Chronicle Editor
Pathisa Nyathi
THE silence is loud. It is the silence of death. It’s 11PM and I am engaging my restless mind in vexing matters relating to the British iconic cultural landscape — the Stonehenge which the most recent research has identified as a cemetery. For the past three months I have been tucking my mind into the literature of this 5 000 years old monument. I am in possession of a book, “Exploring The Stone Age Mystery: Stonehenge” written by Mike Parker Pearson. I have a copy that he autographed. Given my amazing level of forgetfulness, I have no clue how the copy got into my hands though I seem to remember that one Chris James Stone passed it on to me.
Though I have been to the UK on several occasions, I have never visited the Stonehenge in Wessex’s Salisbury Plain. I however, developed a keen interest in the iconic Neolithic monument. The overarching worldview behind its creation and construction is unbelievably similar to our own African cosmological ideas relating to death and the afterlife. What makes the interpretation of the Stonehenge somewhat challenging and intriguing is the fact that current scholars embrace an ideology that is diametrically opposed to that of the people who created and constructed the Stonehenge.
Besides, the Stonehenge Riverside Project which did sterling work on the site seems to have given an ear to and tolerance of African Thought whose several elements are embedded in the Stonehenge and its associated monuments such as the Durrington Walls, the Bluestonehenge and the Woodhenge. Archaeology is an exact science and its findings may not be in doubt. However, interpreting these may be a totally different issue which has to lean on several academic disciplines such as history, astronomy (in the case of the Stonehenge) and ethnography.
Not so long ago I penned a few articles relating to how Africans within the Matobo Cultural Landscape and adjoining areas dealt with epidemics that afflicted them over the ages. It was observed then that Africans have relaxed in the comfort that dealing with epidemics is in the hands of other people. In the past, when they were on their own, they felt some obligated to do something. Not anymore! As the Covid-19 pandemic ravages the world, there is noticeable relaxation among Africans to join the rest of the world to find a cure. Africa lives in the deadening and disempowering thick shadows of other peoples.
My interest, which persuaded me to take pen and paper is the investigation of existing inequalities when it comes to cultural or scientific strategies that the world is adopting to curb the spread of the coronavirus which is a deadly disease. Whereas the world is diverse in more ways than one, Africa is not in the driving seat when it comes to the strategies being adopted and cures being researched. Instead the strategies, albeit exotic, are impacting on African cultural practices. The one area where this is quite palpable is one relating to funerary traditions.
How death is perceived informs a people’s funerary practices that crafted and adopted for implementation. Death is at the centre of the articles that I wish to pen and, in particular, how Covid-19 is set to alter quite a number of African cultural practices, death being but one of them. This is what led me to make reference to the Neolithic Stonehenge. A sharp look at it reveals the worldview of the people who created and built it to a ritual edifice it was. The understanding of death is expressed through the various items of material culture, the numerous cultural and natural features and their relatedness within a cultural landscape, the architecture and sculpture which shaped the built environment. A built environment is applied thought.
Art is an important medium for documenting a people’s history. Art is expressive culture. Why is secularity the overarching design within a burial site both among the Ndebele people and within the Stonehenge?
The comparison embraces many aspects. With regard to the Stonehenge there is reference to round barrows with circular mounds that are enclosed within banks and ditches. Stones, characterised by solidity, are part of funerary traditions in both instances.
It has to be appreciated that Africans developed funerary traditions in line with lived experiences, spirituality and their perceived roles of the cosmos in their lives, inter alia. These and other considerations informed the way death was understood and how related funerary traditions were developed within a spiritual, functional and cosmological context. Funerary traditions have to be contextual and derive meaning from some ordering cosmology. What is put into practice must be meaningful and can be explained in a way that makes sense to the creators and crafters of cultural practices.
Indeed there were endogenous changes that took place in the absence of inputs from aliens and other strangers from the outside world. It will become clear when, in 2021 we begin the “Journey to the Stonehenge” how similar the ordering cosmologies were between the Britons and Africans in southern Africa, including the Ndebele people. What obtains now with regard to Ndebele funerary traditions is a far cry from what obtained prior to colonisation.
Colonisation brought in its wake western funerary traditions and measures to deal with diseases in general and pandemics in particular. The colonial project was, by its very nature, violent and in the process it created conditions where Africans began to abandon their own cultural traditions including practices relating to burial and health practices in general. From the outset Africans suffered a sense of inferiority complex, shattered egos and self-esteem. They began to doubt, as they still do today, their own ways of dealing with any given problematic situation. The Africans were dragged, screaming and kicking, and sometimes on mute mode, into the dizzying orbits of their new masters.
African science was deemed inferior and the Africans fell for it hook, line and sinker. Anything deemed unscientific was regarded as demonic, superstitious and mythical. Related to that was technology. The one technology worth respecting and putting into practice was scientific technology. Anything else courted scorn, disgrace and derision. What the African knew and practised was trashed and hence the Africans are resigned to their enduring state of deprivation. They have neither science nor scientific technology and, it turns out, the disciples of this gospel of doom are the Africans themselves.
Media is important in the dissemination of a particular view of the world, a view not our own and not of our working for we do not own any cutting edge media houses. What prompted me to embark on these articles was a news item on France 24 about how Covid-19 has impacted on black South Africans’ funerary practices. World opinion on any issue of substance is cultivated by powerful media institutions. Africa does not have the likes of BBC, CNN and France 24. France 24 prides itself of broadcasting in French, Spanish, Arabic and English. Just how does Africa hope to influence world opinion in her favour when she does not get her narratives across? The same goes for newspapers. They propagate a certain view of the world, and included in that view are the Africans themselves.
Industrial and economic inferiority do not favour the Africans. Their economies are neither strong nor diversified. Many of the African leaders have had their appetites aligned to those with an insatiable appetite for all the resources of the world. African leadership is measured in terms of adopting and practicing democracy which, in essence, translates to allowing foreign countries to loot and plunder African resources.
In subsequent articles we shall focus the spotlight on how Covid-19 is impacting on African cultural practices. The known cultural practices will have their bases unpacked so that we begin to see why they were crafted and what purpose they served. When these cultural practices are eroded, we shall seek to identify the likely social costs that will attend to the changes adopted to deal withCovid-19. Funerary traditions shall be the first on the firing line.
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