adminPathisa Nyathi
UNDOUBTEDLY, African spirituality is not cast in stone. It has been undergoing transformation following contact with people of different cultures, in particular those of a different worldview. Today there are aspects of African spirituality that are perceived as having been part of it from the outset. For some people, African spirituality minus snuff is unthinkable. Equally, for some it is unthinkable to imagine African spirituality without various pieces of clothes, amalembu.
Spirituality or religion has a cultural context. In fact, it is difficult to imagine religion or spirituality with some existence outside of its cultural context.
This has led to some confusion in people’s minds when the essence of religion is confused with aspects of the broader culture within which it exists. For example, when Christianity was introduced in Africa, it came riding on the back of Western culture. Such Western cultural elements were perceived as and confused with the essence of Christianity.
Even as Reverend Herbert Carter of the Wesleyan Methodist Church observed the burial of Chief Gampu Sithole, there are discernible elements of Western culture and Christianity. “At the people’s request I threw in the first sod, and then his son did so, then his six wives.” Throwing in a sod was an important part of Ndebele funerary rites in which strangers like Reverend Herbert Carter would not have participated in. We note that he was first to do so, and even ahead of Chief Gampu Sithole’s son.
The belief among the Ndebele people was that close relatives had to be closest to the body of the deceased person. The departing spirit seeks to indulge the company of close relatives. In fact, it was close relatives who lowered the corpse into its final resting place. It was the same people that folded the corpse once the person died. Folding of limbs had to be done when the body was still soft and pliable. As a result of folding the body, one who passed on was said to have gone to the land of folded feet, “KoGoqwanyawo.”
If burial is carefully observed, one cannot avoid sampling some important cultural expressions attending to the process of burial. That the son, not just any of the several sons but the heir, stood at the head of the grave and was first to throw in the soil was expressive enough. That society was both patriarchal and partrilineal. Rulers at all levels of the given society were males: from King to household head. Equally, succession was along the male line: from father to eligible son. Note that succession among the Ndebele was not decided on chronology. Rather, many factors, both socio-political and cultural, came to play.
We saw in an earlier instalment that the oldest brother of the deceased shouldered the responsibility of communicating with the ancestral spirits. It was never the oldest sister who had been detached from her maiden family upon marriage. Rituals were conducted to separate her from her childhood family and incorporate her into the groom’s family. Women married into the new family were allowed to take part in the spiritual rituals of the adopted family, but even then not ahead of male folk. Men dominated the spiritual arena. Women were tolerated on account of their innate spiritual endowment deriving from their nature.
The son was ranked even ahead of her own biological mother. This became apparent when all of Chief Gampu Sithole’s six wives threw the sod after the son. Sometimes the sod was spat on by he/she who threw in the sod. One’s saliva was unique to her/him. Saliva carries one’s identity. Saliva thus converts ordinary soil to person-specific soil. The sod has thus been personalised or individualised. The six widows would have taken turns to throw in sods in strict order of seniority; once again not on the basis of order of marriage. Seniority of wives was based, inter alia, on the socio-economic and political status of her father. Who her father was indicated through the way she was referred to — okaLopila, okaTshukisa, okaQalingana. Reference to her father premised her seniority to that of her father.
It is worth noting that there were items that were not interred with the body of the deceased. Some items were burnt. Reverend Carter identifies blankets, clothes and knobkerries as some of the items that were burnt. We cannot help but see some categorisation of personal belongings. There are some that are interred with the deceased. Precious items have been retrieved from royal graves. A good example were gold beads retrieved from burials at Mapungubwe. The Egyptian Pharaohs were also buried with precious items.
Those items that are buried with the body of the deceased are those that must accompany the soul of the dear departed to the next plane of existence. Generally, these are items that one used or was associated with in life. However, the challenge lies in explaining those items that were not buried, but instead, were burnt. The message could be that these were to remain behind. They were not part of the spiritual array of items selected for the journey into the world of spirits.
We could hazard a guess here. Being expressed in the cultural practice is posited duality in Being. The spirit moves on and is accompanied by some possessions. At the same time, there is the part of Being that remains behind. Succession indicates that there is continuity at the physical plane. The son remains behind and assumes earthly rule. It is rule that follows laid down rules of succession without reversal. Ash, the final product in a burning fire, symbolises irreversibility. We could regard it as prayer for the continued rule of the bloodline of the deceased. The King is dead, long live the king!
Through the culturally identified and installed son, the King continues to rule — on earth where some of his personal effects including those that are associated with royalty remain.
“Then I spoke to the people and, at their request, prayed.” The prayer that the people requested and the priest uttered, were of a Christian type. The people, at least some of them, had been converted to the new religion — Christianity. The new religion brought in its wake cultural practices steeped in Western culture and some of these were manifested in funerary rituals. In fact, the old and the new coexisted as is still the case today. In the midst of a Christian prayer there were Ndebele traditional practices informed by a surviving worldview.
The one thing that Reverend Carter documented was how the six widows took part in a very old traditional burial practice. “The widows had taken off their cotton shifts and put on their goat skins and skirts, they had plaited grass round their heads and necks, and their hair was cut off at the crown.”
There is quite a lot to learn from what the Reverend Carter observed. Material culture was changing. There was adoption of Western dress forms.
When traditional rituals such as those pertaining to burials were being performed, traditional dress was preferred to modern dress. The people sought cultural conformity. When performing traditional rituals, traditional attire was desirable. In fact, King Lobengula Khumalo behaved in the same manner. During his coronation in January 1870, he chose to wear traditional attire. Once he was over and done with the coronation, he reverted to Western dress. Chief Gampu Sithole’s widows did exactly the same.
In the next article we shall scrutinise dress forms that they adopted in relation to what they had generally gotten used to.
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