Vusumuzi DubeIN the last article we focused on settlement design at Old Bulawayo.
There is still scope to cover more aspects on the theme of design.
It is to these that we now turn before venturing into the theme of circularity as found in the various cultural features within the Old Bulawayo cultural landscape.
However, before we do that, let us render more aspects and considerations that are relevant to design and its underpinnings.
Settlement Layout is not a haphazard process characterised by hit and/or miss approach.
Instead, there are well considered factors that are taken on board to bring about the result in terms of spatial organisation.
Settlement design can be very complex or simple depending on the range of factors that are taken on board.
As I often put it, in everything created there is always the signature of the creator.
In the case of a built environment, there is the signature of the community.
We thus have to identify that signature and pin down the factors that singly and severally result in the enduring signature, which, in essence, is the mind of a given community.
The signature of a community is, in essence, its worldview, cosmologies and underlying beliefs.
A built environment is a physical representation and expression of the mental picture of its community.
Taking a walk through a cultural landscape is like navigating the mind of the creators, builders and users of that cultural landscape.
A careful study, analysis and interpretation of a settlement design should furnish us with a deeper and more lucid understanding of the ordering mind that resulted in its creation, design and layout.
Socio-economic differentiation and related stratification is one factor that is certainly at work in designing settlement layout.
Social and political “altitude” are created on the physical plane.
The physical height is positively related to social, political and economic height.
At Old Bulawayo, topographical surveys indicated that within the royal enclosure there were depictions of social, economic and political differentiation among for example the king, queens and other royalty-related persons.
Age is another factor that impacted upon design of the settlement.
Teenage children had their own accommodation.
There were huts for males and females, amaxhiba, and both were located in the front part of the settlement.
Given the centre-periphery arrangement, both the children’s huts and livestock byres were centrally located.
This was a pointer to the importance of both the children and the livestock.
The children are the generative or procreative drivers for a community.
It is through them that a community is perpetuated and attains continuity and endlessness.
Besides, they are an important source of labour, an important input in the production process.
It is through the young that a community’s traditions, history, knowledge, skills and folklore are transmitted to future generations.
Through them, continuity is guaranteed.
It is for the same considerations that other competing communities laid emphasis on raiding in order to build up reserves for the young who are the perpetuating elements within a community.
The young represent regeneration and renewal of an ageing community.
In a nutshell, the youth are the future without which a community faces the spectre of decline and even total demise.
In the same vein, the cattle and other forms of livestock play an important role in a community.
Cattle represented domesticated hunting.
Men obtained sources of protein, social status and social regeneration through cattle as witnessed through the faunal assemblage.
Cattle served as sources of food and thus sustenance.
Bovine bones constituted the largest component in the total faunal assemblage.
The Ndebele and other ethnic groups in Southern Africa raided for cattle.
Cattle played political and social roles within communities.
Cattle possession could result in political power generation and see some families become centres of increasing political hegemony.
Kings were sometimes created out of cattle possession.
Men with cattle accumulated both political and social influence and power. At the same time, they were in a position to pay amalobolo for several women.
The resulting several daughters, upon getting married, attracted more wealth in the form of cattle, and ultimately, social and political influence.
Social circumstances resulted in the generation and concentration of political power that, in turn, provided the key to more wealth.
Whatever cattle accumulated through raids and natural increase, these had to be jealously guarded and secured against cattle rustlers.
As we saw in the last article, the cattle byers were centrally located to ensure their security on account of the roles the cattle played in the sustenance and political and social power generation within the community.
The role of spirituality back then should not be underplayed.
Cattle did play an important role in spiritual matters.
Cattle provided an important link between the living and the living dead.
Through the link, the communities were guided with regard to their own survival.
Spirituality became a way of survival, as much as the requisite food and military considerations.
Inevitably, the factors that we have enumerated played an important role in the design of a settlement that was a unit for procreation and one that had arrangements that guaranteed sustenance and continuity.
However, this was not all by way of factors that impinged upon the organisation of space.
A settlement sometimes had economic activities that required separation from other social features.
Examples at Old Bulawayo were the grain processing and storage facilities.
These were receivers of grain from the grain-producing units, the crop fields further afield.
The grain storage and processing areas were in the back part of a village.
That part of the built environment became spaces for women.
Women were traditionally the producers of food which was a role continued from feeding the zygote and embryo through the placenta and subsequently suckling the born babies.
A settlement embraced gendered spaces; spaces for the males and for the females.
The cattle byres were reserved spaces for the males, a continuation of their earlier roles as hunters who then added the spiritual spaces unto themselves within the context of growing political, social, cultural and spiritual power.
Women processed food and it made sense to locate food-processing activities close to the grain storage areas.
Indeed, this happened to be the case as the kitchen huts were located close to the grain storage areas.
It was women who ground grain, using stones, or pounded it using pestle and mortar into meal that was used to produce the staple meal, isitshwala.
Indeed, the kitchen huts were the first line of huts after the grain storage zone.
Meal was produced either in the kitchen huts or next to them depending on the weather conditions.
This back part of the settlement was the preserve for women on the basis of gender-related economic activities.
The men were not an integral part of that food storage and processing zone.
However, we do see them dominating the livestock zone to which they attached aspects of social, economic, spiritual and political power.
Hunting within the cattle pens gave men added power.
That zone became a marker for the male aspects in the social units.
The boys were enculturated within the context of that same powerful zone that men appropriated for themselves.
Wars were fought over possession of cattle and the captives.
Women were excluded from the military adventures.
Armories were located close to the male-gendered sites, the front parts of a settlement.
What we glean from all this is that design was done with a view to bring out and mirror the social, political, economic and spiritual aspects of a given community.
Design embraced wider social aspects, in a way, entrenched, and legitimated them.
Things physical or tangible are more convincing in the exercise of legitimating.
What is concrete is more compelling.
This, in a nutshell, is the story of settlement design and its wider community ramifications.
Online Reporter