The Sunday News
Phathisa Nyathi
THROUGH lived experience the world is named, understood and interpreted contextually. Humans interact with the environment and, in the process, get to understand it better and on their terms. Resultant understanding is sometimes reflected in the names given to objects, persons and environmental features such as mountains, rivers, forests and water pools, inter alia. Given names relate to perceptions and ideas of named objects. Names are, in that sense, some documented human understanding, perceptions and relationships between humans and their immediate and sometimes distant environment.
I have often said my teacher is the best teacher in the world. That teacher is nature and, as indicated in the last instalment, it gives signals about events about impending events. Sadly, humans have lost touch with the environment and the knowledge of communicated messages. Invariably, failure to intercept and read beamed messages quite often bears disastrous consequences. Only last week nature communicated and some of us failed to decipher the messages being transmitted. Misheck Ntunduzakovelaphi Ncube passed on. His death was announced by the drying up of one plant at his Lobengula West house. The plant features prominently in the rendition of his role in the armed liberation struggle.
The plant is called nligazwikono and Velaphi and group used it to get the first weapons to be smuggled into Southern Rhodesia as narrated last week and we need not belabour the point. As pointed out in a previous instalment, I had been visiting Velaphi’s home for the past three months to conduct interviews relating to his illustrious role in the armed liberation struggle dating back to 1962 when he and the Group of 12 undertook guerrilla training in Egypt, indeed the first such training by Zapu cadres. When the Minister for Provincial Affairs in the Bulawayo Metropolitan Province, Cde Judith Ncube and I walked into the Velaphi homestead to console the family, the former alerted me to the shrivelled nligazwikono near the gate. “When an elderly person dies, sometimes a tree dies,” said the Minister.
Indeed, the plant had shrivelled up. The plant has tubers and these will sprout later after the announcement has been made. It was only later, after Velaphi had passed on, that I learnt about the behaviour of this plant. Some elderly lady from Matobo District pointed out that where the plant is growing within a homestead, it will shrivel prior to the occurrence of a death in the family. When, during the vigil, I had been asked to give some brief rendition of Velaphi’s role in the armed liberation struggle, I made reference to the ominous behaviour of the plant. Nature never fails to forewarn fellow nature and this, I am told, is captured in the Bible. Humans, though integral components of nature, sometimes behave as if they are superior and extraneous to nature; they distance themselves from the rest of nature.
As indicated last week, we have now begun descent to Mother Earth. Between her and the heavens, there is the atmosphere which envelopes the crust of the earth. This is a sphere that has a direct bearing on what goes on planet earth. Intimacy between the atmosphere and the human habitat is reflected in the more elaborate and extensive naming. We could start with the deep blue sky, named isibhakabhaka. Its colour in IsiNdebele is –luhlaza, which may be translated as green. As a result, -luhlaza refers both to blue and green in the English language.
The blue sky, in terms of colour, is captured in some spiritual cloths or fabric and glass beads that are associated with rain. Jukwa spirits and dances are associated with this colour. At the Njelele Rain Shrine spiritual adepts don cloths of a blue colour which is associated with light showery rain. The blue colour is complemented by the black colour which is equally associated with rain. Most spiritual rain adepts don materials of this colour. Whereas the black colour on the Zimbabwean national flag is said to represent the black majority, in weather terms it symbolises rain and peace. Rain-bearing clouds are black in colour. When rain drops begin falling from the black clouds, the weather phenomenon is seen as a whitish mass streaking down.
Black never goes with red which is the antithesis of black and what it symbolises. It was, and to some extent still is, taboo to display things red colour when there is lightning and thunder. The colour red symbolises blood and thus, by extension, death. Black symbolises life and the peace required to sustain life. War and death, as represented by red, are the direct opposites of peace and life. Rain brings life by fertilising Mother Earth. In fact, in African cosmological terms, rain is understood and perceived as semen being ejected by some man up in the sky. Sexual reproduction lies at the root of continuity and endlessness of the human and indeed other species. The mayile dance of the BaKalanga is understood in these sexual terms. Only women, often in the nude, take part in the taboo (yila) dance and do not want to associate or come into contact with earthly men. Their aim is to sexually arouse the man in the blue sky till he ejaculates semen which comes down in the form of rain.
In this symbolic picture the sky is male while Mother Earth is female. Interaction of the two results in rain or water, the basis of life and its sustenance. A cloud bears the name iyezi, implying to cover. There are many types of amayezi, plural of iyezi). Imilaza, whitish and thin, do not bear rain but may be viewed as harbingers of rain. There are fluffy cauliflower-like clouds known as amaxhegu. Again these do not bear rain. Amaxhegu refers to elderly men who are no longer that sexually active. They have lost sexual virility. They may produce limited semen which symbolises limited rainfall. During inxwala ceremony a young virile black bull was slaughtered. Its virility and colour black translated to life which culminates in a revived and re-energised nation. The king epitomised the nation and by partaking the parts from a slaughtered black bull, he imbibed new life which then extended to his nation.
Lightning streaks across the sky from the rain bearing clouds and sometimes pierces and enters the earth. A sexual metaphor is evident. Success, sustenance and fruitfulness are quite often rendered in sexual terms. It is sexual reproduction that lies behind continuity of the human species. In ritual killings the same idea is present. Sexual tissues are the targets for obvious symbolic meaning. For a businessman, his business enterprise must flourish and be forever sustainable in the same manner as human species is sustained through sexual tissues. The black cloud, like a black virile bull, holds promise and reality of regeneration and rebirth and hence, endlessness and eternity that are captured in the woman-inspired symbols, namely the circle and its alternative renditions such as the chevron icon and pattern, the herringbone and chess board.
The same sexual symbolic recourse is applied when whirlwinds, izavunguzane, ravage the earth. The ravaging winds are perceived and interpreted as manifestations of an angry Mother Earth. The remedy is to pacify her by sweetly striking her with a sharp object through the agency of a man. The last finger, ucikilicane, is used to point at the ferocious whirlwind. It dissipates; its anger subsides following the symbolised sexual act, executed through the cylindrical finger and the sharp spear (also cylindrical with a sharp end).
Symbolic manipulation was a powerful executing agency and a means to simplify and facilitate the understanding of both natural and cultural phenomena.
