Chief Gampu Sithole’s burial: Funerary rituals and underlying cosmologies
Cultural Heritage
Pathisa Nyathi IN dealing with African funerary practices, one is invariably lurching into rituals, symbolism and symbols. These are aspects of African Spirituality that are sometimes either misunderstood by well meaning researchers or just deliberately misinterpreted out of some perception that things African are primitive and demonic. As a result, they are despised, demonised and denigrated.
Professor E Dada Adelowo of the Department of Religious Studies at the Ondo State University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria, penned the following words regarding scholars with condescending attitudes towards African Spirituality. “It is to be noted that a good number of such scholars had, over the years, taken appearances for reality, symbols for the symbolised, means for the end, with regard to the religious situation in Africa.” This he terms academic fallacy which does not augur well for true scholarship.
Rituals, symbolism and symbols are an integral part of African Spirituality as reflected in burial practices. The three-some concepts are sources of African beliefs and practices. Through rituals and rites, one’s belief system is concretised. This is particularly so when considering that the African world is more complex than that posited through Western experiences. The African world embraces both the material/physical and spiritual realms. The latter is intangible and therefore abstract, and does not relate to space. For humans to meaningfully deal with that kind of reality, there is need to reduce it to concretised, intelligible and meaningful reality. This is where rituals and rites come in.
It should not come as a surprise therefore, to find a lot of rituals and rites that accompanied various cultural practices. It was some kind of mediation between two complementary and interacting worlds, one of which was without a physical/material component. They, rituals and rites, are a means of expressing one’s experience of the super-sensible world and the supernatural beings. They are, in short and simple term, forms of communion and communication between one and one’s objects of worship.
Professor Adelowo, while describing worship among the Yoruba people of Nigeria, indicates that a worshipper made a circle of ashes or white chalk. Within the circle, a symbol of eternity, he pours a libation of cold water. For very long we have been asserting that the circle was, to the African ancients, an important symbol, one that expressed the idea of continuity, eternity, endlessness, immortality and fertility. Certainly, if the Yoruba of Nigeria see it the way the Ndebele see it, we can surmise that the concept is indeed, Pan-African.
This immediately takes us to the observations made by Reverend Herbert Carter of the Wesleyan Methodist Church when he attended the burial of Chief Gampu Sithole. “The body was wrapped, in a sitting position, in blankets and karosses. The grave was dug, and then every man went out and cut a small tree branch for a fence and every woman went in the veld to pick up a big stone. In carrying these to the kraal, they were not allowed to change hands.”
Prior to colonisation and slightly beyond it, graves were circular. Today this phenomenon is still visible in early Ndebele settlements. It was placing of stones on the grave that make it possible to identify them to this day. The circular burial mound was covered with stones. The concept of burial was taken beyond human interment. When a child displayed anti-social behaviour he/she was instructed, “Gebha igodi ukhafulele amathe, ugqibele.” Dig a grave, spit (your saliva) into it, and cover it up. These are seemingly ordinary words accompanying a far reaching cultural behaviour. For our purposes what is important here is that burial is implied, together with its multifarious aspects. There is digging, spitting of one’s saliva and covering up. All these, in their given sequence, depict burial. In this case, what is being buried is the child’s behaviour, here represented by her/his saliva. Covering up is abandonment of an old antisocial behaviour. It is a ritual which is symbolic and concretised. Symbolism came in handy in expressing otherwise abstract ideas.
What we would have loved the Reverend Carter to tell us was the shape of the grave. Was it still circular by 1916 or had it assumed a rectangular shape reminiscent of the new intrusive western culture? Women carried stones to be placed on the earth mound. Why were they not allowed to change hands? Africa believed there were actions and/ or behaviours which, when engaged in, attracted or led to more deaths. Moving the stone from one hand to the other would have been synonymous with inviting another death. One hand, one death. Two hands, two deaths. We are not even pretending here that we got it from some elder somewhere. One merely needs to understand critical beliefs and their underlying meanings in order to unravel the hidden denotations. This is our Rosetta Stone. Apparently, this is the case even today although there would be no one to enforce the practice as African ways and traditions face onslaught, particularly in towns.
The one aspect of burial that Reverend Carter touches upon relates to tree branches. In rural areas this is still taking place. Certain known trees are used to cover a grave. One such tree is umlahlabantu (umphafa). It is a thorn tree which keeps goats and other domestic animals away from the grave. Isihlangu is, at times, used as a substitute. In his observations, Reverend Carter says the tree branches were used to make a fence. This seems to go beyond mere covering of the grave. He does not specify what types of trees were being used. Certain vegetative trees, such as iminyela, were planted to provide shade for the spirit during its visits to the grave.
Considering that this was burial of an important chief who controlled several other chiefs, it is possible that access to the grave was strictly prohibited. Perhaps there were two types of tree branches — one to cover the grave and another to make a fence around the grave. Certainly, we do know that witches and wizards were a feared lot who were not supposed to lay their hands on the corpse. Even today relatives of a buried person go back the next morning to check if the grave has not been tempered with. All this makes sense when intangible aspects of African burial rituals are fully understood and appreciated.
Reverend Carter also records that during Chief Gampu Sithole’s burial one of his sons, born of King Lobengula’s daughter, stood at the head of the grave holding the late chief’s staff and assegai. Chief Gampu Sithole had more than one royal Khumalo wives. He married Princess Mhlumela, King Lobengula Khumalo’s daughter. Apparently, this is the daughter that the Ndebele King had reserved for Gasa King Mzila Nxumalo. Remember, King Lobengula married Princess Xhwalile Nxumalo, a daughter of King Mzila. The arrangement was meant to cement cordial relations between the two Nguni states. Relations between the King (Lobengula) and Chief Gampu Sithole took a nosedive, forcing the latter to flee to South Africa. He however, came back before the outbreak of the 1893 Anglo-Ndebele War in which he participated.
We know too that Chief Gampu Sithole also married Princess Gugwana Khumalo, okaTshukisa (also known as Muntu), the son of King Mzilikazi by one MaSigola. The son was one Dlomo. However, the thrust of this article is not on the history of the Gampu chieftaincy, but rather on the observed funerary practices and their attendant cosmological bases.
The practice that Reverend Carter documented is very important and carries a lot of symbolism. The Sithole ruling lineage was visually expressed through the son standing at the head of the grave holding both the assegai and staff that the Chief used to carry in life. The Chief was dead, long live the chief! This was the message carried in the symbolic metaphor. Next week we turn to that idea which lay at the very heart of foundation of African Spirituality.