Ndebele architecture and settlement patterns

Settlement patterns

The similarities existing between the domestic architecture of the Ndebele and that of the Pedi was also extended to their settlement forms. Historically the larger Ndebele settlement was built in the shape of an open fan, with a large circular space containing the cattle byre and the gathering place for the men being located at its center. The dwelling of the first wife of the senior man was located at the head of the settlement, on axis with the main entry to the central space. Other wives of the senior man were then allocated homes on either side of the first wife, on a left-and-right basis in alternating order of status. The homes of his brothers, or other members of his retinue, were located alternatively to the left and right of his abode, in descending order of status. Where such men also had polygamous families, their own homes were also structured according to an internal left-and-right ordering. Married male children were usually allocated dwellings behind that of their mother, and they too followed a left-and-right ordering. However, by the third generation the demand for space rendered all such pretense for hierarchy nonsensical, and the settlement was either reformed, or it divided into two separate homesteads.

By the 1940s most Ndebele settlements had changed to a linear pattern. The homes of individual family members were still laid out according to their status in a left-and-right hierarchy, but the homestead now followed the land's lines of contour, an arrangement which made better use of their farming resources. The cattle byre, although still central, was now in a square shape, and was located opposite the home of the senior member of the family. This was the pattern followed by the Msiza at their home at Hartbeesfontein, which they then reproduced when they were relocated to KwaMsiza in 1953.

In time, however, the village began to develop along new and innovative lines, quite different from those followed by the Ndebele previously. The original settlement at KwaMsiza was laid out in a shallow V-shape, with the Msiza family setting out their homes along one arm, while the Bhuda and Skosana took up residence along the opposite arm. The settlement was north facing and located out roughly parallel to the main road some 200m to their north. Their agricultural lands were situated behind their homes, downhill and towards the river. Consequently, when their male children began to marry, they could not be settled on land behind their mothers, as this was too valuable a resource to be used as residential space, but rather were given land north of the original settlement, opposite their parental homes. The land between the two sides was left empty, to be used in common. As a result, the two parts of the settlement come together to enclose a village common, giving rise to a space unique in Ndebele architecture.

Although the developments recorded in Ndebele architecture over the past century are in themselves exciting, they also need to be read in the wider context of socio-economic and political changes in the southern African region. They took place at a time when this group saw the loss of its military and political power; the dispossession and occupation of their lands; the placing of whole families into indentured employment on white-owned farms; and the channeling of their men-folk in to a migrant labour system which separated them from their families for years at a time. The latter began to establish some of the preconditions for the undermining of Ndebele patrifocal patterns and their replacement with some elements of matrifocality. Ndebele women thus responded to these forces threatening the survival of their families and of their larger Ndebele polity. They established firm controls over local resources and family structures, and reinforced the identity of their group by devision and promulgating a language of decoration which has since become identified as being uniquely Ndebele.

Their architecture therefore stands as a denial of white racist and colonial preconceptions which saw Ndebele society as being governed by "indolent, lustful and sexist polygamous males" to be broken up and channeled into a labour market for their purported "common good"; it stands as a tribute to the ability of Ndebele men and women to come together and combat the combined threats of colonialism, capitalism and apartheid; and it stands as a symbol of their spirit and their political power, their ability to take the initiative and, in a pacifist manner, reconstitute Ndebele group identify.

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