By Dr Michelina Andreucci

AUGUST is the month we commemorate our heroes who fell during our hard-won struggle for independence and celebrate the gallantry of our defence forces.
In the local seasons, August is time that people contemplate the summer cropping season, especially after the cold spells of June and July.
Zimbabwe is an agrarian country, which traditionally took into account the natural weather patterns. August has customarily been the time to prepare the land and seeds to sow for the coming season’s agricultural period.
Growing up in Mashonaland West among the Korekore people of Kariba, we learnt the rhythms of agricultural practices in indigenous African communities.
It was a time we helped our mothers and grandmothers shell the peanuts – kumenya nzungu.
It was a time we threshed the dry maize cobs in a sack to remove the kernels (kupura chibage) and gather the seeds from dry pumpkins in preparation for sowing in the coming rain season.
All these agrarian practices were accompanied with song, storytelling, folklore with life’s moral lessons and agricultural self-sustenance.
The occasional cool winds of Nyamavhuvhu made the work bearable under the hazy-blue, winter heat in Kariba.
This sophisticated knowledge of groundwork of food and land preparation illustrates how indigenous African people lived in harmony with the rhythm of the land and practised organic farming and sustainable agriculture as part of a bigger cycle of culture and heritage.
Later, I was to learn that these traditional practices we took for granted are what is termed ‘land husbandry and sustainable geo-agrarian practice’ and all other European jargon that simply describe an age-old African traditional practice of land management, seed selection (kusarudza mbeu) and the futuristic sustainable planning, continuity and re-generation; the African philosophy and practice of kuchengetedza nhaka.
Through the observances of Shona meteorology, traditional African-centred agronomists were well informed about how the land breathed or dispersed and swallowed seeds before the on-coming rain season.
I still recall in my childhood the bright saucepan of light as the moon reflected over the nether waters of Lake Kariba.
The moon, for us, was more accurate than the meteorological service’s weather men with sophisticated modern equipment.
In fact, how many of us can remember our grandmothers telling us it would not rain because there was a red moon up in the sky?
Or that the colours of the sunset meant that the rain was far away, long before there was talk of El Nino or La Nina.
Our ancestors knew when to plough, when to sow and when to reap.
It was so well timed; it was as if they spoke to the weatherman himself.
Yet, today, we have to rely on meteorological services to give us this information when our ancestors could simply rely on the signs of the weather.
There was a time in our lives when the beams and shape of the moon, the direction of the wind, the smell of new foliage and the sounds of crickets foretold the weather for us without modern gauges, gadgets and other apparatus.
We used our full senses – the sights, sounds and smells — where Western technology used scientific equipment.
The shriek of the cicadas and the squawk of the haya rain bird, the hissing of the musasa trees (in early September) and the croak of the frogs, all foretold the rains were near.
Nature was the lecturer and we paid attention to the sight and sounds of the earth.
Our agricultural cycle was culturally informed and interspersed with much communal traditional ritual activities.
All the elements were incorporated with the music and dance, all fully integrated with the land that one was living on.
According to African land philosophy, August was literally a time for healing, tilling and preparing the land in time for sowing the new seeds in September.
In Africa, women played a central role in agriculture; from the planting of seed to food processing and ultimately to food preparation.
A close link was perceived to be between agriculture and human fertility.
Thus the planting of seed in the soil was done by young women, still in the reproductive stages of their lives, who were believed to pass on their fertility to another dimension, that of agriculture.
Many believed fertility of the seed could be metaphysically enhanced to increase the yield by doctoring it before planting.
The aim was to enhance fertility and increase resistance to prolonged periods of drought; at the same time, metaphysical intervention was meant to counter the machinations of the witches and wizards.
In line with African ontology, women were the agrarian custodians of the land, and agriculture was the domain of women who were generally associated with fertility; they sowed the seed in the earth from where it sprouted and flourished.
Gendered roles in food production and processing were reflected in the layout of the homestead.
For an agrarian country like ours, it would be sheer ignorance if we cannot combine our indigenous cultural meteorology with modern sciences because as the culture is specific to us, so are the weather patterns offered by nature for us to follow.
In totally dismissing indigenous knowledge systems, colonial education annihilated a living science pertinent to our space and replaced it with Western sciences that are not centred in African knowledge, but are totally divorced from our beliefs.
Today, as we remember those who fought and fell, it is time to bring our indigenous agrarian knowledge into the 21st Century.
It is no longer enough to simply speak of Command Agriculture, but to think and resuscitate indigenous ideas and knowledge in line with the computerised digital world, in order to make the Command Agriculture Programme a success, in line with Zimbabwe’s victory for independence and the land redistribution.
Perhaps it is time we used our culture and traditions more scientifically and respected more our indigenous knowledge and technology.
Our heroes died for our self-determination and this bountiful land Zimbabwe!
Dr Michelina Rudo Andreucci is a Zimbabwean-Italian researcher, industrial design consultant lecturer and specialist hospitality interior decorator. She is a published author in her field.
For views and comments, email: linamanucci@gmail.com