with Credo Mutwa Foundation
For her part, co-panellist Rutendo Ngara viewed zoonotic transmission as a gauge that we humans had “lost our ability to know how to be in a right relationship with the natural world”.
As the chair of the Credo Mutwa Foundation, Ngara’s words held prophetic weight. Baba Credo Vusamazulu Mutwa, wrote Bloom last month, was “the great sanusi of South Africa and the author of many classics of indigenous literature”. He died, aged 98, the day before South Africa went into lockdown.
“We have lost the ability to know how to interact with the elephants or with the lion or with the python or with the eagle, or with the whale, or with the tiny bird, or the worm, or the bee, or the butterfly — or the pangolin, in the case of Covid-19,” said Ngara.
She described a recent encounter with an indigenous elder she had met during her Zimbabwe travels — and he had “an interesting answer” about the cause of the global slowdown. The elephants no longer passed by and gave us messages, said Ngara. And the elders were no longer allowed to go to the sacred sites to do ceremonies.
“In our Western paradigm, we would not see the link … this idea that causality from elephants passing by, and the elders not being able to do ceremonies at sacred sites, would lead to shutdown and mayhem,” said Ngara. Also a “high initiate” indigenous healer, as Bloom described her, Ngara straddled worlds through her degrees in electrical engineering and biomedical engineering, and through her studies towards a doctorate in philosophy of education.
Before the invention of the mechanical clock in the 13th century, humans were “midwives to nature”, she said — then time became a thing to be controlled, a rulable thing to waste or to rush.
“We are not a part of nature, we are apart from nature,” she observed, urging a return to the “sacred sites of time immemorial” revered by indigenous elders — to accord nature the mystery and awe once fostered by places such as the Pyramids of Giza, or the Iron Age city of Great Zimbabwe.
“These sacred sites play such an incredible role in terms of creating a nexus of protection for the planet,” she said. “Covid-19 and the removal of humans from the destruction they have been visiting upon the planet have given these sacred sites potential to start restoring.” To “do the work they have been doing”, for millennia.
Responding to questions from participants on how humanity might emerge from this unprecedented crisis with a renewed worldview and identity, Ngara quoted the Burkina Faso writer, Malidoma Somé, who spoke in the metaphor of indigenous wisdom.
“As with any initiation, the fear of the unknown is more deadly than what is known. At times like these, we must invoke our medicines, our collective gifts and imaginations to stop the spread of fear and insecurity,” she read. Humanity had “read the crisis plaguing the world from the perspective of our human genius, and its capacity to respond to our turmoil wisely”.
Ngara depicted something of an “unshopping” list for the spirit: “Before we think of any global movement, the movement we should be thinking about is the movement within …We have been pushed to go right down to basics — the things you cannot go shopping for.”
The indigenous concept of ubuntu, Ngara added, and its web of interconnectedness among humans, extended into the interconnectedness of all of nature.
Well known as a campaigner for lion welfare, especially those animals kept in the controversial canned-hunting industry or farmed for their bones, Tucker expressed frustration that the South African government “seemed okay with the fact that this [industry] is legally protected. And I have to say that our government seems hellbent on that programme, which has recently converted 32 species, including lions and cheetah, into farm animals using the terminology of ‘faunal-biological resources’. You know, it’s a completely different consciousness from the one that Rutendo is describing which holds the indigenous consciousness of service to our planet.”
Tucker was referring to the Animal Improvement Act, which renders wildlife such as lion, cheetah, rhino and giraffe as farm animals subject to manipulation and consumption. A North Gauteng High Court judgment in August 2019 deemed canned lion hunting to be “abhorrent and repulsive”.
Suggesting that political authorities were not sufficiently equipped to act as informed stewards of planetary heritage, she said: “We actually have to educate our so-called authorities, their way of dealing with our inheritance is unacceptable.”
The “most scientifically responsible research” had traced the pandemic to “these appalling markets, which bring living wildlife into desperately inhumane conditions and slaughter them. There is no logical rationale to do so.”
Here Tucker, the glamorous beauty turned indigenous healer, famously outspoken, had the final say: “I remind us all that there is no logic unless it’s eco-logical. After all, this is our planet.” DM
Daily Maverick’s Earth Day webinar, “Nature and Societal Reset in the Age of Covid-19”, was supported by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. Watch the full webinar on YouTube. Visit Daily Maverick’s webinar page to register for upcoming events.
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