The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
WRITING as a tool for communicating ideas, information and knowledge. Among illiterate communities, communication was facilitated through various other means such as visual art, songs, dances and other performances, oral traditions, proverbs, folktales, design and architecture, rituals and ceremonies. Through thorough excavation of these forms we are able to access the minds and read the ‘‘mind prints’’ of those people (Nyathi 2016:9).”
“I see an immense river, Mulonga, mulonga mupati, rise from a distant source, swiftly snaking his way forward. In his lustful journey, he engages Mother Earth in an erotic embrace that gives birth to life, her progeny. This is another enduring African theme involving God Nyaminyami of the BaTonga. The river is a symbol, so is Mother Earth. Both are (concrete) reality in addition to being symbols of a deeper meaning. Through symbols, designed by our minds and given life by our hands, we allow our minds to be inspired by environments near and far, terrestrial and cosmic (Chikomo and Nyathi 2016:4).”
In the two quotations there is centering of both the arts and the mind and their relationship. Before we delve into the overarching theme at Great Zimbabwe, we shall continue with the framework or template that we introduced last week as a way of providing a more comprehensive construction that we shall expand and develop upon so as to buttress emerging elements out of which shall materialise the theme that we seek to identify and pin down.
The emphasis here is that a particular theme may be expressed through a variety of arts genres such as performing arts which embrace music, dance, poetry, theatre, inter alia and the visual arts which incorporate sculpture, architecture, creative photography and architecture. Whatever theme is resident at Great Zimbabwe will not be confined to that cultural edifice. Rather, its omnipresent theme will be found in other arts genres. We expect the same with regard to the theme expressed at Great Zimbabwe. Do you see something in common between the Great Zimbabwe Monument and the dances jerusarema, mbende and wosana?
Nature and culture are closely related with the former impinging upon the latter. As pointed out in an earlier article, African Cosmology and hence the cultural practices that flow out of it, are informed by cosmic reality. At the cultural level, an identified theme should be a mirror image of that at the natural plane. We shall argue that the choice of location of Great Zimbabwe itself was informed by the very same theme that Great Zimbabwe expresses at the cultural level. It will be a question of unpacking the symbolism of a hill and a river — more or less as expressed above where Mulonga has been cited.
Geomorphologic landforms provide the frontline and formative stage which Africans mirrored at the cultural level. Alternative science has cited the importance of leylines in locating settlements and religious structures.
It is important that we do not get blinded by the enormity of the stone walls at Great Zimbabwe. Within the context of the stone walls, masvingo, there are fundamental common elements which will be found in the architecture of other African communities. This will be evident when we pose to look at how the stones were arranged or laid in space. What will emerge is that a Ndebele palisade of mopane wooden logs is laid in exactly the same way. The same goes for a Tonga village where tall river reeds are made use of. In all three cases, the different materials are arranged in order to end up with a circular design. That circularity is what is universally African or Pan-African rather than the nature of materials used. It is all about spatial arrangement of materials regardless of their materiality. The perceived uniqueness of Great Zimbabwe may not, after all, be that unique if more essential elements are considered, outside of enormity, splendour and magnificence.
African perceptions of uniqueness, individuality and distinctiveness are important. Vast plains on the surface of the earth are the norm or median — nothing unique about them. It is not the same with mountains which are vertical elevations. Equally, it is not the same with rivers that are depressions or carved furrows which are lower than the norm or median. Such considerations lead to African perceptions regarding albinism, twins and disability. There is perceived power associated with or resident in the examples cited above. Such ideas are related to choice of certain cultural sites such as rain shrines, eg Njelele Rain Shrine, sacred mountains such as Mount Fuji, Mount Sinai and Mount Zion and wells such as Bethsaida in Canaan and Lourdes in France.
The other element that we need to deal with is the idea of duality, as expressed in male and female elements. Essentially, these are dual opposites which complement each other in bringing about life or fertility. Can we imagine life in the absence of two opposite extremes of hot and cold as expressed through hot molten magma in the centre of the earth and the cold frozen glaciers on the surface of the earth? Both rotation and revolution result in alternating heating and cooling of planet earth, in the absence of which life is unthinkable.
Eternity is attained, at one level, through binary fission among the single-celled protozoans such as amoeba. Such simple organisms lack critical mass for vegetative reproduction and, more importantly, sexual reproduction. In more advanced animal species, sexual reproduction occurs on account of existence of threshold critical mass which allows for specialisation among certain tissues to a point where some tissues are specialised and constitute various systems such as the endocrine system, co-circulatory, respiratory system, digestive system etc. Where the male element exists, we expect to find its complementary but opposite element-the female element. The presence of one in the absence of the other does not constitute unity or totality which is an expression of life.
The idea cited above, which we may term duality of opposites exists in several cases at the cultural plane. The one good example is iron smelting where there are clearly two distinct elements, male (goat skin bellows and blow pipe) and female (the furnace which, in some instances, is provided with breasts, scarification marks on the belly, and parted legs between which is a symbolic vagina through which flows molten iron, itself being symbolic of birth of a baby). This is symbolic manipulation which is resorted to where there are technological deficiencies. An otherwise chemical process of Redox (reduction/oxidation), is explained and interpreted in symbolic sexual terms. The chosen sites of iron smelting are located in concealed sites in line with perceptions of the process of iron smelting.
More related examples are found in the hearth and firebrands in the kitchen hut, the former being female (circular depression) and the latter male (cylindrical/phallic representation). The pestle and mortar are another example of male-female elements, so are grinding stones. The earth is perceived as female and of a haughty character. When earth storms blow fiercely, a spear or axe is thrust into the ground to pacify the storm. Alternatively, a finger (read cylindrical and phallic, therefore) is pointed towards an advancing earth storm.
The duality of complementary opposites is apparent. Let us give yet another example. Clay for making pots is extracted by women and men are not allowed to venture anywhere near the site of excavation. As expected, Mother Earth experiences pain during excavation. When a man is to approach an excavation site, he is expected to pick up some small wooden log and throw it down as a way of getting the right of entry to the excavation site. For a man, the small cylindrical wooden log he has picked up is symbolic of his phallus which he now uses to give solace and relief to the female that is experiencing immense pain. A stirring rod in a clay pot of isitshwala/ sadza equally represents the male-female elements. Credo Mutwa, of Indaba My Children fame, has indicated that mining in ancient Africa was the preserve of women and not men. From the above expose, the thinking behind that is pretty obvious.
In all the examples that we furnished above, the phallus or male element is represented by a cylindrical object (pestle, small cylindrical wooden log, small cylindrical finger, burning firebrand and stirring rod) while the female element, on the other hand, is represented by a circular object (mortar, hearth, clay pot, earth). This is critically important to understand as it deals, in a morally sanitised and tolerable way, with otherwise pornographic and antisocial phenomena.
However, we should, at the end of the day, be cognisant of the fact that a cylinder is equally circular just like a circle. A cylinder, like a phallus, can be cut into an infinite number of circles. The same goes for things tubular. We shall argue that the circular design is one single pervasive building block, not just for planet earth but, indeed, the entire cosmos or universe. Africa observed and knew all this to be true of the cosmos and sought to replicate cosmic or heavenly reality on the cultural plane. As above, so below.
As we conclude this introductory section, it should not be surmised that all Africans knew about what we are saying in this column. For most of them, what mattered was doing things in a particular way as passed down the generations and prescribed by ritual. It is only those with perceptive or spiritual eyes of the mind who have the requisite capacity to see beyond cultural practices. It is what objective and concrete eyes, as provided by archaeological research, that provides primary data which mental eyes should then subject to analysis and interpretation. That is precisely what we intend doing with Great Zimbabwe.
