From former Finance Minister Magande’s memoirs

Magande with his Grandmother Mizinga in 1970

“My apprenticeship started early in my life such that by the time I was seven years old, I was capable of guarding a herd of cattle alone in the Namaila forests. I left footprints in the hills, valleys, fields, and even on trees as I climbed to collect various fruits. I memorized the schedules of various activities and the courses to various grazing areas and watering points for the animals as I had not learnt the modern cuneiform writing.
After being made aware of the roots of my ancestry, I was determined to nurture my branch of the family tree. To grow strong roots, it was necessary for me to accumulate as much traditional knowledge on the behaviours of my elders and other members of the village community. I wanted to be properly cultured in the traditions of my relatives and people.
As per local custom, and being of the matrilineal clan, I left my parents after being weaned to live with Mizinga, my widowed maternal grandmother, whom I also called ba-Kaapa. By tradition, she called me her husband and I called her my girlfriend. I and two female cousins shared a mat on the floor of our grandmother’s spacious rondavel, where she had a nice bed of fixed stakes. Staying with ba-Kaapa gave me an opportunity to observe her carrying out various chores in and around the hut.
Amongst her many lessons was how to neatly fold our reed mat and the two blankets on one side of the hut every morning. At her advanced age, Mizinga was a competent storyteller and I enjoyed spending time in the evening with other grandchildren listening to all sorts of fabulous tales (kwaana), fables (kulabika), and wise sayings (twaambyo). Most of the fables and sayings were on morals and the virtues of honesty, kindness, hard work, inclusiveness, and togetherness.
My grandmother was an accomplished cook and she pampered us with her delicious dishes of various fresh and dried vegetables and meats. She even knew how to use the paste of fried groundnuts to tame the bitter medicinal vegetable called ndulwe into a luscious dish. Our reciprocal obligation was to obey all her instructions as they were generated from accumulated Tonga wisdom.
We were also responsible for washing the pots and plates, many of which were made by her from local clay and from hard wood such as from the mubanga tree. After washing them, they were neatly placed on a raised plate rack made of twigs, to dry. The racks were part of the colonial administration’s compulsory regulations for maintaining high levels of hygiene in homes.
Ba-Kaapa taught us that we should not take for personal use any item without her permission. In clear terms, nothing belonged to me unless there was an agreement for me to use it. This was long before I read the eighth commandment of the Bible one of the ten moral imperatives that says, ‘Thou shall not steal’.
Ba-Kaapa was a renowned potter, gifted with skills to craft various types of utensils from clay for various uses. She gave lessons to her customers on how to handle the delicate pots and plates she crafted and sold. Apart from observing her at work, we also gained from the lessons to her customers and I do not recall when I last dropped a pot, plate or cup in our home.
Mizinga was an accomplished birth attendant and a counsel for young girls undergoing initiation (kukula). At some point, a young aunt and a cousin were in confinement in my grandmother’s house. During the period of confinement, the initiates (bamyooye) were fed with the best foods and smeared with special ochre (musila) and oils from castor (mbono) and khaya nyasica (mululu) seeds extracted by the old lady. Most often, I was included in the lavish treatment and occasionally, ba-Kaapa rubbed some of the castor oil on me or asked me to take a sip of the oil whenever I had a bowel problem.
After I established contact with Western civilization at on older age, I learnt that castor oil has anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties. The ricinoleic acid in the oil also helps in inducing easy labour during childbirth. I suspect that my grandmother used the castor oil to assist her to achieve fame in her trade as a birth attendant, as she always got smooth deliveries.
Later in life, I was surprised to find someone completely covered in ochre in a modern sophisticated spa. A tradition in which my grandmother was an expert in the fifties had made others rich. Except for my lack of an inquisitive mind at the time, I could have made my grandmother wealthy by establishing a beauty spa long before some foreigner plagiarized my ancestor’s knowledge.
At times in early childhood, I was among a group of curious youths who were invited by the initiates to watch a special performance called banamacaaca. By some rhythmic tapping of a hollow calabash and the singing of a special song in a totally dark room, we saw shadows of people and domestic animals moving on the walls of the room. This was the equivalent of modern films and has remained one of the mysteries of the Tonga kukula ritual.
No male knew what went on in the house of the female initiates. In fact, it was taboo for a male to get close to a house of an initiate, who was always fully covered in a veil and led around the house by a young girl called kalindizyo. After three months of confinement, the mooye was released at a lavish party with much singing and dancing. Males jostled to have a glimpse of the beauty with tanned smooth skin, white eyes and long flowing hair. The public display was an announcement that the girl was ready and willing for marriage. If it was not for my absence attending school, I would have been present at these parties as I searched for a cultured wife.
The teachings during confinement included all there was for her to learn on how to be a good wife. Somehow, the separate secret teachings for young boys and girls, combined well to produce well behaved and resourceful married couples, who constituted peaceful rural communities.
My grandmother was haunted by some friendly spirits (mizimo) that demanded occasional appeasement. When invoked, she spoke in a strange tongue demanding new clothing and special food. Uncle Aaron, who had just learnt how to ride Matongo’s new bicycle was sent to the nearest shop, some thirty kilometres away, to buy new clothing, a blanket, some tea, bread, and sugar for the old lady. I never learnt how to ride a bicycle because the only one in the clan was Matongo’s and it was highly prized and only used on important occasions.
On the evening of the appointed day, there was drumming and singing with a special dance performed by ba-Kaapa and other women whose spirits were invoked by the special sounds of the drum. The old lady was adorned in her new dress and rattles (masebelele) around her ankles while shaking a rattle (muyuwa) made of a gourd. The frenzy was followed by feasting. I relished this occasion, not because I believed in its sanctity, but because of the dancing and the rare opportunity of eating some bread and drinking imported tea. Modernity cut short my enjoyment as the old lady had her last performance in 1958.
When I reminded her of the ceremony in the late seventies, she didn’t volunteer much about it. She, however, reiterated that the spirits of dead people did sometimes manifest themselves in the behaviour of the living. She explained the significance and value of such beliefs in the society of those olden days. She stated that belief and faith were very important for anything to happen. For her, the spirits were real and appeasing them assured the communities of protection from harm. My understanding of all these customs and rituals made me easily fit into the village community.
In the eighties, ba-Kaapa used to visit us at Chelstone in Lusaka where we had relocated in 1974. To reduce the boredom of ‘doing nothing’, she’d sit on a reed mat under the shade of the fruit trees while we were at work and greeted anyone passing by on Acacia Avenue. As some passers-by did not respond, one day she asked us why people in Lusaka did not exchange greetings.
I told her that it was not a custom in towns to greet people whom one did not know. She then asked me, “How will you know people whom you do not even care to speak to?” I was beaten by my grandmother’s philosophy and humane logic. I wondered why she could not be recruited as a lecturer in Humanism at the President’s Citizenship College in Kabwe. With a great sense of guilt, I told her that village traditions are not applicable in towns, even though I knew that my answer was not genuine.
On further reflection, I realized that my many years of modern education at some of the best learning institutions still left some space to be filled by lessons from my humble village teacher of 1953. From that day, I found it difficult to cross paths with other people without greeting them. Luckily, many other traditions and languages have shorter ways of greeting than the elaborate Tonga version, which requires one to enquire on the health or well-being of so many things, including cattle.
The easier greetings, such as ‘Ni Hao,’ in Chinese, ‘Habari,’ in Swahili and ‘Hello,’ in English have made it possible for me to faithfully abide by my grandmother’s humanistic teaching on exchanging greetings with other human beings. Next time that I meet you, please help me to honour my grandmother by answering my greeting”, from my Memoirs