Food taboos: Seeking to understand symbology behind conditions of ‘pollution’ and vulnerability

Cultural Heritage

Pathisa Nyathi

THERE are stages or phases in human development that are considered to render an individual vulnerable. Vulnerability may expose one to danger and even threaten life. Such stages are therefore accompanied by cultural interventions to ensure an individual is safely led through the transient stage of vulnerability.

Assistance rendered to such an individual is motivated by the desire to ensure continued existence, or simply expressed, endlessness, continuity, immortality, eternity and fertility. The cosmos used to inspire traditional Africans. One of several lessons they gleaned from the universe was the idea of continuity. The cosmos is characterised by relative eternity.

Both cultural and spiritual endeavours sought to emulate or replicate the heavens. Physical eternity resident in the cosmos was equated to sexual reproduction at the human level and indeed in other living things, both flora and fauna. In this case, their eternity is underpinned by sexual reproduction. In some species of flora, vegetative reproduction achieves the same results.

Essentially, this translates to sustainability. At another level, it may relate to sustainability in the business sphere and hence recourse to ritual murders to extract the seed which is exclusively endowed with regenerative powers. The idea of seed applies to both plants and animals. In humans seed refers to sperms in semen and ova within the ovaries. Both reside in reproductive organs and ritual murders are perpetrated solely to extract the specialised regenerative cells.

There are times when humans, on account of stages they are going through, are said to be “polluted.” The term pollution, being English, fails to express adequately the idea resident in another culture, African culture, in this particular case. A lot of meaning is lost through migrating from one linguistic world to another, more so to English which is a language rooted in the material world whereas African languages represent a much broader world with both material and spiritual dimensions.

The one such stage of ‘‘pollution’’ is menstruation. In the Western world menstruation is seen as a biological phenomenon and couples are free to indulge in sex without any qualms. The traditional African saw beyond the biological process. Symbology played an important role in the African world of meaning. A particular condition induced a similar condition outside of or beyond itself. It all depended on perceptions that a particular people had.

The question here is how those Africans perceived or conceptualised menstrual blood. To them it was not the same as blood flowing through one’s veins or arteries. Blood in the heart and blood vessels is living blood, it symbolises life. However, once that blood exits its biological spaces, it is dead blood. It is blood that constitutes menstrual flow.

Africans perceived such a woman as possessing ‘‘pollution’’ and many cultural/spiritual taboos followed her. As a result, she went into seclusion so that she did not come into contact with other people and items to which she could transfer her pollution, read death. Generally, African couples abstained from sexual intercourse at the time when the wife was experiencing her periods. She did not prepare food for men.

The belief was that she would pass her condition to the men. It had absolutely nothing to do with the act being messy. Symbolic perception is all that mattered. Essentially, her condition of death (pollution) was passed on to the husband whose virility, so thought the African, got ‘‘killed’’.

It was against such ideas that Ndebele people did not allow their wives or any women for that matter, to jump over their military weapons such as spears and knobkerries. These were items that were regarded as infused with life or potency which the status of women nullified. Even their attire was never mixed. A husband had his own grass basket wardrobe, umqunqu and the wife had her own vessel. The two did not sleep together throughout the night (no grasshopper business!). The wife got invited by her husband for the sole purpose of transacting conjugal business and retired immediately to her own space within the hut.

Women among the Ndebele were not allowed to walk through a herd of cattle. Cattle were doctored for various reasons, in a process called ukuthusa. The reason for the prohibition should be clear by now. The potency of umthuso, sometimes known as ibaso, was nullified by the woman’s condition of ‘‘pollution’’. The feared condition of woman, though periodic, was not known to the general public. The best way out of this lack of knowledge was for the woman to keep clear of the herd of cattle at all times.

Between puberty and menopause she was not allowed to get into the cattle byre. It is now a question of applying the idea we have unpacked so far to interpret this cultural behaviour. Behind every cultural practice there is some underlying worldview or perception that drives and directs it. We note that it was a different story when a maiden, umlobokazi left her father’s home to join her future husband, umyeni wakhe. In all this, what is important is to approach African cultural practices with a mind that seeks to unpack the legitimising worldview and beliefs.

Those who make it their business to stop ages old African cultural practices should know where to attack, not at the level of cultural practices but rather at those beliefs, values, cosmologies and worldview that underpin the cultural practices. Doing otherwise may only lead to those cultural practices being driven underground but continuing to exist like the celebrated small house. What is important and sustainable is to go beyond behaviour and dismantle the pillars that sustain cultural behaviour.

What we are saying here has a bearing on our theme, which is food as a cultural expression. Depending on one’s stage or phase in human development there are attendant food taboos that must be observed. Taboos, we should appreciate, have the attribute of not being questioned. It was not a question of take it or leave it. What had to be taken was taken and what had to be left was left. There was no middle of the road option.

We shall give one example of a food taboo that related to a menstruating woman. During her periods she was not allowed to consume milk in any form, be it fresh, slightly curdled ( ihiqa) or fully curdled ( amasi). Milk from doctored cows carried the potency of umthuso/ ibaso, which potency could result in sustained menstruation. She would menstruate without end till the same medicinal concoction applied to the cows was applied to her. Like poles repel, as we often say in Physics in relation to the laws of magnetism.

Next week we shall look at other conditions of vulnerability or ‘‘pollution’’ and see how they were handled in order to deal with conditions that posed a threat to continuity, immortality, eternity and endlessness. As always, we seek to render Afrocentric interpretation of African cultural practices.

To make pronouncements that African cultural practices are superstitious is, as my friend will say, tantamount to acknowledging one’s laziness or academic arrogance to find out that which lies at the root of these African cultural practices.