The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
WHEN Reverend Dr Robert Moffat visited the Ndebele monarch the one thing he observed during all his several visits was animated and vivacious royal praises showered on the king by those who approached him. In fact, he never travelled without some entourage among who there were praise singers, izimbongi or izinyosi. The London Missionary Society (LMS) missionary, who harboured ideas that diametrically opposed those of the Ndebele, was riled by such gargantuan adulations on the monarch. In his opinion, it was all unnecessary and misplaced native nonsense.
He was coming from a different English/Scottish society where the institution of King/Queen was losing its glamour and glitter. The legislature had assumed some royal powers. Reverend Dr Robert Moffat apparently did not forget that they too once revered the office of monarch which had power over life and death; nor did the royal office endure a few decades. To the contrary, it existed for several centuries. More importantly, the English and Scots, without a cue, let alone coercion from some external quarters, decided to weaken the centuries-old non-elective monarchical institution. The Ndebele were coerced into abandoning their own in 1893 — hence the lingering and persistent yearn for the institution’s resuscitation.
Impatience had got the better of the Scotsman. He expected the Ndebele, indeed other African peoples, to abandon the institution overnight. It is this impatience that often leads to the dismal and depressing failure of adopted ideas to take root. Development is not about short cuts of a material nature, nor is it about creation of physical infrastructure which is some easy way for accounting for donor funds. Donor funds that produce the best and enduring results are those that bring about mental transformation which is not readily monitored and evaluated. External and quite often dictated development paradigms, fail to take root in people’s minds. Such anti-development is not a mental product, emanating from a prolonged and transformative mental process which guarantees sustainability. If Europe took centuries to internalise and inculcate new ideas, why all this impatience in expecting Africa to take short cuts?
The past has a strong hold on the present. It is the present that illuminates and informs the future. As we ought to know, values change but slowly, unlike adoption of new items of material culture. Ideas rest on pillars of ideological support. Only when the ideological support pillars are breached or completely brought down, do we begin to see sustainable migration from old cultural practices and adoption of innovations. Intangible changes, while more fundamental and sometimes pervasive, they are resistant to change, more so when they are resorted to for purposes of legitimating the continued rule of a dynasty or blood line.
Further, we should not seek to be judgemental when it comes to ideas and values of the ancients. Their ideas were sacrosanct to them and they were prepared to defend the status quo where their ideas found expression and acceptance. Sometimes we forget this and get riled by what other people are doing. We only need to get into their minds to appreciate their thought processes. The temptation to think the modern beings are cleverer seems to get the better of us and yet so very often we fail to explain let alone decipher what they did and why they did it.
The mind creates. Hands build, sculpt, paint, draw, engrave, weave, and mould. The latter four are mental products transformed to the realm of the material or physical. They are material executions of mental creativity and its creations — all intangible. To appreciate them one has to appreciate the superior mind behind all tangible products and sometimes intangible phenomena such as performances. When physical phenomena are brought into being, it is the mind that has the final say — be it consumption, appreciation of artistic creations such as sculpture, drawings, and paintings, ceramics, inter alia. All these are not consumed by anything else other than people’s minds — neither their hands nor their feet. After all, what is created is created for the mind — the ultimate judge, opinion maker and consumer. Minds judge, make some opinion on and consume their own creations and those of others — all endeavours of their own creativity. This is more so in the field of arts!
Reverend Dr Robert Moffat opined as follows regarding the royal praises showered on King Mzilikazi kaMatshobana: “These are sounding so incessantly in our ears that Same (Sam Edwards) and I are usually afraid (lest) our tongues take it into their heads to shout out his sable majesty sacred titles to dogs, oxen, or any living thing, all of which are, with a few exceptions, much more worth than the scourge of nations, a man who feasts himself and his thousands on others’ woes. The heart sinks at scenes like these. Nothing but the Gospel can restore man. O Lord pity the natives!”
Perhaps the man of the Bible would not have been this harsh if he appreciated the role of such praises in society. For an illiterate people in praises there resided their historical experiences. Recital of praises was thus a form of documentation. Future generations did access the histories of their ancestors by having the royal praises explained and interpreted to them. The poems were passed from one generation to the next.
When Reverend Robert Moffat argued for the termination of royal praises he probably did not appreciate the full import of his campaign. A single poem that is forgotten goes down with a lot of knowledge and information. In the poem reside cherished values of society. Positive and negative values are brought to the fore with the result that the young get socialised or enculturated into their society.
We write biographies of men and women who have made it in their lives. It is biographies that light the path for others to follow. They are footprints on rock — indelible and enduring. They are lauded lives immortalised through inscription on rock and writing on the sands of time. No society needs to be reinventing the wheel when that was done a long time ago by the ancients — lest a society, lest it be bogged down by starting all over again. Reference points are beacons that light the way in pitch dark nights so that the ship of development is guided so as to be able to identify its destination and keep within the chosen and sometimes desired course.
Iconic figures are society’s beacons or torch bearers. They help identify desired societal goals. Their admirers seek to emulate heroic deeds or positive traits. A society without targets is like a radarless ship. How are we to identify the beacons of light? One way is through documentation of individuals of merit who distinguished themselves through their iconic deeds. The praises are the sources and markers of such distinguished men and women. A society that stagnates risks death due to lack of movement — that constant change that keeps the entire universe in eternal existence. Imagine what would happen when solar, planetary and lunar movement simply stopped? The possibility is too ghastly to contemplate.
There is a lot to glean beyond the routine and mundane recital of royal praises. Praising is but a methodology, a medium that carries content which is targeted at the minds. Reading or just fathoming what a mind has created amounts to two minds interfacing or interacting. The two emerge permanently and sometimes positively altered for the good of humankind. Consumers of poetic renditions are consuming the content that gets into their minds through ears and eyes.
As the installation of Prince Bulelani Khumalo approaches, how prepared are the poets to render the royal praises of the first two kings of the Ndebele people — King Mzilikazi kaMatshobana and King Lobengula kaMzilikazi? Have we not listened to some half-baked poets mix up the praises of the two monarchs? Do we have today the creative minds that are keen observers of performances of history and minds that are imbued in history and poetic devices?
