Journey to Great Zimbabwe: More expressions of sexuality in performances and the built environment
Cultural Heritage
Pathisa Nyathi WHEN we commenced the series on “Journey to Great Zimbabwe “we quoted an important phrase, “As above, so below”. By that we were acknowledging how Africans have always sought to replicate the cosmos or heavens on their own plane, Mother Earth. Conversely, we can also state the anthropocentric opposite, “As below, so above.” This time we recognise how Africans sought to interpret the cosmos through their own standpoint and how they understood themselves. The one observation we made of the cosmos was its attributes of eternity and endlessness. We further observed that it is eternity that does not result from sexuality.
The African, placing himself at the centre of the cosmos, thrusts the way he attains eternity onto the cosmic plane. For him, without doubt, eternity is a function of sexuality. He thus applies sexuality terminologies to the cosmic plane as if the cosmos attains its eternity through sexuality. Let us refer to the moon as an example of a cosmic body that has the attributes of eternity and identify the vocabulary and see if it isn’t derived from asexuality-oriented understanding of attainment of human birth and death. The African understood continuity through his own sexuality and sought to impose his own ides as obtaining at the cosmic plane. The moon has a lunar cycle of 28 days. A new moon is born, grows, develops and ultimately dies. That is followed by rebirth and the same process recurs on a lunar monthly basis. Birth-growth-development-decay-death and rebirth have human attributes with regard to attainment of continuity and eternity. The African places himself at the centre of the universe in terms of his understanding of universal phenomena and their operations and workings.
We saw the African impose his own ideas of sexuality on the physical landscape by perceiving the river as male and the earth as female where the two are in some eternal erotic embrace resulting in the earth falling pregnant and the mountains being the visible product of the sexual engagement. If the African is so obsessed with attaining eternity through sexuality and imposes those same ideas on both the physical landscape and the cosmos, would he fail to create the same thematic elements in what he has total control over? Would he fail to create both male and female elements in the built environment? That question will be answered when we take a closer look at Great Zimbabwe, when we allow the cultural edifice to express itself, instead of us acting as her uninvited proxies.
Let us continue to identify more areas where sexuality was expressed, this time within the homestead. From as far as West Africa, stretching down to southern Africa, an African homestead exhibited gendered spaces. In other words, there are male and female areas in terms of occupation and roles. The front part of a homestead is male. Among the Ndebele of Zimbabwe, this is where the cattle byre is located and where men held court, inkundla and sometimes food was taken to them there. Even at death, the head of household, invariably always a man was buried in the same area he occupied in life. The back part of a homestead was designated as the female domain. Here grain, the product of a woman’s labour, was stored in granaries. Adult women and their daughters and daughters-in-law processed the grain and prepared meals for the villagers. At death, women’s remains were interred in the same area. There were no common cemeteries for men and women. Apart in life and apart in death seems to have been the cardinal principle. The lesson we derive here is that sexuality was expressed in the design of a homestead. There were distinct and identifiable male and female aspects built into the homestead.
Song and dance equally exhibited sexuality. Performances effortlessly communicate the same ideas that may be expressed in words. For them, this is done through combining entertainment with cultural expression. We shall cite the Jerusarema Mbende dance that is found in Murewa and Uzumba in Mashonaland East. The dance, actually a fertility dance, has music produced by a single drum. Two dancers, male and female, face each other and energetically advance towards each other and exhibit erotic gyrations of their waists. Do we need to say what resides in their wriggling waists? Biology and Anatomy tell us there are, in their waist region, tissues that engage in sexual encounters of a procreation nature. Tissues with procreation qualities are located, in both males and females, in the waist region. The dancers are invariably always of opposite sexes, male and female. Sexuality is thus being expressed in a dance that white missionaries and colonial officials banned for its explicit sexual insinuations as if they themselves were not products of sexual encounters, or expressed more bluntly, products of natural vulgarity. Africans always celebrated continuity of their lineages and communities. It was thus unthinkable for them to exclude, in their cultural practices, sexual expressions. This was true even in their songs and dances.
Let us now turn to another dance, this time a dance of the BaKalanga which was performed when the first line rain dances and rain rituals failed to yield life-giving rains. The dance was called mayile, a word derived from yila meaning something taboo. Essentially, the dance was engaged in by drum-beating women in the nude who did not want to meet up with men as they went about their symbolic dance meant to induce rain to fall. The centre of attraction in their dance was the imaginary heavenly man. They sought to sexually stimulate this man and entice and work him up sexually till he reached orgasm and ejaculated. That symbolic ejaculation translated, in metaphoric terms, to rain from above — actually from the man to whom were exposed zwinoyila. Once again, we see the interplay between male and female elements in a rain-inducing dance. I remember attending, not so long ago, the installation of Chief Siachilaba in Binga. A dance was performed by school pupils where boys and girls danced to music from drums and singing. A young boy danced behind a girl and he exhibited gyrating movements of his waist, albeit innocently. Even the unschooled would have figured out what it was that was being expressed, Jerusarema Mbende style: sexuality which brought together male and female elements.
Let us turn to the pacification of a raging storm among the Ndebele. A tempest was pacified through a way that expressed sexuality. The act was performed by a last born person in a family. The act was a symbolic expression of sexuality. It is important to draw readers’ attention to the fact that for most observers what was perceived was the cultural practice without appreciation of underpinning sexuality. This was the case with many examples that we have cited. It takes a different mind to unravel the underlying cosmology. A tempest is an expression of an angered Mother Earth, a female. Remember what William Shakespeare said about an angered woman and hell fury? To pacify her, a qualifying person thrust a spear into the ground, read female. Sometimes an axe was driven into the ground. The ground, as part of Mother Earth, is female. The spear is male, it is symbolic of a phallus. Just recall Albert Nyathi’s follow-up song to “My Daughter.” The sequel is titled “My Son” and the son is being advised to be cautious of using his spear indiscriminately. The spear is a reference to his manhood. The earth is pacified through the symbolic sexual act when the spear is driven into the ground, into her. Compare with Ngara/ Maphosa the spear thrower, chikanda miseve!
These are expressions of African ideas, perceptions, thoughts, views about how the concept of eternity is attained and how its expressions universally encompass all cultural, cosmic and verbal spheres. Eternity and continuity are not achieved by biologically immature persons. Only those who have attained puberty can continue the process of attaining human continuity. Dare we ask why attainment of puberty was celebrated among African communities?