The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
QUITE often we do not fully appreciate the extent to which cosmic bodies and their traits influence our lives on earth. There is a strong link and interaction that underpin and inform both natural and cultural processes. Even those processes that we may consider as cultural are informed by natural processes whose origins are traceable to cosmic occurrences.
In this article we are concerned with lunar months with the objective of linking their names and the cosmic processes in the first place and then environmental characteristics that are shaped by cosmic processes. Last week we zeroed in on the seasons of the year and that they are the results of cosmic occurrences.
Movement of cosmic bodies is at the core of causality when it comes to months that are related to seasons and express the changes that get manifested. We are quite familiar with seasons being behind the various cultural activities, rituals and ceremonies which we sometimes take for granted. The movement of the sun, and its position in the solar system and its position relative to the earth prescribes the commencement and end of the agricultural season. Similarly, the winter is as a result of movement of the sun, though it is the earth that is moving — its rotation and revolution.
Our cultural rituals and ceremonies are directly and indirectly influenced by the movement of the earth. For example, the First Fruits Ceremony, ukuchinsa, is timed to coincide with the ripening of the first fruits. Growth of agricultural plants relies on availability of soil moisture which in turn comes after the summer rains.
Through adaptation, the growing agricultural plants get ready for ripening towards the end of the rain season. Harvesting takes place after the end of the rain season. There is some synchronisation.
Given the changes taking place on the cosmic realm, our cultural practices equally go in tandem with what is happening at the formative realm. Ceremonies such as umbuyiso, the bringing home ceremony, Inxwala, Umthontiso are all timed to coincide with changes taking place on the cosmic front.
When we begin to look at the lunar months it will become clear that the environmental changes associated with each month are a reflection of what is happening on the cosmic front. In other words, cosmic occurrences result in environmental changes on the earth planet. Then our cultural practices are closely linked to the changes that are taking place. The cosmos dictates, we take orders.
Sometimes through adoption of technology, in some limited way, we defy it.
We do this for example when we resort to irrigation so that we may practice agriculture during months that are regarded as dry months.
Through irrigation technology, we are in a position to harness and store rain water for use during the dry season. Our agriculture, as a result of technology, is no longer rain fed. Environmental conditions are a mirror of the state of the cosmos. Even as we say so we should never lose sight of the fact that our planet earth, indeed like other planets and their moos, are part of the cosmos which is interlinked and integrated.
Let us now identify a few months so that we seek to bring to the fore the link between their names and cosmic status and, finally, the environmental characteristics.
Naming is a tell-tale of environmental characteristics which have their origins in the cosmos. The first month in the African calendar is uMpandula. Perhaps, unlike the Gregorian calendar, ours is informed by the cosmos. I have said before that the Gregorian New Year has nothing new about it. What is the difference between December and January? On the other hand, the African New
Year in the Southern Hemisphere differentiated environmental conditions. The name of the month captures the change which marks the onset of the new year. Phendula is the word, a verb whose emphasis is on change. We see some plants and trees beginning to flower, ukununkula lokuqhakaza, and develop green leaves. Temperature rises much above that of the previous month, uNcwabakazi.
We might as well take on the month known as uNcwabakazi. The term ncwaba refers to cleanliness or clean appearances. That refers to the deviation from the previous month, uNtulikazi, July. UNtulikazi is associated with winds which, it being the dry season, blow dust, uthuli, off the ground. Soil particles land on every available surface including human beings who get a film of the dust. They and other surfaces, get a grime of dust — sebezintulintuli, hence the name of the month.
The presence of whirlwinds, izivunguzane, others refer to these as izavunguzane, is sometimes used in the prediction of the coming rain season, whether rains are promising or not. The more whirlwinds there are, the greater the chances of rain. This is but one of several indicators of the impending rain season.
We are not going to deal with all the lunar months regarding their names and natural characteristics. So far, all the three months that we have looked at regarding their names, what we observe is that the names are informed by natural characteristics which are in themselves in tandem with cosmic conditions. Whirlwinds, their subsiding and the budding of tree leaves and flowers the following months are all natural.
It is then up to humans to decide what cultural activities they can engage in. The beginning of the new year is the time when ash was added to the crop fields where pumpkin seeds were planted. It is also time when tree stumps in the fields are removed, a process known as ukugubula.
The rain season is fast approaching. Community representatives begin rain making rituals. Those going to the various madaka, such as Njelele, Mataletale, Zhilo, Manyanga and Ntogwa, inter alia, start pilgrimages to the rain shrines. Shrine keepers will have, during the month of uNcwabakazi (August) cleaned and cleansed the shrines.
Remember, the shrines, as natural phenomena, are identified on the basis of close resemblance to a woman’s womb which is associated with fertility. Here the fertility in question is that of Mother Earth who, like the human mother, is associated with fertility.
Next time you get close to Njelele, just look carefully and you will see it as a womb in terms of shape. But that is not all by way of comparison. There are other characteristics which it shares in common with a human womb. There is in the cave some water which corresponds to the amniotic fluid.
There was a belief in Africa that a woman’s womb ought to be cleaned and cleansed, ukugezisa/ukuhlambulula in symbolic terms, if she is to get pregnant. The same was applicable to Mother Earth, the Mother of human mothers who in turn nourish their own babies. Cleansing of
Mother Earth ranges from rituals such as those of the BaKalanga, the tenela where men go on a hunt meant to cleanse the environment. As they go about hunting, they remove what they consider as impurities such as trees that were struck by lightning and nests of birds that are thought to chase away rains when they open their mouths.
This is cleansing that is equivalent to what African gynaecologists do to women in order to facilitate conception which is the natural process that guarantee endlessness and continuity. Without rain there is no life on earth.
Defiling these rain shrines translates to imparting them with impurities. Symbolic conception may not take place. The rain coming down symbolises male semen. It takes two to tango. Without the man up there, the woman down here will not conceive. Fertility cannot be facilitated.
The African mind may not see the chemical processes and equations in the natural world. What they see is symbolised reality which simplifies what would otherwise be difficult phenomena to explain and interpret. Rituals are some form of pedagogy, which seeks to reduce complex issues and bring them within the mental reach of the mind.
Next week we shall have a look at more lunar months and see what lies behind their names. Why were they so named? Natural phenomena are documented and rendered meaningful through the names that they are given. We stand to understand and fathom African phenomena better when we begin to interrogate the African mind which orders reality.
