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Embracing traditional wisdom can help South Africa's progress
Southern Africa is a storehouse of indigenous wisdom on the link between humans and nature. Wisdom that we would do well to heed today, says Max du Preez.
The San of southern Africa are the direct descendants of the very first humans. The ‘Bushmen’, as they’re often called, have a vast knowledge of animal behaviour and the medicinal and other values of plants, unsurpassed by modern, western science. Deeply spiritual and artistic people, they have left myriad examples of their rock art, some many thousands of years old, still to be seen on rock faces all over the region.
Around the mid 1400s, a small group of black farmers, stone builders and iron workers, known as the Leghoya, trekked south from the old civilisation of Great Zimbabwe to settle among the Bushmen in what is today the north-eastern Free State Province.
The Leghoya were astonished that, while so many of their number were caught and eaten by the large number of lions in the area, no Bushmen were ever attacked. As George William Stow, 19th century author of The Native Races of South Africa, noted: “The Bushmen moved amongst [the lions] with perfect indifference, sleeping in the middle of the great plains, completely exposed, without the slightest apprehension”.
Why was this so, I asked two old Leghoya men whom I met in 2002. They confirmed what is widely seen to be the explanation. When the San moved into an area, they used their ancient knowledge of animal behaviour to quickly identify the alpha males among the lion families. They kept a close eye on each pride, waiting to see when the leader was getting older and younger ones were ready to challenge him. The moment a new alpha male took over was when the Bushmen would strike. He would scarcely be able to take his first nap before the best hunters would creep up in a way only they had mastered, and beat the sleeping lion with their sticks, shrieking and shouting at the top of their voices. The poor lion would get the fright of his life and flee in a hurry, understanding the lesson: ‘You don’t mess with us, we don’t mess with you’.
One of the old men called it a “pact” between human and lion; the other said to me that the Bushmen “made arrangements with the lion that our people could never understand”.
There are other stories, too, showing how Africans can live in harmony with each other, as well as with nature. We just need to seek them out, and listen. Stories like those around a man called Mohlomi, who was born in central South Africa in about 1720.
As a rainmaker, Mohlomi is said to have surpassed even the Bushmen. As a healer with a vast knowledge of natural medicine, he is said to have had a cure for leprosy. As a chief, he disbanded his army and ordered his warriors to till the fields and look after the children and women instead. And as a peacemaker, living out a vision he had experienced during his initiation ceremony into manhood, he spent most of his life walking unarmed across southern Africa, learning from other cultures and preaching peace and tolerance wherever he went.
He taught the law of what we would now call karma, and of equality among all men. He warned against male machismo and was a committed pacifist at a time when armed conflict was commonplace. When Mohlomi was too old to travel, he established a leadership academy at his kraal and trained many young and aspirant chiefs. His most famous student was Moshoeshoe, later founder and king of the Basotho nation and the man who brought stability to central South Africa during the turbulent 1820s.
“It is better to thrash the corn than to shape the spear” was one Mohlomi saying that was repeated long after his death. Another was “peace is my sister” – a sister being a person who is in a fragile position in society and has to be protected and cherished.
It was Mohlomi who taught people to greet others with an open raised hand and the call of “Khotso!” (Peace!) – a practice still used to this day. And his most famous saying of all is now proclaimed by many a Mosotho historian as a call to democracy: “A chief is a chief by the grace of his people”.
Nicola Robins:
Rainfall mirrors the community
“In southern Africa’s agro-pastoral cultures, rain is a symbol of fertility and abundance. It makes people happy. Farmers hope for ‘female rain’ – cool and gentle – rather than ‘male rain’ which is hot and fast. When the community is out of balance, the rain responds accordingly. It will either not come at all, or it will come as a destructive male force to wash away imbalance, flooding homes and eroding the soil. Traditional communal practices seek above all to maintain balance, so averting the chaotic forces of nature, because beauty, they believe, only emerges when things happen in accordance with their natural place.”
Nicola Robins is Co-founder of the Raindance Network and senior associate of both Incite Sustainability and the CPSL.
Cormac Cullinan:
One whole, one law
“We have been behaving as if we believe that the best way of maximising human welfare is to consume the resources of the Earth as quickly as possible. This is based on the belief that humans are separate from, and superior to, all other aspects of Nature, and that increased consumption leads to happiness.
Scientists now think of the Earth as a system or community, created by infinite webs of relationships that bring everything together, from sub-atomic particles to vast global climate systems, in an interdependent whole of stunning beauty and complexity. Legal systems use the notion of rights to strike a balance between the interests of different members of society. So it only makes sense – since we are an integral part of this system – that the main purpose of human governance should be to ensure we satisfy human needs and simultaneously benefit the planet’s community as a whole. Cicero pointed out that each of our rights and freedoms must be limited in order that others may be free. The rights of humans must be limited to [stop us] unjustifiably preventing non-human members of the Earth community from playing their part in the great evolutionary dance.”
Cormac Cullinan is a Cape Town lawyer recognised internationally for his work in developing the new discipline of ‘earth jurisprudence’.
Ian McCallum:
The past is in our blood
“Central to the folklore of the Nguni people is the Ziziphus mucronata – the Buffalo Thorn. They call it the tree of life. One of the many striking things about it is its rows of double-spiked thorns, with one spike pointing outwards and forward, while the other curves back and inward. This, say the Nguni, tells us that we must look ahead to the future, but never forget where we have come from.
The thorns are poetic. They represent the push of the human spirit on the one hand, the pull of soul on the other; the wings of psychology in one direction, the roots of our biology in the other. They are complementary opposites. They hold the tension between science and non-science, and it is crucial that we hold that tension, for within it is the definition of an ecological intelligence.
In this image lies the explanation of the human-nature split that, we are finding out, is causing us so many problems: we have forgotten our animal past.
The psychological instincts of the predator, the parasite and the scavenger are in our history and in our blood. They will not go away. To rediscover ourselves in nature, we need to reshape the way we think about ourselves, our history and our relationship with the Earth.”
Ian McCallum is a medical doctor, psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, author, director of the Wilderness Foundation, and former Springbok rugby full back.
Interviews by Monica Graaff.
Rainfall mirrors the community
“In southern Africa’s agro-pastoral cultures, rain is a symbol of fertility and abundance. It makes people happy. Farmers hope for ‘female rain’ – cool and gentle – rather than ‘male rain’ which is hot and fast. When the community is out of balance, the rain responds accordingly. It will either not come at all, or it will come as a destructive male force to wash away imbalance, flooding homes and eroding the soil. Traditional communal practices seek above all to maintain balance, so averting the chaotic forces of nature, because beauty, they believe, only emerges when things happen in accordance with their natural place.”
Nicola Robins is Co-founder of the Raindance Network and senior associate of both Incite Sustainability and the CPSL.
Cormac Cullinan:
One whole, one law
“We have been behaving as if we believe that the best way of maximising human welfare is to consume the resources of the Earth as quickly as possible. This is based on the belief that humans are separate from, and superior to, all other aspects of Nature, and that increased consumption leads to happiness.
Scientists now think of the Earth as a system or community, created by infinite webs of relationships that bring everything together, from sub-atomic particles to vast global climate systems, in an interdependent whole of stunning beauty and complexity. Legal systems use the notion of rights to strike a balance between the interests of different members of society. So it only makes sense – since we are an integral part of this system – that the main purpose of human governance should be to ensure we satisfy human needs and simultaneously benefit the planet’s community as a whole. Cicero pointed out that each of our rights and freedoms must be limited in order that others may be free. The rights of humans must be limited to [stop us] unjustifiably preventing non-human members of the Earth community from playing their part in the great evolutionary dance.”
Cormac Cullinan is a Cape Town lawyer recognised internationally for his work in developing the new discipline of ‘earth jurisprudence’.
Ian McCallum:
The past is in our blood
“Central to the folklore of the Nguni people is the Ziziphus mucronata – the Buffalo Thorn. They call it the tree of life. One of the many striking things about it is its rows of double-spiked thorns, with one spike pointing outwards and forward, while the other curves back and inward. This, say the Nguni, tells us that we must look ahead to the future, but never forget where we have come from.
The thorns are poetic. They represent the push of the human spirit on the one hand, the pull of soul on the other; the wings of psychology in one direction, the roots of our biology in the other. They are complementary opposites. They hold the tension between science and non-science, and it is crucial that we hold that tension, for within it is the definition of an ecological intelligence.
In this image lies the explanation of the human-nature split that, we are finding out, is causing us so many problems: we have forgotten our animal past.
The psychological instincts of the predator, the parasite and the scavenger are in our history and in our blood. They will not go away. To rediscover ourselves in nature, we need to reshape the way we think about ourselves, our history and our relationship with the Earth.”
Ian McCallum is a medical doctor, psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, author, director of the Wilderness Foundation, and former Springbok rugby full back.
Interviews by Monica Graaff.
Max du Preez is one of South Africa’s best-known journalists. A former political correspondent, TV producer and presenter, he founded the anti-apartheid Afrikaans newspaper Vryeweekblad.
16 December 2009
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Indigenous wisdom on display
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