Making Zimbabwean Landscapes: Painters, Projections and Priests

bibliographic database
Line

Periodical article

Title:	Making Zimbabwean Landscapes: Painters, Projections and Priests
Author:	Ranger, Terence O.
Year:	1997
Periodical:	Paideuma
Volume:	43
Pages:	59-73
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Zimbabwe
Subjects:	natural history rock art painting Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Architecture and the Arts Literature, Mass Media and the Press
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/40341731
Abstract:	This article deals with the making of European and African landscapes of the Matopos, the granite hills south of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, in which Cecil Rhodes lies buried and Njelele and the rest of the rain shrines of the High God, Mwali, still function. There do not seem to be any 19th-century European paintings of the Matopos. The first real notion of what these hills look like came in 1896, when Ndebele regiments rose up against the white prospectors, missionaries and traders who had settled amongst them. After laying siege to Bulawayo, many Ndebele fighting men fell back into the Matopos, where they were attacked by British troops. The first paintings of the Matopos were carried out not by Europeans, but by long-vanished hunter-gatherers. These rock paintings do not depict landscapes as such, but presumably visualized 'supernatural potency' and an urge to control rain and animals. Later, paintings by Christian agriculturalists in the Cyrene mission showed Christian as well as local influences in the representation of nature. Bibliogr., notes, ref.