By Elliott Siamonga

ONE of the most impressive things about tribal art is its ability to convert everyday raw materials into something special and beautiful.
The BaTonga of Zimbabwe and Zambia are superb bead workers.
Their beadwork is remarkable for its variety, colours and intricate designs. Beadwork became a cultural icon for the BaTonga, as did their creative sculptures and art.
Beaded attire is considered a sign of wealth and beauty.
Designs served social functions as markers of cultural identity and status.
BaTonga beadwork designs were initially dominated by a predominantly black, white or red background, which included only a very few randomly placed geometric shapes.
BaTonga elders say from the 1940s, their aesthetics changed.
Women began to include a wide range of colours and overwhelming their compositions with geometric and figurative motifs from everyday life.
The women wore their traditional beaded skirts and were bare breasted, and men and women alike had their cheeks scarred, removed their two front teeth, and pierced their noses to insert a stick through the septum.
Elders said this self defacement apparently began when the slave trade was at its height in the latter half of the 19th century.
Aggressive neighbours working for Arab slave-traders would raid the BaTonga, capture them and sell them into slavery – and it was hoped that by disfiguring themselves, they would be less attractive to the human traders.
History, however, indicates that they were not alone in this, other tribes also resorted to defacement, removing of teeth and even inserting lip plugs to reduce their attractiveness to slavers.
The skirts which are now worn during special ceremonial dances and other traditional rituals such as funerals are handed over from generation to generation and have been preserved for these gatherings and rituals.
These are worn by elderly women whose front teeth had been pulled out or those perceived to be true descendants of the true BaTonga.
Although these days the traditional BaTonga women’s dress is distinctive and unique, it consists of two garments – a small cloth in the front and a larger back apron, both traditionally made from black or dark blue indigo trade cloth.
The only other items regularly worn were bead belts and necklaces and coiled wire wrist-bands.
One other object that was unique to the BaTonga was the little head pad that consisted of a ring of grass covered in cloth, with cowry shells attached around one surface.
These rings were actually attached to the hair and worn permanently to protect the head when water pots were carried from the river on their heads.
The small front skirt was often beaded in small wavering checks or zigzag rows of red, black and blue beads, while the back skirt was decorated with evenly spaced rows of fan-shaped lozenges of red, white and blue beads.
These were worn by girls who had come of age.
The back aprons were made in various sizes with the possibility that their owners tended to increase in girth with age, or possibly because the larger skirts could display more beads, and therefore carried more status.
The colourful beaded skirts which were more revealing and were adorned during special ceremonies.
BaTonga elders say the skirts were made in the mid to late 19th century, since trade in beads and cloth would have been extremely scarce in this remote area before this time.
Before then the BaTonga woman wore black hide aprons which probably preceded the beaded cloth ones.
One quite noticeable distinction is the row of beads that sometimes edges some skirts.
This according to the BaTonga elders is a fashion from one side of the river only, since Lake Kariba effectively divided the BaTonga into two populations in two countries.
In addition to the distinctive skirts and fore aprons, BaTonga women still wear beaded neck rings, girdles and headbands, as do the BaTonga men.
They are very skilful at creating round geometric neck rings, which are made by winding cloth tightly round a thick length of copper wire and covering it with beads.
Men often wear a small cloth panel neck ornament decorated with beads in the same patterns as the women’s front and back aprons, but much smaller, and necklaces which have the same decorative element worn over the chest and the back of the neck are also popular and unique to the BaTonga men.
Another excellent innovation was the blanket used by the matriarchs; the traditional blankets were made from cow hides.
Such blankets are worn by married women and grandmothers (matriarchs) only. The actual beading of a blanket was undertaken over many years and reveals events about the owner’s life.
It represented her social status and testified to the woman’s artistic abilities, and high social standing when considering her ability to dedicate numerous hours to creating the artwork.
Although the wearing of traditional BaTonga costume is dying out, (along with the defacing of faces, nose plugs and missing front teeth), the old skirts are getting very hard to find.
At the same time, as with other tribal costumes in Southern Africa, BaTonga dress can be modernised as a political statement of cultural identity.