adminRECENTLY at some Unesco Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) workshop held at the Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT) I said the following words, “The traditional African is not what he does, rather he is what he thinks.” I said this following the realisation that there was overemphasis on the cultural practices of the African (what he does) rather that what he thinks which is his cosmology or worldview which informs what he does.
While some anthropologists chose to follow this route, I urged workshop delegates to take a different route and seek the cosmological underpinnings behind the cultural practices of the Africans. Later, reading the book, Capturing the Intangible: Perspectives on the Living Heritage by Unesco, I came across a quotation by Malagasy anthropologist Jose Rambinintsoa, “The Zafimaniry become what they think.”
Both quotations share something in common — the need to seek out the meaning in whatever the African does in order to fully appreciate what informs his actions. As we have said in some earlier articles, meaningful Pan-Africanism is to do with the shared cosmologies and worldviews of the Africans.
Rambinintsoa had further observed how the Zafimaniry were inspired by nature in which they lived and interacted. Much of their worldview was informed by what they observed in nature. A good example was the spider web which held big shiny beads of dew in the morning without breaking.
The Zafimaniry are famous woodcarvers. The finished sculptured wooden pieces are embellished with various motifs which express their environmentally inspired worldviews. It is these messages that they wish to communicate to wider society.
The design of the spider’s web brings out the idea of inter-connectedness, unification, unity, strength and networking. Is this not the idea behind the World Wide Web (www)? Even the so-called modern man is still deriving a lot of inspiration and technological applications from nature such as emulating the building design of a spider’s web.
If we turn to the Ndebele hut we observe its completed roof as resembling some sort of spider’s web. The rafters, intungo, are crisscrossed by imithando (imbalilo). The resulting structure is strong and exhibits the same ideas of interconnectedness, unity, unification, strength and resilience.
The whole structure emanates from a common centre, the apex. Overall, the structure is circular in design — comprising circles of increasing radii (if one starts at the apex).
The rafters are also arranged in a circular manner so that they constitute a somewhat adapted cone — itself a circular design.
It is this idea of an interconnected universe that brought together the stars, planets, moons and other celestial bodies which was captured in the house roof of the Ndebele people and indeed other fellow Africans. The African was indeed his ideology, his worldview and his cosmology.
The cultural landscape he created was a reflection of his thinking as Jose Rambinintsoa of Malagasy wrote. In the cultural world he created he left indelible identity (signature) marks which in their totality give some idea of what he was thinking (the cognitive makeup).
The cultural landscape is an entry point into the mind that crafted the landscape. In everything created there is a bit of the creator.
All this broad and seemingly meandering introduction serves as background material to illustrate how, when the worldviews change, this change is reflected on the cultural landscape. In this particular case we are concerned with house architecture — specifically the roof.
A community’s cosmology is in sync or tandem with its cultural landscape or more accurately the various cultural elements.
This phenomenon became apparent one year when the Reverend Paul Bayethe Damasane and I were driving along a road through the Caprivi Strip in Namibia. We were on our way to Oshakati not very far from the Namibia-Angola border.
Along the way we saw houses that in our view were of Tonga origin. The fact that we were in a position to say this was because each ethnic group has its own distinct identifiable architecture. While at the broadest level the essentials are more or less the same, there are however some differences at the micro-level.
The round or circular huts were grouped into large villages. The roofs had a steep slope and thatched in typical Tonga style. All we could see from the road were the roofs shooting above the palisades made from reeds obtained from water bodies.
The palisades were circular and in this regard shared something in common with palisades from other African groups.
Palisades render privacy (exclusion), express territoriality and mark off socio-economic and political differentials are built from various materials ranging from stout wooden poles, stone walls, thorn tree branches and tall reeds.
The material chosen depends on what is locally available and the architectural traditions of the particular ethnic group.
We had travelled quite a bit from Katima Mulilo when all of a sudden there was a break in the house architecture, in particular the roof design. The houses had rectangular walls and their sizes differed from those of the Tonga groups that we had hitherto been exposed to.
The houses were much bigger. The roofs were flat at the top. They were the kind referred to as heaped roofs which have four sides. Grass was used to thatch the roofs.
Remembering some missionary history in the pre-colonial period I was able to predict the presence of a mission station not very far from where we were.
The Catholic Church sent two missions to a people that they considered warlike and a hindrance to the advance of Christianity to the north. These two peoples were the Sotho-speaking Kololo (amaGololo) under Sebituane (uSibindwane). The other was the Ndebele then under King Lobengula. The latter mission arrived in Matabeleland in 1879 at the time when the throne was near Hope Fountain.
The missionaries brought their own architectural traditions which were inspired by their own cosmologies and worldviews. Even the earlier arrivals, the LMS missionaries did not embrace Ndebele house architecture. They introduced a new architectural form despite their being a minority. They built rectangular houses with heaped roofs with combed thatch as opposed to amathikili.
By the time the Ndebele were evicted from Bubi in the colonial period quite many of them had acquired the new architecture. For example, Princess Tshakalisa Khumalo aka Sintinga who lived in the Shangane Reserve built houses in line with the LMS architectural tradition.
The same was true with Wilson Lethizulu Fuyane. His homestead at Lupanda, not far from the Gwayi River, had houses of a rectangular design with heaped roofs.
Fuyane had been educated at Inyathi Mission and later proceeded to Tiger Kloof in South Africa, another LMS institution that taught practical subjects such as carpentry, building studies and leather craft, among others. At his homestead only one house retained the traditional Ndebele architecture. It was the house belonging to Pombo Fuyane, Antony Magagula’s mother.
Sooner than later we got to a road junction with lettering that read, “Linyanti Mission.” Yes, that was the road leading to the mission station that was established among the Kololo of Sebituane whose mission was to pacify the Kololo. It was this group of people that introduced Sesotho to that region where the Lozi, among other people, lived. It was their language that would ultimately give the mighty falls on the Zambezi River the name Mosi-oa-Tunya, the smoke that thunders.
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