Cowboys of the Kalahari

Cowboys of the Kalahari
by Jonathan I. Edelstein
5 June 2002

**Southern Africa** ... Zimbabwe never rose again after its sack in 317 [1089 CE]. Its neighbors, angered by centuries of raids and slaving expeditions, were very thorough in their destruction; little remains today beyond the records of travelers and the ruins of the city wall and palace. Zimbabwean civilization, however, was to have two lasting effects on the history of southern Africa: horses and religion.

The horse is not native to sub-Saharan Africa, and the disease environment of the continent -- particularly the tsetse fly -- has often stymied efforts to introduce Asian or European breeds. Although the kings of what would one day become Zimbabwe may have begun purchasing horses from Arab traders as early as the first century, many of these animals sickened and died, and others were too delicate to be of much use in work or warfare. The survivors, judged useless by their owners, were abandoned to survive as best they could on the savanna.

Amazingly, they did not die out. The horses that survived the initial trip to Africa and the diseases of the rainy season were the hardiest of their breed and provided a foundation upon which natural selection could perform its work. In time, as the surviving herds grew more disease-resistant and numerous, the Zimbabweans culled and selectively bred them. By the end of the second century, generations of selection had produced a hardy breed of horse uniquely suited to southern Africa. FN1

The "Zimbabwe horse" was neither as fast nor as strong as a European cavalry horse, but it was tough, and perfectly capable of pulling a plough or carrying a lightly armed warrior. Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Zimbabwe about SE 235 [1007 CE], reported that the king of Zimbabwe kept a troop of elite cavalry and that these horsemen were the foundation of the kingdom's might.

Inevitably, the neighboring tribes and petty kingdoms also learned to ride and fight on horseback, and in time they surpassed their former masters. As Zimbabwe rested on its laurels, the surrounding tribes coalesced into nations and improved upon their cavalry tactics. The successor states that stretched from sea to sea by the end of the fourth century are known as Cattle Kingdoms, but they were in reality kingdoms of the horse. FN2

Although most kingdoms of southern Africa remained primarily pastoral and cattle ownership continued to be a mark of status, their civilization was profoundly affected by the horse. Horses made it possible for rulers to exercise control over a much larger territory; Zimbabwe even at its height had been a collection of tributary states, but its successors were true nations. The horse also influenced southern African techniques of cattle herding, allowing tribesmen to maintain control over larger herds spread throughout a wider area. Towns grew larger as the pasture that was manageable from each increased, and trade between them grew with the advent of horse-drawn carts. By 425 [1197 CE], thriving caravan routes connected the kingdoms of southern Africa with the Arabized cities of Sofala, Mutavele and Lombaba and with the growing Submissive way station at the Cape.

It was in the kingdoms south of the M'popo river, though, where the horse worked its greatest changes. Here, new lands were broken to the plough as agriculture took its place alongside pastoralism; by the end of the fourth century, it was estimated that these nations fed themselves as much from the farms as from the herds. Towns of up to 20,000 people -- large cities by the standard of that part of the African interior -- grew up at administrative and trading centers, and the first stirrings of literature appeared.

Historians have often debated why literature came so late to southern Africa as compared to Reshem and the Sawahil coast. In part, this was due to the greater isolation of the region and its position at the very end of the Indian Ocean trade network. One often-overlooked factor, however, is the fact that the southern Africans' dominant form of syncretism, unlike that of East Africa, was not a religion of the book. Although the religion of the Eternal Prophet incorporated tales from throughout the world and its monotheistic aspects were increasingly emphasized during the fourth and fifth centuries, it was brought to Africa by storytellers, and it did not adopt the Reshemite veneration of the written word.

By 450 [1222 CE], though, this was beginning to change. The Eternal Prophet's faith began as an imported religion, but it meshed well with local traditions of ancestor worship and storytelling, and indigenous legends of the Prophet soon took their place alongside the imported ones. As the fifth century progressed, these stories began to become the core of a coherent belief system. Given that all gods and heroes worshiped by other peoples were regarded as incarnations of the Eternal Prophet, this belief system was remarkably pantheistic, positing a universal spiritual consciousness and claiming that all human religions were facets of the true faith. The treatment of ancestors as lesser prophets likewise evolved into the belief that all people possess the gift of prophecy and divinity.

Along with the coalescence of the southern African belief system came the first attempts to collect the stories of the Eternal Prophet in book form. In many ways, the compilation of these collections mirrored that of the Old Testament, with worshipers and wise men gradually achieving a consensus as to which stories were part of the canon. The canon of the Eternal Prophet would not reach its final form until the ninth century, but it had taken a substantially modern shape by the early sixth, including stories of the Prophet's various local and foreign incarnations, books of wise sayings attributed to lesser prophets and ancestors, creation myths and speculation on the nature of God... FN3

Return to Submission posts.