Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
ON a chilly July mid-morning sometime last year, Pathisa Nyathi walked into the Sunday News newsroom.
Under his arm, he cradled three books, all of which continued his lifelong journey to explore and document African cultural practices.
As he celebrated his 72nd birthday, Nyathi had published Journey to The Stars, a book that explores African astronomy, African Body Art, and Mhande, the sixth edition of a series of books about Zimbabwean cultural dances.
While he loved this new set of triplets in his family of 71 books, on that particular day Nyathi used them as a springboard to announce a book that would be his “retirement gift” to the world.
Phathisa Nyathi
“My target had always been, which I failed to achieve, was to get the total of my books to reach my age. I turned 72 last week so I wanted to get to that but I am short by one book. Which means next year, I would have achieved that target. The journey continues,” he said.
Despite such a long and illustrious career, Nyathi felt that all his life, he had been working on this one book that would crown all his work.
Throughout his career, he had always been fascinated by witchcraft, or what he called African science, which he felt needed to be explored and put down on paper.
“I feel like now I have accumulated enough experience for it and I have a better understanding of this science. I have done my research and now it is time for me to look at this African spirituality. This book will be the accumulation of all my life’s work. All this time I have been building towards this,” he said.
Phathisa Nyathi
For some, Nyathi’s decision to delve into witchcraft so late in his career might have sounded disturbing. After all, this is a subject that is usually spoken of in hushed tones and those that practice the dark arts are usually shunned. Nyathi instead, was not repulsed by the idea of exploring witchcraft or talking to people who practised it. In typical fashion, he was highly intrigued by the subject.
“This is now the beginning of the end of a very long journey, in a way. It has been a long journey but we are still going. What will cap it all, in my view will be what I term ancient African philosophy. That will be the icing on the cake. When you see me get to that it will mean I am about to hang the pen. By that, I am talking about the science from which witches and traditional doctors alike like to tap into. It’s the same thing, the same science.
“That is a science, there is no doubt about it and I am not talking about the negative stereotypes that people have attached to these things because of the little understanding that they have. That is what I am going to write about and when you see me getting to that, you should know that a man has worked and it is time for him to take an interest in other things,” he said.
For Nyathi, this exploration of African science was the final frontier for a very good reason. Why, the supernatural in the West is portrayed in almost a romantic manner, in Africa it is demonised and derided. In post-colonial Africa, traditional healers, witches and witchdoctors all fall under the same umbrella of undesirables whose craft is evil and unwelcome. As a trained science teacher, he was for the last time trying to look at this maligned aspect of African culture with a scientific eye.
“A traditional healer is umthakathi. A motor mechanic is umthakathi. This is somebody who possesses unique mechanical skills. He is a cut above the rest. Yes, you have many motor mechanics, but this particular one is unique, ngumthakathi in our language. Umthakathi doesn’t mean anything negative, instead, it is very positive. The word that they ought to be using is umkhunkuli because they use the dark city of things. Those are people who travel at night. The kind of science that they practice happens at night,” he said.
Phathisa Nyathi
For Nyathi, questioning the uncanny of abilities of witches, wizards and traditional healers came from a desire to not highlight the potency of African science, but a wish to harness it for the collective good.
“So what is of interest to me is the question why? I’m not concerned about the what and when. I have a science background because I was once a secondary school science teacher so I understand certain principles. I know that some objects will not leave the ground without energy. So, if there are people who fly, surely they’re making use of energy. We need transport but we also know that fossil fuels are finite. So we need to be learning from this ancient African science about how they’re making of use of energy to fly from Binga to get here, to fly from Gutu to get to Gokwe,” he said.
It is unclear how far Nyathi had gone in bringing his vision to life before his death.
In his interview with Sunday Life, he emphasised the fact that good health had thus far allowed him to write so many books that touched on African culture.
“I am grateful for good health thus far in life because you cannot write if you’re not healthy,” he said.
Earlier this year, the veteran columnist started sharing articles that highlighted his latest and last obsession. A few months later, he was hospitalised, as the good health he had always treasured started failing him. It is as yet unclear if he had yet finished what he believed was the culmination of all his life’s work. Up until he breathed out his life, he still had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, particularly knowledge with an African flavour.
“The tendency is to think that we are cleverer and I have said this is because of this linear perception of progression of knowledge. We think we are at the peak but I doubt that very much. There are people who know something that we don’t know, something we don’t understand. These are people who tapped into a certain energy that we are not able to tap into. These are people who were strongly linked to this science and also linking with the heavens, the stars.”
