The Mafwe community has established that educational activities which they cherished for centuries have been minimised or completely abolished through Western education. Cultural educational activities and games like kanamundame, mulabalaba, mayumbo and kudoda which served similar purposes to the Western system of chess and draught are completely forgotten. The majority of elders who went through these games and activities concur that they acquired new knowledge through them.
On the other hand, dances like chiyaya chisongo, likulunga, tuwolowolo, muuba sometimes called Njangula, and tuňombyo, have become unpopular, which means the Western education influence has taken a toll.
This can be attributed to the failure of the Western education system to encourage these dances as they were perceived to be barbaric and tilted towards superstition, which in turn was not on a footing with the Western religion and beliefs.
On the contrary, the old people bemoan the abolition of these dances, as the result has been people lazing idly and failing to engage in exercises which were vital for their healthy bodies. The Mafwe elders realised that traditional dances such as chisongo, chiyaya, muuba, to mention a few, which lessened and eliminated diseases such as high blood pressure have waned and hence the major cause of death.
Whereas Western morals are in a state of decay the kashwi education system among the Mafwe improved and cultivated moral development extensively. Mushapo discouraged careless sexual indulgence and enhanced abstinence which in the final analysis prevented sexually transmitted diseases and assisted women during the breast-feeding period. This is in line with what Broodryk (2006) advocates when he says that in South Africa and other African countries, people’s lives were shaped by moral lessons, customs, rituals and taboos.
Men followed the path laid out for them by their fathers and women led lives as their mothers before them. Paradoxically, whereas Whites thought that the Mafwe had no activities which could be termed ‘educational,’ kanamundame and mulabalaba enhanced reasoning, logic mathematical calculations and the skills of innumeracy among the youth.
This could be related to counting livestocklike ngoshile (one), kangala (two), kangala (three), mbuntamo (four), mbilimbwishwa (five), miyosho (six), chokange (seven), ngolilo (eight), mindule (nine) and kumi (ten). This counting system bordered on a holistic approach which saw objects as a whole.
This means objects were counted in large numbers per group. Mayumbo on the other hand honed the intelligence of the youth while kudoda game enhanced dexterity, versatility, concentration and skillfulness among the youth. These skills helped the youth in their practical activities, building houses, learning complicated jobs and equally enhanced good memory capacity. The Mafwe can boast of a rich lunar calendar of 13 months, more than that of the Western system.
They could tell the differences and changes in seasons of the years as demonstrated in the names of their months: Kuzyangure meaning harvesting time, (April). This is so because harvesting in the Mafwe community is done in April. Kamwiana means little warmth, August, Ndimbila means very hot, (September), Nkumbulisa balimi means reminding farmers that it will rain, hence time for ploughing (October). As Mainga (1973) noted among the Malozi, seasons determine the agricultural activities of the people, so is it among the Mafwe.
Above that the Mafwe have an idiomatic expression, ‘mazyuba ka a li kambami’, meaning days cannot be the same, no matter what happens. In other ways, every day has its own event or occurrence, even seasons rotate according to different days. It further amplifies the issue of each day is unique and cannot be likened to another day with the certainty of similarity.
So, it is in line with the Holy Book in Ecclesiastes 3 which maintains that there is time for everything. Myths of sidimwe and mwendanjangula died natural deaths like the deaths of dinosaurs.
No one can narrate these fables to the young ones nowadays as chiningamo period is defunct because this useful and resourceful period has been swallowed by the introduction of night-long discos which have plagued even the rural areas. One can only conclude that many traditional practices might have met a similar fate like the dinosaurs in this case through Western education and indoctrination. Mafwe had a saying, ‘mwana wo ngwali ndu ngwali, mwana wo nkanga ndu nkanga, mwana wo ndavu ndundavuana,’ literally translated as ‘a partridge will always produce a partridge chick, and a guinea fowl will always produce a guinea fowl chick and a lion will always produce a cub and not vice versa’.
The Mafwe regards the partridge as one of the birds which are too difficult to tame and a guinea fowl as another bird which cannot change its colour of black and white spots and a lion as very aggressive. In this regard they simply mean, a child will naturally follow what he is taught by his elders and never change. This is equivalent to the biblical expression in Jeremiah 13:23. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?” which means people cannot change their basic nature adopted from childhood through education.
Consequently, a Mafwe child is expected to adhere to the teachings and principles of his elders and will refuse to bow down under any circumstances to any foreign pressure. Like other African communities, the Mafwe evolved similar systems of education which assisted them in the education of their children. The bottom line is that the disappearing teaching of these traditional dances honed the skills of the young Lilemba.