Cultural Heritage with Patisa Nyathi
Cooing pigeons have just gone silent-presumably asleep. A few moments ago, they were cooing, dwarfing and outshining other bird species that frequent our home in Luveve. Pigeons are new arrivals here and have turned our carport into their home. They feed lavishly on our vegetables, spinach in particular. Other bird species try to outcall these dove-like birds albeit without much success.
My attention was drawn to the solar ritual performed by the setting sun some few hours ago. One could not gaze at the white-hot sun. It is royalty, which my eyes and other people’s eyes fear and revere. It is too glorious to look at. When it sets, it takes on a crimson-red colour that is enchanting. Now it has lost its royal trait. One is free to gaze at the sun until it exits the theatrical in readiness for the coming scene. Beyond the ritual, the sun visits its mother to share some warmth and light with her as Ndebele people will say.
I remember several years ago when I described the same ritual performed by the setting sun over the mighty Kasambabezi (Zambezi) River in Binga. I do miss those literary engagements when I was a lot younger. Today, it is a different story. I am older with less vigour and vitality but possessive of a bagful of cultural wisdom. The sun never forgets to repeat the same ritual every day. It never fails to return where it started. Like other celestial and cosmic bodies, it repeats the ritual every twenty-four hours. Repetition is a characteristic abundantly found not only on the terrestrial realm, but also on the extra-terrestrial one.
Birds chirped sweetly as if to give a glamorous send-off to the sun. They too display repetition. They go to bed but do not forget to get up under enchanting, melodic and harmonious calls. They do not have clocks that tell them the time. Their minds are their calendars and clocks. Like cocks, they possess internally built mechanisms to keep track of time. Dutifully, they remind us about the rhythmic farewell ceremonies.
The sun, like other celestial bodies, is perfectly circular in design and form. We see it as moving beyond the horizon, which soon takes license and liberty to conceal itself. The absence of the sun brings joy and hope to peddlers of Ancient African Science (AAS). The memory of one of them in Nigeria who was stuck on the roof of a house is still fresh. She was wearing her birthday suit. These scientists share time with traditional doctors. Their nude reign commences about 9.00 o’clock and lasts until the hour of 03.00 in the morning. My restless mind is curious to understand the characteristics of nudity that nocturnal scientists resort to during their escapades.
These are issues for the following year when I will dare to grapple and wrestle with the science that is maligned together with its purveyors. Winds are blowing, whistling, and howling hyena style ominously. Such winds chase away mosquitoes but invite people who require no invitation. When the sun departs, they will squeeze through locked doors and shut windows. Night provides the necessary ambience that complements prowling animals, birds, and the spiritually endowed individuals who are kept company. My mind rushes to ponder the theme of welcoming. It is always joyous to be welcomed warmly. Kings and queens of the night invite themselves and you welcome them unknowingly and grudgingly.
I remember the idea of welcoming as I recall my stay at Kalulu Kreativez in the Chalala area of Lusaka, Zambia. Before I deal with Kalulu Kreativez and its own type of welcoming, let me start with the Robert Mugabe International Airport in Harare. The most conspicuous structure is a conical tower capped with some exquisitely crafted cone. I remember vividly when it last welcomed me to Harare in November 2017. The wind of change was issuing from the barrels of Soviet and Chinese-supplied guns.
I hope we all know the symbolic meaning of the towering conical tower. It is a symbolic representation of an erect male sex organ. The idea was gleaned from Great Zimbabwe where there is one that is anatomically more accurately rendered in granite rock. One mischievous Karl Mauch from Germany thought, in his wild imagination, that the stone structure was some kind of gold storage reservoir and went on to mutilate it in the vain hope of accessing the riches that powered and drove the colonial project.
The gigantic sexual organ at Great Zimbabwe is provided with two symbolic testes also fashioned out of granite stones. The anatomy in terms of relative positions is just perfect. However, when visitors arrive at the Robert Mugabe International Airport a similar symbolic sexual organ welcomes them. There is one aspect that crafters or builders restored. They provided a cone at the top of the colossal tone structure representing half of the story of fertility or procreation that guarantees and underwrites continuity, perpetuity, eternity and endlessness of the human and indeed, other animal species.
What I have not seen on the improved representation of the male manhood rendered in stone, are the two accompanying ‘balls’ where seed is produced and stored in readiness for the treacherous journey to the destination where the Law of Opposites is executed resulting in procreation. How were these two critically important components forgotten or consciously left out? The conical tower alone does not symbolically carry out intended purposes.
Looking at the monumental lithic structure now, I see expressions, representations and manifestations of patriarchy and masculinity. Men perceive their ritual staffs (tsvimbo) as symbolizing male power. For them, this is the justification for their power and authority. Women’s sidelining and exclusion are based on absence of these anatomical organs. Sons (or nephews in the case of Tonga chiefs) qualify to succeed their fathers for the simple reason of possession of anatomical “conical towers with balls,” induku zabafana/tsvimbo dzevakomana.
The conical nature of the lithic structure is so as to achieve stability when the centre of gravity is pushed lower. The structure tapers towards the top. Otherwise, the organ it symbolizes is cylindrical as seen in the male sexual organs. A tall cylinder may tip over and fall. It lacks the flexibility that is inherent in biological organs.
We now turn to the new Zimbabwe parliament building recently commissioned at Mount Hampden. I am not here making reference to its architecture beyond the conical tower. I have not had the privilege of physically getting to the site to be welcomed by the towers that clearly depict the anatomical organs that express and symbolize masculinity, patriarchy and patrilinity. All I see from visual renditions are the vertical conical towers minus the fertile ‘balls of eternity.
The Law of Opposites applies and the ancients, regardless of their ethnic and racial orientation, knew the male sexual organs had counterparts that symbolized female sexual organs. In Africa, axiology, ethics, and etiquette forbid artists from graphically depicting female sexual organs. In the Matobo Hills World Heritage Site (WHS) several San rock paintings depict male sexual organs. Missing are female sexual organs.
Would we say they are missing at Great Zimbabwe? Certainly no. Circular structures, that is, stonewalls are symbolic of the female sexual organs. In their absence the representation and symbolization of fertility resulting in continuity, perpetuity, eternity and endlessness would be incomplete-in the application of the Law of Opposites. Same sex intimate relations defy nature that is guided by and built on the Law of Opposites. The conical tower is actually within a circular wall, part of which bears a chevron pattern. Here we find more than the dual expressions of femininity: the circular wall, the chevron pattern and the Zimbabwe Bird with its component parts symbolizing femininity and masculinity together in full expression and application of the Law of Opposites. For the artist it was migration from the Law of Opposites to the Law of Unity.
At Stonehenge in England, the Avon River Valley Project excavated a similar but smaller representation of a male sex organ. It was made out of white limestone that proliferates in the area. Size is not important. What are symbolic are representations and expressions of fertility and procreation. In both cases the opposites to conical towers exist, in the form of erected sarsen and bluestone circles and the Great Enclosure of circular stones at Stonehenge and Great Zimbabwe respectively
A lot of finds from the site are easy to explain and interpret from an Afrocentric perspective. A lot of cultural and spiritual practices that were taking place 5 000 years ago at Stonehenge are still happening on the African continent. It was for this reason that I found interpreting the Stonehenge monument relatively easy for one like me who understands African Thought, African Cosmology and African Worldview fairly easy. I eve wrote a book on the monument titled, “Journey to Stonehenge,”
Finally, let us see what welcomes visitors to Kalulu Kreativez. When one enters the robust sliding gate, two plastered pillars with two adjoining open “Vs” or triangles immediately welcome one. Instead of these units being repeated several times, they are repeated only twice. The open Vs that were opted for bear perfectly rendered painted circular black blobs towards the end of the two down-facing triangles. The triangles have to be imagined as their bases do not have one of the three sides drawn. The last side is imagined.
The question now is, what welcomes visitors to the Kalulu Kreativez cultural centre? For that, we have to deal with the modified triangular design that symbolizes a circular female organ-the womb. The triangle or open ‘V’ is a two-dimensional representation of a three dimensional female organ, the womb. Yhe triangle marks off and demarcates the position of that all-important organ in the execution of continuity, perpetuity, eternity and endlessness. The womb is associated with fertility and is sometimes symbolized by a clay pot. Both represent and are expressions of fertility. When a woman is not expecting, her womb is in a resting position and its design and form may not immediately be appreciated.
Thus, those who arrive at the Kalulu Kreativez Cultural Centre are welcomed by symbols that express femininity. Thus two double images or symbols of women welcome visitors to the cultural centre.