Let us begin the ceremony! We call for the Zulu, the Maseko, the Ndwandwe, the Mthethwa, and the Swati. Namuhlanje sizoba nembuyiso (Today we will have the mbuyiso). The mbuyiso is a ritualistic ceremony practiced by various Nguni tribes to bring back home the wondering spirits of the deceased so that they may take care of us earthly progeny. Our ceremony today requires us to extend the invitation to the Ba-Tswana, Ba-Kongo, Va-Shona, Ba-Venda, Ba-Pedi, Ba-Luba, Ba-Mileke, the Ba-Mbara and the rest of the Bantu. Today we must call upon the spirit of ubuntu!
Did you know the ancestral tribe of your origin was the Ba-Tu/Ba-Ntu. That root word ntu has defined you as muntu, munthu, munhu or motho (All words meaning human in various Bantu languages). It is through you that the intergenerational knowledge will emerge, I trust we will find ubuntu and bring them/it home.
Are you settled? My apologies, I see you are a bit confused so I will orient you. I want you to know that this is a process of decolonisation. It is important for us to resurrect our African worldviews especially in ubuntu. Your questions will have to wait, we must start the mbuyiso ceremony.
The rules for the ceremony are as follows:
You must be quiet! If you must speak, speak in hushed tones. This is how you respect the spirit that is being brought back home.
Secondly you must remember that we bring the soil from the where they/it was killed and transfer it to the ritual grave at the homestead. (If ubuntu has died, who killed it and in who’s land can we retrieve it from?)
Thirdly, you have the responsibility of the goat. Once we retrieve the spirit of ubuntu, it will enter a goat and you are responsible to bring that goat to the sacrificial hut. If the goat escapes, we will interpret it as the spirit of ubuntu refusing to come home. You will be responsible, and all hope will be lost! Ensure your grip on the goat and be attentive.
I am sorry, I know this is all sudden and there is a lot going on, but I assure you, this is very important. Once we have found ubuntu and brought them/it back home we can then begin summoning the power of African knowledge production. This is not calculated, rational, soulless knowledge, this is intergenerational knowledge carried down through oral tradition and cultural practice. It is not lost in space, but it is lost in time. The portal to access it is interwoven in your subconscious and the sinuous strands of your DNA.
I have explained the rules of the mbuyiso. I can afford you more clarity on some of the information I have spewed.
The Bantu are several sub-Saharan ethnic groups that migrated from the 2nd millennia BC until the 1500AD from modern day Eastern Nigeria. It occurred as a slow filtration, gradually descending to the Southern tip of Africa. There are several reasons for this migration, such as the exhaustion of resources like agricultural land, overpopulation, famine, epidemics, and warfare. This has been one of the biggest migration movements in African history.
Perhaps your next question might be about ubuntu. The ceremony of the Mbuyiso is a form of practising ubuntu. I will allude to a paper called “Ubuntu Orality as a Living Philosophy” by Devi Dee Mucina to describe ubuntu in two distinct characteristics, ubuntu as people and ubuntu as theory.
Ubuntu as people
This description expounds on the etymological analysis of the word, specifically the root “ntu” which is ubiquitous in many Bantu languages to mean person. Therefore, to literally translate ubuntu would mean the art of being human, the essential practice of humanhood. Ubuntu therefore becomes a way of self-identification and the identification of others.
Ubuntu as theory
There are sayings in various languages used to describe ubuntu. In Zulu/Ndebele we have “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” which loosely translates to “I am because we are.” There are other sayings, for example, there is one in Chichewa that says “Kali kokha nkanyama, tili awiri ntiwanthu” which translates to one person is like an animal, two are a community.
Both axioms convey that one’s humanity is asserted only by the recognition and the relationship one establishes with others. This is where the idea that ubuntu is inherently communitarian (as opposed to individualistic) comes from. This, in relation to western pedagogy is regarded as the most definitive trait of ubuntu.
Mostamai Molefe makes a case to define ubuntu primarily as individualistic in his paper “Individualism in African Moral Cultures.” He makes an interesting argument that dignity and integrity are the backbone of ubuntu and those are traits applicable at the scale of the individual. He purports that the question about whether ubuntu is individualistic or communitarian is redundant because fundamentally, the underlying goal of practicing ubuntu is driven by personal interest. According to him, the community is a way to contextualise individuals.
His argument has merit, but I wonder whether he trivialises the type of relationship one has with their community. This relationship is asserted by different rules depending on the ethical/moral code carried out by the respective community. This differentiation in rules, I would suggest are what creates this distinction between individualistic and collective communities. Emerging ideas such as African phenomenology expound on collectivist/communitarian theories.
Below, you will find Devi Dee Mucina’s meditations on ubuntu:
I reflect the existence of my ancestors - I exist because they exist or as we say “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” – A person is a person through other people or we could also say, ‘A thing is a thing through other things.’ Meaning all things know each other in relationship to each other.
• We come from the energy flux and are the energy flux. Therefore, the circle is important to the ubuntu spirituality. The circle shows that we are one.
• We respect and give thanks for all our relations because all elements are part of the energy flux that makes up life.
• We try to live ubuntu life with the aim of finding integrity and wholeness in the balance of nature, which is to see the energy flux in everything.
• To each person, place, animal, or object we ask for permission before taking and give thanks for that which we have received. These prayers are directed to the spirit of the desired object. These prayers explain our actions and give justification for our actions because we respect the spirit of all things.
• Birth and death reflect the life cycle in all things and in all places.
• The spirit of the land and the spirit of the water we honour in special ways. In fact, it is said that the experience we have with specific elements helps us to develop language and knowledge as an effort to respect the space we occupy.
• Our traditional governance institutions are inclusive of nature as a decision-making relational member of ubuntu. We honour the intelligibility of nature.
• We honour the dead because they live in a parallel world to that of the living.
As we come to the end of our mbuyiso, it is time to eat our beefy supper and commence our dancing. Njelele music, which has been adopted from indigenous Zimbabwean tribes, has been incorporated and is used in the ceremony. Can you feel that? The feeling of ease? Perhaps during the rituals, we managed to summon the ancestors. Perhaps I could dare to suggest that we managed to summon it, or at least a trace of the spirit of ubuntu.
Bibliography
Cartwright, Mark, Bantu Migration (2019) Retrieved 9 July 2022, from https://www.worldhistory.org/Bantu_Migration/
Molefe, Motsamai, “Individualism in African Moral Cultures.” Cultura (2017) vol 14:2, p 49-68.
Mucina, Devi, “Ubuntu Orality as a Living Philosophy.” The Journal of Pan African Studies (2013) vol 6:4, p 18-33.
Nyathi, Pathisa, Zimbabwe’s cultural Heritage (Bulawayo: Amagugu Arts, 2005)
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