The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
EARLY Egyptians seem to have given names for a reason. They believed a name endowed eternity to a named object. Egyptians believed in life after death and many of their cultural practices were conducted in pursuit of that objective. Corpses were mummified so as to provide some resting place for the departed spirit. Funerary objects were buried with the corpse for use in the journey to the underworld. Lotus flowers were held in the hands in the belief that they expressed regeneration and rebirth. Indeed, many of their beliefs were applicable to black Africans.
Names were given in order to render identity to named persons. Communication was facilitated. For a people who posited duality, the material and spiritual components were part of an interacting and interlinked reality. There is rock art in which is depicted plant life. Sometimes tubers were part of what was depicted in the specimens. The San, like farmer communities, posited a duality in materials they dealt with. A tuber may have been depicted purely as documentation of plants that were part of the world of the San. However, there was also the spiritual dimension to the same tuber, beyond its nutritional value.
Some tubers were endowed with medicinal properties. Where we see such tubers depicted we are at a loss as to what the San artists sought to communicate between a tuber as food and the same tuber as a medicinal plant with spiritual attributes. Still drawings/pictures present more challenges in terms of interpretation. Video presentations are better placed as they may capture processes. For people to whom rock art is outside the world of their experience its interpretation becomes a real challenge. Some people may concentrate more on the aesthetic expressions with little or no regard for the underlying meaning behind the art.
A name beyond rendering identity, affords spiritual access to the named. Spiritual identity is accessed through a name. Spiritual identity is the vehicle for accessing the material component. A name has a special role in the African world. Two aspects of a tree are captured: the material and tangible alongside the spiritual and intangible. A stranger to the multidimensional African world faces challenges in interpreting phenomena such as rock art.
Today we shall look at some trees and plants so as to understand the role played by names within the world of trees and plants. We shall begin with a plant that is associated with the smuggling of the first batch of military hardware to be brought into the country in 1962 from the DRC. The plant with tubers is called in TjiKalanga nligazwikono, the one that fells, liga, the big ones, zwikono. The associated history of the plant and the weapons has been told before. We need not belabour the point anymore.
The plant, also found in Zimbabwe, especially in better watered areas, has chemical properties that ultimately result in the felling of big animals such as buffaloes. The tuber is crushed and added into water in a pool. When the big animals partake of the doctored water they experience weakness and get immobilised. The animals’ knees give in resulting in the animals falling to the ground and, in the process, becoming easy prey to hunters.
The name is thus descriptive. It is a name that describes the characteristics of the plant. When ingested, it will fell big animals. Its associated characteristics have given it its name, corrupted in IsiNdebele to umligazigone, which is devoid of the requisite meaning. The plant is visible in many homesteads both in urban and rural areas. Here it is being used as a protective plant that fortifies the homestead. Every summer season the plant develops new shoots. A witch approaching the fortified homestead is symbolically weakened and felled by the magical powers of the plant. As a result, the witch is immobilised and fails to make further advances towards the protected village. At the entrance there are two plants, each on the opposite side.
Besides its role as a feller of the big ones, the plant is a foreteller of impending death. When there is to be a death in the homestead, the plant shrivels and dies. The schooled are forewarned by the plant regarding what to expect. Apparently, the elderly keep a check on the plant if there is a patient in the home. Its death signals impending death.
For men the tuber is used as an aphrodisiac. A man who ingests the concoction approaches death in the sense of being knocked out, immobilised like a buffalo. However, upon recovery, the man is a performer in the theatre of sex. Certainly the San, would have captured such a plant in their rock art. Where the cultural background is not known, it is difficult to explain, in the first instance the identity of the plant and secondly the justification for the depiction of the plant. Art is expressive culture. Where the culture is not known, there is no way we can know what is being expressed.
Let us take a look at another tree, known as umvagazi. This time the tree is named not on account of what it will do but on its behavioural features. The tree is known as mukwa and mukwa oil is extracted from it for use in conditioning wooden furniture. The name derives from its behaviour when cut. Blood oozes out of its bark. The name translates to “blood comes out.”
It is important to note that to come out in IsiNdebele is captured through the verb “phuma.” However, the word used is not “phuma” which would have resulted in the name, “umphumagazi.” Instead, the applicable verb is “va” which is used in the Shona language. The same tree in Shona is named “mubvamaropa.” To linguists this is an important observation and a pointer to shared commonalities among Bantu languages.
A log from the tree is sometimes placed across the entrance of a cattle byre. The log was meant to prevent a disease known as umkhono or black quarter in English. A characteristic of the disease that is fatal is clotted blood in the forequarter or hindquarter. The link is pretty easy to see as the log from umvagazi is thought to prevent clotting of blood in a cow. This is a case of applied symbolism.
What becomes clear from the names of the two plants/trees is that names are given out of observed behaviour of the tree or the effects it induces. More often than not, the meaning behind the name may be lost as a result that over the years the characteristics of the plant and what it will induce are lost. Our knowledge of the language is lost and the meanings attached to names are lost with that knowledge.
One plant that is well known is umganu. From the wood of the tree wooden plates are carved. A plate is known as umganu in IsiNdebele, be it wooden or not. We may have lost the origin of the name as deriving from the tree of that name. Even when a plate is a china plate, it is still known as umganu on the basis of its use. The name originated from the name of the tree from which wooden plates were fashioned out.
Let’s take a look at the last tree and its name. Umtshekisane is, from its name a tree whose roots will cause one’s stomach to run, ukutsheka. This is true only if the roots are roasted, debarked and the bark crushed into a powder that is added to water and the mixture is then ingested. The tree is a medicinal formulation which will result in a running stomach, as a way of cleansing one’s digestive system.
