The Sunday News
SHELAGH Ranger (2007) in her book titled “The Word of Wisdom and the Creation of Animals in Africa,” refers to Shorter’s views regarding the Kiambu.
Shorter observes that the Kiambu people have integrated a sky-centred theology and an older earth-centred one.
“The sun at its zenith occupies a position above, the sacred hill of the chiefdom and the high-flying birds are the symbols of transcendence while the great carnivores stand for beauty and power.
That is why chiefs wear the skins of lions and leopards and the feathers of eagles.
leopard
But other creatures each have their symbolic importance, even the friendly python which lurks among the rocks, a symbol of ancestral spirits, whose graves are its home.”
Ideas that are embodied and expressed here are equally applicable to the Ndebele people of Zimbabwe.
Indeed, Ndebele kings and their followers adorned feathers of various kinds of birds such as eagles, ostrich and the blue lilac, reserved for King Mzilikazi.
Further, the soul of a dead person is believed to transform and inhabit various forms of nature ranging from trees, reptiles and snakes.
The final stage is that of birds which then fly off to some celestial destination.
Python bones were retrieved during excavations at Old Bulawayo.
The last article dealt with the significance of a python among the Ndebele of the 19th Century, a significance that is very much in vogue to this day particularly among the traditional healers and other spiritual personalities.
traditional healers
It does seem the Ndebele and African groups in general possessed intimate knowledge of fellow creatures, including plants and trees, in particular the attributes and characteristics that were sought out and harnessed for the good of relevant humankind.
Once the traits were identified, they were then ritually harnessed and symbolically transferred to human beings in accordance to their social and political statuses.
The harnessed or domesticated attributes were observed as being an integral part of a human being.
The person who, through symbolic manipulation, made himself/herself to be perceived as if he possessed the harnessed traits and attributes.
He/she assumed or acquired the harvested attributes.
Where the identified animal trait was respect, that trait was expressed through the targeted human being to whom that attribute was transferred.
A feared animal had its identified attribute transferred to a queen.
In the eyes of a beholder, the harvested trait was displayed in the targeted person.
This worked both in the positive and negative senses.
A hated animal had its trait transferred to an individual who was accordingly hated.
This was the opposite of a positive trait such as that cited above.
There was reason to do this.
In the main, it was calculated to acquire and exhibit a trait that facilitated, in the targeted person, the desired characteristic transferred from an animal, bird or plant/tree.
A king sought respect and loyalty from his subjects.
The manipulators of naturally occurring attributes ritually harnessed these and made them appear in the person who would then express and exhibit the same traits: a feared and respected king.
This is what ought to be known if we are to appreciate some elements from the Ancient African Science (AAS).
This is critically important if we are to disabuse ourselves of seeing paganism in the trait-manipulating exploits of African scientists.
Optical illusion and mentally induced perceptions may be the result that is to all intents and purposes real as its consequences are real.
We fear a king, a ruler and yet this was symbolically infused into the king and our perceptions were likewise manipulated.
Natural attributes relate to both physical and metaphysical attributes.
Where a people are materially inclined they will not see the metaphysical and the spiritual and will be hard put to see what a spiritually inclined African sees and the rituals he/she performs to manipulate natural trails and distribute them among individuals for the desired ends.
A tree for example may be induced to acquire the identity of a given and targeted individual.
After a repeated “verse and herb” incantations, the tree effectively assumes a new identity.
This is a way of accessing an individual who otherwise was unreachable.
Assaulting the transformed tree either physically or spiritually is tantamount to doing that to an individual who symbolically has been brought nearer the assaulting person, a qualified manipulator of natural attributes. In common, parlance these are traditional healers and witches/wizards.
Surely the fallen wizard at Old Magwegwe Township must have harvested the energy resident in creatures that are naturally endowed with “flying” attributes.
The man is said to have been coming from Binga and his flying energy ran out when he was flying above a fortified house in Magwegwe.
Perhaps this is adequate by way of introducing the working theory.
Today we focus the spotlight on the bones of leopards and lions that were retrieved from the Royal Enclosure at Old Bulawayo.
Unless one is sufficiently inducted into the applicable AAS, it is difficult to understand what the significance of the bones of such big cats was.
We began this article with a quotation that provided some background to African perceptions and that was done with a view to introducing applied perceptions as applicable through the eyes of the 19th Century Ndebele people.
Unlike the python bones that were used by the traditional healers, the king himself used parts of a lion and a leopard.
What was retrieved during excavations were those enduring parts of big carnivores such as phalanges and teeth.
The perishable skins would not have been detected, as these are perishable.
Lions and leopards are ferocious fighters.
In their fights, they make use of their strength and power that are channelled through the teeth and nails.
These parts of their bodies are thus expressive and symbolic of their power and strength.
The king used these as integral parts of his necklaces so that those who beckoned him saw a lion or leopard because of its nails and teeth.
A king is a ferocious defender of territory.
A king is a symbolic and sometimes physical/literal fighter who defends territory by deploying the military and personal arsenal available to him.
Equally, the teeth, especially the canines rather than the molars used for chewing, are the ones that are used as integral components of royal necklaces, (izigqizo and imigaxo).
It is important that these parts of the big carnivores were ritually manipulated in order to have the cat-traits identified and transferred.
Merely obtaining and wearing the desired big cat parts would not result in the intended outcomes.
The universe, so observed the Africans, comprised opposites; expressed through the Law of Opposites.
The parts of cats referred to above symbolised strength, power and defence.
These attributes could be opposed, meaning they could be negated, nullified or neutralised.
Africans knew how to incapacitate avian predators, the birds with talons and lions and leopards with phalanges and teeth. Again, knowledge of nature came in handy here.
There is a plant known as inkunzane whose fruits have “warped end-growths.”
They resemble and thus symbolise folded phalanges, teeth and talons.
talons
These were manipulated to neutralise the work of predators such as lions and leopards.
The same was true of hawks that preyed on hatched chickens.
In the absence of their attacking arsenal, they are demobilised.
One man that I interviewed nearly 40 years ago boasted that lions and related predators would never attack the herds of cattle that he symbolically worked on.
He worked on the principle that a lion lurching onto a cow would have his nails failing to eject its nails.
The teeth equally would not enter the body of a cow.
A lion so manipulated is as good as no lion at all.
The chicks were protected the same way.
A swooping hawk would have its talons remaining in “locked” position, failing to extend and enter the body of a chick.
All this metaphysical science now remains within what is derogatively referred to as IKS (Indigenous Knowledge Systems) as if there is anything that is not indigenous to a particular group of people.
Lions and leopards are regal animals.
Lions
This is to say they move with respect and dignity.
Once again, a king needs this trait.
The least that followers expect of a king is one who is jumpy-jumping among tree branches like a monkey who is not solidly anchored to the ground.
Respect does not follow individuals who behave like this.
A friend once told me about the “presence,” call it some aura, that he felt when he came into close contact with some reigning monarch.
A king is both born and culturally rebirthed so that the subjects feel naturally obliged to respect him and the “Bayethe” salute flows effortlessly from the mouths of subjects.
