By Munhamu Pekeshe

THIS weekend I am off to Govere Village near Gandachibvuva Mission in Chikomba.
My father’s only remaining uncle is slaughtering a beast to celebrate becoming a centenarian.
We are all in agreement that he clocked this revered age status several years ago.
Unfortunately there are no birth records to prove this.
In attendance will be his children, daughters-in-law and vazukuru.
As I will be representing my late father, I will be given the status of heading the latter group as muzukuru mukuru.
The invitation came via one of his daughters, mbuya vangu.
She went to great length to assure me that this had nothing to do with chivanhu (African tradition); in her own words this was going to be innocent feast celebrating sekuru Muvhangeri’s life.
I assured her tradition or no tradition my attendance was confirmed.
I recalled how during funerals people go out of their way to assure mourners that a beast slaughtered in honour of the dead has nothing to do with the nheedzo practice but simply an act of ensuring that there is enough relish for mourners.
Cattle are prized possessions in our African societies.
They are central to African spiritual beliefs and are rarely slaughtered outside a religious function.
This troubling concept makes it difficult for many to conceive of a situation in which cattle could be disposed for purely feeding purposes as in the party my sekuru is hosting in Govere.
Until recently you could get two years for ‘stealing’ an elephant against nine years for a cow.
Historically we know how the rising Shona cattle herd was one of the pillars of the Great Zimbabwe civilisation.
Good pastures around Great Zimbabwe and access to the sweet winter grass of the Lowveld helped build one of Africa’s largest cattle economies during the 11th to 16th Centuries.
Analysis of bones from Great Zimbabwe refuse mounds of the time point to indiscriminate slaughtering of young beasts.
This central economic and dietary function of cattle is also observable during the zenith of the Ndebele state. The Ndebele kept large herds.
Cattle played a key role as national resource for the nation and individual households. They helped sustain Ndebele life and determine the status of individual beings.
Cattle were slaughtered for relish.
Cattle were also highly regarded for dairy purposes. Lastly cattle herd an overt religious function in the society.
Black bulls were associated with sacredness while cattle enclosures were both temple and shrine in that society.
In the second half of the 19th Century European traders and missionaries used cattle, particularly oxen, which were prized for drawing wagons.
Lions and lung sickness were an ever present menace. Cattle also provided meat and milk to the growing European community.
Whereas David Livingstone had relied on conquering the Zambezi River in opening up Central Africa for European exploitation, Robert Moffat appreciated that in Matabeleland such progress was dependent entirely on the efficiency of his stock of oxen.
During the colonial period we see the dwindling of cattle herds at individual family level, increased economic and religious use and a growing reluctance to dispose of cattle through sales.
Africans had from pre-colonial periods been willing to sell their livestock to Europeans. This is how European traders and missionaries acquired their cattle stock.
Cattle were important during lobola transactions. Up to the 1930’s a single lobola transaction could involve 20 beasts but by the 1960’s this had halved whereas today a herd of five cattle is considered a decent danga in lobola.
Cattle were also important as savings or keepers of value. In this aspect the cattle asset was kept as a saving against a future need.
In the 1970’s those that sent children to mission boarding schools parted with a beast every school term per child.
The exchange value against a term’s fees is almost applicable today were a beast fetches US$400 againstUS $600 fees.
Africans fully recognised the role of cattle as stores of value and refused to sell their stock for purely exchange purposes.
They realised that cattle reproduced at a much higher rate than the interest offered through the banking system.
This reluctance was misunderstood by whites to mean an anthropological discomfort with disposing of cattle.
Such faulty arguments were used in legislating for compulsory sales of African cattle.
In fact it was Africans’ appreciation of the reproductive and investment value of cattle that led to their reluctance to sell under the Rhodesian cattle marketing regime.
Consequently they only offered for sale elderly cattle of little economic value and as a rule never sold breeding stock.
Prime stock was also required as draught power for sleighs and later scotch-carts and ploughs. Cattle also had a pronounced dairying role especially in the western part of this country.
A new function of cattle came with increased use of cattle manure, mupfudze, to maintain soil fertility.
What we have seen in many communal areas is increased economic use of cattle at a time of decreased herds. Nationally we have only five million cattle against over ten million people.
This places a premium on cattle such that slaughtering a beast is only understood in terms of religious imperatives.
Sabhuku and the local police will have to be informed. On my way back to Harare I will pass through Unyetu checking on my herd of nine cattle.
Hyenas and Tsikamutandas are an ever present menace to the preservation of this herd.