IMAGERY on clothing or traditional attire worn in most African countries has different meanings.
At funerals or weddings, different attires are worn with different symbols.
Chiefs, traditional healers, elderly men and women also wear clothing with different symbols to show their status or positions in society.
A distinctive feature of traditional African dress is its use of festive colours, intricate patterns and figurative symbols to communicate meaning.
These garments are much more than mere adornment.
They are used not just to praise political heroes, to commemorate historical events or to assert social identities, but also as a form of rhetoric – a channel for the silent projection of argument.
In addition to pictorial symbols, colours and writings on the surface of the cloth, often the cut of a particular African garment can convey meaning.
Traditional dress for the women includes various pieces that signify age and marital status.
A woman wearing a head-wrap and a long wrap-around skirt is likely young and unmarried.
If she adds a stretch of cloth around her midsection that is often used to carry babies, indicating she is married.
In Zimbabwe, just like in other African countries, traditional dressing is beginning to be recognised although the country does not have a standard form of this type of dressing.
Traditionally, this type of dressing included a wrap-around cloth, headdress and ornaments, including necklaces, earrings and/or bracelets.
The people of Zimbabwe no longer wear these types of clothing on a regular basis.
Some choose traditional dress for ceremonial or state occasions, such as Heroes’ Day or Independence Day.
Many Zimbabweans feel out of place when confronted with the problem of what to wear when asked to wear traditional dress. Gradually, outfits inspired by Nigeria and Ghana have begun to be termed traditional dress locally, although in reality, there is nothing that our ancestors would recognise in the resulting get-ups.
Made with fabric from China and designs from any corner of the globe, it is only perception that qualifies the outfits as traditional dress.
Perhaps the term ‘African attire’ is more suitable as the outfits have been traditional in countries like Ghana and Nigeria for a long time.
If countries with complex cultures like South Africa and Malaysia can have a national dress, how about Zimbabwe with its more unified culture, bar of course the political polarisation that has divided the country for over a decade now.
While Zimbabweans have expressed their wish to be identified as Africans by wearing West African garb at some functions, there is nothing at the moment that identifies Zimbabweans in terms of dressing except, of course, political party regalia, which does not really count, at least outside the country.
As a way of trying to shrug off Western attire, Zimbabweans have sometimes been forced to wear what has become known as African attire even though it is West African fabric.
Today, a chief from any other African country would wear clothing with the symbols of a lion, elephant or any powerful animal or reptile, while a traditional healer would wear clothing with adornments of snakes, hyenas, birds and other supernatural objects just to signify their trade.
The garments often come in different colours of red and black for the traditional healers, while gold and blues signify royalty.
There were also cloths that signified marital status such as nursing charms.
These had medicinal qualities and were worn to broadcast the wearer is a nursing mother.
The adornment was accepted throughout some southern African tribes as a mother’s protection.
Even if a baby was not with her – the necklace would send the message home that the woman is taken.
An example dates back to the 1950s when charms and beads were worn by the Ndebele and the BaTonga tribes.
These tribes were, and still are, excellent bead workers.
Their beadwork is remarkable for its variety, colours and intricate designs.
Beadwork became a cultural icon for the Ndebele as well as the BaTonga, as did their mural art.
Beaded attire is considered a sign of wealth and beauty.
Designs served social functions as markers of cultural identity and status.
Ndebele beadwork designs were initially dominated by a white background, which included only a very few randomly placed geometric shapes.
From the 1940s, Ndebele aesthetics changed. Women began to include a wide range of colours and overwhelmed their compositions with geometric and figurative motifs from everyday life.
The BaTonga beadwork had red, black or blue backgrounds as seen on their traditional dancing clothes during the kuomboka ceremonies and muganda festivals in both Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Africans from different countries often used beads for currency (often referred to as African money), wealth storage and social status could be easily determined by the quality, quantity and style of jewellery worn.
This created a high demand for trade beads in Africa.
Although originating from the Asante tribe, symbols known as adinkra have become ubiquitous across the Ghanaian region of West Africa, including Ivory Coast and neighbouring Togo.
These symbols are used to represent almost any characteristic and are seen adorning everything from clothing to pottery.
Due to the succinct and profound nature of these symbols, they are also often seen tattooed on people.
One example of an adinkra symbol is fawohodie, meaning independence, freedom or emancipation and is represented by two ‘V’ symbols back to back, creating a large ‘X’.
The Chokwe tribe from Angola developed a complex set of iconography and symbols to discuss spirituality and philosophy. These symbols became part of an abstract written language known as tusoma.
Basic tusoma was made up of symbols and lines that could be easily drawn in the sand of the steppe terrain.
Tusoma symbols include the two sticks arranged in an off-centre cross known as chackamenga, which represents the fire around which Chokwe people gather to discuss philosophical and spiritual issues.
Adinkra cloth is an embroidered and dyed cotton cloth that is native to Ghana.
Using stamps carved from a gourd or calabash, the cloth is decorated with adinkra symbols.
These symbols, of which there are more than 700, represent historical events, regional proverbs and ideology and aspects of daily life.
Some common adinkra symbols are the adwo, which represents peace, the dua afe, a symbol of love and beauty and the abe dua, a tree-like emblem that represents self-sufficiency and wealth.
Kente cloth is typically woven into long three-to-four centimetre-wide panels.
Several panels can be sewn together to make clothing for both men and women.
The patterns created by the brightly coloured threads often represent common motifs, religious beliefs and political commentary.
The colours are of particular significance as they interpret the meaning of the pattern; with red symbolising death, green meaning fertility, white expressing purity while blue signifies love.