‘Our traditions are denigrated, despised’

In Conversation with Trevor

Author and arts and heritage advocate Pathisa Nyathi has bemoaned the death of African traditions, which he attributed to colonialism.

Nyathi (PN) told Alpha Media Holdings chairman Trevor Ncube (TN) on the platform In Conversation with Trevor that African people’s understanding of their own heritage has been denigrated and despised as paganism.

The veteran author spoke on a wide range of issues that included African traditional dances to Gukurahundi.

Below are excerpts from the interview.

TN: Mr Pathisa Nyathi, welcome to In Conversation With Trevor. I am so delighted that you found the time to join me.

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PN: Thank you very much for inviting me.

TN: Pathisa, as I was preparing this I found myself being taken to the place in Gwanda where I grew up, with my grandfather and in the evenings,  we would sit around the fire in the kitchen, he would tell us stories of how they grew up.

He would tell us folk stories, poems and that kind of stuff.

So we sat at my grandfather’s feet and we imbibed the culture, we imbibed the language.

That does not happen anymore.

How do we pass on our language, our culture when that kind of stuff is not happening?

Most of our African population including here in Zimbabwe we are in the cities, our grandfathers are not there, our mothers and fathers are busy.

Talk to me about the challenge of ensuring that our culture, arts and heritage lives on in these circumstances?

PN: Okay, but before I proceeded, let me make a brief presentation of some of my books so that we establish some rapport.

TN: Absolutely.

PN: Yes. So I will present you with these few books. Ithumbale, Joseph Kumumati.

TN: Wait if you just hold on. So Ithumbale, is a history of the Bhebhe People of Zimbabwe?

PN: Yes that is right.

This one is on Joseph Kumumati, we grew up together in the Matopos district.

Now, I loved his story because he trained as a Zipra cadre, then when he came back home he was in the 5th Brigade and I realise it was a story that some people were not aware of.

When they think of the 5th Brigade they think it was all Shona.

It is not correct. There were Ndebele people, in other words there were Zipra people.

TN: In the Gukurahundi?

PN: In the Gukurahundi, that’s right.

TN: Do we know the number of people?

PN: We may not know the number, he (Joseph), would know about his particular battalion.

TN: Is he still alive?

PN: He is still alive, yes.

TN: Have you spoken to him?

PN: I have interviewed him, I would not have written about him without interviewing him.

TN: Fantastic.

PN: He would not allow me to interview him before this new dispensation.

TN: Aha.

PN: He was a bit uncomfortable.

TN: However, much more comfortable in this new dispensation?

PN: Yes he was much more comfortable, and I was much more comfortable because there are books that I subsequently wrote, Dissidents for example, from my own perspective, Gukurahundi.

I have said to people since then I have not seen anyone come to me and say watch it or ask what I was writing about.

So, perhaps they were serious that we could discuss these issues and I have.

I still write. It is a pity I was looking for my latest book, which came out yesterday about the life and times of Joshua Nkomo.

Again I do touch on Gukurahundi.

TN: We are looking forward to that.

PN: It is going to be out soon, we were just doing some proof-reading.

Amabhiza, is a book popular in some parts of Zimbabwe, southern parts.

TN: Is this a dance of some sort?

PN: Yes it is. I have about five dances that I have written about. Ombakhumba, Jomboyo, Jerusalema Mbende and Wosanna.

TN: Tell me, Wosanna, under what circumstances was it performed?

PN: It will take care of entertainment, we still play it today.

However, during the days when African spirituality was still strong, it was played as some kind of precursor to the Wosanna, main dance.

An all-female dance, and so it would be played initially before you get to iWosanna, but now it is for entertainment.

I know Joshua Nkomo loved that dance, my father loved the dance and I love the dance.

So there is a lot that I learned as I will indicate later in the programme.

TN: Tell me, let us not leave that as it is an interesting thing, what about the dances that get performed at the airports?

Welcoming the president, welcoming international visitors?

Is there any symbolism? Is there any significance?

You look at them dancing. You know them better than we do, talk to me about that?

PN: Iwosanna is a life dance.

That one is not one to play around with.

Ihoso, which is Amabhiza is entertainment.

So you can play around with that one.

In all dances there is symbolism, that is particularly important to appreciate.

Some people will not see much in that, all they will see is people jumping up and down.

No, it is much more than that.

When I look at a dance, I am looking at the cosmos in motion, because so much of what we do, I hope we will have time to discuss those issues, we copy the cosmos.

So our dances relate and link us to the cosmos.

For example, if we take that hoso or amabhizha, when you look at that dance, from the colour there is some metaphor, there is symbolism in that.

It is the colour of the clouds, clouds that are rain bearing are dark and black, then sometimes you will see their ends are whitish.

So you look at the attire, through attire, through dance movement (which is choreograph), you are creating an ambiance, that ambiance is a rain ambiance.

The more intense the ambiance the more repetition, the more copying of the rain atmosphere as it were, the stronger the chances of the rain falling.

TN: Wow.

PN: It is something that our people now no longer believe, they do not believe in these things.

Largely because they do not understand them in the first place, they are quick to dismiss what they do not understand.

Then again because of conquest, our understanding of the cosmos is all about what other people understand, what they understand is the truth.

Our own understanding has been denigrated and despised as paganism.

TN: You said you would find more time to talk about the cosmos and the link to the dancing?

Can we get into that right now?

You have described the dance that is about rain.

What other dances do mirror the cosmos? Project the cosmos?

PN: I do not think there is a single dance that does not mirror, if it is an African dance, there is not a single one, and I understand quite a few.

TN: Sure.

PN: From the Shona world, the Kalanga world, the Ndebele world, all ethnic groups.

However, I am not only confining myself to Zimbabwe. What is African?

I have said we are not Africans because we live on the African continent, nor are we Africans because we are black, no.

It is all about worldview, it is about the way we relate to each other as human beings.

One, how we relate to the environment, and that environment is terrestrial, but it is also cosmic.

The cosmic environment is even more important, because there are certain attributes that the African observes or has observed and has passed them down.

Remember your question about passing down information?

We are going to relate it, that is how it was happening.

When you look at the cosmos, perhaps some people are not familiar with the term, I am here referring to the stars, the sun being the best example and the nearest to us, but we are also including the planets, the moon, all these constitute the cosmos.

There is one thing that they have in common, movement.

Without movement there would be no cosmos, things would just collapse.

So movement is a chief characteristic of the comic bodies, the heavens which some people prefer to use as a term.

It is not, however, haphazard movement, it is rhythmic movement, it is periodic movement, it is cyclical movement, which makes it very predictable.

You know when the sun rises, it is moving at a particular speed and does not change that speed.

The sun does not slow down, it is moving at the same speed that it has always been moving.

The moon does the same, we know when it is going to appear, we can predict.

Where there is matter there is geometry.

I think it was Keller who said that.

So the African did not invent much by way of his dances, he was merely copying the dance of the cosmos.

TN: Pathisa let me hold you there because you have just touched on an important thing for me, which brings out the disjuncture.

So how African am I when I do not understand what you have just outlined?

When what you have outlined has not been imparted to me?

When I do not understand these rhythmic connections with nature that I ought to?

I have been disconnected from my culture, to my heritage because of the stuff you talked about.

I do not understand the stuff that you are talking about.

So how African am I?

How African are we when we do not understand what you have just outlined as important as it might be?

Talk to me about that?

PN: We acknowledge that Africa has lost a lot, there is no doubt about that one.

However, there are issues that all of us will understand or ought to understand.

There are other issues that are understood by perceptive minds, we are not all the same.

What we all ought to understand are cultural practices; there is a vast difference between cultural practices and that which underpins, informs those practices.

This is why some people are quick to dismiss things African.

They are just blank when it comes to the underpinnings, that which informs African culture.

Why do they dance the way they dance?

That movement, and it is movement that has got many rhythms, poly rhythm we call it.

It is not mono rhythm, it is poly rhythm.

You will see the hands of an African dancer, the hands are moving in their own rhythm.

The waist, especially among the women, that part moves a lot and the movement is rhythmic, they have not invented that rhythm.

All African did was copy the cosmos and the adage is, “As above, so below”. That is our adage.

TN: Before we move on to the next book, I wish the dancers in Victoria Falls and all the lodges, where visitors are welcomed by these dances, and we have European visitors, American and so forth watching those dances, I wish someone could explain to those visitors what the dances are all about.

PN: That is not happening.

That is exactly what is not happening.

What you need there are a few people with perceptive minds, those are few I will accept, who see, it is in you, you are born with it.

To understand these things, see the link between what we do on earth, our cultural practice, see how it has affected our architecture.

It does not matter whether it is Tonga heart, a Shona heart, a Ndebele heart, it is the same.

TN: It speaks something?

PN: It speaks something. There lies our Africanness.