In Yvonne Vera’s Nehanda, representations of land are used to define and interpret identity by Nehanda’s people and the British colonizers. Throughout the novel, Vera deploys land as a marker to both illustrate the significance of the ancestral past and the implications of colonialism on the future. Land is not only the physical location of the struggles between Nehanda and the colonizers, but also a source and implication of the ways in which the two groups define themselves and each other. As the novel progresses, representations of land shift in significance, demonstrating how interpretations of identity and location evolve when land is threatened and repossessed. Nehanda explores how land constitutes a vision of the past through ties to ancestry, examining the ways in which native and colonial interpret, or fail to interpret, the links between land and history. Interpretations of relationships to the land are deployed by both Nehanda and the British colonizers to define and characterize interactions in the present and visions for the future. In Nehanda, land is depicted as intrinsically connected to both past and future, deployed to mark and interpret the identities of native and colonial.
The spirits of the ancestral past are present within the land, tying the preservation of the history of Nehanda’s people to the defense of the land under the threat of colonial invasion. Nehanda and her people invoke their ancestors when staging a resistance against the colonials, stating, “We shall be strengthened by the power of those beneath the earth” (Vera 78). Connected to the land is the history of Nehanda’s people through the presence of ancestors’ spirits who are appeased with frequent offerings. Libations are poured directly into the earth as offerings for protection from the departed (Vera 27). The ancestral past that occupies the land is depicted as exerting control over the living, linking land with both the history of Nehanda’s people and their situation in the present.
The ritualized acts of respect for the ancestral spirits who occupy the land practiced by Nehanda’s people contrasts the view of the land maintained by the colonial forces. The colonial forces threaten the integrity of the ancestral past in failing to demonstrate reverence to the land and offer appropriate sacrifice, seeking instead the riches and resources that the land might offer. The colonials make no effort to understand the links with the past that land signifies to the native, but rather appropriate their standards of what land means on their project in Africa: “The strangers who were digging all over the land without proper sacrifice have offended our ancestors…We walked in wisdom with our shadows, in search of the dead part of ourselves which would be our shelter” (Vera 24). While this statement examines the links to the past that are located within the land, it also suggests the ways that this history is linked to issues of the present, particularly in regards to identity, home, and protection. Interpretations of land distinguish the differences between native and colonial. Nehanda and her people regard the land as a link to the past that forges their identity in the present while the colonials consider land as an entity to be conquered and exploited for resources.
According to Mr. Browning and Mr. Smith, interpretations of location and land are indicative of the differences between African and European. Mr. Browning regards the natives’ concept of land and location as a signal of their ineptitude and inferiority, stating, “We have drawn maps, and know how to locate ourselves on the globe. The native only knows where he is standing…This is what we should teach at the new school, a knowledge of the earth…It is simply a consciousness of the world, and of one’s self and one’s place in it” (Vera 53). Although Nehanda’s people constantly engage in rituals that bind them to the land, Mr. Browning is unable to comprehend their connection as authentic or culturally sophisticated. Instead, he appropriates his own standards of cartography and positionality to define what a knowledge of the earth entails.
After discussing the inability of the African to locate himself in relation to the rest of the world, Mr. Browning declares, “The African must begin to go somewhere. He must be given a goal in the future” (Vera 53). Mr. Browning links movement on land to progress, suggesting that literally going somewhere would signify advancement and development for the African. His interpretation of movement on land indicates his own expectations and standards, reflective the colonial project in which he is engaged.
Land also plays a role in signifying the creation of a concept of home and identity forged through ties with specific physical locations. Nehanda’s people recognize that the strangers’ efforts to build homes on the land will result in their continued presence in the territory into the future. The connection to the land that the building of a home communicates is explored as the storyteller remarks, “the stranger was to be among us for a long time. He had built a home. Humans are not like birds, which build nests in trees only to abandon them next season. Humans make homes so that their young may walk the same soil that they have walked” (Vera 11). Building homes on the land is an action that is not only indicative of the present conditions and interactions of the colonial, but also of their commitment to a continued presence in the area. Examining the connection to the future located in construction of homes, the storyteller suggests land is linked to formation identity in the present through association with specific land locations and commitments connected to the future.
Nehanda and her people view protection of the land as intrinsic to their survival into the future. When Nehanda attempts to incite her people to take up arms against the colonials, the crowd, “respect[s] her command of the ground, her territorial claims. They listen to the unmasking of their destiny” (Vera 61). This passage links claims to land with invocations of destiny. Nehanda seeks for retribution for the colonials’ offenses through a resistance to “cleanse the soil,” again connecting land and its protection to the struggle against the colonials (Vera 109).
While land is used as a means to interpret and distinguish native and colonial throughout the novel, as the narrative progresses, land increasingly is depicted as restrictive and indicative of boundaries. In the beginning of the novel when the men of the village are discussing a course of action in dealing with the colonials, “the dare, or village gathering place, is marked off by vertical poles tied together to keep wind out. Within the shelter is a circle of stones on which visitors sit, with another circle of smaller stones at the center” (Vera 38). The physical location of the gathering place is bounded, signifying a group identity and a sense of communality. The rituals of Nehanda’s birth at the beginning of the novel also indicate a relationship to the land that is ritualized and formative of communal identity. As the resistance movement against the colonial forces advances, however, land is portrayed in restrictive and possessive terms.
While in the beginning of the novel land is primarily described through rituals that connect the people to the land, as the novel progresses the land is bound to the people. Rather than the land possessing the people, the people begin to speak as if they possess the land. At the beginning of the movement towards resistance, while discussing the course of action that should be taken in regards to the colonials, one of the men states, “The land cannot be owned. We cannot give him any land because the land does not belong to the living” (Vera 43). Land is regarded as belonging to the ancestral past under the protection of those inhabiting it in the present. As the colonials advance and the resistance movement is staged, Nehanda states,
The past is in these hills…This is our land given to us by the ancestors. Protect it with your blood. The gnarled roots of trees are brothers with the earth. This is the season of journeying to our origins, to the beginning of our beliefs, and of our time. This is the season of planting new hope in the ground, and of weeping. This is the season of night, of locusts, and of long shadows that have banished the sun from the earth. (Vera 80)
While a similar idea about protection and ancestry is expressed, the degree to which the land can be possessed seems to have changed. While earlier in the novel the land cannot belong to anyone but the ancestors within the earth, Nehanda and her people now articulate, along with an expression of duty and protection, a sense of ownership of the land.
In Nehanda, land is tied to the ancestral past and the survival of Nehanda’s people in the future. These connections implicate land in the struggle between Nehanda’s people and the British colonizers, relating interpretations of land to formations of identity. Vera’s complicated representation of land in Nehanda’s narrative of the past is reflective of concerns of the present in that land remains an issue of contention in Zimbabwe. In “Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State, and Nation,” Amanda Hammar and Brian Raftopoulos call for a discussion of the land issue that moves beyond either vague or static notions of ‘the land question’ that seem to have dominated debates and practices around the politics of land in Zimbabwe for some time, towards a more transparent and inter-related questions of land…forcing us to reconsider in dynamic and contingent ways the order of priority of land questions demanding attention in a given historical moment (Hammar and Raftopoulos 24).
Vera’s Nehanda creates such a dynamic constitution of the land question, weaving past and present into a narrative that disrupts conventional historiographic impulses and constructions of history. Through a complex deployment of issues and interpretations of land, Vera examines the ways in which land is not only placed as site of struggle, but also as informed and implicated by the struggle.
By Sarah Winkler
Works Cited
Hammar, Amanda and Raftopoulos, Brian. “Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State, and Nation.”
Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis. Ed. Amanda Hammar, Brian Raftopoulos, Stig Jensen. Harare: Weaver Press, 2003.
Vera, Yvonne. Nehanda. Toronto: Tsar, 1994
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