Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
decision to do something or take a certain course. Indeed, in retrospect it may appear that way,
however, the course of a society is not determined by pre-planned “group think” but rather by
life's imperatives, habitat pressure, environmental strains, and ease of survival (energy
conservation). Thus, one aspect of increasing herding and pastoralism had to be related to
human conservation of energy or any other term of choice one may wish to label it, including
Joe six-pack being lazy; the ultimate conservation of energy, after all, is on a couch in front of
the seductive TV watching the basketball “hunt” or football territorial battle drinking beer.
Once domesticated livestock, namely bovine cattle, sheep and goats became available,
middle aged and older hunting men could conserve energy to a greater extent. They would
socialize around or under the shade of a tree and drink “utshwala”, a native beer made from
millet, sorghum or corn maize, often mixed with “amasi”, and prepared by their women folk.
The children (abelusi) would herd the cattle and bring them back to the cattle kraal or isibaya
at night for protection and milking after the calves had fed. For the Zulus the kraal (a group of
clan huts, called kaya or home) consisted of a central isibaya surrounded by huts. For the
Xhosa and the Swazis, the cattle isibaya, often with a fowl run, was situated more on the
periphery of the huts. Chickens and goats were mainly kept for a protein source since cattle
were rarely killed except of rare special occasions and then by the Chief. This principle of a
kraal with the chief surrounded by his wife or wives and close family and advisors is still
used by Presidents Mandela and Zuma. In the case of Mandela he was a large compound
before one enters Chilembene, near the Limpopo River, Chokwe area in Gaza, Mozambique
that I saw, surrounded by a high wall, and that according to the locals he and Graca Machel
would fly into by helicopter (it is visible with Google Earth, including the Machel compound
opposite). At the center of the traffic circle is the statue of President Samora Machel. In the
case of Zuma, his compound at Nkandla is also surrounded by a high wall with multiple
houses, supposedly financed by $7 million from supporters of various shades of business
veracity and by millions from the government. The Masai took milking one step further by
mixing milk with blood from their cattle by extracting a limited amount from a cow or oxen's
jugular vein in the neck. Thus, men may have driven the process in a male dominated society
since it required less effort on their part. They could sit around on pieces of leather or leather
“bearshus” - leather pant like thongs - and chat about the cattle, women, brag about past
exploits in fights or maybe killing cattle raiding lion in the case of Masai “moran”, and drink
beer, very similarly to our modern Joe six pack. However, this was also the beginning of more
organized structure of society as plans were made for managing the cattle, marriage, deals, and
sowing. While these meetings were held under a shaded tree, and still are in Africa, the
modern versions are those committee meetings we hold in wood paneled boardrooms or
conference centers, often lined by African mahogany wood panels. And just as under the
shaded African tree, there is a tendency for an elite hierarchy to plan and decide for the rest of
the committee/clan, often while conserving energy in a leather bound chair. African tradition,
however, holds strongly at these “committee” (“umhlanganiso”, if more serious, indaba or
Legothla, pronounced “le GOAT la,” a Xhosa term) meetings that everybody is given an
opportunity to speak (“ithuba”). If an informational meeting is called by the chief it is called an
“imbizo”, the stem word meaning calling. Nelson Mandela maintained this approach in his
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