The Sunday News
IN the last article we introduced the topic relating to bones, in particular how bones found their way to the Old Bulawayo Cultural Landscape. I had then hoped that the introductory chapter was going to lay sufficient background information for the treatment of the topic on bones.
It was my hope that the introductory chapter would allow me to deal more definitively with the explanation and finally the interpretation of the relevance and significance of bones.
It later dawned on me that the bones are in fact, an important prelude to a deeper and more fundamental topic, one that relates to the heavily maligned and misunderstood craft sometimes referred to as witchcraft.
There are writers that have attempted to write on the topic from an isolated and exclusive viewpoint as if witchcraft can ever stand on its own as an independent profession.
This limited view of the craft was spawned by failure to isolate, identify and unpack the phenomenon from a broader perspective, which posits the two-dimensional existence of the phenomenon.
There are fundamental and essential principles constituting the craft or science within which are to be found the two opposing aspects at the level of application.
Perhaps to clarify the issue let us refer to nuclear energy. It is energy from the nuclei of atoms. The energy may be harnessed and put to good use, for example in health diagnostics and provision of light. That is positive.
At the same time, the same energy may be harnessed and put to harmful use as feared might happen in the war between Ukraine and Russia if some world powers try to intervene. The same energy will cause untold destruction and suffering.
This is the view that we seek to apply when we deal with the so-called witchcraft, which is one of the reasons for the introduction of bones from birds, snakes, and animals whose flesh was not for consumptive purposes. As will become apparent in the forthcoming articles, archaeologists retrieved various bones from snakes, wild dog, vultures, eagles, lions, leopards and pangolin, inter alia.
It is these bones, more than those from cattle and other domesticated animals that require background information. These relate to the broader topic that we are painstakingly trying to introduce and unpack so that we explain and interpret the relevance and significance of the bones at Old Bulawayo’s Royal Enclosure from a more informed position.
It is a topic that lays bare the worldview of the Ndebele people and indeed other African ethnic groups that share the same beliefs, philosophy and cosmology.
In essence, we are saying there is a broader field of scholarship whose one aspect is witchcraft, the negative aspect that draws from the same field of science or craft. That broad field is the same from which traditional doctors, diviners, seers, psychics, clairvoyants, spirit mediums, herbalists, soothsayers, fortune tellers and many more draw from.
The science or craft and its underlying principles, precepts, rules and edicts is one and all the practitioners, including sorcerers, witches, wizards and purveyors of evil magic rely upon. Out of the same craft or science, some seek to harm others or even kill them.
This is the area of witches, wizards and sorcerers. Herbalists and traditional doctors equally draw upon the very same craft or science in order to divine, heal and put right things that have gone wrong within the communities.
Let us, at this juncture, revert to the Ndebele language so that the ideas we are trying to put across are better articulated and understood. We start with the verb, thaka that expresses the idea of combining, putting together in a skilled fashion.
What is being put together may include the spoken word such as incantations, selected energy, herbs and other ritual ingredients during which energy is harvested, controlled, directed and unleashed for purposes of harming or healing a targeted individual or condition.
The ritual is in essence spiritual technology, which relies on identifiable and observable principles. The said technologists are spiritual men and women. This is to say they are endowed with mystical or spiritual powers.
They are able to harness the energy that abounds in the universe, control and unleash it within the contexts of rituals that are sometimes accompanied by elaborate and legitimating ceremonies.
However, what matters the most and lies at the centre of that applied craft or science is the ritual that embodies and brings together many facets that, in combination, have the capacity to concentrate force, domesticate it before unleashing it as directed by targeters. The target has to be identified and the targeters identified.
I am of course aware that this is a complex science and technology which we need to unpack and disaggregate if we are to appreciate the introduction of bones of birds, snakes, animals such as lions, leopards and wild dogs into the Royal Enclosure at Old Bulawayo.
In any case, we should never assume that the science we are trying to unpack is simple. It is a science of the ancients, which is transmitted to current generations through spiritual channels.
From the verb thaka, we end up with ubuthakathi, and umthakathi. Ubuthakathi is the science or craft embodying the knowledge and skill. Umthakathi is the person or agent, usually spiritual, who is a purveyor of the technology drawing on the applied principles.
Here we are referring to both the witches and traditional healers and both categories of men and women draw upon the same craft/science. The difference lies in the use to which they put the craft. A traditional doctor is sometimes known as inyanga-mthakathi.
Lion bones
They are healers who draw from the science ubuthakathi. Equally, a witch, not an umthakathi, but umkhunkuli, is endowed with bewitching knowledge and skills and can, simultaneously be a healer. Both individuals are intrinsically referred to as abathakathi, the knowledgeable and skilled purveyors of magic or mystical powers.
The traditional doctor reverses spells and curses that a witch has cast on individuals. Here the Law of Opposites applies. That requires that traditional doctors be reliant initially on divination or diagnostics to find out the nature of the particular curse or spell and identify the ritual, which was performed and, based on that knowledge, seek to apply the Law of Opposites.
Equipped with that knowledge, they move to intervene by seeking to undo what was done. He does the opposite of what was done. Like poles repel, could be a principle that they apply.
It is pertinent to give some practical grounding to what we have been dealing with to avoid hollow academic grounding and posturing. The person of King, in this case Lobengula, was the embodiment of the Ndebele State and Nation. He relied on the traditional doctors to fortify him directly and therefore, the State and Nation indirectly.
For that, the traditional doctors relied on formulations derived from certain herbal and animal extracts. Bones of fighting and defending animals would remain behind after the use of certain of their body parts in the all-important fortification processes or rituals.
The doctors themselves needed to enhance their “seeing, — ukubona/ukuboniswa” in order to be in a position to undo what would have been done or come up with protective charms and formulations and the harnessing of forces of protection or nullification of what was done by witches.
There were birds and animal extracts that were used to enhance divination such as through the sharpening of vision and dreams, which are relays of revelations from the spiritual realm to that of the living.
Further, the traditional doctors themselves must be fortified against the machinations of the purveyors of evil magic or mystical powers, the witches who were mortally feared by the community members.
Their own fortification demanded the use of certain herbs together with animal and bird extracts, ritually manipulated through spiritual technology.
In conclusion, we reiterate the existence in the universe of a diverse range of pervasive forces. The forces may be harnessed, controlled and unleashed on targets by various individuals who are spiritually endowed.
Witches/wizards and traditional doctors are the purveyors of the same science or craft albeit for different reasons — either positive or negative. The craft or science is one and both the witches and traditional doctors tap into that common source.
Witchcraft is but an aspect of the broader craft/science and may be fought or warded off by taking recourse to the same science or craft and applying the opposite principles. The principles behind witchcraft, sorcery and evil magic on the one hand are the same as those applied to healing, fortification, protection and curing on the other.
In all instances the spirit is at the centre, hence we refer to African Spirituality rather than African Religion.
