WHUDA: Preserving the art of Stonemasonry

*Stonework by Rivaldo Diamoh Sithole of WHUDA*

WHUDA (Winfried Holze Urban Design Architectures) a marble artworks studio which was started by Winfried Holze in 2018. It has since become one of the few marble arts companies actively preserving and transferring the art of stonemasonry.

Stonemasonry has, in the past decade, been cited as being amongst the fading forms of indigenous knowledge in Southern African countries. The Great Zimbabwe Museum, with the support of the Endangered Material Knowledge Programme, has been particularly focused on conserving the knowledge around dry stone masonry and encouraging a movement to reinvigorate the practice. It is an understatement to say that patronising this craft is a positive step in cultural appreciation.

The WHUDA team not only preserves this craft as artisans but they extend this skill to explore contemporary social narratives as well.

On the 6th of March 2025 the National Art Gallery of Namibia will be hosting WHUDA in an exhibition titled “Earth to Light” and the possibility of seeing some great works while exploring some insightful themes is palpable. The team’s recent works include an exhibition during KIFA Week 2024 (Kalahari International Festival of Arts), where the WHUDA team showcased works inspired by cultural integrity and mental healthcare which are very crucial subjects in our globalised world. Their latest work, “Silhouette Evolution” was a multidisciplinary event which portrayed the potent role of stonemasonry in contemporary arts and culture. Here’s a dive into that event;

Silhouette Evolution: Stonemasonry on perception and transformation

*William Tonderai (Left) and Ino Ati the painter (Right)*

On the 25th of January 2025, I had the exciting experience of attending the Silhouette Evolution live session by William and Ino Ati. A silhouette is an image often in a single hue and tone against a brighter background, usually a black shadow against a white backdrop. Evolution has to do with the gradual development of something. This event made use of these concepts to explore perception and transformation.

This was the scene of the event; a painter painting the image of a sculptor who was in the process of sculpting while the audience dipped in and out of observing that process. Going to add their strokes on two group paintings that were in the next room, having conversations and drinks or playing a game of pool. Meanwhile, the stone being carved, the reason we were all there, was going through its transformation amid all these activities.

This event was without a doubt, an insanely creative way to explore the nature of transformation. That the world doesn’t stop to watch you change and grow, you just do as the world goes on, so that Pinterest quote saying “Stop waiting for the right time, and just start working on being who you want to be” has some truth to it.

One of the collective paintings the audience worked on, led by Shamoulla

In terms of perception, it seemed, the idea of a silhouette captures this very well. Fundamentally “what is your single hue image as everything else falls in the background?” and that “simply because it’s not the center of your perception doesn’t mean it loses value or ceases its own evolution” (your main character is not the only main character).

The event masterfully showcased three ideas associated with perception;

That it is uniquely held; different people may look at the same things yet walk away with different ideas of it.
That to be perceived is not a requirement of transformation.
That what we perceive to be of highest importance is often what shapes our experiences.

While the audience simply watched a man turn a rock into a rock shaped like an owl. The painter created a much more dynamic image,capturing the sculptor’s movements while centering the owl with yellow eyes emerging from a block of marble. I mention the stonework as being at center stage, but, gathering from the painting titled “The sculptor’s nest” it could easily be the sculptor’s immense focus around all the movement and noise that could be said to be the crowning piece of the event, or the painter’s creative eye and craft in his portrayal of the transformation taking place in front of him that were the event’s masterpieces, or the paintings in the next room that the audience passively worked on together with less attention given to them until the sculpture was done. Or someone could’ve walked away remembering the owl in the painting and how it’s yellow eyes were watching us, and the guys playing pool could be looking on the day they had a great game of pool which stopped because it rained.

Ultimately, the title Silhouette Evolution perfectly captures this idea of a fantastic transformation taking place in the background. The question of which fantastic transformation takes the forefront depends on the viewers perspective, at the same time, that single perspective doesn’t lessen the value of the other transformations taking place.

William at work

*Close Up of the Sculptors Nest by Ino Ati*

Conclusion

Go visit the exhibition on the 6th of March 2024 at the NAGN to experience WHUDA artworks. The Silhouette Evolution is only one of the many means of storytelling and exploring of concepts that the WHUDA team has participated in. As they continue to contribute to the preservation of stonemasonry as an art form, their creations and the narratives they explore effectively document the times in culturally specific forms, while having the potential to address several contemporary issues.

Reach out;

WHUDA:

Instagram: @whudamarbleartnamibia

Website : http://www.whudamarbleart.com

Ino Ati (Painter of “The sculptors nest”) : @by_ino_ati (instagram)

Shamoulla (Coordinator of the group paintings): @shamoulla_creating (instagram)

The Story of Zuva and Mwedzi

In the spirit of romance, love and union, I decided to revisit an old folktale I came across some year back about how the world came to be. For a good while, I believed that this was the Shona, world creation story. I’d later find that there were different versions of it, all written with the bold claim of being the single story of how the Shona lore described the creation of the world, each with the same characters, Musikavanhu/Nyadenga (God), Zuva (the Sun), Mwedzi (the moon), Hweva (Morning star) and Morongo (Evening star).

This story I’ve shared is a blend of all the versions I’ve encountered, enjoy ❤ …

This story goes…

Many years ago, before the great hammer hit the ground and before the world came to be, there was Nyadenga, who sat in constant contemplation. A moment came when he decided to move, in this moment he felt a great joy followed by an intense desire to share this experience. So he created to Zuva, full and fiery with a portion of Nyadenga’s greatest sense of passion and joy.

After a time, it became clear that Zuva could not relate to Nyadenga, he had a loneliness about him which saddened Nyadenga. On a certain day, Nyadenga shed a tear at the sight of a lonesome Zuva, who’d been yearning for something he’d never known before. Nyadenga kept this tear and breathed life into it. Giving birth to Mwedzi, a companion for Zuva.

The two shared a beautiful romance, and Nyadenga delighted in it. He gave them the ability to realize this love through creation. Together they were amazing creators, Zuva would create beautiful plants and vegetation and show them to Mwedzi, and Mwedzi would create insects, birds and many gentle animals to show to Zuva. The more they created and shared in the beauty of their creations, the more their love grew. Nyadenga had been gifting them with inspiration when they created and stoking their love when they were apart, it gave him a sense of whimsy to do this for them in secret, and the amusement he felt when they’d each come and talk about the other in their private times with Nyadenga, filled him with more gratification than he’d ever anticipated.

Gradually, they grew more and more distant from Nyadenga, relishing only in their union. No longer speaking to their creator, leaning into a vanity over the works they had done.

Nyadenga grew furious at this, after all, the entire reason he created them, was to share the joy of life with them.

He watched as their vanity transformed their love into arrogance, believing they had done it all on their own. He leaned further back when they no longer sought to create as a mark of affection and their once heartfelt devotion to each other turned into competition.

Their new commitment to outshine each other increasingly became fuelled with spite. Each one determined to prove that their creations were more beautiful, more important, more useful than the other.

In a moment of rage, Zuva, knowing that Mwedzi’s animals fed on his plants, began to lace some with poison, and sure enough, the animals began to die off. A grief stricken Mwedzi, not knowing how to deal with this deception grew angry at her creations, she had often bragged that her animals were stronger because they could move freely as they pleased and that she could easily command them to stomp on Zuva’s motionless plants if she wished. She never imagined that he would poison them, or that they could succumb to the attack of a motionless creature. Soon after she created more violent animals to hunt down and kill the ones that had embarrassed her.

This war that grew between Zuva and Mwedzi was felt by their creations. The plants vowed never to speak, fearing their father would set them ablaze. The herbivorous creatures grew more anxious, and uncertain, not knowing why they were punished with such violent siblings. And the carnivorous animals turned on each other, those who revelled in their roles as predators making a sport of attacking those who had sunken into shame and guilt for their violent nature.

Nyadenga could no longer bear the chaos. He called Zuva and Mwedzi and showed them the pain they had been causing. But they were too caught up in their strife to truly care about the harm they were causing to their creations, only choosing to blame each other.

So one day, Nyadenga took from Mwedzi’s smaller carnivores, the snake, which at the time only hunted for mice, and he filled it with poison from one of Zuva’s plants and set it loose. As Zuva paced and inspected his garden, he grabbed this snake with careless rage, mistaking it for a fallen branch and it’s hiss for an expression of disrespect, he had believed the plants honoured him with their silence.

He felt the poison shoot up and without much time he was with Nyadenga.

Mwedzi would meet a similar fate, when she grabbed the snake to return it closer to the mice after seeing it wonder near Zuva’s garden.

The two pleaded with Nyadenga, begging to be sent back, Nyadenga wouldn’t have it, but he allowed each of them a single ask for their eternal lives in Nyadenga’s house. Mwedzi begged for them to be able to watch over their creations. Nyadenga granted this with the condition that they never do this together, that they were to spend eternity watching over their world apart, and were to never directly interact with their creations as they did before.

After hearing that their union would not continue in eternity. A teary eyed Zuva begged for a chance to work on one last creation with Mwedzi, as a monument to their love. She accepted this, it hurt her too that their relationship would end, even though it had become so bitter. Together, with the help of Nyadenga they spent time creating mankind and womankind, pouring bits of themselves and their shared love and knowledge into them, and placed them on earth to help keep harmony amongst all creatures.

Soon after they were done, they shared a final kiss and a teary farewell then Nyadenga kept his word and separated them. Calling Zuva’s watch time day time and Mwedzi’s watch time night time.

They drew nearer to Nyadenga, in their separation and the love that they had shared for each other resurfaced. So Nyadenga, not wanting them to suffer the lonesomeness that had once caused a heartbreaking isolation in Zuva, allowed them to send messengers; Hweva and Morongo, between each other, while keeping the vow that they never meet again.

The End

ǂAONI //AES : Reclaiming the Historic Narrative of the ǂAoni People Through Theatre

Section 6 of the Swakopmund Protocole

The owners of the rights shall be the holders of traditional knowledge, namely the local and traditional communities, and recognized individuals within such communities, who create, preserve and transmit knowledge in a traditional and intergenerational context in accordance with the provisions of section 4.

The application of this section is partially significant for how it allows customary groups to take ownership of their stories. The colonial era had oppressors taking the role of the authority on people’s stories. While we remain grateful for education, we can’t neglect the messaging that, “foreign knowledge is superior to indigenous knowledge.” This has played out as indigenous people not often being at the forefront of being historians of their own cultures. Since independence, many cultural groups have been making efforts to correct the stories that have been told about them. In this article we’re covering two works that have been conducted in Namibia, surrounding the cultural relationship between people and the ocean.

A phenomenal production retelling the story of the ǂAoni people and the ocean. The play consists of a cast of three, the father (Dawie Engelbrecht), the mother played by Hazel Hinda and their daughter Khoendikhoes, played by Chantell Uiras (Diolini). The story follows the three as they revisit the events of the colonial past and how these impacted on the current socioeconomic position of the ǂAoni people, a clan of Nama people mostly found around the !Kuiseb river in the Erongo region also referred to as the Topnaar community.

Setting things straight

One of the main issues covered in this play is that of the history of the community. Colonial era historians alleged that the community’s displacement during the colonial era was in response to countering fighting within the community and harm to the natural environment. The story starts by letting us know who these people were recognized as, ‘the water people’ or guardians of the water and marine life. Their role as caretakers was undermined by the ambitions of the colonizers. It was also clear that they were moved without consultation and that it was carried out in a forceful and chaotic manner. They did not stand a chance against the armed invaders and had no other choice but to comply. An all too familiar history. Before anyone else felt the hit of the colonial invaders, they, being at the coast, felt the first and strongest blows, and because the settling of foreign invaders on the coastal territory did not help their case much.

They spoke of the !Nara fruit (Acanthosicyos horrida), how it was not just food, but the unique way in which each family farmed it was a way to distinguish between families. After the displacement, restoring the practices that were central to their cultural identities has been a struggle not so much because they have lost the capacity to do so, but more because of the policies put in place to make sure that they never do Policies that have seen their way into post-independence Namibia. The play was not made out to be an attack on the contemporary government, but a channel to shed light to the fact that they (the Topnaar community) too are a people that were uniquely disempowered by the apartheid system, and that their story continues to be swept under other emerging and apparent issues. The story has been written in collaboration with academic research institutes like the University of Namibia (UNAM), One Ocean Hub, Global Research Fund, and UK Research and Innovation. Researchers such as Robert Vigne are also amongst those who have showcased the significantly disproportionate level of harm faced by the Topnaar Community during the colonial era. It’s safe to say that the message shared is one grounded in facts not a baseless critique.

When speaking to the audience after the play, a leader from the ǂAonin community, Joel Kooitjie, as well as, acting chief of community Stoffel Anamab, pointed out the struggles that their people continue to face today. Some impacts include the fact that they are only about two Topnaar people in local authority offices and that decision makers in their area can sometimes fail to capture their context very well and ultimately miss their needs. Furthermore, as a community that had largely survived on marine life for sustenance, bearing witness to the harm the ocean and its creatures have faced while disempowered from taking any feasible steps to help serves as a testament to the gradual weakening of their own development, this is in part because a great amount of their income came from inland circulation of oceanic goods. The historical and cultural relevance of ocean governance in this community has been significantly undermined and resulted in having to re-adapt to a life where their strongest skills remain in the backburner. It goes without saying that this need to suppress who they are in order to be convenient for invaders is a level of robbery that digs at the core of personhood.

Conclusion

The play ǂAONI //AES is an example of the Swakopmund Protocole at work. It’s the active reclaiming of a history by the people. It is also an assertion of who they are and who this land has known them to be. The impoverishment and struggle they face today is a result of being subject to a system that has unfortunately kept them down. The post-colonial government canntot take the blame for this, but, in their continuous efforts to decolonize Namibia, they can take the Topnaar Community and their pleas into consideration.

Anita

Anita is a fictional short story of a mother on the search for her daughter, admist frustrating bureaucracy, finding out that she didn’t know her daughter as well as he thought she did and the legend of the Zambezi water goddess Kitapo. It is written in honour of International women’s day, recognizing the lives of women who are extraodinary despite traits that may not be widely likeable or ‘perfect’ but simply because they exist as themselves on a day to day basis, the ancient lore that centers women and the incredible love held by many women who are mothers and daughters.

Anita

Anita woke up to the usual morning routine. Her alarm clock rang at 06:45, but she had hit the snooze button automatically. Anita would drift through some comfortable haze until her body had finally woken her up at 07:10. With bleary eyes, she scrolled through Instagram, chuckling to herself as she passed by memes and checked in to her horoscope. On any given day, she would see a motivational video on YouTube coaxing her out of the morning fog. At 07:20, she would jump out of bed and go through the routines as a matter of course: drag her from her sleep right to the kitchen for a piping hot cup of coffee, on which some Allan Watts-esque video droned in the background, accompanied by a steamy, self-indulgent shower into which she slipped herself-just long enough to clear the remnants of sleep.

This two-year ritual had been part of her life, interspersed periodically with stretching exercises or switching over to Pinterest to get her fix of inspiration. That is, until last week-Tuesday, to be exact-when everything changed. She called in late to work, and at first, coworkers thought she was merely ill and hadn’t called it in to human resources, so they weren’t alarmed. But to her mother, Mai Mushawako, the silence was loud. It was highly out of character for Anita not to call that evening, and highly unusual for her to completely ignore the myriad of messages sent onto her phone.

Anita’s studio apartment was on the ground floor of a newly built estate and told volumes about her Bohemian character. It was decorated with bottles reused as lamps, a shelf full of vinyl records, though sans phonograph, fiction novels, and books on African gods and customs. The walls were pasted with motivating sentences, and plants were thriving on every available nook. Nothing was disturbed; she looked like she had just stepped out, having left no traces of a tussle or kidnapping.

Mai Mushawako had become a fixture in the complex, knocking on doors in a frantic search for her daughter. She was clad in a chitenge, tightly wrapped around her body, with feet dragging in worn flip-flops. Many residents-who, because of her normally polished appearance, could barely recognize her-implored her for information. Each of those questions was tinged with increasing dread, building into a suspicion that maybe, just possibly, one of them knew more than they were letting on. They could not turn a blind eye to her desperate appeals; rather, they almost wished for some sort of answers while at the same time not wanting the worst to be confirmed.

The police at the missing persons’ unit reacted with a shrug, labeling Anita’s absence as youthful rebellion. Detectives Haufiku and Majapo were parents themselves, inured to such cases. When Mrs. Mushawako urged them, they would say some stock phrases: “We are doing our best,” “We are still waiting on more information.” With each rebuff, some of her respect for them eroded, and this amateur sleuthing became her only source of hope.

Mrs Mushawako put together over six months of details about Anita’s life in order to paint a fuller picture. There was Samantha, her close friend, pursuing her PhD in African studies, and a new connection in Anita’s life in the midst of discovering that she had been increasingly interested in the lore of Bantu, aspects of identity that Mai had hardly realized. Anita had been reading stories about their ancestors, learned the totem chants, and the long trek from the Congo basin to Zambezi. Mai felt guilty over the distance she had created between them with her heresies. Was she stifling the inquisitiveness in Anita with dogmatic Christian dogma? In a supposed attempt to piece together what might have been going on, Mai noticed that Anita had been communicating with a Professor Matenga, who was reported to be a specialist on the Kitapo water goddess legend. A water goddess named Kitapo, dear to the Tonga, miraculously shared a love with the Nyaminyami spirit-the walls of colonizers’ dams separating them both. This story, which would otherwise be considered a simple cautionary relationship tale, seemed to take whole new meaning now that her daughter was gone.

Confronting him with raw emotion, her voice cut through the air at a café meeting with the professor. “Have you involved my daughter in ungodly rituals?” she shouted, anger spiraling to despair. He attempted to calm her: “Your daughter has answered a call, wherever she is, she is safe…”. The words fell flat against her growing outrage. She stormed out, leaving the professor bewildered and detectives full of doubt over where this case was headed.

Mai Mushawako drove her Nissan into her village homestead. The loneliness of the journey weighed heavily on her. VaMushawako had remained in South Africa, saying life must go on, but to Mai every quiet moment felt like an eternity of anguish.

Gogo Mushawako sat on a lowly wooden stool, her body worn by time, but the presence of a queen. The two buildings behind her, a modest two-bedroom house built by VaMushawaro and a round hut kitchen, were a testament to the meaning of family and history. As Mai drew closer, Gogo’s knowing eyes met hers; an understanding which needed no words was made.

“I have to tell you what happened to Anita,” Mai started, a quiver in her voice. Gogo cut her off, “Your daughter was here, mwanangu. She has answered the call of Kitapo.” It was like thunder that hit her, sparking an instant storm of denial in her mind. Memories came flooding back-stories of her cousin who disappeared, elders’ whispers accompanying the absence.

“Do not be sad, mwanangu, Gogo said firmly yet calmly. “I will explain it all when the time is appropriate, but she is safe.” The reassurance fell flat – starkly in contrast to the deep bubbling sorrow within Mai. Overwhelmed by all this knowledge, she collapsed into sobs – her terrors fell like waves to the shore.

Her cries echoed in the homestead as neighbours averted their eyes; this was avoidance to not confront the grief they felt was imminent. In that instant, a piece of Mai’s heart broke, an impregnable bond that she felt with her daughter against the fraying mark of uncertainty.