out more clearly through a Shona proverb which says a single fingernail cannot crush a louse. A more effective fist consists of co-operating fingers which, in isolation, are powerless or ineffectual.
Conflict is symbolised through burning wooden firebrands. When all burning is over what remains is ash, cold ash which symbolises conflict resolution. What the Reverend Robert Moffat did not point out is that the court proceedings took place under some cool shade of a big tree. Historical records do indicate that at each royal town there was what has been termed an indaba tree. Under such a tree, court proceedings were held. There was symbolism at play there. Conflict is hot, whereas peace is cool or cold. The burning firebrands are hot but when they have burnt out only cold ash remains. The shade of an indaba tree was to protect the people from the heat of the blazing sun. Heat (conflict) and cold (peace) dichotomy is present and applied in a cultural set up.
Spears, shields and knobkerries are weapons of war, agents and purveyors of conflict and their presence is inconsistent with and a negation of peace.
No wonder therefore, they were left out of the sites of conflict resolution. It’s all about creating an ambience which is culturally and ideologically intelligible to the people. Not everyone appreciates the symbolic dimensions and meanings at work. Only a few perceptive minds are able to fathom the depths of the symbolic pool of meanings.
Reverend Robert Moffat also observed that the people attending court sat in a circle. The king, as chief judge, also sat in the same circle with no one behind him of course. As we have time and time again said, Africans had strong ideas regarding circular arrangements and designs. It was just not their houses which exhibited a circular design. Here is the Reverend Robert Moffat observing how a court was organised in the same way.
In a way the circle allows for equalisation and allows for meaningful relations between people. It is a symbol or icon of peace in that it embraces everyone without presenting some authoritarian hierarchy. The universe is organised in terms of relations among solar, stellar and lunar cosmic bodies. There is mutual attraction and repulsion which allows for the continued life of each body, without each taking a tangential and suicidal trajectory or fatally ding with other cosmic bodies. The circle symbolises balance, collaboration, relatedness, solidarity, and dynamic equilibrium.
These are desired attributes of a healthy community or society.
The African did not invent these positive values. Rather, he observed them within nature, in particular the cosmic bodies and how, given their infinite numbers and motion in infinite planes, there is relatively little conflict by way of collisions which would spell doom on earthly life. If some outer body collided with the earth and pushed it off course either towards or away from the sun, life as we know it on this planet might cease. An unbalanced society is like planet earth which has been hit by another equally colossal planet or sun or moon. Of course, out of its death, life would emerge as happened with the collapse of a supernova. Life emerges out of and is sustained by death. Africans have always been alert to such philosophical thinking. As one friend would say, “When did they get stupefied?”
The king seldom spoke during court proceedings, observed Reverend Robert Moffat. There were people that were assigned to the role of prosecutors and it was they who cross examined both the complainants and plaintiffs. The king did not take the opportunity to dose off. He listened attentively for it was him who was to pronounce judgment. Not so long ago I attended a traditional court and found exactly what Reverend Moffat described.
Further, Reverend Robert Moffat observed that women did not attend court. In the particular case whose proceedings he witnessed there were women who had come as witnesses. He further observed that the women did not stand up to give evidence. Instead, they knelt before the men folk. At the same court that I attended I found the same to be true. Women did not stand before men. Before being called upon to testify they sat down. But once called upon, they rose but to no more than a kneeling posture.
There is need to expand on this for purposes of clarity. Kneeling or sitting on one’s haunches expressed authority hierarchy. The highest man on the land was the king. No man, regardless of his stature, such as that of chief, was to stand equal to the king. Even when it came to physical height, he lived on the part of the settlement which was the highest. That point is best brought out among the Nyai people where their king occupied the highest place on the hill top. He occupied the loftiest office on the land. That reality had to be symbolically brought out on the physical plane. There was some pecking order that related to position on the hill with the socially lowest residing in the lowest part.
Bo Hhe bagele dombo,
BoNthoyiwa bagele dombo,
BoTjibumba bagele dombo,
Zwilanda zwigele pasi kuBambanalo.
This was an interesting story about seniority and occupation of Mapungubwe Hill over 2 000 years ago as recounted to this writer by Nthoyiwa from Dombodema some few years ago.
