The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
IN addition to the traditional trade goods that the Reverend Dr Robert Moffat, in his inaugural journey to the Ndebele monarch and his people then living in present day Matabeleland, observed that the Ndebele people possessed muskets. Upon inquiry, he was informed the muskets were being traded by white men along the Zambezi River. Reverend Dr Robert Moffat’s first thoughts were that the white men being referred to were of Portuguese stock. Indeed, the Portuguese had, following their arrival and settlement in the East Coast in the 16th Century, set up trading centres or ferias along the Zambezi River.
However, it turned out the said muskets were manufactured in Birmingham in England. The stocks for the muskets were made from beech tree and mice were already wreaking havoc on them. Guns, muskets and rifles entered the weapons arena and had the capacity to turn the outcomes of battles in favour of those who possessed them. The Ndebele had long appreciated that fact and the desire to obtain guns lay behind the friendship between King Mzilikazi kaMatshobana and the London Missionary Society (LMS) missionary.
Generally, attire for both men and women was made from animal skins, particularly cow hides. Leather was tanned soft and fashioned out into skirts (izidwaba) for women and loin skins (amabhetshu) for men. When Reverend Dr Robert Moffat travelled through Matabeleland, he saw cotton cloth.
This he saw when he crossed what he termed the Kualia River which runs north-north-west and is a tributary of the Zambezi River. From his accounts, it is clear that the river that he calls the Kualia is the Gwayi which flows in a north-north-westerly direction towards the Zambezi River.
Pieces of cloth, blue and checked, “. . . of which some had pieces tied round their waists, necks and dangling over their shoulder.” Again, the LMS missionary comes up with a name that requires some effort to figure out. Cloth came from Seykue (the smokers of tobacco). Mention of tobacco does provide some clue. The Ndebele elite were obtaining their supplies of tobacco from present day Gokwe. The famed tobacco growers and processors were the Shangwe people who the Ndebele called AbaSankwe. This seems to be the name that Reverend Dr Robert Moffat records as Seykue. LMS missionaries captured images on film of these tobacco traders bringing the much sought after commodity to Matabeleland.
A long wooden rod was strung with two cones of compressed tobacco. One cone was behind the shoulder, while the other was ahead so that the two balanced. In those days, tobacco, igwayi, was snuffed by many. The name igwayi came from either Arabic or Portuguese. The latter though seems to have a stronger case as the Ndebele word for snuffing is ukufola. In the ChiShona language the word for tobacco is fodya, which among the BaBudya sounds as folya, thus making it closer to the Ndebele rendition. Pictures of early Ndebele men and women show them with snuff boxes, imfece, dangling from their necks. Some of these were made from horns of small antelope such as steenbok (inqina/impunzi), klipspringer, (igogo). Sometimes snuff boxes were made from wood, empty gun cartridges, ivory and hollowed out pieces of reeds.
The case of adoption of tobacco as snuff is rather interesting. Tobacco snuff entered the material realm as a new commodity obtained from Portuguese traders. Africans even began to grow some varieties of tobacco for their own local consumption. Africans hold the belief that a human being comprises two components — material/physical and spiritual. At death, the two separate and the spirit continues with eternal life in the spiritual realm. After some time, the spirit of the dear departed is summoned to come back in order to look after its progeny. It is only then that such items, tobacco included, enter the spiritual realm. Those items that were considered valuable during the life of the dead are given to the spirit residing within a medium.
Today, snuff, certain types of cloth and glass beads are taken as possessions of spiritual mediums. In the process, we miss out on the inherent dynamism of African Spirituality. In the same vein, one who possessed and worked with a gun, such as a guerrilla during the war of liberation, will ask for his AK rifle or ZEG U, as the case might be. Similarly, my own spirit might ask for a pen or a typewriter or laptop, if not all of them all at once! We thus should not read too much into tobacco snuff, glass beads and pieces of cloth. If anything, their demand testifies to the dynamism and the regenerative character of African Spirituality and its critical role in intergenerational transmission of heritage.
Tobacco was not always made into snuff. Tobacco smoking was in vogue much later, especially when wrapping paper became readily available. At the same time, women were participating in smoking to a much lesser degree in comparison to men. With the advent of Christianity, tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption were scaled down as some Christian denominations discouraged both practices. Simultaneously, the taking of snuff was regarded as demonic, just as African Spirituality was demonised and denigrated.
Diversification in the use of adopted exotic items of material culture took a similar route as tobacco. Cloth was used as described above. A look at the performances of spiritual dances will show dancers using what today are termed spiritual cloth used as described above. It should be noted that when the Reverend Dr Robert Moffat witnessed the use of cloth it was not then being used in the spiritual domain. It was no more than fashion in the mundane material realm. Only when the owners died and their spirits returned did the items acquire some spiritual dimension and quality.
Cloth in possession of AbaSankwe seems to have come from Portuguese and other sources. Reverend Dr Robert Moffat records as follows: “One man had a piece of new strong cotton of English manufacture round his waist.” Do note that Reverend Dr Robert Moffat is referring to a man. It sounds very strange and weird, odd and bizarre today but adoption of new items of material culture was fraught with a lot of experimentation, innovation, hit and miss and sometimes hilarious experiences. Men adopted shirts, jackets and waist coats before they did the same with pairs of trousers. Their choices were occasioned by the fact that when they went to answer the call of nature, they removed trousers and placed them either on a tree or on the ground. It was all cumbersome! Pictures depicting Ndebele men donned in this fashion abounded at the time of colonisation and soon after. With time, wearing of trousers began to sit well and adoption was complete, though confined to male folk.
A look at the items that were being exchanged during barter trade reveals that Africans were receiving items to do with body adornment. Cloth was tied around or over various parts of the body as indicated above. Glass beads too were worn around ankles, wrists and waists, and sometimes even brows. Bigger glass beads, amangqongqo, even entered the sexual realm. Such beads were worn by women around their waists in order to arouse men during sexual intimacy. A woman without such sexual stimulants was described as a smooth log of wood — or isigodo somkhaya, as my mentor Hudson Halimana Ndlovu used to say. At other times, these glass beads were strung together with contraceptive herbs to prevent conception.
Colonisation, whose precursor was military defeat, led to many changes in African culture. On the frontline, there were ideological transformations which eroded the support pillars for African cultural practices. Africans were provided with exotic cultural lenses through which they were forced or enticed to view the world and the cosmos at large. Military defeat provided the necessary justification or legitimation of the new world-view and ways. Cultural values that had been considered sacrosanct faced abandonment in favour of those of the conquerors. Africa was effectively and irredeemably placed in the orbit of the western belief world.
The one aspect that was not spared was architecture. All along African huts were inspired by the cosmos with their circular design and elliptical orbits along which their movement symbolised endlessness, continuity and eternity. Though builders could not see the link between architecture and the cosmic design, the practice, without interpretation, was passed down through the ages to future generations. Western architecture was characterised by the rectangular design which does not exist in nature. The circular design of the Stonehenge in England and the Coliseum in Rome had been abandoned in favour of the rectangular design.
Even the missionaries were not keen to adopt the indigenous African design. As some kind of compromise they adopted the lozenge. The circle thus came to be associated with the African mind, not in a positive sense, but as reflective of a primitive mind not to be copied. Those doing Building Studies at Tsholotsho and other industrial schools were taught primarily the rectangular design. Houses for civilised men were rectangular and the Ndebele, and indeed other Africans, sought to attain civilization as defined in western parameters. However, for them the adoption of the new design was without justification or basis. If the master does it, the native must follow suit as his ways are THE ways.
The changing architecture was captured when the Reverend Dr Robert Moffat gave chairs to the king. “I sent the two chairs to him, with which he professed to be delighted, and sent them back to the wagons to remain till another time.” The LMS missionary explained the king’s behaviour in terms of the fact that there were no houses to hold them or at any rate, he could not get them into a door of a Matabele house. Indeed, the entrance to a Ndebele hut was low and narrow. One got into an Ndebele hut in a kneeling position. This is no longer the case today. The doors allow even the tall and the obese to get inside in a standing position as is done by ingenalimi, one who gets into a house in a standing position.
Reverend Dr Robert Moffat’s Matabele journals are thus useful in pointing out the status of material culture of the Ndebele in the pre-colonial period so that we begin to appreciate the social, political and cultural forces at work to bring about changes that we see today. Culture, in its various manifestations, is never static. Ideological changes inevitably lead to changes in the observable cultural practices.
