The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
THE United States of America Ambassador to Zimbabwe Brian Nichol poses a probing question. “Who can honestly tell me why this hut is circular?” His eyes dart around as if searching for one who would give him an honest answer.
We are at a homestead within the grandiose and picturesque Matobo Hills where we are admiring and consuming some stunningly beautiful hut wall decorations executed by one of the women in Matobo North. We have just arrived from Amagugu International Heritage Centre in Ward 17 where the Ambassador has just launched a book titled, Preservation of Ndebele Art and Architecture.
We are standing under sweltering heat with not a speck of cloud, let alone one pregnant with rain.
“There he is.” Clifford Zulu, a curator at the National Gallery in Bulawayo had been briefing the Ambassador on painted hut walls. At that point he joined other onlookers among whom was a large contingent of journalists from both print and electronic media.
I obliged. Keen as a proselytising missionary in Africa I explained. “Let thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. As above, so below. Africans have always sought to replicate the heavens on earth. The heavens, or cosmos or the universe, are built on the basis of a circular design. Not only are cosmic bodies circular, they also move along elliptical orbits. If you were told today, seven more planets have been discovered, do not ask what shape they are. They will be circular.”
I went on to show him that Africans did not invent the circular design, as in the hut he had been pointing to. A circle has neither beginning nor end. It thus represents and expresses continuity, endlessness, eternity, perpetuity and immortality. Hands draw, hands paint, hands build, hands mould, hands engrave. However, it is the mind that creates. Art is a product of a creative mind. Hands are no more than obedient servants.
It should therefore come as no surprise when an African hut and its wall decorations all embody a circular design, itself an expression of fertility and sexuality. Individuals perish, humanity is forever.
That is possible through sexuality. I sincerely hoped I had won a convert! All this is my way of introducing the gorgeously beautiful Victoria Falls International Airport whose architecture is informed by African ideas regarding the built environment and aesthetics. The Chinese seem to lead the way in acknowledging African aesthetic ideas and applying them to the physical infrastructure that they build.
They are, by so doing, tapping into the minds of ancient Africans and simultaneously drawing from cosmic traits of beauty.
Viewing the airport’s roof from one end, one recognises hemispherical structures, with each semicircular unit repeated several times.
The result is a moving wavy roof which is in tandem with African ideas of aesthetics which mirror cosmic reality. Repetition exists in nature in several forms. Night-day-night-day; left-right-left-right . . . ; sleep-wake-sleep-wake, summer-autumn-winter-spring-summer . . . This is repetition which may be termed periodicity or seasonality. The sort of repetition we encounter in nature is regular and predictable. It is rhythmic. Life and good health depend on this seasonality and greed-driven human intervention is threatening the one aspect of this seasonality.
The negative net result is climate change where nature manifests emerging irregularity, a preliminary stage where angered Mother Earth is waging a relentless war by getting rid of those who threaten natural cycles and processes.
The airport has three structures through which passengers alight from landing aircraft or go to board departing aircraft. For starters, the number three is significant in the African world. Some may see it expressed in the Bible as, “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Many fail to see it as an African Statement, forgetting or deciding to forget that the Biblical world was then an African world, in so far as African Thought, African Worldview and African Philosophy are concerned.
The said three structures are replicas of an African hut in terms of design. Whereas the roof more succinctly captures Zulu/ Ndebele and Xhosa beehive hut, the rondavel, as it is sometimes called, captures the essence of a Shona, Tonga, Nambya, Sotho, Kalanga and indeed other ethnic groups both in Zimbabwe and beyond.
The former hut exhibits undifferentiated architectural design. The grass and wood saplings constitute both a roof and wall. In the latter case, a roof, of grass thatch is separated from the wall which comprises clay walls or wooden poles and clay walls. It is on these clay surfaces where decorative designs are executed. This architectural structure may be viewed as more advanced as a result of its differentiation and complexity.
Essentially, the two are the same in so far as they capture the same architectural design unit. The circular design is common to both. The beehive hut, iqhugwana, has a hemispherical design, which is no more than part of a circle. The cone-on-cylinder/ drum hut equally embraces the circular design. The walls are cylindrical or circular and are thus built in line with African ideas of beauty and functionality.
The roof is no exception. On a two-D surface, it is a chevron motif whose apex is upward-facing.
However, on a three-D surface it is a cone with its apex facing upward.
The roof of a rondavel is true of the latter. It is important to realise that a cone is essentially a circle.
From the bottom-up its radii or diameters are decreasing and the reverse is true when starting from the top. Therefore, in essence, the cone is a specially adapted circle, one that has been reconfigured. Its meaning and significance is the same as that expressed by a chevron motif. As will be demonstrated below, the chevron is a reconfigured circle.
So the Chinese have embraced African aesthetic ideas. This must have been a result of research.
However, it is imperative that we appreciate the meaning embedded in these architectural designs.
Beyond material structures, there is some hidden and underlying ideas emanating from African Thought, African Cosmology and African Aesthetics.
Another African decorative motif and pattern which has been captured at the Victoria Falls International Airport is the ubiquitous chevron on its glass front. The appeal to aesthetics by the chevron rests on its aesthetic traits of movement, repetition, rhythm (seasonality, periodicity and hence predictability) symmetry, balance and equilibrium. We ought to understand it as displaying a single unit which is repeated several times. Each unit is informed by that part of the body of a woman where the all-important womb is located.
The chevron unit occurs on a two-D surface. In reality, it is a representation of a cone on a three-D reality. A woman is not a flat screen, but displays three-D reality. The circle, we may surmise, is the universal cosmic design unit which the Chinese have embraced and incorporated into their architectural designs. Among Africans, the chevron pattern is found executed on several materials within their world of crafts, artefacts and the built environment: eggshells, leather, wood, ivory, horn, clay, cloth, plaited grass and stone.
The womb is the site where continuity and endlessness are operationalised and concretised. The shape of the womb is circular and this becomes more evident among expectant mothers.
Hopefully, after this expose and rendering, the Victoria Falls International Airport will better be understood and appreciated. Learned aesthetic traits gleaned from an Africa past apply to other cultural situations within the world of crafts, artefacts and the built environment.
