Recently, as my elderly uncle and I listened to the radio news about the persistent drought and looming hunger in the country due to last year's poor rainy season, the old man remarked loudly: “Ah! how can we expect good rainfall when so many innocent people were killed during 2008 elections without any rituals for healing; people are also going about recklessly poaching and killing sacred animals and snakes for selfish reasons and what with family members engaging in incest!

By John Masuku

Ancestors very angry
To many traditionalists natural disasters like droughts, floods, diseases, pestilences and earthquakes are a show of anger from ancestral spirits who need to be appeased in different ways all the time. Bhara Moyo a village headman blames Western culture, Christianity and modernisation in general for all the misfortunes that befall African people: “Our forefathers used to hold rainmaking ceremonies in which they asked our ancestors to give them rain and seasons of plenty. Indeed it happened. I witnessed it myself because soon after the ceremony we were drenched to the skin. Nowadays people even dare to curse themselves by attempting to seed some rain clouds. They even have the audacity to predict weather patterns using some machines. That’s openly undermining and challenging our ancestors and Creator who in turn fix us to the bone”

Scientists,traditionalists agree
Where traditionalists and scientists seem to agree is when they both campaign against the indiscriminate cutting down of trees which is intensifying desertification. However, they both proffer different reasons; scientists blame deforestation for global warming as carbon emissions get into the atmosphere freely without being checked by trees. Traditionalists say this brings curses on people since in the process they clear some species which are deemed sacred in different African cultures.

When I was on school holiday in my rural village many years ago we discovered a very big snake in our home. As we looked around for knobkerries and stones to kill it my grandmother angrily intervened. She broadcast some grain around it while saying some poetic words and ululating and the snake ‘returned’ to the bush. Her explanation was that the serpent was linked to our totem and it was actually ‘guarding’ the home!

There are many other reasons for which traditionalists are still attributing for natural disasters like floods, rising temperatures and unstoppable ‘veld’-fires. Anusa Chikanga a traditional healer emotionally narrated some of them: “Surely where in our culture have you seen a man dating another man, or a woman another woman and you even want to make it part of the law of the land in the new constitution? Defenceless infants and toddlers are being raped by their own fathers, brothers and relatives on a daily basis and surely you cannot expect our ancestors to ask the Creator to give us rains and seasons of plenty. Never!”

Traditional pilgrimages the answer?
So post- Copenhagen, as world leaders largely disagreed about the remedies to rapid climate change and its devastating effects, Bhara and Anusa and other traditionalists elsewhere might be pondering on how to utilise all public holidays for traditional pilgrimages around sacred hills and caves in quest for lasting answers from ancestors buried there, regarding the best ways to manage persistent droughts, floods, famine, AIDS, earthquakes, rising temperatures and other disasters of our time.