Chronicle Editor
AFTER no less than 70 instalments under the column, Cultural Heritage, the series on African Cultural Astronomy ends. It was a long mind-opening journey through several African countries where communities that subscribed to African cultural astronomy lived and sometimes continue to live. Information was garnered in the main through the internet service.
A Pan-African scope was covered and afford me a chance to identify commonalities among the African communities’ cultures; in particular, their thought, cosmologies, worldview, beliefs, philosophies, and spiritualities were identified in the context of seeking the essence of Africanness. From an inherited worldview Africans who shared a common origin, began spreading throughout the continent and beyond.
Some Africans ventured outside of African to the Pacific islands, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, India and China among other diverse destinations on the globe. In these wanderings and dispersals, African knowledge and wisdom were planted throughout the world. The initial star was made within the cradle of humanity — Africa.
However, ideas and knowledge adapt to the unique environments where diverse communities live. Within the African continent itself, cultural diversities emerge resulting from changing thought and other elements of cultural essence. Cosmologies were changing, so was the worldview in tandem with altered terrestrial and extraterrestrial circumstances.
Inevitably, the cultural practices changed to mirror the cultural essence in its new forms. The various people that initially exhibited the same cultural practices began to differ. As the essences of culture changed, it was inevitable the cultural practices were going to change in tandem. A look at the built environments reflected similarities. Almost without exception various societies, communities centred circularity.
A close look at the iconic English monument, the Stonehenge within the Salisbury Plain exhibits many similarities with African ideas. Circularity was featured prominently. Stones became the metaphor for eternity that was reinforced when erect circular stones were inserted into the ground. Sexuality was symbolised and was perceived as the driving force for the continuity, perpetuity, eternity and endlessness of the human race and indeed other animal species. Both in Africa and Europe and elsewhere the cosmos was responsible for the emerging designs.
The Colosseum in Rome featured a circular design during the time of the Roman Empire. The Leaning Tower of Pisa was also a colossal structure that copied cosmic designs. A cylinder essentially is circular just like the African huts that are hemispherical and cone-on-cylinder. Circular design was the common feature with a common meaning derived from the cosmos.
Artefacts at Stonehenge were no different from those found in Africa. The artefacts did not include right angles. Angles were either acute or obtuse. The artefacts featured circularity in their design and form. Such circular artefacts were deemed aesthetic, as they resembled cosmic design. In some instances, natural materials used in the manufacture were the same. At the Stonehenge, clay pots were made out of clay. Some were made out of metal such as spears and swords.
The first layer in the manufacturing process expressed beauty and aesthetics. This was the case at the Stonehenge and in Africa. Embellishment was equally similar. The chevrons were found on clay pots at Stonehenge and in Africa. Among the African communities, some designs were executed through incisions and engravings. The same was true in Africa.
African pots were also painted and drawn. However, the different methodologies of executing surface artistic designs depicted the same motifs and symbol with arguably the same meanings.
However, over millennia and therefore similar worldviews, the designs began to change and the chevrons were abandoned together with the primary circular designs. Houses in Europe assumed rectangular designs. The Diaspora began acquiring new and different designs, presumably with different meanings.
In Africa, the situation was no different. However, in their case there continued to exist more similarities than differences. This was because of similar natural environments and therefore similar worldviews, thought, beliefs and cosmologies. All the same, the difference of environmental adaptability were exaggerated when the colonial project was initiated. Colonising nations were numerous and sought to create different spheres of influence. African communities were advised and misled into believing they were different. It was all a strategy of divide and rule where looting of natural resources was the main purpose behind colonisation that in a more subtle way continues.
Africa is liberally endowed with critical natural resources especially underground. The ICTs require Lithium that happens to exist in great abundance in Zimbabwe. Petroleum reserves are also thought to be vast and that translates to continuing interest in Africa.
The long and educational journey centred around cultural astronomy. It became clear that astronomy played an important role in the lives of African communities. On the continent, there are circular stone circles such as in Sene-Gambia, Naboritunga near Lake Turkana in Kenya, David’s Calendar (Inzalo Yelanga) in Mpumalanga and the Nabta Playa in Egypt close to the border with the Sudan.
The ancient stone structures to trace and keep track of movements of cosmic bodies that were welcomed with pomp and pageantry. Rituals depended on maximum potency. Certain spiritual, ritual and ceremonial events depended on the positions of certain cosmic bodies within the firmament. The spiritual component or dimension was taken care of by burials on the site. For example, at Stonehenge there were cremations that took place.
The position of maximum potency was figured out. The position of the sun during the winter and summer solstices was monitored. At the Stonehenge, there were stones that on the summer solstice were aligned with the rising sun. The stones were the Heel Stone, the Slaughter Stone and the Altar Stone. On summer solstice the day was longest and potency at its maximum. Africa likewise shared the same idea that were important to agriculture and the requisite rituals and ceremonies.
The ancients did originally share a common thought, ideologies, worldview that were informed largely by the cosmos. Their cultural practices were similarly and rightly so as they were informed and underpinned by the same worldview. It will come as no surprise that the critical arts were similar as these mirrored the broad culture and its underpinning essences planet and the cosmos. We are intrinsically related and linked to what goes on in Heaven, as some people may prefer to call the cosmos.
In the numerous articles, that I wrote these ideas became apparent and broadened my cognitive orientations, content in the form of knowledge, ideas and perceptions of the terrestrial and the extra-terrestrial realms. More importantly was the revelation of the seminal link and relatedness between our planet and the cosmos.
At a time when climate change is playing havoc on the terrestrial environment, we are all the wiser to derive lessons from penned articles over several months. If we mess up the environment, we are certain to face serious repercussions. The spectre of hunger hangs over humanity. Climate change is as a result of careless and reckless interventions. The angered Mother earth will react with a vengeance and eliminate the culprits along with the innocent
The one long-term benefit from the journey was scaling higher levels of understanding cultural phenomena. My journey in the arts started from humble beginnings where I dealt with matters mundane and simplistic. It was some curious mixture of history and cultural practices, in particular with regard to the Ndebele people who I understood better than other tribes.
Within the same vein I began venturing into other ethnic groups notably the BaKalanga. Then I spread my tentacles to other ethnic groups such as the VaVhenda, the Tonga, Nambya, Xhosa, Shona, Babirwa/Sotho and the Ndau. Here it was different cultural groups that were treated as different, but sharing a common country, Zimbabwe.
The relatedness between history and cultural practices provided some useful association. However, this was not that useful in my growth and development in the chosen field of study that was enhanced through access to the internet. I did not take what I was reading as the gospel truth. My thrust was Afrocentric and unapologetically Pan-African. Reading provided narratives that I would seek to challenge, as many were Eurocentric. I sought an Afro-centric thrust and approach.
In due course, it dawned on me that confining myself to cultural practices was immensely inadequate. I could hardly claim to understand African when I was steeped in the numerous cultural practices. If anything, I would see difference among the various African communities, some of which were separated into different countries during partition that did not consult Africans. If I gave credence to the difference, I would be playing into the hands of measures that sought to divide Africa to continue with her exploitation.
I was convinced there was something amiss in the approach that I was pursuing. The journey provided me with opportunities to query that approach that I found not satisfactory. I started seeking that which underpinned and informed the cultural practices, that which lay behind the designs and associated embellishments. That, in my view constituted cultural essence. Cultural practices were a product of higher cultural essence, the drivers of cultural practices in order to fulfil that which is demanded by essence, namely thought, cosmology, worldview, beliefs, philosophy and conditioning critical values. I felt some sense of satisfaction, fulfilment and contentment.
Embarking on the “Journey to the Stars, “was critically important as it led to a better understanding of the cosmos, the heavenly bodies that underpin and inform cultural practices. I was at this stage grappling with cultural essence rather than its manifestations, expressions and representations. I began subjecting the entire cultural sphere under the new revelations. I thought I was happy and I was happy. Little did I know my joys were ephemeral and transient.
Cognitive endeavours and vexations lead the mind to see what hitherto it had not seen. New vistas emerge. New relationships emerge. The horizons of knowledge are pushed back. The mind, when fully applied to new and challenging experiences tends to display ductility and malleability. The journey to the stars provided me with new opportunities to view the world with perceptive eyes that go beyond sight. The two eyes are dwarfed and the mental eyes, that perceive beyond the material eyes with their tragic limitations. Material eyes feed into the mental or cognitive eyes that even a blind person’s perception extends beyond sight. Perception does not require physical or material eyes.
It was at a time when I was penning Mhande, a traditional dance of the Karanga people. For decades, I had written about the African drum as an African musical instrument. Back then, I had no perception beyond sound that Africa produces through various media such as hands, rattles, hand piano, marimba, whistles, vocal chords, to name but a few. It suddenly dawned on me as I wrote the book that when we refer to sound we are in reality referring to energy in one form. I began to see sound as patterned pulses, throbs, rhythms, pulsations and pounds of energy. Energy, I would later glean, exists in numerous forms such as heat, light, movement (kinetic energy), chemical, electrical energy among several others.
Energy is indestructible. It can be transformed from one form to the other. I remember teaching these ideas to O-level students with limited perception and understanding. It was more of rote learning. It was time for me to view the material world in relation to energy. I came to the conclusion that what really matters in the world and beyond in energy. Energy can be lethal and dangerous. We use the material objects to harness and domesticate energy, to store energy, to transform energy and allow energy to do work.
Already my mind was excited. A more intimate understanding of energy was going to serve as an introduction and the Rosetta Stone towards unlocking the chests of witchcraft and African traditional medicine. The two belong in AAS and tap into it. Energy was going to it seems to me the highly maligned AAS is essentially about science, in particular Physics, Chemistry and Biology.
The Journey to the Stars ends here after providing me with new insights, perceptions, comprehension and understanding that I will need to equip my mind when, as from next week, I embark on the “Journey to the Ancient African Science (AAS).”
Bongani Ndlovu