Moves to preserve cultural heritage in Chimanimani
ACCORDING to the 2003 UNESCO Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage, intangible cultural heritage means practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills as well as instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces that people recognise as part of their heritage.
Cultural heritage is the accumulation of knowledge that a society and its individual members process during their lifespan.
Zimbabwe became a State Party to the 2003 UNESCO Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage which entails her to produce an inventory of intangible cultural heritage within her territory.
Plans are afoot to develop a plan of action for the promotion and protection of cultural heritage.
Mutare Museum, together with five other museums from across the globe are working on a project called MuseumFutures which seeks to share ideas and experiences of museums across the world.
The five museums are Mafala Museum from Maputo, Mozambique; MajiMaji Museum from Songea, Tanzania; Conflictorium Museum from Ahmedabad, India; ArnaJharna Thar Desert Museum from Jodhpur, India and Acervo Da Laje from Salvador Bahia, Brazil.
For this project, Mutare Museum will document intangible cultural heritage in the form of traditional music and dances of Eastern Zimbabwe, focusing on Chimanimani District, which is a cultural hub.
Recently, a team from Mutare Museums visited Mhakwe and Gudyanga areas of Chimanimani to record and research on some Zimbabwean traditional dances and music.
In Mhakwe, the participating teams were Makwaya and Dzimbahwe mbira groups and in Gudyanga, the teams were Pasichigare Group and Gudyanga Primary School Dance Group.
Makwaya is a choir made up of elderly members from Chikutukutu Village. They sing about the past and contemporary issues affecting their community.
The choir has 19 women and one male. This was attributed to men spending most of their time fending for the family away from home, while the women are always at home.
Makwaya has been an old age tradition within the community since the 1950s.
“The group does not have a structured dressing attire, but uses props like gourds (tsani) in some of their songs. In their songs, they sing about Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, environmental issues to raise awareness on the sustainable use of natural resources and the need to preserve cultural practices like traditional rain making ceremonies. To add variation to their way of singing, they also use poetry in their songs.
“Dzimbahwe Mbira Ensemble is a local group from the same village and it only has male figures who play traditional music using mbira and drums,” said Mr Lloyd Makonya of Mutare Museums.
Leading the group are two brothers who claim to have inherited some of the mbira instruments they use from their forefather who was also a mbira player.
Some of their songs are meant to get someone into a trance during traditional ceremonies. In Ndau, such songs are called gokoro.
As part of their attire, they put on skin of a African civet (bvungo / jachacha) and a python sash made of python skin.
Lead researcher for the project, Ms Chiedza Zharare said:
“The conservation of cultural heritage is important to the nation as it provides the foundation of its identity and a means which strengthens the inter-societal relationships among individuals.
“Preservation of cultural heritage allows us to demonstrate how we evolved into what we are now by recognising the past in its entirety.
“This helps us in the assessment of current conditions by shedding light into the formation of cultural syntheses. The aim ultimately is the insurance of cultural continuity of such practices.”
To round up the first phase of their documentation exercise, the project team went to Gudyanga to record a traditional dance group made up of elderly members who perform chokoto, a courtship dance.
The dance attire for women is made up of chakati (skirt), usanga/zvuma (neck beads), undende (woven wool placed on the neck) and mupakatirwa (java material tied across the body from the shoulder to the back).
For males, their attire comprises of bemba (a cloth wrapping around the waist, donned with colourful beads), machoba (rattles tied on the legs) and manyatera (rubber sandals). They will also be holding a ndonga/tsvimbo (knobkerrie).
At Gudyanga Primary School, a team of young traditional dancers performed chokoto and muchongoyo dances.
This bode well with Mutare Museum’s efforts to create such an inventory through the MuseumFutures project.
Speaking on the sidelines of the documentation exercise, Chimanimani District culture officer, Ms Lukia Mvududu said: “We encourage communities in Chimanimani to respect, preserve, harness and use their cultural heritage and resources to develop a united, vibrant and prosperous national community with a distinctive identity.
“The last stage of the project will see Mutare Museum coming up with an exhibition showcasing the research work to the public.”