The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
EARLY in the morning Baker Mathanda Dube announces his approach to my rural home at Sankonjana. He got wind I was visiting and to him my arrival brings bliss and joy. He has been harvesting hay in his crop field which he could not all place under maize. My heart also smiles when I see him. I consider him a fountain of knowledge. He knows I have an insatiable yearning for stories from our past. He knows some of my ancestors too. One of my grandfathers, Pulazi Mavela Nyathi was born of these Dubes. He knows their history well.
His name, Baker, carries some history about it. Here they call him SekaTanki, that is, father of Tanki. He lives with his son Fanalaye. Mathanda was born in 1935 at a time when there was a native commissioner by that name. He never saw the man associated with vicious evictions of people in the Gwanda District, especially at eNqamenei. As I always say, our people document historical events through the process of naming.
Though he never saw the man, he got to know about him. However, he knows that native commissioner Baker served in Matobo District before his transfer to Gwanda District. The native commissioner he knew was Noel Robertson, known to Africans as uNkomiyahlaba. Mathanda says the extremely crude native commissioner arrived in Matobo District from Insiza District. Like Baker, he was associated with evictions within Matobo District. He seems to have been native commissioner before the offices relocated to Kezi. Rumour had it that uNkomiyahlaba torched his office in order to conceal financial records.
Mathanda remembers the time when uNkomiyahlaba met his equals among the BaKalanga. One day he arranged for a meeting at St Joseph’s where Ntelela Malaba was chief. The men there sought to fix him. On the day of the meeting, all men decided that they were not going to attend the meeting he had called for. Native commissioner Robertson arrived at the venue of the meeting as scheduled only to find women alone. Apparently, the purpose of the meeting centred around the construction of contour ridges (imigelo) in crop fields.
That was part of the agricultural measures introduced by Dr Alvord. Technological development was being adopted and had several components to it including centralisation (amalayini), creation of district councils of which chiefs were ex-officio members, demarcation of zones for crop fields and livestock grazing. There was culling of cattle to bring down their numbers to levels within pastures’ carrying capacities.
Mathanda is his name which carries some distortions of TjiKalanga. In the singular the word danda, means a wooden log. In its plural form it is matanda, wooden logs. When the word is spelt with an “h”, an impression is created that the word refers to one who loves, umathanda, the one who loves, othandayo. As Dube, Mbizi people, they are one with Bango people. Bango is a misspelling of the word bhango meaning a wooden log. Bhango and danda are two words meaning the same. SekaTanki goes on to narrate their history but that is not what I am keen to listen to on the day of his visit.
My interest is in the killer pandemic (coronavirus/ Covid-19) and how, if at all, they coped with similar pandemics in the past. The people in my rural area do not seem terrified by the outbreak of the pandemic. However, when villagers exchange greetings, reference to ikhorona is always there. Weather issues have become a back burner. The headman called a meeting for villagers in Ward 1, Silebuho Ward and I do not think social distancing was observed. On the same day, cattle were being dipped at Mthoyiwane dip tank. I never heard about social distancing either. However, the local church, the Salvation Army did not meet in the same manner they always do. Their gatherings were decentralised. A few members congregated at one homestead within some geographical locality.
Mathanda says he has experienced curbing of the spread of a pandemic twice so far. The first time was in 1947 and the second in 1949. The term for the ritual intervention is zhambuko. The word, common in Kalanga-related dialects, means crossing or place of crossing, like crossing a river. Pandemics are not new to the African continent. Africa had her own Afro-centric cultural interventions that were applied.
Mathanda notes that 1947 was the year of a severe drought when crops failed. There was as a result, starvation. It was the year when the Southern Rhodesian government imported yellow maize from Kenya, hence the name for the maize meal — inkenya/ikhenya. Isitshwala from the yellow mealie-meal was not palatable at all, hence reference to it as isikundamoyo, a Ndebelized Kalanga word.
Asked about what pandemic it was that necessitated the administration of zhambuko, Mathanda says there was isikhwalibhana, small pox.
“Did you not see that your grandfather Pulazi (uMavela) and his child Kokayi, had pock marks?” enquires Mathanda. Apparently, I do not have a clear memory of the grandfather and child he is referring to, as I saw them when I was very young.
The following year, 1948, was a year of plenty. There was no pandemic that required intervention. After that, the following year presented yet another challenge. The timing is important to appreciate. African spirituality was still being taken seriously with quite many adhering to its tenets. I was keen to get to the juicy part regarding the modus operandi. Mathanda’s people at that time lived at Maribeha on the southern side of the Mwewu River, a tributary of the Tuli River. The two have their confluence in Tshoboyo.
Opposite Maribeha on the northern side of the Mwewu River was a place called Bhandawuni. At the two places there were men who presided over the administration of zhambuko ritual. The two men were Debede Nyathi and Mbanje Ndlovu, of Nshabe section of the Ndlovus. The latter lived at Bhandawuni while the former lived at Maribeha. Debede Nyathi belonged to the Ligigo House of the Babirwa. He was in the same house with Hwadalala (Kgoatalala), the chief.
The river to be crossed was Mwewu. It was not just a question of physically crossing the river. Medicines for use during zhambuko were obtained from the Dula Shrine, koMaswabi. Mathanda notes that back then, the shrine that was consulted the most was Dula, rather than Njelele. He contends that Njelele Shrine was popularised by former Vice President Joshua Nkomo. Debede Nyathi and Mbanje Ndlovu travelled on foot to Dula to get the requisite medicines that were to be used during the administration of zhambuko ritual. Walking on foot then was common as vehicular transport was rare.
Even scotch carts were not that common back then. What were being used were the four-wheeled wagons, okhokhokho. Mhlambezi Nyathi is another spiritual man who used to walk to the Dula Shrine in connection with rain-making rituals. He belonged to the Serumola/ Luphade section of the Nyathis. This writer belongs to that section of the Babirwa. He walked from Ratanyane (Riretenyana) area where he worked closely with Willie Ngalapi Nyathi’s mother. Mathanda informs me that sometimes Mhlambezi used to send my father Menyezwa Gandana to the Dula Shrine.
The people from Maribeha crossed (zhambuka) the Mwewu River to the northern side. There they would be attended to by Mbanje Ndlovu who remained on his side of the river. Medicines brought from Dula would already have been processed. The ingredients were mixed with finger millet (rapoko) meal and a paste made. Meanwhile, some wooden spoon was carved and this was used to administer the paste.
When an individual got to where Mbanje stood, he/she dipped a wooden dishing spoon into the paste. The individual, in a standing position, received some portion and placed it in his/her mouth. The first morsel was spat onto the ground. The second portion was then swallowed. After that, the individual, without ever again looking back, proceed towards the Mwewu River and crossed it as he/she moved to his/her home. The injunction not to look back is/was common in many African rituals. During wedding rituals among the Ndebele people, a maid exiting a cattle byre was not expected to look back again. Not looking back symbolised severance of or with a particular condition, status, place or people. Where a condition is the case, it is through that act that which ensures it will not visit or revisit again.
Another act that is common in African rituals is spitting on to the ground, ahead of swallowing. The first morsel is being sacrificed to the ancestors. The act serves as a prayer, some sort of libation as Africans then believed in the spiritual power of the ancestral spirits. Their intervention was thus being solicited. After all the whole reason behind summoning during umbuyiso, the bringing home ceremony was for them to come and look after their progeny in terms of good health and protection from malevolent forces.
This symbolic severance is buttressed through crossing of a river. The crossing symbolises movement from one state to another and never to be followed by the condition or state just departed from, exited from, or severed from. The river acts as a symbolic barrier which the pandemic will not cross and as a result, access people on the other side. There are some elements of both physical and social distancing. Then the people on the opposite side, that is Bhandawuni, crossed to the southern side of the Mwewu River and there they were met by Debede Nyathi who administered zhambuko medicines in the same manner as described above with reference to Mbanje Ndlovu.
What then constituted the secretive part of zhambuko? Many years ago, when I was still young in the writing career, I described that secretive part. Mathanda merely says they did not witness what transpired thereafter. However, he knew that the two emissaries to the Dula Shrine got together for the final bit of the zhambuko ritual. Though I might have forgotten the finer details of that part of the ritual, I still do remember (Sunday News has the article from back then) that there was that very critical final stage. The remnants of the zhambuko medicines were buried, in a symbolic burial of the pandemic. The burial site was a deep opening or hole in a flat rock (idwala). The hole had to be very deep and narrow. The remnants were cast in the hole (I forget the Nyubi name for such a geological formation). Big stones were then used to cover up the gaping hole in the rock.
In symbolic terms, the pandemic was buried. In a different set of symbolic manoeuvres, the pandemic was cut off from spreading and accessing the population. Obviously, back then I was not as au fait with African Thought as I am now after decades of imbibing African Philosophy. What is important though is appreciation that a community applies what is intelligible and culturally meaningful and relevant to it. It turns out now that Africa has lost virtually all knowledge of the spiritual, symbolic and cultural interventions, while placing all hope on science as if science is not culture.
When Western society is expected to come up with a vaccine. When the same society says we should cover our mouths, noses with oral and nasal pampers and napkins, we are more than willing and eager to oblige without ever looking to remedies from our own communities. We believe nothing of our own. The remedy must not come from our continent, not from Madagascar even!
Next time we shall deal with social distancing among the same ethnic groups as a measure to curb the spread of a pandemic.
