The Sunday News
Phathisa Nyathi
ALL around us the land is parched dry. Streams that have all along been perennial have become dust bowls. Leaves are dry and the feeble early July winds blow them off the yellowing trees. However, as we approach this piece of what was once divine and sacred ground, there is some marked difference. It’s like an oasis in the Kalahari Desert. It is not a mirage. The grass is green. Clean white water is flowing gently towards the nearby Wovi (gwizi gomfi) River. The boys have come to fetch water. Their scotch cart is full of plastic 20-litre containers. A girl approaches delicately balancing a 20-litre plastic container. She too is coming to collect water.
I am travelling in the company of Misheck Fobe Dube from Amagugu Heritage Centre. Together we had visited Malusi Masuku who lives nearby to interview him on the history of Princess Famona Khumalo, a daughter of King Lobengula who was married to his great-grandfather Chief Hole Masuku. In our side talk, there was mention of inuta, an environment phenomenon in the Matobo Hills area. I had not seen one, though I have written about it in the past. A Mr Sibanda who we found in the company of Masuku took us to see inuta, as it is called in the language of the BaNyubi who live among the hills. To get to the site we entered through a gate. Buscod people fenced off the area which had belonged to Yedwa who ran some trading store where the Bulawayo-Kezi/Maphisa road crosses the Wovi River. The project suffered a stillbirth though some cattle are still seen grazing in the peripheral area.
Apparently, Yedwa used to run a shop near Malongwe River. A few gum trees still stand in testimony to his abandoned residence. In fact, there are several such abandoned stores including Country Store near where La Concorde branches off the main road to Kezi. Another is Thandabantu which Yvonne Vera mentioned in her book Stone Virgins. People who used to live in the area were evicted and their resistance, championed through Sofasonke led by Nqabe Tshuma was to no avail. Instead their lawyer Paddy Lloyd ended up buying land in the area, what today is referred to as Egqwetheni, at the lawyer’s place.
As we get closer, the white water becomes clearer. There are several sources of the precious liquid that is imperceptibly flowing out of the ground. There is a major source, one that we could term the primary source and a few others dotted around that are secondary sources. Approaching these sources, one gets the feeling of walking on some moving raft of earth buoyed by a phenomenal underground water reservoir. To get to the main hole-in-the-ground, there are stone slabs that serve as stepping stones, lest the ground swallows one like quick sand. Even the Buscod cattle, in their calculated approach, take a tangential route that skirts all the secondary and primary nutas. We can clearly hear the sound made by their hooves as they sink into the bog. They have learnt that they dare not venture anywhere near.
These environmental phenomena are found around a few areas within the Matobo Hills. There is one near Njelele Hill, and its waters flow into the nearby Dewe River. Other rivers in the area such as Mathanda and Malunde are bone dry. Cattle get water from the Dewe River. There is another nuta near Shumbashabe Hill where Chief Nzula Masuku settled when he returned to the hills. He was coming from Donkwe Donkwe where his father, Chief Hole Masuku, had been resettled following alienation of the land around Emthangaleni where he and wife Princess Famona had lived. Commercial farmers of Afrikaner stock such as Van Vuuren and Cloete (Mandayi) were taking over their lands stretching from Zhanje in the north to Zadobhe in the south.
Sibanda, our tour guide, laments the fact that the way the nuta is handled today indicates total lack of respect and flagrant flouting of traditional values and taboos. The untenable situation, he argues, is further exacerbated by the fact that there is no traditional authority to direct how the place should be looked after, especially the observance of taboos. Chief Malaki Masuku has not been succeeded several years following his death. Apparently, there is some ongoing wrangle that the chiefs are dealing with. Scotch carts are not supposed to get anywhere near inuta. Plastic and metal containers are not supposed to be used to fetch water.
Gourd cups (izinkezo) or wooden plates (imicephe) were used to fetch water. Cooking clay pots with black soot were not to be used. In fact, the place, endowed with spirituality and some sense of awe and reverence was approached in an appropriate manner. Water is life and its source equally deserved deference. Hands were clapped, kubutjila, when individuals approached the nuta. Besides, people did not melee around. Respect was expressed through kneeling down to fetch water.
Since colonisation, accompanied by the introduction of Western education and Christianity, the place no longer commands the respect that it once used to. In Mashonaland there are similar phenomena, each known as kasipiti. Respect for these have relatively endured somewhat. In Chiweshe, for example, one kasipiti is found near and works closely with a difficult-to-scale mountain known as Gwiranzara. To go up the mountain, one has to cling tightly to the rock, as if using one’s fingernails, nzara. On the hill summit there are water reservoirs in rock openings. A human skull is found. Respect is effected when errant individuals get lost when they defy known and recognised taboos.
Our guide stoops low to identify glass fragments of broken bottles that have been deposited here, apparently made as offerings by people who he alleges have come from Mashonaland. Grains of finger millet have also been offered at the site, in exchange for spiritual power. Money, corruption and changing values lie at the root of desecration of the nutas. Their reverence though used to emanate from the imagery and symbolism that reside in them, in addition to the fact that these are sources of life.
To a discerning mind, it is easy to pin down the origin of respect. The earth is perceived as female, a mother and therefore the source of fertility and endlessness of life. Water oozes out of the opening in the ground-clearly a metaphor for a female genital which is highly respected. The image is further reinforced by the fringing grass that is lush in an area that is windswept. The image of pubic hair will not escape an African mind. Many origin myths among several African communities refer to such places as the origins of humanity. Ntsoanatsatsi in the Orange Free State in South Africa is one such — a marshy place overgrown with reeds. Among the Ndebele people of Zimbabwe when a mother has had a new baby it is said she obtained it from a pool of water. All these are images used to circumvent what would otherwise be pornography and unsuitable for young inquisitive minds.
The community has tried to retain the respect for the nuta. Where a canal had been erected to channel water from the nuta to irrigate crops was covered up to stop water flowing along the canal. The eastern section of the fence that had been erected was ‘‘eaten by cattle’’, a euphemism for saying it was removed by villagers in a defiant display of protest. A similar case is reported from Chiweshe where a man offered a beast to the custodians of a kasipiti in exchange for drawing water from the environmental phenomenon. The man’s project was sanctioned. He drew water to irrigate his vegetable garden and sold produce to the community. On his part, he was instructed to conserve the site in order to preserve it.
