ZETHU CAKATA

Introduction

This article explores the never-ending search for words that accurately and appropriately place an indigenous African person in coordination with their ways of knowing. The violent cutting of the cord, so to speak, which facilitated this coordination by the European invaders left indigenous African peoples in misalignment with their essence. The essence is the inner substance comprising the depth of what an individual brings to the world. To be misaligned with one’s essence is to be in constant search for frequency with no success, which leaves one out of tune with one’s inner being. This misalignment is a consequence of colonialism which, according to Mtuze (1999), unleashed the cultural domination of Africans. This domination was aided by the work of missionaries and the imposed Western education system that vehemently opposed anything that had to do with African culture and spirituality.

This obvious denial of African culture and spirituality was accompanied by the perception by the coloniser that the people they found in Africa in general and in South Africa in particular were not actually people. They were either subhuman or animals^{[1]Mtuze,1999.}.

Ramose (1999) makes the same observation that the coloniser used the concept of rationality to define the world and thus inferred that the African was without it. This therefore meant that they were, as Ramose  (1999: 14) states, ‘at best subhuman but certainly not human’. This justified the coloniser’s attempts to culturally dominate the Africans. Some of the manifestations of this domination that Mtuze (1999) alludes to were the banning of cultural practices such as ulwaluko, which is the rite of passage from boyhood to manhood (though not successfully banned), and imbeleko (the ancestral welcoming of a child), and the replacement of African clothing with clothes introduced by the coloniser. African healing practices were deemed barbaric and primitive. This attitude induced, among Africans, self-loathing and the desire to discard their culture, and people converted to the Christian religion and were absorbed into the schooling system.

Part of the coloniser’s strategy was to distort these practices by substituting their indigenous names with colonial names. These colonial labels caused people to lose the essence of the meaning of their practices.

One such practice whose meaning was distorted through colonial renaming is ubugqirha (healing). Indigenous African peoples are on a healing journey back to themselves and to facilitate healing, and it is important to put these concepts into our bag of tools with their intended meanings gazed at from within their own ontological and epistemological prescripts. This will ensure that indigenous African languages are not used to communicate Western ideology, but to communicate African knowledge as known and lived by its people. Often, in higher education spaces, healers are written into the curriculum carelessly, derogatorily and inaccurately. An example of carelessness when writing isintu (an indigenous culture that is founded on ubuntu) healing practices into academia is the tendency to treat them as homogeneous. This simplistic writing of healing practices in universal terms could be associated with the colonial anthropological works that distorted African ways of being. As a science of cultures, colonial anthropology became a primary reference for many African cultural practices (Mafeje, 1998). The journey to becoming a healer is often depicted as a singular experience, ignoring the fact that being called to heal from an African perspective entails lineage-specific practices.

The inaccurate depiction of healing is evident in postgraduate student theses and speaks to a lack of depth employed when exploring these concepts. For example, some postgraduate works list iingcibi (surgeons in male initiation schools) and indigenous midwives as healers.^{[2] See Linda, 2016; Maluleka, 2017.} This categorisation is not applicable to every culture as cultures such as amaXhosa consider these people practitioners that are skilled in those areas. They are not considered healers.

Knowledge about what healers do and who they are is often sourced from people who are not field experts of such knowledge and, most importantly, the ethics of disseminating such knowledge are often trampled upon. For example, in Ndlovu’s (2016) study entitled Traditional healing in KwaZulu-Natal province: A study of university students’ assessment, perceptions and attitudes, participants were university students who are not knowledge experts. The practice of utilising people who are not field experts makes indigenous knowledge distortions permissible. Some of the distortions involve limiting the holistic concept of healing to be about the diviners, hiding the fact that healing is a lifestyle embedded in African cultures whose relational ontology is grounded on the concept of impilo.

Impilo does not have an English conceptual equivalent as it encompasses notions of both health and life.

Speakers of Bantu languages refer to health as impilo/bophelo; this is not different from calling it life. Interestingly, in the Sesotho language, the heart is referred to as pelo; this does not literally mean the heart, but the psyche/soul. This concept is understood as a composite state of being alive with all aspects of your well-being taken care of. Impilo is rooted in spiritual well-being; physical, emotional and mental distress are usually perceived as a symptom of spiritual unwellness. An intervention would thus be found in the family and community.

In this article, the focus is on one particular aspect of healing which is healing by the gifted. African life is a healing system that requires constant spiritual connections with family, community, nature and the departed. Though conflicted about sharing views on such sacred topics as indigenous African healing, there is something that needs to be said about language and how it helps us not only explain the phenomenon, but also how it should be disseminated. To explore this, I use the isiXhosa term inzululwazi to locate an indigenous understanding of ‘science’ and how this indigenous  understanding of ‘science’ allows us to explore the concept of ubugqirha, an isiXhosa word for ways of healing.

Why isiXhosa  (why language)?

The use of language, in general, and particularly isiXhosa in this work, is informed by the proven ability of indigenous African languages to nestle African epistemologies. While many of these languages have undergone bastardisation under Christian coloniality, some indigenous communities have managed to keep them alive. This bastardisation distorted African knowledges. However, the surviving indigenous African languages allow us to see through the epistemological distortions, of which the concept of healing has been a victim. In over 360 years of European invasion of ‘South Africa’, there have been active distortions of people’s understanding of their healing epistemologies. While there are people who still possess the authentic wisdom of their ancestors, healing in the present day has taken a capitalist outlook and a colonial gaze. By this I am arguing that while healing practices are not immune to modification and evolution, the change we witness today points to the assimilation of Western ways of knowing and being into which indigenous Africans were coerced.

On the other hand, cultural evolution is not something that nations are coerced into, but happens by choice. As the Nguni saying goes Induku entle igawulwa ezizweni (‘a beautiful rod is cut off from other nations’) to emphasise the fact that beautiful things come from other lands, showing an openness to learning from others. The ethic here is that you take what you appreciate from others; this has not been the case with Western ways of knowing. The European invaders imposed their ways upon Africans and this imposition was an unethical act.

I aim to illustrate that colonialism may have tried to erode and inferiorise African ways of being and knowing, but language has kept them alive. Language is a window into the soul of indigenous African people. It helps us not only with the actual transmission of epistemologies, but also provides the underlying ethics with which the knowledge should be handled.

Inzululwazi: a deep knowing

Of the numerous functions that names serve, memory is most relevant to the question of healing. Indigenous names are said again and again to ignite in the bearer the memory of self. As stated earlier, the concept of healing has been distorted to a point where some people are sceptically asking if there is anything to salvage from the indigenous African practice of healing. Interestingly, it is a personal name that aided me to explore this sceptism. On 28 June 2019, I had a discussion about the meaning of our names with colleagues and students at work, a university. I was particularly intrigued by an honours student’s contribution. We know the student as Lusanda, but she revealed that her grandmother named her Nonzululwazi and she never uses the name. This did not come as a surprise to me as there are many such instances in South Africa where children would loathe their deep-sounding African names. This is part of the blatant denial of African humanity by the coloniser and a manifestation of cultural domination highlighted above. The colonial renaming of people who had converted to Christianity and who were in the imposed Western schooling system led many Africans to look down on their names. This is best articulated by Mtuze (1999: 55) as follows:

The black converts had to be given new names, the so-called Christian names, thus implying that their own indigenous names were pagan names. Gone were meaningful names such as Jongintaba (the one who watches the mountain), Nomalanga (the lady of the sun) as they had to give way to Paul, Patrick and Elizabeth, or Victoria.

Names such as Jongintaba and Nomalanga are more than just names. Embedded in them is a spiritual meaning about the child’s purpose.

Similarly, the name Nonzululwazi, which could be translated as the lady of deep knowing, is more than just a name. The word nzululwazi was translated in the imposed Western education to ‘science’. It is thus currently understood to mean science. I have always thought of inzululwazi as science until this June 2019 conversation. That is when I realised that the word ‘science’ is too limiting or had been presented as such to us in the imposed Western schools. Nzululwazi literally means ‘deep knowledge’. This immediately described everything I had observed about Lusanda. Her grandmother could have foreseen the deep knowledge she was bringing from the other side:

ubunzulu in African cosmology is associated with the world of the spirit. It is to possess knowledge that is nestled in the depths of our understanding and our understanding is known to be rooted deep in the ground.

The usage of this term is noticeable even in the early writings of the missionary-educated isiXhosa speakers who started writing hymns for the church. In one of the hymns, Jesus Christ is referred to as Nzulu yemfihlakalo, nzulu yesimanga, ezalise umhlaba nesibhakabhaka (‘deep mystery, deep wonder, that has filled the earth and the sky’). It is important for me to draw from these converted Christians because they had been an important lesson. As Mtuze (1999) states, some Christian converts wanted to incorporate aspects of their indigenous African cultures into their newly found religion. This is evident not only in the lyrics, but also in the rhythm of the hymns they wrote.

Some of their hymns reveal an Africanist orientation which leads one to argue that they were drawing from their African understanding of the spirit world as something deep, mysterious and rhythmic, as something that fills the land and the skies. This is an understanding of the spiritual world that the speakers of isiXhosa carry. The writer of this hymn refers to Jesus Christ as deep and mysterious; this is similar to how isiXhosa speakers refer to healing and healing practices. A deep knowing is therefore to have access to inaccessible knowledge, and that is believed to be a gift. It is important therefore to begin with the concept of naming as it is a critical aspect of indigenous African epistemology. Names of people and everything in our surroundings reveal the spirit of the person or thing upon which the name is bestowed.

This student’s personal name reminded me that language is the memory cushioning our epistemologies. Our task is simply to retrieve. When we ignore our names and their meaning, we prevent ourselves from hearing what they are calling us to remember. Indigenous African names, through language, transmit particular knowledge, while at the same time they provide guidelines on how to protect the sacredness of certain knowledge. Thus, African ontology informs how we should disseminate our knowledge. The words we use to communicate such knowledge guide us on how the knowledge should be communicated. Thus, the language carries both the epistemology and its ethics. This will be expanded on in the ethics section.

Ubugqirha

For a clearer understanding of the meaning of healing to a particular cultural group, it is important to first understand their ways of perceiving and understanding the world. Any phenomenon within a people’s culture is shaped by their ontological orientation. It is therefore not an error that the concept of healing to the speakers of isiXhosa draws from their conceptualisation of being in the world in space and time. Just like many other African cultures, the conception of space among isiXhosa speakers is cosmological. AmaXhosa believe in the interrelation of elements in the universe to ensure a harmoniously balanced life. As Aja (1994) states about the Igbo culture of Nigeria, in explaining their cosmology the Igbo people use the visible and invisible elements of the universe. The Earth, the galaxies and the world underneath are all organising elements that work together to ensure order in the land of mortal beings. Coupled with the understanding of time as measured in varying cosmological ways, space becomes a key role player in the people’s spirituality.

This inseparable relationship between time and space is evident in the isiZulu usage of iskhathi to refer to time and umkhathi to refer to space. The two are not conceived separately because space is never perceived outside of time.

Hence, the measurement of time is always referenced to specific elements of the universe. The measurement of time relevant to this article is that of the Earth’s rotation. As stated in Aja (1994: 5), ‘the day is determined by the rotation of the earth on its axis; the month is determined by the period the moon takes to revolve around the earth; while, the year follows the revolution of the earth around the sun’.

This measurement of time is based on natural movements. The most relevant to this study of these measurements is the usage of the lunar cycle called a month. This draws from the lunar energy which is an important aspect in the healing phenomenon of many African societies. Lunar months determine the major festivals, feasts and help in structuring ritual calendars in society.^{[3]Kwashi, 1974; Aja, 1994.} For example, in the Basotho culture of southern Africa, the ritual naming of a child is conducted during the appearance of the new moon. For many rituals, Africans rely on the Earth’s rotation around the moon. It is around this lunar energy that ubugqirha (healing) is centred. This understanding of the moon as the key player in the healing practices of amaXhosa is encapsulated in the isiXhosa word for healer, ugqirha. Ugqira refers to a Xhosa practitioner of healing based on cosmic knowledge such as the moon as confirmed by other indigenous healing traditions like iNyanga (doctor of the moon), Ngaka (doctor of the moon) and uGqira (doctor of the rhythm of the moon). All these healing traditions refer to the invocation of the moon as the source of cosmic resonance that leads to true healing. In other words, the basis of the healing power of medicine is the cosmic resonance. The white ochre applied to the face of mediums is known to represent moonlight. We also see the relationship between healing and the moon in the word ukunyanga, which means to treat an illness. Inyanga is the isiXhosa word for the moon, thus ukunyanga is to practice the work of the moon. A month is also referred to as inyanga because it is measured in the 28-day cycle.

Ugqirha, the healer and ubugqirha, which is healing, centre around the word Gqi. Gqi according to Zulumathabo Zulu (in a personal conversation in July 2019) describes a cosmic rhythm. It means resonance and whose dictionary meaning is the sound which is produced by an object when it vibrates at the same rate as the sound waves from another object. In this context, the other object is the moon. Thus, a healer is someone whose spirit resonates or reverberates with the rhythm of the moon. In many African societies, the light of the moon represents distinct insights that occur during spirit possession. The rising moon serves as an apt metaphor for the heightened state of awareness and clairvoyance that occurs during spirit possession (Kwashi, 1974). The depth of the word gqi is evident in its expanded usage.

Gqi also extends to mean isithunzi, which is an aura or a symbol of dignity. As it is known that healers have a certain presence because they are reverberating with something ancient – they are known to walk with authority. It makes sense therefore that this word is also used to refer to footsteps – izigqi (in isiZulu) or izingqi (in isiXhosa), which means a person moves rhythmically, and this denotes spiritual alignment. Isingqi also means rhythm, hence the synonym of inyanga is isangoma (one who is like a song or a vibrational being); thus, you are vibrating as you should.

In the cosmology of amaXhosa, ingoma (song) and isingqi (rhythm) are inseparable. They both communicate a harmonious balance or an alignment/rootedness with the source. Thus a healer is somebody who is aligned with the moon which is the source of healing. I have borrowed this concept from umama uTu Nokwe, a renowned South African musician, writer and actor who was trying to explain what appeared like a rehearsed response to music performed at the commemoration of Miriam Makeba at the University of South Africa early in March 2019. She noted that everyone in the hall appeared to be vibrating at one frequency – besimoya munye. Nokwe commented that the mood is that way because by nature Africans are vibrational beings. Healing is therefore a response to the echoes of ancient times or to sounds from far away sources. It is a vibrational practice.

The healing nature of the moon is also communicated in how it is understood as a feminine symbol in many African societies. It is often linked to life itself, through lunar cycles that align to human and agricultural fertility and the structure of ritual calendars (Kwashi, 1974). To denote the fertility symbolism, among Abantu languages such as isiXhosa, a female’s menstrual cycle is referred to as inyanga. To be on one’s period is called ukuya enyangeni (going to the moon). This denotes the relationship between healing and femininity. Oestrogen draws more from the lunar energy, meaning it vibrates with the moon. This explains why certain healing practices were only explained to men because it was known that women are innately connected to cosmological sacredness. For example, there are mourning rituals among the AmaXhosa where only men participate. The elders understood that men were not naturally attuned to the working of the spirit. They needed to be guided through each step.

Ethics embedded in the language

We also find the root gqi in the word ubugqi. Ubugqi describes an ability to perform acts whose methods are beyond comprehension. Sanele Ntshingana (in personal conversation, October 2021) describes ubugqi as built on the stem gqi, which explains an occurrence of a sudden event (something that appears unexpectedly). It is something that has attributes of magic and depicts highly specialised skilfulness. Ubugqirha embodies all of these attributes and it is thus an aspect of ubugqi.

This means the Abantu celebrate the ability to not have an explanation or to not fully comprehend certain phenomena. This is what I call the ethics that the epistemology communicates. The minute you mention the word ubugqi, the speakers of the language already know that it is not necessary to ask too many questions if the meaning is not revealed to you at that point in time.

Ugqirha is therefore someone with a gift of doing things that are beyond comprehension. This illustrates the ethic behind the sacredness with which healing knowledge is treated.

A healer embodies the ability to act beyond comprehension.

This brings the ethos of Western pedagogy into question. If through language we learn that a phenomenon such as healing is beyond comprehension, how do we then make it feature in our curriculum? This is one of many examples to guard against merely incorporating African ways of knowing in the Western curricula. There is a need to move from an understanding that the pedagogical ethos of indigenous Africans is different from those of the West because it is rooted in indigenous/African worldviews, philosophical underpinnings, cultures and languages. Therefore, the naming of both healing and the healer carry with it the ethics of handling the knowledge form. Ignoring this would be making Western education accommodative to indigenous people instead of allowing indigenous epistemologies to occupy their rightful place as legitimate knowledges.

Some of the existing literature on African culture and knowledge emerges from an era of colonial missionary writing of isiXhosa. Most of this knowledge is corrupted, with deliberate inaccuracies because the coloniser’s aim was to induce self-loathing and to demonise African cultures. For example, the very concept of Ubugqirha has undergone this very corruption and left African healing to be gazed at with a Western lens. To this day, ugqirha who is an African practitioner of healing is referred to as igqirha and someone who has a traditional Western training is referred to as ugqirha. This makes an African practitioner appear as an object, while the Western one as a subject (a human being). The article i- which precedes the word gqirha objectifies the healer. It is derived from the word into (which means a thing), while the prefix u- humanises, it shows that you are talking about umntu (a human being). This line of labelling and delanguaging transcended into the English language where the healing of abantu (people) was reduced to only dealing with abathakathi (witches), where a healer is called a witchdoctor and a Western-trained practitioner is called a doctor. This delanguaging was useful in distorting African ways of healing and inducing self-loathing because it was part of the education that children received in the schools that the missionaries set up.

These distortions have had an impact in the way healing is practised today. There has been a tendency to universalise and commercialise the practice, resulting in people losing an understanding of what it really stands for. African medicine is not universal; it cannot be universally prescribed. It is lineage specific. The lineage contains the particularities of how one should relate to the soil, to the land, and that is what ubugqi means: how one should source healing from the soil and help it restore itself so it could be able to heal your land again.

Conclusion

In this article, isiXhosa has been used as an example of how language transmits the culture of healing. Healing is embedded in naming practices, in women’s physiology and in the understanding of plants and the galaxies. The gift of healing is a higher order bestowment and the greatest responsibility because healers are entrusted with the ability to bring harmony and wellness. To possess this gift is to be entrusted with the sacredness/ubugqi of a people. It means one is blessed with the ability to decode the ancestral encoded wisdom. Healing is a craft of ethical people, a people who are led by their own laws that are negotiated between the living, those in the spiritual realm, the galaxies and nature. Healing requires respect of the people’s way of perceiving their reality and their place in this reality. It combines deep knowledge that is deemed sacred by those who practise the culture.

It is crucial therefore to avoid writing on these knowledges for academic or knowledge dissemination purposes in the Western sense where African knowledges are just used for what Grosfoguel^[4]2019. refers to as epistemic extractivism.

We do not bring these knowledges to spaces of learning so we can make them fit into Western styles and purposes of knowledge sharing where they are othered.

We bring these knowledges to heal the colonial wounds and to rediscover the epistemic centre.

This is not an ideal unique to South Africa. In many nations in the world, the epistemic centre is the knowledge of the land; the situation is altered only in former colonised lands. Thus, calls to decolonise the curriculum mean to correct this wrong and recentre the ways of knowing of the people of the land. This work, therefore, stems from the understanding that the demand for an Africa- centred curriculum is an age-old call for self-definition. It is the echoes of the old. Though unheard, they remain calling for Africa’s self-knowledge and though sacred, they still demand their place under the moon. The moon has not failed in its ethical duty to reveal and hide the mysteries of its healing powers. The call to write on these sacred truths is a reminder to be trusting of those in the lead, that the knowledge is in their hands and we are just the compass to point the African child back to her glorious place of harmony: a place of resonance, rhythm and song. By writing, we are saying our core has heard the beating drum from the moon.

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Published online: 13 Oct 2023. South African Journal of African Languages 2023, 43(2): 93–97 Department of Psychology, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa. This article is re-published in herri with kind permission of the author.