FOR the African majority, cattle are not merely a commodity; oftentimes they are named after ancestors and designated to host departed spirits.
Their role in African culture is rooted in our belief system and therefore cannot be considered a commodity for collateral.
The conflict between Western systems, concepts of cattle breeding as well as finance and indigenous concepts is averse.
In spite of every challenge, a household will not sell what is considered a family bull despite its commercial value on the market.
The main motivation is the preservation of wealth, heritage and culture than satisfying what are considered low instincts such as hunger and material gratification.
At whatever price, one will never be convinced to sell a mother’s cow even out of desperation (mombe yehumai- inkomo yokamama).
Culturally, cattle cannot be sold before long deliberations and consultations are undertaken.
This is due to the age old African belief system that considers the breeding of cattle as building generational wealth.
Modern efforts to use cattle as collateral have to take into account rigid, binding, traditional and cultural considerations before one considers cattle as deposit.
A family bull or mother’s cow (mombe yehumai) can never be used as collateral.
Out of a herd of 30 beasts, perhaps only one out of 10 can be given as collateral.
It is important for financial institutions to understand the dynamics that influence indigenous notions of wealth before crafting and imposing Western cultural models of collateral. Cattle were, and still are, our wealth, our currency and form of exchange that provided a tangible economic tender collateral and generational wealth.
The majority of rural indigenous communities do not adhere to building wealth through Western currency, but rather through commodities such as cattle – culture is a powerful intangible force that determines the cattle economy – culture will always take preference.
No doubt, the Western value system of cattle was purely carnal, carnivorous and based on survival, and now purely a means of a financial base.
This brief historical dissertation on cattle was to give Zimbabwean readers an interpretation of the African value system of cattle beyond beef and milk.
Recent statistics show that 90 percent of the cattle currently in Zimbabwe are owned by the smallholder farmers for whom cattle play various functions besides commercial beef slaughter.
Ensconced in African communities is the fact that the value of livestock is not about quick growth, meat yield or size, but rather other intangible attributes.
Cattle were, and still are, a symbol of traditional leadership. They were, and still are, a socio-religious form of libation and sacrifice for the ancestors, cultural continuity and sustenance for indigenous people.
Cattle were a form of draught power, the first form of industrialisation and mechanisation.
Totems and clan-praise names were articulated through the various cattle value systems.
They were and still are, a symbol of the tribe or clan-group as well as a form of identity and empowerment.
Indigenous cattle also provided security and tangible assets in terms of socio-cultural economic value systems.
Our cattle provided clothing and regal status for the appointed indigenous rulers.
Even in the cuts of meat, Dr Michelina Andreucci asserts that they were culturally sanctioned and traditionally symbolic to the rural community recipients.
Cattle rearing at Mapungubwe, great Zimbabwe and other Iron Age sites stretching down to Tavhatshena in the Transvaal, South Africa, are proof of cattle rearing systems that illustrate the importance of cattle-rearing systems in Zimbabwe and other southern African pre-colonial centres. Our indigenous cattle were part of the African-centred belief system.
In light of Command Agriculture, the current Zimbabwe Livestock programmes and the indigenous reclamation exercises of land and livestock by the Government of Zimbabwe, I found it necessary to outline the history of the laws, looting and losses of cattle from indigenous African farmers in colonial times.
The various legal acts, ordinances and laws were passed to the advantage of the foreign settler-brigandage over local indigenous inhabitants.
They did not just conquer foreign lands but looted and disrupted socio-agrarian patterns of life and cultural ways of the indigenous people.
It was a heritage disrupted, dislocated and subsequently discontinued.
From the early Zulu invasions of King Mzilikazi and King Lobengula that raided our cattle, foreign European colonisation, settlers’ looting and regional skirmishes; and later Ndebele cattle rustling raids, the coveting of our indigenous Mashona cattle goes back in the annals of our socio-political history of our cattle heritage; from pre-Stone Age to the reigns of Munhumutapas to today’s independent Zimbabwe.
Engraved, etched and painted on numerous stone walls in stone and Iron Age Zimbabwean Cambrian granite caves are the prototype indigenous cattle bred by the original Khoisan people.
Among them are the kudu humped cattle and the stocky indigenous Mashona cattle breed prevalent throughout the Mashonaland provinces from the north of the country to the lower Midlands and Masvingo.
To the south-west of the country are the Ngoni/Nguni cattle with a piebald dappled hide and the now rare, heat-resistant BaTonga cattle breed, which was once prevalent in the Binga, Hwange and Kariba areas, spilling over into neighbouring Botswana, Namibia and Zambia.
One would want to conclude that it is through traditional archaezoology that the role of cattle in Zimbabwean societies, from time immemorial to the present time, will reveal interesting interpretations of the faunal remains of cattle at our Iron Age sites.
The question of restitution of our cattle breeds and indigenous herds that were seized and some burnt/destroyed and seized during the wars of liberation should be legally challenged in international constitutional courts and the Rhodes Fund in Britain be asked to compensate Zimbabwe with immediate effect.
African countries deserve compensation for the empire’s greed, but more so, for their untethered rampaging and wilful destruction of a long-grown heritage, under various legislative measures for the control of African cattle infections that were brought into colonial imperial Rhodesia, that included the Cattle Clearance Ordinance of 1920.
Our history and heritage should buttress our understanding of our agro-economy.
Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA (Doctorate in Business Administration) and Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. He is a writer, lecturer, musician, art critic, practising artist and corporate image consultant. He is also a specialist art consultant, post-colonial scholar, Zimbabwean socio-economic analyst and researcher.
For views and comments, email: tonym.MONDA@gmail.com