When seasons change
The extraordinary female artists of Zimbabwe's rural Matobo Hills
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Dear NE-One
Mark and I have been back in South Africa for two months now – and one of the joys of being in one place for such a long time has been watching the seasons change the life that surrounds us. Trees that just last week were skinny skeletons of barren branches are now erupting with new leaves and dull, fraying bushes are transforming into their voluptuous summer selves. Birds are returning from their sojourns to the northern summer and, any day now, we should hear the Piet-My-Vrou, the red-chested cuckoo, whose whistle-call – piet-my-vrou, piet-my-vrou – signals the beginning of the rains.
Always, at this time of year, my mind returns to the rural Matobo Hills of Zimbabwe, where in a few weeks ihundundu, those awkward-looking birds with long eyelashes, will also begin to call. And while the rains will be so welcome, they will also wash away the exquisite art created so carefully by the women who live among those hills.
Theirs is a story I wrote a few years back for High Life, the inflight magazine for British Airways – and I’ve longed to return ever since…
A note on photos: these images were taken while the houses were still being decorated. Below the paywall are some exquisite images shot this year, as well as contact details for someone who can arrange a tour of the painted houses in the Matobo district.
When seasons change
Sand puffs around hooves as cows saunter between the rocky domes of the Matobo Hills. It’s late in the dry season – the rains are just a few weeks away – and the African landscape is all shades of dust, earth and acacia trees. The heat is building; with it comes the promise of rain but while it will replenish the soils and bring new life to the area, the rains will also destroy the visual expressions of hopes and dreams and fears created by women who have lived among these hills all their lives.
The Matobo area south of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, might be revered for having the richest collection of rock art in the world, but through the dry season each year there’s a different artform that dominates the landscape: painted houses. At homesteads throughout the rocky hills, thatched huts boast walls decorated with tendrils of flowers; with animals; patterns; organic shapes and earthy lines painted by hand. It’s an art-form handed down from mother to daughter, a source of immense pride for the Matabele women of this region.
“Come in! Come in!” Gogo (‘grandmother’) Margaret calls across her just-swept yard. She stands in her kitchen doorway and on either side of her, beneath the eaves of a thatched roof, deep ochre walls have been decorated with dots of white ash and bold flowers. The patterns are repeated on her sleeping hut. “I have always painted my house,” says Gogo Margaret. “Every year, after the rains, I paint my house. Every year, I do something different.”
It’s part of the cycle of life here: the rhythm of Africa conducted by seasons. The rains wash away the art painted on clay walls and once the rain has ceased and harvesting is complete, women have time to decorate their homes, just as they have done for generations.
“In our society when it comes to division of labour, what pertains to the soil is the domain of women, and anything to do with wood is the domain of men,” explains cultural historian Pathisa Nyathi. “Men will build the framework of a house, and the women will then plaster it with clay and thatch the roof. Because the walls have a mud or clay surface, only the women will decorate the walls.”
The Matabele are relatives of the Ndebele people, whose bright, geometric patterned houses in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province have become icons of that country’s art and style. But although they share the same roots, when it comes to painting homes their art these days couldn’t be more different. While the Ndebele houses are a beautiful riot of colour and angles created with store-bought paint, the Matabele homes are softer and more organic, painted only with natural products.
White paint is made when ash from the leadwood tree is mixed with water. Black comes from burnt maize stalks mixed with maize meal and water. Almost-black paint is made with soil dug from under decaying leaves; grey comes from sand taken from ant heaps. Sand that is collected from hilltops, riverbeds, fields and beneath boulders provides different shades of yellow, brown and ochre – and women then create their own colours by mixing the sand, soil and ash. Some even call on distant relatives to send a bag of sand – a shade not found locally – via bus to the Matobo district.
Once they’ve prepared the walls by applying a base coat over last season’s work, the women could spend up to a week drawing on their new designs. Some draw freehand while others create guidelines and stencils using plates or pieces of wool stretched between two points. When all the preparation is complete, the women apply paint with the palms of their hands, with their fingers or with toothbrushes, depending on the size of the area and the pattern they’re creating.
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“In earlier times the chevron design – which represents fertility – would have been very prominent on the houses,” says Nyathi, who has a special interest in the interpretation of African symbols. “These patterns carried messages for the entire society, or stories about people’s world view, but now these messages have been lost. The patterns, however, remain.”
“Our art used to be largely geometric but now flowers and animals mark a new development in house painting, and that’s okay because an art form is never stagnant. It evolves; it recreates itself over time – that’s how it ensures its continued life.”
As with their southern relatives, the Matabele’s tradition of painting houses was on the verge of dying out – but in 2014 a competition called My Beautiful Home was initiated to encourage women to get back to painting their homes. Charmed by the prospect of winning wheelbarrows, water tanks, metal pots and other useful household items, women in the rural Matobo area are now reigniting their creativity.
“The competition has increased the care and the amount of time women devote to painting their homes,” says Veronique Attala, one of the founders of My Beautiful Home. “It’s given them more reason to continue with their art and also – this is extremely important – it’s given them recognition from all the family, especially their husbands.”
The array of designs painted onto the houses is vast. Many women paint borders around the their houses; some paint just one shape on a wall while others cover the entire surface of the building. Thulisa Ndlovu, who won the competition in 2016, turned her entire homestead into a bold puzzle of ochre, black, yellow and white jigsaw pieces.
“The women express their emotions through their art,” says Attala. “One dry season Uzile painted a lion because her father had been eaten by one. Patience feared an eagle, so she painted one, while Zodwa loved flowers. Duduzile and Thulisa were masters in geometric designs. One year Queenie painted the granite elephant-back boulders that are so typical in the Matobos, and the following year she painted the most exquisite flowers.”
From year to year the designs might change totally, or not at all. There are no rules, just art.
It’s late in the afternoon when I happen upon the homestead of Queen Ncube; it’s a magnificent display of floral tendrils that are framed between floor and thatched roof by bold borders of lines and pattern. Mrs Ncube has passed her house-painting skills on to her two daughters – one of whom this past dry season drew the patterns that the other daughter painted. “It is now my turn to rest,” muses Mrs Ncube as she looks across her homestead, “but I keep watch over what my daughters do. This is our tradition. It has always been this way.”
This change in season is signalling a time of change for Mark and me; in the coming weeks we’ll be putting plans together for where we move onto next month. I’m not sure just yet where that will be – maybe Europe, maybe we’ll head to Asia. I’ll keep you posted.
As always I’m on the lookout for women to interview for Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives. It’s a series here on NE Where that celebrates the unusual paths that women take – whether it’s a short diversion in their life’s journey, or a new route entirely. If anyone springs to mind please let me know.
Until next time
PS Below are photos of six of the houses painted this past dry season. They get better each year!
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