Liguqubele iZulu

Sethembile Msezane

15 April - 20 May 2023

I.

Black rainclouds gather.

Lithini izulu?1

Sisemnyameni.2

The young ones say, “ukugula kwabantu.”3

The elders say, “ukufa kwabantu.”4

Lithini izulu?

Across generations, abantu namuhla5, speaking of “ukugula kwabantu” and abantu abadala6, speaking of “ukufa kwabantu”,  both mark the same rupture in being-black-in-the-world7 — black social and spiritual death.

Grounding ourselves in the knowledge that abantu are simultaneously biological, social, spiritual and ecological beings who must live in balance and in rhythm with both their natural and spiritual worlds, we come to understand ukufa kwabantu as the illnesses that reflect the social and spiritual deaths which arise from both ancestral and ecological rupture.

II.

Lithini izulu?

Sethembile Msezane’s Liguqubele iZulu is a foretelling of difficult times ahead following rupture — ukufa kwabantu. Msezane confronts death — of a loved one, as well as of a former self she can no longer hold onto. The series of black and white paintings journeys through various forms of death and loss that shifted Msezane’s consciousness as she grappled with an overcast season, spanning from late 2017 to roughly 2021. In this mourning and grieving process, Liguqubele iZulu reflects Ntu knowledge systems as ecologies of being as Msezane re-members the rupture and finds relief, answers and healing through communion with the ancestral and natural worlds.

Invoking the porous boundaries between the spiritual and natural worlds, the artist expresses her turmoil, vulnerability and release in internalising the transforming sky, land and water during this period on a fragile mull canvas. Msezane invokes the portals and powers of healing work through medicinal monochromes interweaving hair tufts imbued with rainwater, snuff and air through breathwork that creates delicate patterns on the porous surface.

*

Lithini izulu?

Liguqubele iZulu begins in rupture — a singular white figure, isithunzi released from the body, ascends into the skies. This is the first and only figurative painting on display as we are confronted with our first sign of ancestral and ecological rupture. Hamba Nhliziyo Yami, Uye eZulwini.

After the rupture of death — ukuzila. Darkness enters like the black fog that haunts the paintings and demands that Msezane withdraw from society during the period of mourning and treatment. In withdrawing from society, she enters into this darkness and undergoes a form of social death. Abstract monochromatic paintings take on turbulent wave and striated cloud formations, mirroring the black and white medicines healers use to re-member the rhythm and balance between abantu and their spiritual and natural worlds. 

In this process, Msezane comes to ground herself in the knowledge that abantu are emotional, biological, spiritual and ecological beings who are not distant or separate from nature and the cosmos — we are formed of and with them. And so it is, we have the power to rupture nature and the cosmos’ rhythm and in turn, nature and the cosmos have the power to rupture our rhythm. That is why, when it is said, lafa elihle kakhulu8, it is recognized that, not only have we, abantu, suffered social and spiritual death, but the land, and indeed, the world in which we live has suffered death too.

In remembering our intertwined being with nature and the cosmos, Msezane’s paintings reflect climatic change in relation to the discord that presented itself in this turbulent season of her life. Msezane’s black and white clouds meander through these painful seasons. isiChotho, Isililo, Inkungu. Amalanga Ayashiyana disrupt the presumed cosmic progression from the darkness of night to the goodness of daylight. Instead, the climates she experiences urge a slowness and humility in a meandering, non-linear process of healing.

In charting this slow, painful and meandering journey of death, grief and rebirth, Msezane’s interweaving of cloud-like hair tufts and snuff on this porous canvas calls into being a spirit that is insistently and materially present. In so doing, she complicates and collapses the boundaries between spirit and matter, surface and material, memory and present reality, fragmentedness and repair. Interweaving the celestial and the terrestrial through these materials, Msezane reflects her grappling with complex and conflicting physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual states during painful seasons of transformation.

Msezane’s marriage of the black of death, darkness and impurity, and the white of life, light, and purity, reminds us that ours is a cosmology that seeks neither excessive purity nor excessive impurity, but balance between all states of being. From death comes life, from darkness comes light, and from impurity comes purity, so it is that Msezane’s black and white strokes invoke healers’ black medicines frothing with the goodness of white.9

Thus, in seeking wellness, reconciling with the shadows can be the very medicine that removes the evil, misfortune and darkness which enshroud abantu, expelling what is bad from the body and strengthening against future attacks. And yet, ridding the body and the person of what is bad and undesirable does not mean umuntu is now in good health and once again in balance with their worlds, but it does create an environment for light to re-enter and recreate balance and wellness within these worlds. 10

Xola Nhliziyo. 

It is through acceptance of loss, acknowledgement of anger and acquiescence to vulnerability, that similar cycles in nature reveal themselves to us. In this slow and painful journey toward humility, healing and rebalance, we will then come to understand that both the light and dark clouds are necessary for the cleansing rainstorms.

III.

Lithini izulu?

Ultimately, the message Msezane finds in sky-, water- and landscapes is the message of surrender. In surrendering, she comes to understand that Ubuntu is an ecology of being that demands that abantu live in rhythm with their natural and spiritual worlds. If we are out of rhythm with nature and the cosmos, we are out of rhythm with ourselves as people. So it is that when we rupture this rhythm, we face social and spiritual death — ukufa kwabantu.

Khumbula:11

To repair death’s rupture, Msezane re-members our ancestors' humility: we must not attempt to conquer nature, the cosmos and time through permanence. We must let go and live in rhythm with their cycles of life, death and rebirth. In Msezane’s words, “Sometimes, I reflect: this is what I could have done when it started raining.”

By Panashe Chigumadzi

Footnotes.

1. What is the sky saying?

2.  We are in the dark. We are in difficult times. 

3. Literal translation: “the illness of [black] people”. Sinethemba Makhanya writes “I use ‘ukugula’ and Ngubane uses ‘ukufa’. This speaks to the temporality of language and how it changes through the generations. In my generation (and locality) “ukufa” means death although in older forms of isiZulu it can mean disease; the word “isifo” (derived from ukufa) can either mean there is an illness or a death. I am more comfortable with using the term “ukugula” to mean illness or disease as for me “ukufa” feels more fatalistic.”  Makanya, Sinethemba. Ukugula Kwabantu: the construction of mental health by traditional healers in a peri-urban area. A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy to the Faculty of Humanities, School of Human and Community Development, University of the Witwatersrand, 2021 p.17

4.  Literal translation: “the death of [black] people”.  In her seminal text, Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine (1977) Harriet Ngubane writes, “ukufa kwaBantu’ is considered a class of disease where “the philosophy of causality is based on African culture, this means not that the diseases, or rather symptoms, are seen as associated with African people’s only, but that their interpretation is bound up with African ways of viewing health and disease” (p. 24). In this sense Bantu refers to “peoples native to Africa” (p. 24) only. Ngubane, Harriet. 1977. Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine : an Ethnography of Health and Disease in Nyuswa-Zulu Thought and Practice. London ; New York: Academic Press. p.23-24

5.  [Black] people today.

6. [Black] people of the past. 

7.  Manganyi, N. C. 1973. Being-Black-in-the-World. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.

 8. The world is dead.

 9. See “Colour Symbolism in Medicine” in Ngubane, Harriet. 1977. Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine : an Ethnography of Health and Disease in Nyuswa-Zulu Thought and Practice. London ; New York: Academic Press

10. See “Colour Symbolism in Medicine”

11. Remember.