The Sunday News
Cultural Heritage, Phathisa Nyathi
WE may reiterate that food was produced and consumed essentially for sustenance. Over 20 000 years ago some wild grasses, roots and tubers were domesticated. Humans and the selected plants developed a symbiotic relationship. These domesticated plants, now known as food crops, could no longer compete favourably against their wild counterparts. They needed special attention such as seed selection aimed at improving varieties. Weeding served to remove competition from the more resilient forms growing in the wild.
Water was needed to ensure successful growth. Harvested seed roots and tubers were stored in carefully designed storage structures which eliminated moisture and vagaries of insects such as imbovane, weevils that wreaked havoc on crops. Certain climatic conditions were required for the cultivation of crops. As a result, river valleys such as the Nile, Euphrates and Tigris became important places for food growth. Considerable cultivation took place on hill terraces where local microclimates favoured agriculture. Populations increased in response to increased food production. New technologies helped increase both production and productivity. Communities that hitherto had been nomadic hunter-gatherers adopted a sedentary life.
Communities underwent numerous changes in social organisation and in structural terms. Communities became stratified with the emergence of the ruling elite that controlled the means of production: land, labour and entrepreneurship, inter alia.
An appropriate ideology emerged which provided legitimation of emerging social and political structures and social changes. Architecture, for example, changed to accommodate new realities such as living at one place for longer periods of time. In some parts of Africa clay dwellings were constructed while in central and southern Africa where savanna vegetation provided plenty of grass architecture was in line with that reality. Bee-hive huts, undifferentiated and making use in the main of grass, were constructed. Other communities made cone-on-cylinder huts which were more differentiated, now having clay and wooden poles for walls and thatch comprising wood and grass for roofs.
Grain needed vessels for storage. Baskets and clay pots were then being produced for that purpose. At the level of intangible cultural heritage story telling was adopted and orature (oral literature) began to play a more important role. These were the sources of values and morals that provided pillars to support new processes and socio-political structures. Cosmology was at play in arranging the village architecture and interpersonal and intergroup relations. This form of agriculture was rain fed and communities developed supernatural ways of environmental intervention to ensure rain fell. A good example is that of the Njelele-related rain rituals which still exist today among the BaKalanga and related groups of the Bantu people.
While all this was happening, it was critically important that new technology was domesticated, by making it meaningful within the philosophical context of a given community. It was not always the case that innovation was endogenous. Where this was the case, meaning was inherently built into the design and production processes. Where new technologies were exogenous, it was imperative that pre-existing cosmologies be applied to render them intelligible, meaningful and therefore sustainable within the new worldview. It was recognised that technology alone was not the panacea for development. There had to be compatibility between technology and its supporting ideology.
We can illustrate this idea through the introduction of iron smelting and fashioning of iron implements by ironsmiths (abakhandi, mihha, mhizha). We are aware of the raging arguments and counter arguments relating to where iron smelting originated. Some scholars pin down the origins of iron smelting to the African continent. Others think it all started in western Asia and infiltrated into Africa via Carthage in North Africa. For our purposes in this article, the controversy is neither here nor there. What is of interest to us is the domestication or indigenisation of what is on the surface, may appear as a mere technological and chemical process, a redox reaction where iron ore/heamatite (iron oxide) is reduced to iron while carbon is oxidised to carbon dioxide.
Recently I found myself leading filming crew from Cush Communications in London who were documenting human development from hunter gatherer communities to agricultural ones that engaged in crop production and practiced iron working.
As we went up a little hill within the Matobo Hills, I pointed out to the fact that the iron smelting site was secluded and generally inaccessible. That was deliberate on the part of the smelters in line with their understanding of the process of iron smelting in line with their domestication of iron technology. Domestication, which essentially was ideological, ensured adoption and sustainability. The seemingly universal chemical reactions had to be couched within the context that was intelligible to the people. For science to be adopted and made use of, it must be domesticated. Communities prefer to work within contexts that are meaningful on their terms, not other people’s terms as often happens in the field of community development.
For these particular people the whole process was akin to sexual reproduction, a biological process that ensured or guaranteed continuation of their species. As we have pointed out before, Africans were keen to ensure perpetuation of their own kind and overall, had faith in natural processes which they sought to invoke within cultural contexts. If this was so, iron smelting, being reminiscent of or the symbolisation of sexual reproduction, it had to be engaged in, in total seclusion, hence the isolated and secluded spot on the hill.
Design of the production apparatus was in line with the cosmological world of the community. Sexual reproduction has two basic components: male and female. The male component comprised goat skin bellows, at least among the BaKalanga. These were made in pairs, thus symbolising the two testes. The manner in which the bellows were worked on was akin to the male sexual act. From this male side was a circular tapering clay pipe which introduced air to the female side. As you might surmise, this symbolised the phallus.
The other component was rendered in female terms. Once again, the furnace was designed in line with the worldview of the particular community. It was a design calculated to be perceived in line with their understanding of the cosmological portrayal of femininity. For example, among the BaNjanja the furnace was provided with two breasts and scarifications on the stomach, further endorsing the furnace as being female. The opening in the furnace symbolised the vulva through which the baby, molten iron, was delivered.
Following the sexual act there came a period of growth and development of the zygote, embryo and finally the foetus. That was followed by child birth, once again a private process not to be subjected to the full glare of strangers. This is how iron working was rendered among the communities in southern Africa. The seclusion is explained in terms of this critical process of domestication, which made new phenomena, processes and inventions in line with a people’s worldview. That infused sustainability into the new processes being adopted.
Let us not lose sight of the fact that iron working is brought into the picture because it enhanced agricultural output. The hand hoe was one of the products of the iron working process. Molten iron was handed to the ironsmiths for fashioning into various implements including those in the agricultural sector such as hand hoes and axes, both of which extended the acreage under cultivation and thus enhanced food security. What should become apparent is that food production was related to available technologies, which technologies were domesticated so that they were not perceived as foreign bodies which risked rejection.
Various crops were domesticated in various parts of the world. The one crop that does seem to have been indigenous to Africa is pearl millet (zembgwe, inyawuthi). Sorghum (amabele, mapfunde), too may have been indigenous to Africa and was, like pearl millet, suited to the prevailing climatic conditions. Africa may have been the cradle for the domestication of yams and cassava.
