Chibale Zambia: modernity and tradition

Chibale Zambia: the theme modernity and tradition. Adapting your life based on local experiences and knowledge or on those of external others is a major theme in Chibale. It has had many expressions in Chibale life in the past seventy years. In general, people are less interested in contrasting modernity with tradition than they are in finding an effective blend of the two.

Definition of modernity and tradition

In Chibale, town life, commercial farming and, to a lesser extent, life in other countries are sources for the concept of modernity. A description of the concept of modernity used in Chibale could be: what can be learned from others who lead a less traditional and in certain respects apparently more successful life than we do. Some will emphasise the successfulness and tend to take over part of the behaviour and concepts. Others emphasise the apparentness and have the intention to see through the trappings of modernity. In both cases, modernity relates to the ideas about the successfulness of others in a certain period. And: success is a salient issue in Chibale.

It would be a mistake to think people especially go for modernity or only for tradition. An extremely modern attitude will bring a person into trouble, he might, for instance, be accused of witchcraft. An extremely traditional attitude will evoke less resistance but will be seen by most people as not effective and in some periods as backward. A description of the Chibale concept of traditionality is: what is right to do given what we have done before. At times, the concept is used in a rather static interpretation: These are our customs. And sometimes in a more dynamic interpretation: In the present time we can learn and take with us the useful things from the past.

Major influences and expressions of the theme

Chibale Zambia: modernity and tradition. What have been the major influences and expressions in this theme in the last 70 years? Migrant labour, the returning of people who have stayed in town for a long period¹In the 1980s, the average duration of the stay in town for the population above fourteen years of age was no less than ten years for men and five and a half years for women. In the 2000s this was halved., the rise and decline and rise again of christian cult groups, the rise and decline of spirit possession cults, the persistent need for ‘traditional’ medicine and especially problem solving, the use of adolescents’ popular music (kalindula) at beer parties, the ‘Chibalisation’ of external cultural influences, the rise and fall of the idea that towns offered better opportunities for a good life, the pitfalls of commercial farming, the rise of a cultural heritage view on certain own cultural products, the disappearance and return of girls’ initiation, and the arriving of portable and especially mobile media.
Influence from other countries, except somewhat from Congo and to a minor degree Zimbabwe, was small up to 2006. Then the first portable dvd-players with a display arrived. And in 2013 the electricity supply built up to Chibale village started providing electricity to those who could afford it along the road from Mulilima to Chibale.

Examples

People may call a part of Chibale ‘town-like’ because people live relatively close to each other and can more easily go out to meet one another or buy and sell products. On the other hand, ‘town-like’ may mean there is allegedly more rudeness and fighting at beer parties. BanaNshimbi, the healer, called towns mishi ya bushilu, villages of madness.
A second example. Many saw a line running from witchcraft to jealousy to competition to development. However, associating this line with the one running from traditionality to modernity was neither nonsensical nor true. In other words, people who associated themselves with modernity could be firm believers in witchcraft, while people who cared for tradition could well be on a path of slow development. This shows that one should avoid using an extraneous definition of modernity, like ‘orientation towards development’.

Elaboration G: Cash cropping and living in nkutu

During the 1960s and 1970s, the government and NGO’s promoted hybrid maize as the pre-eminent cash crop. They ‘regrouped’ the villages forcing all people to start living near one of the few large sand roads in Chibale.²Seur (1992: 117). The cultivation of hybrid maize involved buying seeds and fertilisers. It made people dependent on the government and banks. On the other hand, it was one of the only ways of making money in Chibale. During this time of increase in maize cultivation, a diminishing number of people continued swidden cultivation in the bush staying there in temporary houses (nkutu). They were looked upon by the other people as ‘backward’.

Bags race and nkutu

In the 1980s, people introduced the name bags race to refer to and comment on the modern attitude of trying to cultivate as much maize as possible. This involved contracting loans, working very hard and hiring people to help at low wages. The attitude towards the preferability of maize cultivation and the backwardness of other forms of cultivation had started to change because of developments such as the forced village regrouping, the sudden rise of the price of fertilisers and the late delivery of seeds, fertilisers or bags by the government in certain years. While an increasing number of people became involved in the bags race, other people started consciously choosing for nkutu. The houses they had near the sand roads were just to satisfy government regulations. They came there for some cultivation (maize hoeing) and then went back to nkutu.
There they also cultivated gardens apart from fields. They lived ‘village lives’ in nkutu with relatively good houses. The ‘village’ had to have a certain size since it was dangerous to live there with only a nuclear family. Living in nkutu was a choice: being on their own and being independent of government haphazards. It gradually also became an economical choice: because of the sole dependence on maize cultivation, millet had become scarce and well priced. It was needed for making cipumu beer. So, an nkutu farmer could well make more money than her maize colleagues. Without all the problems of loans, prices, fertiliser, hired help etc. They had fewer problems obtaining relish as they had their gardens. And they trapped a lot making them less depending on licenses for bullets and the rising price of bullets.

Modern traditionality

The way of living of the ‘nkutu people’ was more traditional than that of their maize colleagues. But, in their own eyes, it was better adapted to the situation in Chibale in the 1980s. The new nkutu people were not the same as those who kept on doing it in the 1960s/1970s when the rest started with maize cultivation.
They worked harder, cultivated a wider range of crops, and somehow had a sound commercial intention, directed towards getting by and hopefully a little more. They sold a certain part of their millet, went to Serenje Town with the money to buy clothing, soap and salt, came back and had enough for the rest of the year. Their music was more traditional since their circumstances were more traditional. They had Bwalwa, Sandauni, Cibombe, Imbile there. None of them would ‘come to the roads’ for Sandauni, but they did come for Cililo and Ipupo.
Gradually the dual track of maize cultivation near the passable roads and nkutu cultivation became the dominant agricultural strategy in Chibale.

Modern traditionality. A similar reversal can be seen in the way people who returned from town were looked upon.

In town there is unemployment, but here there is self-employment. In the past, money was only found in town and town dwellers used to laugh at villagers.
∵ Harriet Lupalo in Seur (1992: 305).

Those townies used to laugh at those who had remained here, because they were poor. But today no one laughs at a farmer anymore, because now farming is the only way to make money, to take care of your children.
∵ Langson Mupishi in Seur (1992: 160).

This concludes the series on social themes. Continu to the article about Chibale history.