Nyamatsatse Festival: Women, Water, Stars and the Time of the Flood...

September 17 - 24, 2023. Harare, Zimbabwe.

Tese tinobva mumvura. Uye mvura inobva mudenga.

Pochodzimy z wody. A woda pochodzi z nieba.

We all come from the water. And the water comes from heaven.

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The Nyamatsatse Festival of Healing and the Arts, set for its second edition in 2023, brings together a celebration of indigenous arts, culture, healing practices and traditions from Zimbabwe, Southern Africa and beyond. The second edition of the festival will focus on water, the water crisis and water conservation (see below.) This year’s theme will invite creative solutions for one of our world’s biggest problems of this day and age.

The Nyamatsatse Festival will involve a seven-day journey of presentations, workshops, performances and shared creative spaces, and will end the festival with a traditional celebration on the seventh day. The theme of this year’s festival is Water, the Spirit of Water, the Flood Mythologies and Water Stars.

Nyamatsatse is about connection and putting together the broken pieces of humanity, as well as celebrating arts and culture (tsika nemagariro).

The festival will include speakers from various disciplines and traditions, ranging from artists to traditional chiefs to industry experts. The planned events shall aim to explore how best we can approach these questions and issues with integrity,

discernment, and wisdom. The festival will last for seven days, from around 10 am through the evening, with a tea and lunch break with variety of visual and performance arts (music, theatre, spoken word, dance, fine arts displays, etc) mixed in. On the final day (the seventh day), there will be a traditional celebration of the spirit of water.

This year’s edition of the festival shall be themed “Water, Stars and the Time of the Flood”. As the name implies the focus will be on everything water. Zimbabwe has a nationwide water crisis. The water reticulation system has not been developed since the colonial era, with the continual increase in size of both population and urban settlements in the last 40 years putting pressure on the infrastructure. The local authorities have had to rely on rationing systems, meaning neighborhoods across the country can only get tap water at most three days in a week. Water bodies across the country have been drying up at an alarming rate. Major rivers including Runde, Save, and Mazoe have decreased in size significantly due to siltation. Human activities like artisanal mining and stream bank cultivation have been pinpointed as the major causes. As we speak the country is in a dire energy crisis because the water levels at Kariba Dam where the national hydroelectric station is based have gone dry. Mazoe dam is also expected to completely dry off in the next fifteen years. Chinese mining consortiums have been using water from dams and lakes for their mining activities leaving behind sedimentation and destruction of the riverine ecosystem.  This has resulted in people resorting to drilling boreholes as an alternative. However, this is not a sustainable solution since it reduces the levels of underground water, a phenomenon that has global environmental consequences. Zimbabwe has also been experiencing irregular rain cycles. In the past five seasons the country has oscillated between droughts and extreme flooding. The elders and wisdom-keepers in Zimbabwe have attributed the erratic rain cycles to the fact that Zimbabweans have abandoned the age-old custom of rainmaking. Traditionalists lament that this generation has denigrated and abandoned the traditional methods used for so many years to manage the ancestral lands in a sustainable way. Cultural methods of water preservation emphasized the fact that water is a living being like plants and animals and should therefore be treated with dignity and a sense of respect for life. Mythological tales speak of the water spirit which is responsible for the health of all water bodies across the country. This water spirit must be appeased for good rains and longevity of water levels. Whether this spirit is real or not is a concern for spirit people and scholars but what is important to note is the fact that this approach sought to encourage a more humane approach to the relationship that people have with water. Corporates, government departments and individual citizens are meant to cultivate within themselves a general sense of respect towards water and water sources.  

The issue of water also brings women’s issues to the forefront. Traditionally, it is women who are considered stewards of the household. Water is the key element to running the household; without it, nothing gets cooked or cleaned. Because of this, water accessibility also becomes an important aspect in women’s ability to develop themselves in the world.

Nyamatsatse Festival for Healing and the Arts is a needed platform for these conversations about the water crisis, both in our world and within our internal mythology. To re-imagine our relationship with water is to re-enliven our inner landscapes and therefore re-invigorate the external landscapes of our lives as well. The edition this year will seek to revive this conversation between generations.