AS we honour the life of the late historian, Pathisa Nyathi, who passed away last Saturday, we republish an article that was originally published on 16 July 2023 where Sunday Life Reporter Bruce Ndlovu, interviewed Nyathi after his 72nd celebrations. In the article, Nyathi spoke about his ‘final journey’ to his storied career.
Bruce Ndlovu , Sunday Life Reporter
AFTER a career spanning 71 books in his 72 years of living, author, historian and cultural guru Pathisa Nyathi has acknowledged that the sun may soon set on his illustrious career, with his next books set to touch on cultural practices in the broader African community, instead of just Zimbabwe whose cultural practices his writings have extensively explored.
Last week, as he celebrated his 72nd birthday, the celebrated cultural activist published three books that further explored African cultural practices. Nyathi published Journey to The Stars, a book that explores African astronomy, African Body Art, and Mhande, the sixth edition of a series of books about Zimbabwean cultural dances.
In an interview with Sunday Life, the author described the three books as a precursor to more work that will take him towards the end of his storied career.
“My target had always been, which I failed to achieve, was to get the total of my books to reach my age. I turned 72 last week so I wanted to get to that but I am short by one book. Which means next year, I would have achieved that target. The journey continues,” he said.
Mr Pathisa NyathiWhile he still has more ink in his barrel, Nyathi said that he would be expanding his horizons, with a laser focus on African culture marking the beginning of the end of his journey as an author.
“This is the time when I am moving out of Zimbabwe to get to the African continent, trying to understand our Africanness and what it is that we share in common. That’s where I am operating now in Zimbabwe and exploring a lot within its borders. As the sun sets, we want to be broader and look at Africa as a whole because my argument is that Africa is unco-ordinated. We don’t know, for example, the Zambians’ history and culture and how it links with us. There’s a danger in the various ethnic groups thinking we are very different, which is not true.
“If you look at Africa though, our perceptions, our beliefs, our cosmology, you will see that there is a lot in common. But where there is a political strategy of wanting and manipulate Africans, they will tell you we are very different. We have fallen into that trap of thinking we are very different, which we are not.
When you are looking at body art and why body art, you see a lot of commonalities. The drive is that, we see each other as one people but people who are diverse. We should look beyond cultural practices while underestimating what informs them, which is African thought, African philosophy and African world view.
We are talking things like cosmology, which are things that shape us, guide us and underpin cultural practices,” he said.
StarsNyathi said the detour on the long journey he had travelled thus far, was the exploration of much maligned “African science”, which had over the years been denigrated from pillar to post with little understanding of it.
After his flirtation with ancient African philosophy, Nyathi said it would be time for him to cap his pen and call it a day.
“This is now the beginning of the end of a very long journey, in a way. It has been a long journey but we are still going. What will cap it all, in my view will be what I term ancient African philosophy. That will be the icing on the cake. When you see me get to that it will mean I am about to hang the pen. By that, I am talking about the science from which witches and traditional doctors alike like to tap into. It’s the same thing, the same science.
That is a science, there is no doubt about it and I am not talking about the negative stereotypes that people have attached to these things because of the little understanding that they have. That is what I am going to write about and when you see me getting to that, you should know that a man has worked and it is time for him to take an interest in other things,” he said.
Nyathi described his recently published book, Journey to the Stars, as his attempt to reconcile with African astronomy at a time when modern man had “tamed” the heavens, with electric lights, weather forecasts and other modern inventions now doing the job that was done by the stars and other heavenly bodies.
“It’s a Pan-African book because astronomy was very important and Africans followed astronomy very keenly but of course, with colonisation and modernisation, there has been a decline in our knowledge of astronomy. It was important in the sense that it was what determined the seasons, movement of the stars, the movement of heavenly bodies. It was important because it indicated the start of the agricultural season, the start of certain rituals and ceremony and even the process of going to Njelele itself.
It was all that knowledge that was important but this has declined because we have brought the heavens down, through these city lights all around us. It means we are no longer paying attention to what is happening, the movement of the stars, the moon, when it dies, for example. Now we are trying to capture that and it is not only in the context of Zimbabwean ethnic groups but how this all applies to the rest of the continent,” he said.
In African Body Art, Nyathi said he wanted to explore practices whose brightness had almost been extinguished by colonial forces.
“We are looking at body art, things like lip plugs, earrings and trying to see if they survived slavery. We want to look at the Ndebele and how beadwork was scandalised, as it was associated with things pagan.
In comparison, in South Africa beadwork is still fashionable but even now, we see the young people trying to reclaim it. We see the youth in festivals, like Mzilikazi Day or lobola ceremonies, we are seeing a marked improvement,” he said.
This post was originally published on here
