The Sunday News
Phathisa Nyathi
MOUNTAINS are physical entities which, at the human level, are infused with cultural meaning, sometimes one that encapsulates spirituality. This is true of many communities on the planet, especially in black Africa. For some, mountains are burial sites yet for others, they are meeting sites between God and his supplicants. In terms of perception of environmental landscapes, mountains are strange and unique in that they are higher than the average surrounding terrain. It is this abnormality as it were that makes them stand out like a sore thumb above the terrestrial environment. Some of these physical structures are of mammoth dimensions and altitude.
Perceptions attached to mountains inform what role they play within the cultural world of a given community. For example, mountains resemble graves which comprise earth mounds and stones on the mounds. Burials of the deceased seek to create miniature mountains which do not, by and large, take a rectangular form. Instead, they broadly take on a circular design, with exceptions being ice-eroded mountains towards the polar regions.
Some mountains are very tall and are thus perceived as close to the heavens or at least the non-physical abode of departed souls of the deceased. For a people holding beliefs that souls/spirits exit bodies and begin journeys to the spiritual world, it makes sense for them to locate bodily remains within mountain caves. Such mountains are infused with sacredness on account of being abodes of ancestral spirits. Where mountains do not exist, they are created on the ground to assume the shape and composition of mountains: circular with earth mounds and stones. Graves should thus be seen as miniature mountains. Magnitude does not matter that much. Size will vary from normal size graves in most parts of black Africa to the gigantic pyramids in ancient Egypt where colossal stone slabs were imported from afar and dressed.
Depending on the composition and shape of mountains, some mountains assume the form of a womb. The womb, as has been indicated before, is an important anatomical and physiological tissue or site where continuity of the human species is executed. Such mountains are accordingly associated with fertility. This happens to be the case with the Njelele Shrine within the Matobo Hills. Njelele is a peace and fertility shrine. Such a shrine and several others dotted around Zimbabwe and neighbouring countries such as South Africa and Botswana, host annual pilgrims that approach them for rain rituals in areas that are characterised by erratic and little rainfall.
At a different level, mountains especially when they are ranges lying athwart moisture laden winds, are associated with relief rainfall. Rain-bearing clouds, upon approaching lofty mountain ranges, are forced to rise and, in the process, cool down to a point where their water vapour begins to condense into droplets that coalesce and form big rain drops that are forced to come down by the force of gravity as rain that falls on the windward side. Such meteorological phenomena seem to tally with the ritual side in which Africans associated hills with fertility by possessing the characteristics of a mountain in several respects.
Water is life and it is the source and sustainer of that life. Both ideas share this common feature: association with life and fertility. The earth, minus water from rain, is barren; which is to say it is lifeless. Life is threatened where there is absence of water. Africa has always known this fact which becomes evident when water conservation measures are put in place.
This idea, based on physical attributes, is complemented by the fact that some mountains become the abode of ancestral spirits. The royal dead were placed in mountain caves. Given their power, the ancestral spirits were regarded as possessing power and capacity to cause rain to fall. As a result, they were approached in rituals calculated to achieve precisely that. Njelele, Ntogwa (in Botswana), Zhamu in Esigodini, Mataletale (in reference to striations on the rocks) and Blouberg (in South Africa’s Limpopo Province) were some of the hills that were associated with rain rituals on the bases of their material attributes and or the abode of ancestral spirits.
Within the Matobo Hills mountains were allocated to individuals who possessed exclusive rights to the resources of that particular mountain. The practice was calculated to conserve the resources resident on the mountain for their sustainable exploitation. The resources in question included, inter alia, dassies, rock rabbits, klipspringers, bees’ honey and timber. The one individual given exclusive utilisation of resources felt some sense of conservational responsibility and adopted appropriate measures for he knew that once the resources on the hill were depleted, he had nothing to fall back on. The rest of the mountains belonged to other persons in the locality.
During times of extreme drought a klipspringer was captured and confined to a house overnight within a homestead. Cultural interventions were formulated prior to release of the animal which lives on mountains. The measure was a last resort after approaches to madaka (grassroots rain shrines) and mayile (the taboo rain dance) had failed to yield rains. A CARITAS workshop held recently in Matobo revealed knowledge among the rural folk regarding weather forecasting. A klipspringer, igogo, proceeded to perch itself on a high rock boulder. That behaviour was seen as forecasting impending rain. Igogo requires water to accumulate on rocks so that it too may drink. Going up and perching itself on high rock was a prayer on its part. Indeed, its prayers were duly answered.
Mountains were sometimes named on the basis of associated rituals that were performed on them. Njelele was so named on account of birds of that name that resided on the hill top. Njelele birds portended rain and did find their way into the praises of both Mwali and the Malaba shrine priests.
Thobela,
Mbedzi,
Bagudu baNjelele,
Banozana ikabe mibvumbi
A hill off the road from Bulawayo to Inyathi is named Isiphongo. Isiphongo refers to the brow. The hill close to where the village of KoBabambeni was located resembled, in terms of shape, to a brow. Not far from Ntabazinduna there is a hill called uMdanyazana. It is some kind of a knoll, some prominent physical structure of limited proportions within a low- lying terrain. Not far from Mhlahlandlela, King Mzilikazi kaMatshobana’s last capital town, there is a hill of the same name.
Hills have been given names that capture the history of a people. Back in KwaZulu-Natal where the Khumalos lived, there was a hill named Ngome. It was a hill whose name found its way into King Mzilikazi kaMatshobana’s praises:
Inkom’ ezavul’ inqaba ngezimpondo,
Ngoba zavul’ iNgome zahamba kithi kwaZulu.
Close to the Tuli River in the Matobo Hills, not far from the Matobo National Park, there is a hill of the same name. Not far from the bank of the Tuli River lies the grave of Mtshane Khumalo who led King Lobengula kaMzilikazi’s forces against the British South Africa Company-sponsored invasion army at Gadade on 1 November 1893. There is also a hill of the same name in the Zvishavane area under the jurisdiction of Chief Mafala Matshazi, descended from Mfangilele who was chief of Indinana Regiment/Village.
Naming has a basis or reason for its existence. It could be on the basis of its physical orientation or shape. Sometimes it resembled an earlier hill of the same name. Out of nostalgia, a hill in a new area of settlement may be burdened with the same name. Rituals associated with a hill may result in its naming after its ritual significance. Intabayezinduna (since become Ntabazinduna) is associated with the treasonable installation of Prince Nkulumane kaMzilikazi while King Mzilikazi kaMatshobana was still on his way to Matabeleland. There is thus so much history that lies behind names of hills and mountains.
Our ancestors did not write but they did document their histories in various ways including naming of their world including its mountains and hills.
