Isihlangu

Ancestral Africans have had a long history of leather craft. However, very little is known about the techniques that were used by historical tribes. The San people of the Kalahari Wastes are known for their very functional array of bags, quivers, cordage, and clothing. The Bantu tribes that migrated to the Southern regions of Africa by 500 BC would also have used hides and skins from their livestock and from the wild animals that they hunted.

The weapons and protections that the Bantu tribes used are well documented by early European explorers. Theorised to be part of the protection tribes used in conflict and for the protection of hunter-warriors against big cats and other large African game, the shield was a staple of all tribes until the recording that the Xhosa had discarded their shields by 1835.

The shields were made out of the hide of the nomadic species of cow that the Africans called the Sanga-Nguni (Bos taurus africanus). Little is known about the preparation of the shield, but analysis of the historical relics leads one to assume that the shields were largely raw hides with the stiffness and penetration protection that a raw hide offers.

Hide preparation
Many cultures prepared “leathers” in a manner very similar to the way in which the Bantu prepared the hides for shield-making. Standard methods define what is meant by the word “tanning” as the “treatment of hide or skin with extracts of natural products (e.g. bark, leaves, seeds) or chemical agents (e.g., chromium, aluminium, organic compounds) to stabilize against heat, enzymatic attack and thermo-mechanical stress. It could also be said that tanning is the process: “... whereby putrescible raw hides and skins are converted into leather”.

A commentator in the leather biodegradability community agreed with this “putrefy” principle, but goes on to add a very important property of leather that many others forget, that is that leather must not change its properties after wetting and drying. It should not be rendered susceptible to rotting after wet/dry and he makes specific mention, on page 3, that the material should remain flexible and workable after a wet/dry cycle - clearly not the case with an Nguni shield and raw hide, in general.

The famous Himeji White Leather is more extensively prepared by the material used in an Nguni shield, but is nevertheless no more “tanned” than the African shield material. The composition of dog chewing toys is fundamentally naked collagen that has very little resistance to bacterial putrefaction and is in principle identical to many untanned or tawed products. The work done by Stather, and separately by Gustavson, the focus on enzyme testing showed that alum-tanned material was not resistant to enzymes, supporting the idea that alum is a taw rather than a tannage. In fact, in 1978, the work concludes: “that shrinkage resistance and enzymatic resistance run parallel”. Raw hide, particularly the Nguni shield raw hide, has a low shrinkage temperature and is hence an untanned product vulnerable to bacterial attack. Hair loss on many of the shields is a verifier of this fact. Records do not show if the preparation of the Nguni shield was as sophisticated as the Himeji White Leather, but there is some evidence that “specialists” may have had substances that they added, or may even have used smoke as some form of cure. Testing of surviving shields suggests that they are raw hides that may have had some mechanical treatments.

Shield technology
Detailed by Ella and Nicolaas in their book on the material culture of the Southern African Nguni people, the Nguni shield was applied shaped using stones while wet. The residual flesh was scraped off and the raw material was washed. It could have been that anti-bacterial herbs could have been used to slow degradation.

The shaping using stones was to ensure that the shield had a slight hollow to it and to ensure that it had very little stretch to it. The mgobo is the central staff to which the shield is attached - with a cross member (very rarely used). The mgobo is attached to the shield using loops of different coloured hair-on raw hide. The loops are woven through the shield to allow a firm attachment (preventing the shield from being pulled away from the warrior) and to ensure the ability to hold the shield (which weighs about 2.5 kg). The pattern produced by the weaving is called imigabelo. The weaving is used to contrast the overall colour of the shield.

A pure white shield was a very rare artifact, due to the fact that many Nguni cattle are coloured. In fact, many Nguni tribes believed that when an Nguni calf is born they are all pure white. The first time the calf walks through a river is when it acquires its colours. Very rare calves remain uncoloured, and they are treasured, with shields made from their hides and were reserved for the elder, seasoned warriors. Black Nguni is a common colour, and these shields were reserved for general unseasoned impi.

The skill used for making these historical shields is slowly being lost and should be a national heritage priority for Southern African tanners to relearn the skills and to ensure that the craft continues.

References
Shaw, E.M. and van Warmelo, N.J. 1972. The material culture of the Cape Nguni. Volume 58, Parts 1-4 of Annals of the South African Museum, ISSN 0303-2515. South African Museum.

In the next issue: At the basic level, somebody wanting to study the impacts of a production system will use a life cycle assessment (LCA). LCA’s use the standard methods called ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 to govern how these assessments are carried out. These rules are quite open-ended and are open to a wide range of interpretation. An industry can gather and can agree that for a small group of products, across a wider range of systems, that additional rules can be used to enhance the LCA’s done by companies - these are often referred to as Product Environmental Footprints (PEF). As the categories get bigger, and as the scope of the companies included increases the rules can be incorporated into Product Category Rules (PCR). In the next issue the use of a PEF for the South African ostrich industry will be discussed - how can this be of benefit?