The Sunday News
Cultural Heritage with Pathisa Nyathi
THERE is a need to provide background information before we hazard the significance and purposes for the anthropomorphic clay figurines that were unearthed from the fill of the wooden Royal Palisade.
There are related features that require taking on board out of whose relatedness we may proffer credible interpretation.
It is significant to note that the human clay figurines were retrieved from the fill of the royal palisade.
There is a possibility that if more gulleys had been dug, more clay figurines might have been found deposited elsewhere along the royal palisade.
At the same time, it is unlikely that similar human clay figurines would have been found from fills of peripheral wooden palisades in the Commoners Enclosure.
Researchers reported finding one clay figurine in association with a complex of glass beads. Another clay figurine was found with a shirt button, isikopelo, in IsiNdebele.
According to Edward Matenga, 35 miniature human clay figurines were accounted for.
Apparently, the human clay figurines were concealed from the main entrance in the northeast.
The white beads were used to mark the positions of their eyes and faces. The buttocks were steatoppigous, noted Matenga.
Now we may need to revisit the introductory story in the last article.
The ethnic identity of the female traditional doctor is significant.
King Mzilikazi
She was of Sotho origin whose ancestors, the Mloyis, attended to King Mzilikazi during migration from KwaZulu-Natal. They were incorporated along the way, certainly before arrival in present day Limpopo Province.
In fact, The King allocated them a place where they set up their own village by the name of Ezinyangeni (eZikaMzondo).
After conquest the villagers under Duha Mloyi were relocated to Nkayi where the chieftainship was abolished and the Mloyis came under the authority of Chief Nkalakatha Ndiweni who led the relocating Ujinga lukaMletshe Village.
Now we try to piece together information at our disposal to see if we might emerge with some credible explanations that account for the presence of the human clay figurines at Old Bulawayo.
Known cosmological ideas and cultural practices of the Ndebele, and African recourse to symbolism to achieve certain ends will hopefully illuminate the way. We start with the belief among the Ndebele and indeed other African groups.
They posit the presence of malevolent forces and individuals who possess knowledge and skills to manipulate the said forces and powers to cause harm to targeted individuals.
Skilled spiritual individuals, who work rituals that harness, direct and unleash forces towards targeted individuals, their households and properties may harness the pervasive powers, forces and energies.
In order to counter the malicious machinations of such persons, people’s homes, livestock pens and crop fields were fortified ukubethelwa as a means of countering the evil powers of witches and wizards.
Various methodologies to achieve this goal were applied. Medicated and sharpened wooden pegs, izikhonkwane, were dug into strategic positions along the homestead boundaries.
The medicated wooden pegs were dug into the ground next to the palisade — on the inside. Some traditional healers planted one peg at the centre of the homestead. What the pegs did was to create some fortified and protected zone into which wizards and witches dared not enter or fly over.
The pegs served as some kind of antiballistic missile battery. Stories abound concerning flying witches who fell down over some homesteads, presumably protected/fortified ones.
The traditional doctors went about this onerous task at night when neighbours did not see what was going on. Sometimes there were cases when the traditional doctors performed the fortification rituals in the nude.
This was done out of the belief that wizards and witches plied their trade at night and in the nude. Nudity fights or negates nudity. It is similar to the Laws of Magnetism. Like repels or fights off like.
If neighbours were not supposed to witness the fortification process, certainly missionaries and traders stood no chance to witness so secretive a ritual.
Given the ethnic identity of the woman in the story described above, one can surmise that Ndebele or Sotho traditional healers practiced the use of figurines. The practice happens to be one that was not witnessed by many.
Even the residents of the homestead did not witness the processes.
Instead, they were advised to remain within houses and later, after all had been done and completed, they were given rules and taboos to observe in order to maintain the efficacy and potency of the anti-ballistic missile battery.
Sometimes there’re rules and taboos that were calculated to avoid members of the household from falling victim to the fortification arsenal.
One question that we may pose is, why use human clay figurines rather than the usual medicated wooden pegs that are normally used? Humans symbolise and define the apex of development in the animal kingdom.
They are thought to possess power, especially spiritual that they ritually control and unleash towards targeted persons.
At the same time, harnessed powers and energies may be used to counter evil forces.
However, other lesser specimens from the animal kingdom may be symbolised and used for the same purposes.
The forces are neutral but may be used way, either evil or good depending on the purposes of the one who harnesses the said powers. Lions and other zoomorphic specimens have been used.
A combination of such and humans have been used as in the case of the Egyptian sphinx. A zoomorphic clay pot, actually symbolising a fighting ram was used at the royal residence of Mambo at Khami.
The ram, bearing fortification charms, was used in conjunction with copper wires.
To create, ukubumba is a way of re-enacting the ancient old process that brought the human race into being as narrated through the Sumerian creation myth, which is shared by some Africans in their creation myths.
Clay was used in the process. There are other materials, notably wood, that could have been used but clay was given precedence because it was the material used to create humans as testified to in the creation myths.
Symbolised humans are best specimens to fight humans of evil intentions
What about the button from a shirt? Here we go to the practice where a corpse that is being buried must have all buttons removed from its clothes.
Buttoning up, ukukopela symbolises shutting out, blocking or excluding.
The concepts being expressed here are calculated at symbolically shutting out witches or their malevolent ritually targeted formulae.
The formula is closed out, or countered or negated.
This is the principle used when two individuals, male and female, engage in extra-marital sexual encounters and then fail to separate after the act.
They remain locked, as in the expression of a button and what it does.
A knife may also be used with the same embarrassing effect. It is part of the Ancient African Science (AAS), which does not make sense to Western scientists.
The colour of the white beads seems significant too.
White is a facilitating colour, some kind of catalyst. For example, at the Njelele Fertility Shrine the spiritual adepts, amawosana wear black and blue colours.
White too may be used. Black symbolises the colour of rain-bearing clouds in the blue sky.
White comes in as a facilitator. “Amehlo amhlophe,” the Ndebele will pass congratulatory messages whenever one has succeeded. Success is associated with a white colour.
I am not surprised that white glass beads were used in the manufacture of human clay figurines.
