The beautiful watercolour illustrations of George French Angas, in 1849 were the first depicting Nguni women working with clay, coiling pots that were used for cooking, storing water or brewing beer in Southern Africa.
Beer pots, for dispensing beer, called (ukhamba) are spherical containers, used communally, passed from one person to another, each drinking their fill, as a form on bonding, respect and enjoyment. Sorghum beer known as utshwala or umqombothi, is served at ceremonial occasions including, births, coming of age, lobola negotiations and weddings.
Beer is also an integral part of rituals and funerals, poured on the ground as a libation to the ancestors and for communication with the spirit world. In short, beer signifies complex cultural meanings in the life of Nguni people.
Today, terracotta containers are still made by potters in the rural areas, primarily for brewing and dispensing hooch. Potters construct vessels using the coil technique, sometimes burnishing them at the leather hard stage. The dense black colour is achieved from a reduction atmosphere when pots are twice fired with organic matter. At between 600-800 degrees C, vessels have a low fired porous body perfect for keeping beer cool.
Nguni beer pots have a concise clarity of form and they are characterised by flat bottoms, thin walls and cut off rims. Perusing early photography, it is evident that calabashes used for containment featured in domestic scenes and I speculate that these may have influenced the form, smooth compact surfaces and rims given to latter clay vessels. The ceramic pots shape varies across the country, from spherical to bag-shaped depending on the geographical region. For me, the most beautiful examples come from the Pongola area, K.Z.N where the focus is on the taut interior space with minimal external embellishment.
Decoration is either an additive or an incised process. Sometimes both, being influenced by regional stylistic preference and fashion. The designs are inspired by fauna and flora, beadwork patterns and traditional amasumpa motifs, (raised nodules that occur as decor on wood carving such as headrests and milk pails in Zululand and Swaziland) and are often placed where the pot was held, to prevent slippage when the vessel was passed from one person to another.
But beer pots izikhamba (pl) are not only used for dispensing beer. Due to economic expediency, potters also sell their wares at curio outlets catering to tourists. In Mpumalanga particularly, this is along the arteries leading to the Kruger National park. From here, they are bought by traditional healers who will change the beer pots function and context by often using them as ritual vessels serving sacred functions.
The irony of this is that ritual sculpture in Africa is gradually secularized through the process of trade, from its original site and purpose. Through the hands of various dealers a piece undergoes face lifts along the way, being shone to add patina, repainted, placed on a mount, and proffered with credentials by dealers until finally sold as an artwork. But in this case, functional ware used as an income generating tool in the tourist industry, finds its way back home to ritual purpose.
Today in Mpumalanga, healers continue to use terracotta izikhamba, as both the material (clay) and the rounded form carry symbolic associations with historical practices, therefore locating the pot as an artefact within a living or continuing tradition and reaffirming the healer’s occupation as ordained keepers of this practice. These vessels are also used for other reasons: Jolles. F. 2005. In quoting Berglund. 1976, explains the symbolic reasoning for the Nguni ukhamba being black in colour. “ …the blackening of beer vessels constitutes an invitation to the ancestral spirits to be present at the ceremonies and sip beer in the comfort of darkness”. It is therefore logical that healers, working with ancestral spirits would regard these particular vessels as relevant to their occupation and seek to incorporate them into daily practice. Other functions of clay pots by healers would include: display, ritual purpose and medicinal containment. For visual display, pots sometimes form part of the massed and accumulated paraphernalia, for creating and designating the altar as a nexus point of spiritual connection in the ndumba (spirit hut).
During ancestor rites beer is poured as a libation from these pots, therefore by association, the inclusion of these vessels in this space, also endorses this location as one of ancestral habitation.
In previous generations, healers would offer pot making as a necessary skill to their students. Besides the ukhamba, they also use larger vessels more generally known by their shape as water or cooking pots for display. In some instances, a terracotta pot filled with various organic material (umuthi) may act as a reliquary, or amongst older practitioners, as a stand-alone altar, indicative of the changing roles that vessels fill in healing practice. However at their most basic, terracotta vessels are also simply storage containers for a large variety of powdered medicine.
Pots are sometimes plain, undecorated and nondescript. In traditional healing terms, the banality of a particular item in no way detracts from its significance. In fact, some of the most ritually charged artefacts in traditional healing practice are what might be considered visually insignificant, their importance gauged by purpose and place.
In other instances, healers may redecorate vessels with dots, dashes or chevrons, relevant mark making that forms part of training, imbuing the vessel with entoptic designs, or those seen during the initial phase of trance, ( also to be seen in some bushman painting).
Today, often painted in red, black/blue and white, the healing fraternities’ symbolic colours, both the type of uniform marks and the colour, differentiate these pots placing them firmly within the context of ritual practice. Painting is frequently accomplished with a slap of enamel and this is an accessible way of reinterpreting or reinventing the significance of culture, within the framework of modernity.
Bibliography:
Angas. G. F. 1849, The Kaffirs illustrated. Barclay. G. for Hogarth. J.
Jolles. F. 2005. The origins of the twentieth century Zulu beer vessel styles. South African Humanities, vol: 17. Pg: 101-151. Pietermaritzberg. Kwazulu-Natal
Berglund. A. 1976. Zulu thought patterns and symbolism. N.Y. Holmes and Meier.
Simmons. F. 2010. Ch.6. Sacred spaces and shrines. In: Ukuthwasa style: meaning, significance and change.. Unpublished document. University of Johannesburg
