The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
WE acknowledge that what Reverend Doctor Robert Moffat recorded during his visits to the Ndebele monarch King Mzilikazi Khumalo was a tip of the iceberg. As one schooled in ways of a material world he hardly saw beyond the frontiers of his world. Even where he noticed matters spiritual, he cast them in religious terms, seeking to couch such matters in the context of his world of experience, orientation and training.
During his 1835 visit to King Mzilikazi Khumalo Reverend Doctor observed a messenger bearing at the end of a stick skins of birds of beautiful plumage intended to decorate His Majesty’s crown. Royalty was distinguishable from the rest of the commoners. Such differentiation took several forms. One such was their manner of dress. We have in previous articles made reference to beads that were the preserve of royal women. The beads were referred to as isantubane.
Royal women such as princesses wore dress akin to that of men. They wore indlukula, some headgear fashioned out of ostrich feathers. Such paraphernalia was reserved for military personnel and yet princesses donned such. Princess Famona Khumalo, a daughter of King Lobengula Khumalo and wife of Hole Masuku even had a rifle. Princess Sidambe Khumalo, another daughter of King Lobengula had a short stabbing spear called isijula/umdikadika/ijozi. Queen Lozikeyi Dlodlo had a smoking pipe similar to the one that King Lobengula Khumalo used. That was during the days when snuffing was more common than smoking.
Thus dress was an important marker of one’s gender, political and socio-economic status. Sometimes one’s profession was reflected in the manner of one’s dress. Presently, at Amagugu International Heritage Centre’s gallery there is an image that points to the fact that the woman being depicted was a traditional doctor. The photograph, availed to our heritage institution by the Rees family in Wales, was not captioned. Her attire is a tell-tale. Python vertebrae and vulture femurs are part of her spiritual attire.
There are two aspects that stand out in the case of the messenger who pitched up in the royal residence. One remembers a drawing of an African man who bears a letter on a stick and is running, obviously on his way to deliver the letter. You need not ask who was to be the recipient of the letter: a white person of course! The drawing appears in the post office along Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo Street in Bulawayo. Of late I have not been to the post office and so am not in a position to know whether the colonial drawing still graces the wall in the post office. The messenger was not allowed to touch the letter lest he defiled it prior to it being handled by the ‘‘Missisi’’, as King Lobengula Khumalo would have said.
Similarly, the messenger was not allowed to touch what was destined for the king. A story is told of one white visitor to King Lobengula Khumalo at his royal town of KoBulawayo. When the man took leave of the king, he touched the central pillar in the hut, insika. The king was furious over the fact that the poor white man had touched the wooden pillar. To one unschooled in African thought it looks like some beautiful superstition. To the king it was not so.
The king would have touched the pillar on several occasions. The wooden pillar thus had some body ‘‘grease’’ belonging to His Majesty. Africans had long been alert to the genetic uniqueness of human beings. The ‘‘grease’’ was imbued with unique royal genetic identity. An African scientist schooled and skilled in manipulation of one’s identity/signature could harm that particular individual. The king was not being superstitious. He knew well the capabilities of men of advanced craft, that they could, by manipulating his signature, bring about his downfall.
It was for this reason that disposal of royal excreta was a closely guarded secret. Access to his excreta — read his extended person/signature, could be skilfully manipulated to bring about his downfall, incapacitation or even death. It was in the same vein that royal hair, toe and finger nails were never to be accessed by potentially malicious and malevolent people of craft and science. Have you not heard how the Kalanga King She Tjibundule had his kingdom collapse after Tjangamire Nitjasike (Dombodzvuku, dombo lakakona tjingwango, and known as Tjilisamhulu in his childhood days) of the BaLozwi had married off his daughter Bagedze Moyo for the Biblical Samson and Delilah spiritual manipulation? She Tjibundule’s hair, being his signature and extension of self, was manipulated to neutralise the power of his magical gourd, gona.
It is for this reason that some of us do not take kindly to people who are given to dismissing outright African cultural and spiritual phenomena. Such people are either lazy or reluctant to fathom African Thought by getting into the mind of the African. Quite often their stance is motivated by racial arrogance. Sadder is the fact that the Africans themselves have adopted this unfortunate and unwarranted position hook, line and sinker.
Reverend Doctor Moffat did not specify the bird species whose plumage he saw. However, oral traditions are clear on the identity of the bird species — the blue roller, ifefe. Only King Mzilikazi Khumalo donned the feathers of that bird. In fact, the bird was sometimes referred to as King Mzilikazi’s bird.
This is a case where dress set the king apart. Even the way he donned the leopard skin was different from the way other men of distinction such as chiefs donned the same leopard skin. What is important though is to understand the narratives or intangible cultural heritage, itch, which attended the perceptions of the leopard.
Not so long ago I met Sabine Kamper from Germany who was part of the media practitioners who visited Amagugu at the invitation of the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA). I got to know that she was working on the Big Five: elephant, lion, rhino, leopard and the buffalo. Expectedly, her narratives on the Big Five were Eurocentric. I tried to impress upon her to work on the alternative narrative. Surely, Africans have interesting narratives concerning these animals. This is what tourists from Europe would love to read about. I remember suggesting to the officials from Matobo Rural District Council to consider exactly this possibility instead of rendering the old and tired Eurocentric narratives.
One could ask why the king sought to be different from the rest of his subjects. Familiarity breeds contempt. Do you not know that among the Ndebele people a mother-in-law and her son-in-law never shook hands? The two never ate food in full view of each other. All this was calculated to maintain social distance between the two. What starts as a seemingly harmless and innocent handshake may soon end up as some erotic embrace which may quickly degenerate into something more intimate. Behind cultural practices there are cosmological or ideological underpinnings which should be appreciated. When the two leaders of the Babirwa people, namely Daueatsoala and Makhura visited the Lozwi ruler to request for land on which to settle in the first quarter of the 19th Century, they and the Mambo or the Lozwi ruler never faced each other. Instead, they faced in opposite directions.
The Lozwi ruler gave them stringent conditions that they had to fulfil in exchange for land; one was to clear dog excreta each morning. The other was to remove ash from the royal household. Makhura obliged but Daueatsoala the elder brother declined and returned to South Africa. Makhura, who persevered and humbled himself, was rewarded with land stretching from Maribeha in the west to Mpindandangwa or in short Mpindangwa in the east. So it was with King Lobengula Khumalo and his visitors. He never addressed them directly. Instead, he spoke through Indunayezinduna Magwegwe Fuyane, umfokaNgazana.
