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Ecological Implications of Water Spirit Beliefs in Southern Africa: the Need to Protect Knowledge, Nature, and Resource Rights

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Ecological Implications of Water Spirit Beliefs in Southern Africa: the Need to Protect Knowledge, Nature, and Resource Rights Ecological Implications of Water Spirit Beliefs in Southern Africa: The Need to Protect Knowledge, Nature, and Resource Rights Penny S. Bernard Abstract—This paper explores the ecological ethic intrinsic to the There has been a corresponding awareness of the need to traditional cosmologies of the Southern African Bantu-speaking examine how indigenous people have managed to live in a peoples, specifically in association with water sources and riparian sustainable way within their environments, both in the past zones. It details the complexity of beliefs regarding the water spirits, and the present. The need to document and preserve such particularly related to the snake and the mermaid, and their role in knowledge is thus seen as crucial for humanity’s long-term the calling of traditional healers in Southern Africa. The implica- survival on Earth. It is pertinent to note that much of this tions of these beliefs with regard to water and riparian zone knowledge is intimately connected with the broader frame- management are examined. The pools in which such spirits reside work of peoples’ cosmology and world view, which is embed- have sacred status and are of key importance in the training of ded within their physical, spiritual, and social landscapes healers, as well as being important sites for the performance of (Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995; Tilley 1994). Hence, procuring family rituals. Many of these sites are threatened with environmen- and preserving existing knowledge, although crucial, is only tal degradation, mainly by agroforestry and dam-building programs. one aspect of the equation. Knowledge is dependent on the Over the last century, healers have been increasingly marginalized protection and preservation of these broad features of the from such pools through the privatization of land and the former landscape, within which peoples’ identity, cosmology, and South African Government’s apartheid policies. It is argued that to knowledge are embedded. In terms of the physical land- promote indigenous knowledge and wise stewardship of resources, scape, protection and preservation are just one aspect of the adequate protection of such sites is essential, and mechanisms need solution. Ensuring indigenous people access to these sites is to be explored whereby healers and their communities can be granted essential because such features are integral aspects of the access to such features of the landscape. nature, formation, and transmission of knowledge. Through- out the world, over the last 200 years these communities have become increasingly marginalized and denied access to such resources, with the resultant threat to their knowledge. Introduction ____________________ In South Africa, indigenous African peoples are emerging from centuries of alienation and marginalization imposed on There has recently been a surge of interest worldwide in them by their colonial and apartheid masters. In the last the way indigenous people interact with their environment century, they were systematically denied access to a large and the value of their knowledge systems. Many interna- percentage of their resources. The Land Act of 1913 is well tional organizations, such as the Convention of Biodiversity recognized as the institutionalized mechanism that precipi- (CBD-UNCED 1992), the United Nations Working Group on tated this, whereby it stipulated that over 80 percent of the Indigenous Populations (WGIP), the United Nations Educa- population was to be confined to 13 percent of the total tional, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), landmass of South Africa. and the Working Group on Traditional Resource Rights Since independence in 1994, efforts have been made to (WGTRR), are calling for the recognition of indigenous correct this state of affairs, but the present process of land peoples rights to self-determination, the value of their restitution is slow, arduous, very expensive, and fraught knowledge, and the need for strategies to protect and with many difficulties. Many who were uprooted from their preserve this knowledge (Gray 1997; Posey 1999; Posey and natural landscapes have lost their knowledge and tradi- Dutfield 1996). This has largely been precipitated by the tions, or have repudiated them in favor of monotheism, global environmental crisis, which has revealed the short- capitalism, and globalization. These transformations, as comings of an exclusively scientific approach, often within well as the inevitable population pressures on the restricted the western economic development paradigm, in solving the resources, have led to behavior changes, which have re- multitude of environmental problems facing present and sulted in environmental degradation and abandonment of future generations. much of the traditional ecological knowledge that is no longer relevant to them. These modern forces have all contributed to the “disenchantment” of the landscape, Penny S. Bernard is an Anthropologist, Anthropology Department, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 6139, Eastern Cape, South Africa. E-mail: whereby the respect for the spirits of the land is rapidly [email protected] disappearing and with it a powerful mechanism for limiting In: Watson, Alan; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2003. Science and stewardship human behaviors that have negative ecological impacts. to protect and sustain wilderness values: Seventh World Wilderness Con- Despite these threats to knowledge, however, there re- gress symposium; 2001 November 2–8; Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Proc. RMRS-P-27. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, mains a strong body of beliefs among a core of African Rocky Mountain Research Station. religious functionaries—the traditional diviner healers 148 USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-27. 2003 Bernard Ecological Implications of Water Spirit Beliefs in Southern Africa… (amagqirha, izangoma). Despite being heavily “demonized” symbols. The central feature of these myths and rituals is by their Christian invaders, they continue to play a signifi- the association with the “calling” of individuals to become cant and influential role in their communities. diviners. This usually involves the physical submersion of The following summary demonstrates the intimate con- the candidate under the water of a certain river pool or the nection that exists between the physical, spiritual, and sea (for a few hours, to days or even years) after which it is social dimensions of Southern African spiritual healers’ alleged that the individual emerges wearing the full regalia knowledge and practice, particularly with reference to water of a healer—a symbolic snake wrapped around his/her body resources and the belief of water spirits. It must be noted and medicines. This experience of being taken under the that water sources provide just one aspect of the knowledge water, often by a wind or a “snake” can happen in a dream, base. Plants, forests, and mountains are also integral to the but this is merely notification that the individual’s ancestors training and practice of traditional healers. The data pre- are calling him/her to become a healer. The “calling” is sented comes from research I have done among the Zulu-, usually preceded by the candidate suffering an illness Xhosa-, and Karanga/Shona-speaking groups over the last (ukuthwasa), although sometimes, especially in the case of 4 years. These communities span a wide area of Southern children, they just happen to be playing near the water at the Africa, extending across several thousand kilometers and time. Individuals who have had such experiences commonly over a number of State boundaries (South Africa, Mozam- report seeing snakes, mermaids, or even their ancestors. bique, and Zimbabwe). It is worth noting that I have identi- Skills in healing, sacred knowledge, psychic abilities, and fied a common corpus of knowledge linking the African medicinal plants seem to be the gifts that are imparted to healing traditions with the water spirits over this whole these chosen people by the water spirits. It is the spirits that region that is not exclusive to these groups only. It also choose the client, not the other way around, and resistance features strongly in other Bantu-speaking groups in the to the “calling” usually leads to misfortune. Relatives are not region, such as the Swazi, Venda, Sotho, Tshangaan, Ndebele, allowed to display any grief at the disappearance of one who and Tswana, and they are also prevalent amongst the has gone under the water or he/she may never be returned earliest known peoples of Southern Africa, the Khoekhoe to the living. Anyone who enters these water sources without and the San. the calling of the ancestors will disappear, never to return. Key symbolic images linked to objects seen under the water or to messenger animals that summon the “chosen” Water Spirits in one to meet the spirits are remarkably similar within all the Southern Africa _________________ groups, namely, the snake or python, the water monitor (leguuan), the hippopotamus, the dolphin, the otter, the Among many of the Southern African indigenous people crab, the frog, the brown fly, and/or the horse fly. Among the (Khoisan- and Bantu-speaking people) there exists a set of Zulu, snakes (especially pythons), and crabs that visit people complex beliefs regarding water, river systems, and riparian in their houses are regarded as ancestral manifestations and zones. The spirit world is regarded as the ultimate source of should not be harmed. such life-sustaining resources. Water is the essence of both Certain places are more favored by the river spirits than spiritual and physical life, and the spirit world is regarded others. They are believed to live in deep pools of certain as the ultimate source of such life-sustaining powers. Inte- rivers, often below waterfalls, fast moving “living” water, or gral to such beliefs are various zoomorphic spirit manifesta- in the sea. “Living” water is often associated with its ability tions, primarily the snake and the mermaid, who reside in or to generate foam, and the foam appears to be symbolically beyond the water and who interact with humans in a variety important. Berglund (1976: 146) cites a diviner (isangoma) of ways.
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