Chronicle Editor
AFTER 21 articles on the much-maligned and hardly understood profession, the first book volume has been published under the banner “Journey to Ancient African Science: Seeking to Unpack the Principles and Laws of Witchcraft and Traditional Healing.”
The emphasis, it made clear from the very outset, was to undertake a more objective and empathetic approach to the science that is never seen as such.
The objective, therefore, was to undertake some Afro-centric thrust towards the field that is patently a victim of bias from vocal elements in our societies. The study thus embraces the duo of witchcraft and traditional healing. Both derive their practices from underpinning science with its laws and principles. To some people, it is all mumbo jumbo of supernatural hocus-pocus.
Super nature probably, yes, and yet that should not preclude the objective study of cultural practices in order to reveal that which underpins and informs. We should never make it an academic profession to attach stigmas to what we do not understand. If anything, we ought to put on mental work suits to ensure better understanding. Why become victims of racial bigotry, partiality, subjectivity and biases?
Often times, we see cultural practices minus the science that drives them. As a result, we are quick to drown in the murky waters of ignorance and, in the process make pronouncements and judgments premised on sheer lack of knowledge and sometimes pride prejudice.
Presently, we have been unpacking applications of identified principles that inform and underpin cultural and spiritual practices within the field of witchcraft and African traditional healing. After all, the two are two sides of the same coin. Practitioners in both aspects of the mono-field are capable of flip-flopping and gallivanting between the two sides.
In the final analysis, we have observed that it is human anatomy that bears individual identity as embodied in the DNA. Broadly, we see integral parts of the human body as representative of the whole body. This is true of parts on the body surface such as hair, toes, fingernails and skin. At the same time, there are integral parts of the body that are internal and like external ones enumerated above, carry the same identity-bearing DNA. Examples here include blood, body fluids, mucus, faecal matter and numerous body organs and urine, inter alia.
For our purposes, we seek to contextualise cultural practices that emanate from identity considerations. As already pointed out, some body parts, regardless of their size, are obtained and used by peddlers of Ancient African Science.
We did observe that accessed parts, be they very small or big and may be used in fulfilment of the Rule of Representation. A tiny fraction is representative of a big whole.
External components may leave their identities when impressed on fine and impressionable surfaces such as soft soil. The impressions made on such surfaces carry some identity in terms of some line configurations on the body surface that have been impressed on a soil surface. An animal or individual person whose markings or lines’ configurations are impressed on the loose soil has been imbued or permeated into the soil.
As explained in the last article, such a re-arranged soil surface will retain the individual identity on the soil or a surface such as wet clay even when the lines have been disturbed or deleted following the mixing up of the soil.
Those that are au fait with AAS will harness energy from a variety of sources including their evil spirits, energy from sources such as plants and animals, then activate trailers/trackers and infuse propulsive energy and unleash the ritual package. The origins or sources of the package may be traced back to witches and wizards, but also to traditional healers.
As pointed out at the very outset of these 21 articles ago, the broad fields of AAS embraced the work of both witches and traditional healers. The applied principles and laws are the same. Traditional healers have the power to unleash the same ritual packages that witches use. Cases have been reported where traditional healers have tested each other’s powers. Eagles have been unleashed to attack one’s adversary or competitor.
Sometimes, the aim is not to kill one’s competitor but just to prove who is stronger. Eagles descend with a lot of thunderous noise when they come down. These strength-testing gimmicks are meant to establish some pecking order within a community of traditional healers. It is known that healers engage in these brawls in public. This is not the case with wizards and witches as their adventures and businesses are transacted under the veil of dark nights.
A look at some taboos may reveal how spiritual wars are fought. It is taboo for one to stand and cast her/his shadow onto a sitting individual. The practice has a witchy dimension although it may not be interpreted as such. The one standing and casting her/his shadow on a sitting individual will use her/his shadow and, in combination with silent speech, invoke some spiritual formula aimed at a targeted sitting individual.
This may sound incomprehensible and dismissed as pagan and superstitious practices. But before rushing to make these ostentatious, brazen and disparaging comments one has to be familiar with the working principles and laws that drive, AAS.
A shadow is unique to a particular individual. One could say it carries some identity that is intricately linked to some individual. At the same time a voice, which is no more than patterned energy pulsations, is unique to a person producing the sound. There is thus some complementarity between these two traits.
We should at all times, be cognisant of the link and connectedness between voice, whether vocalised or not, and one’s shadow. Both components are integral to a particular and identifiable individual. That together with spiritual energy and power will create a powerful ritual package that may be utilised to malevolent effect.
We mention all these principles so that we begin to appreciate underpinning rules, laws and principles of science. Quite often, we come across cultural practices that are difficult to explain, let alone interpret.
All this, we mention to appreciate and interpret cultural practices especially those that emanate from our own cultures. This is more so when they are underpinned by spirituality existing at the intangible level but operating at the material level. Where people being studied have a different culture and belief system from the one being investigated, seeking interpretation turns out to be a mammoth task. This is all the more so when visual art forms which, like other art genres, are an expressive culture.
This I experienced recently when we embarked upon a project to preserve San rock paintings within the Matobo Hills World Heritage Site (WHS). The US Ambassador to Zimbabwe sponsors the project. It has been recognised that the valueless San rock art is under threat and yet it embraces a veritable source of San culture. We were able, as Amagugu, to observe some of these threats.
Fires have been made inside some caves and adjacent to rock boulders. Charcoal has been used to make images that have defaced original paintings. Fires produce black soot that smudges the messaged-endowed images. Some insects and birds have made their nests on rock surfaces.
In the process, the clarity of the images is compromised and that militates against objective and comprehensive interpretation of the images more so when we, as strangers seek to interpret a visual art that goes beyond aesthetic expressions to encompass functional roles. Tree and plant roots have led to the splitting of rocks that bear art. A full image is lost in the process. Some animals, such as daisies and birds such as bats have deposited mounts of droppings within caves.
Raised dust has accumulated on the paintings and in the process; the painted works have been covered up slime that interferes with the accuracy of the artwork. Animals such as goats venture into the caves when it is raining to seek shelter. Now and then, the animals rub their bodies against rock surfaces that bear images. The affected images become faded and lose their important fullness. When it rains, water drips down the rock surfaces and has the inimical tendency to smudge the artwork. Lichens of various colours such as grey, green, blue, yellow and white have covered the rock surfaces that bear artworks.
Availed funding is meant to capture the threatened San rock art before it deteriorates further. Different methods will be applied that seek to document and salvage some of the relatively clear art. The women from Matobo have, for ten years now, been engaged in decorating their hut walls as part of the “My Beautiful Home-Comba Indlu Ngobuciko Project.” The seven villages in Ward 17 will identify San Rock art sites and select the clearer ones that will be targeted for copy painting.
On the basis of their experience of hut painting and assistance from two accomplished artists associated with the Visual Arts Association of Bulawayo (Vaab), they will be given further expert training in the field of visual arts. The artworks in selected caves, on boulders will be captured for preservation in various forms. Copy painting will involve the women copy painting the artworks as they appear today. Cameras will be used to capture the images on rocks.
Websites will be created where the images will be posted for permanent storage and archiving. A book will also be written where the various art images will be featured. Some bit of cautious interpretation, art interpretation will be carried out. This is where I realised how difficult it could be to interpret art outside of its cultural context that embraces artistic traditions, belief systems and cosmology.
In one cave, there were clay grain bins of a relatively big size. The walls were made out of clay with some few twigs constituting the frame. It was clear this was a later cultural development associated with early farming communities, the Kalanga and BaNyubi people. These were agriculturalists belonging to the Iron Age Era
The stick figure of one man was clearly taller than the rest. The man, in blood red colour was executed through painting by brushes. The face, in line with other human images, was not clear. What was rare with the elongated man was the fact that he had what we perceived as a rope with which he was tying some smaller and shorter people.
Beyond that, there were no further clues. I immediately felt the challenge. How do we interpret the phenomenon that has been captured visually? The painters depicted their culture with which we were not very familiar. The tendency here is to perceive and seek to interpret from our standpoint, our artistic traditions and understanding of the world.
With virtually zero cultural background, trying to figure out what is represented here is a mammoth task. Perhaps it depicts some spiritual dimension. The body size is symbolic of elevated spiritual power, of a super spiritual being.
Probably the man resides within a spiritual world. The rope, I would surmise, depicts the connection with the material world of mortals who are guided, protected and defended by the powerful and supernatural being that we see as if pulling the smaller and shorter individuals. We can only draw upon our cultural resources to attempt some modicum of interpretation.
The detour that we have taken was to give emphasis to the challenges that we come across when we seek to interpret cultural phenomena across cultural barriers. This happens to be the case in our current articles where we are dealing with AAS. The one who is unfamiliar with underpinning interpretive beliefs will be hard put to interpret what exactly is taking place.
Beliefs, cosmology and worldview and thought are ever at work, influencing and conditioning community members in terms of what they do as that is subject to thought and cosmology. It is imperative that before passing comments or seeking interpretation we avail ourselves to the beliefs that birthed cultural practices. Cultural practices that human innovate are in harmony with their belief systems. They do or act, as they believe. It is against this background that we may begin to appreciate and understand the reasons for certain cultural behaviours.
It has been reported that King Lobengula ordered his capital town KoBulawayo burnt when he relocated to a new site in 1881. The new place retained the old name, KoBulawayo. Some people have wondered why that practice existed at all.
I have always said it was not the king that ordered his town razed. Instead, Ndebele cultural tradition and spirituality did so. The King, being a product of a cultural milieu, acted as expected by being socialised into his community. The king did not do something that was out of step with the Ndebele community’s expectations.
The shadow story that was enumerated above should, likewise, be understood in the same fold. What a given community believes ought to be unravelled so that proffered interpretations are not out of cultural, cosmological and spiritual contexts.
Bongani Ndlovu