PDF Excerpt About The Symbolism Of Pythons And Crocodiles In Venda (South African) Culture

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post provides an excerpt from a 2008 pdf by Kent D. Fowler, University of Manitoba entitled "Social Memory and the Antiquity of Python and Crocodile Symbolism in Southern Africa". This excerpt is quoted "as is" with minor spelling errors and ellipsis given within particular sentences.

The content of this post is presented for educational and cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Kent D. Fowler and others for their writing and research on this subject. 
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PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S NOTE
This pdf file very briefly refers to the Venda Domba dance which is also called "the python dance". That portion is re-quoted in the comment section for this post because I'm particularly interested in how that information helps explain the way that dance is traditionally performed and also how this information helps explain some of the reasons why this dance was and is performed. 

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/12/traditional-performance-and.html for a pancocojams post entitled "Contemporary Changes In Where and How The Venda (South African) Domba Dance (also known as the Python Dance) Is Performed".

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EXCERPT FROM PDF ENTITLED "SOCIAL MEMORY AND THE ANTIQUITY OF PYTHON AND CROCODILE SYMBOLISM IN SOUTHER AFRICA

[from this pdf file accessed by the pancocojams editor on December 16, 2020:

Animals and People

Archaeozoological Papers in Honour of Ina Plug

Edited by Shaw Badenhorst, Peter Mitchell, Jonathan C. Driver

BAR International Series 1849

2008

Kent D. Fowler, University of Manitoba- "Social Memory and the Antiquity of Python and Crocodile Symbolism in Southern Africa":

[20 pages]

"Abstract

[page 169]

To explain the minimal importance of aquatic animals in the diet of Iron Age farmers in southern Africa, Ina Plug and her colleagues proposed that dietary preferences and food avoidances played a role
in the subsistence pattern. The symbolic signifcance of animals is one major factor infuencing food avoidance practices, which can result in the absence or low abundance of animal remains in faunal assemblages. This contribution examines symbolic reasons for the rare and infrequent remains of  snakes and crocodiles at Early Iron Age sites (c. AD 200–1000).  Snakes and crocodiles figured prominently in interpretations of Zimbabwe Culture sites (13–19 centuries AD) based upon analogous symbols relating snakes and crocodiles to seniority, gender and security in Venda and Shona cultures. In this paper, similar themes in the Zulu ethnographic literature are examined that suggest a conceptual reservoir shared by a range of unrelated southern Bantu speaking peoples.

 […]

[page 171]

Snakes and crocodiles have long been important animals in the mythology and cosmology of Khoisan peoples (Morris 2002). In three well understood Bantu speaking cultures in southern Africa—the Venda, Shona and Zulu—snakes and crocodiles are also considered important and powerful creatures, and these beliefs are anchored in mythical explanations of ancestors, leadership, rainmaking, healing
and witchcraft.

The Venda and Shona metaphorically link snakes with sacred leadership because it is held that the frst Shona leader and rainmaker used a sacred pool to pass from the spirit world into this world. Pools and pythons are considered sources of life and fertility because life for the Venda and Shona “is created or sustained by a snake in a mother’s womb” (Huffman 1996:89). For this reason, crocodiles, pythons and pools are the main elements of Shona and Venda iconography and are expressed alone or in combination on many items of material culture, including drums, divining dice, doors and soapstone carvings. The Shona, for instance, use complex designs, such as chevrons, lines or cross-hatched motifs, on these media to reference croco-

[page 172]

diles. The designs indicate which quality of crocodiles is being emphasised and thus a chevron becomes a metaphor for male power, a cross-hatched motif for female power, and a line indicates a crocodile in its pool and is a metaphor for ritual seclusion.

Huffman (1996) argued that this aquatic symbolism characterises the design of stone walls at settlements throughout the large Zimbabwe Culture zone between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries AD because many of the complex designs built into the stone walls parallel those of later Shona and Venda art. Huffman argued that the designs were variously associated with male and female status, fertility and security through the medium of monumental stone walling. Huffman’s interpretations have been roundly criticised for relying too heavily upon Venda and Shona ethnography to interpret Great Zimbabwe (e.g., Beach et al. 1997; Beach 1998). Yet, it is in the realm of python and crocodile symbolism that we fnd parallels with the Zulu, the largest Nguni-speaking group in southern Africa.

The same association of crocodiles with rulers made by the Shona and Venda is not found in Sotho-Tswana and Nguni cultures (Huffman 1996:29). Nevertheless, there are surprising similarities in Venda, Shona and Zulu cosmology concerning pools and crocodiles. Zulus also consider pools as places where people populated the world (Berglund 1976:144). Home to both pythons and crocodiles, pools are one of the locations where diviners may enter the earth to commune with the ancestors when being initiated (Berglund 1976:155). Zulus also believe that crocodiles are prohibited as food and can only be handled by special people.

Zulu ethnography is replete with references to prohibitions against eating, or even handling, crocodile remains. There is a total prohibition against touching crocodile fesh (Krige 1965:Appendix V) and this is supported by procreation taboos, as men will abstain from sexual intercourse if they have killed a crocodile (Raum 1973:248). For the general population, it is also considered bad luck to possess parts of a crocodile (Raum 1973:466) because they are considered a “royal animal” (Raum 1973:436). However, unlike the Venda and Shona, crocodiles are not linked expressly with leaders.

The different associations between leadership and crocodiles are further paralleled in the ways crocodile by-products are used in Zulu, Venda and Shona societies. Amongst Zulus, only healers would handle crocodile fesh. They also ornamented their dress with the pebbles that crocodiles swallow to swim more effectively, or they consumed the pebbles during certain curing rituals (Raum 1973:436).

Non-healers who handled crocodile fesh did so with malicious intent. Descriptions of the use of crocodile parts are vague. Shooter (1857:143) reported that crocodile liver was used by “evil-doers” but was no more specifc than this.

However, similar accounts linking crocodiles to witchcraft are documented in Zambia. So-called “men-crocodiles” refer to witches that are believed to turn into or employ crocodiles either to kill their enemies, or to act as agents to kill the enemies of others (e.g., Johnston 1908:494–495; Bentley 1911:154; Gouldsbury and Sheane 1911:201; Campbell 1925:288). A similar metaphorical transformation is performed by Venda and Shona chiefs during their installation ceremony. Both Venda (Huffman 1996:29) and Shona (Bullock 1927:289) chiefs would eat food cooked with pebbles from a crocodile’s stomach. However, the intention is not malicious, but to take on powerful attributes of crocodiles.

Pythons, on the other hand, are directly associated with leadership in Shona, Venda and Zulu cultures. In Venda court art, python and crocodile imagery are paired, with crocodile images in the centre surrounded by those of pythons (Huffman 1996:89). In the Venda “python dance”, the same structure is found. Initiates dance in an undulating line emulating a python encircling a pool represented by the central court. In this context, the python is the “snake of the water”, a metaphor for female fertility. Pythons are also paired with the mountain imagery of chiefs and referred to as “snake of the mountain”. On some hilltops, it is believed that pythons guard the entrance of caves that contain pools that are portals to the world of ancestors (Huffman 1996:91). When linked to chieftainship and hilltops, pythons are the “snake of the mountain” and invoke linked metaphors for rainmaking, young and junior men, and male virility.

Whilst we do not see these same metaphors in Zulu culture, pythons are also linked to leadership, as well as healing, witchcraft and the ancestors (Raum 1973:235). Python fat was used in medicines to protect against witchcraft (Krige 1965:169) or lightning (Krige 1965:312; Raum 1973:235), and was used to fortify new Zulu leaders during seclusion as part of their installation ceremony (Krige 1965:255, n. 2). The most powerful symbol of Zulu leadership—the ink’atha, or sacred coil, symbolising unity—is “covered with the skin of a boa constrictor or a python […] because of its powerful sticking power; it will help to bind the nation in loyalty to the king” (Krige 1965:244). These 
metaphorical links between leaders and pythons extend to other semi-aquatic animals and the dress of leaders. In addition to wearing leopard skins, the Zulu élite also wore otter skin headbands and belts (Raum 1973:436). Commoners were killed if they wore these skins. However, despite their non-elite standing, diviners also wore otter skins to ward off lightning, would wind snake skin around their

 [page 173]

waist, or wore a train of python skin during rainmaking ceremonies (Raum 1973:436). Therefore, unlike the Shona and Venda, Zulu diviners, herbalists and rainmakers claim the same connections to all the “royal” Zulu animals (Raum 1973:436).

Clearly, there are major differences amongst Shona, Venda and Zulu cosmology and leadership pertaining to pythons, crocodiles and other semi-aquatic animals. They do, however, share a common conception that individuals of special social standing—leaders, healers, diviners and rainmakers—would not have observed avoidances held by others in society, and that in special circumstances sacred
animals and their by-products were used in ritual capacities. Handling and using python and crocodile remains served to reify this special standing. Prohibitions governing the consumption and use of aquatic animals would have simultaneously unifed the group observing the specifc avoidance practices (a syncretic function) while differentiating the individual or group of individuals from others in the society (a diacritic function). As Raum (1973:423) has observed, such practices of diversity-in-union may achieve “a higher degree of social solidarity and harmony”.

The shared symbolic elements, practices and functions of python and crocodile parts and imagery in these cultures are interesting because Shona and Venda people otherwise have very few cultural or linguistic connections to the Nguni. Several Nguni migrations north into Sotho-Tswana, Shona and Venda territory occurred in the past, with the earliest one in the mid-ffteenth century (Huffman 2004).

Considering that the python and crocodile imagery of the Zimbabwe Culture appears as early as the thirteenth century, it is very unlikely that concepts and metaphors were adopted from Nguni groups. Likewise, there is no substantial evidence that the infuence of Zimbabwe Culture extended south into Nguni territory. This makes it unlikely that conceptions of pythons and crocodiles were adopted by the Nguni from further north early in the second millennium AD. We must therefore consider that the concepts and metaphors of python and crocodile symbolism have deeper antiquity within a common substrate of EIA cultures of the frst millennium AD.”…  

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