Retracing the aims of Digging Tswana Roots

L M Leteane | Friday April 21, 2017 13:26

Next week shall be my last article for Mmegi. Sadly, there was yet much more I could have unearthed for you, but as Fate would have it this newspaper wishes to restructure and I have to move on. For my loyal readers, this is not the end of my work: bigger and better things lie ahead, but only next week will I intimate what form my future work will take. This week the best thing, perhaps, is to revisit the overarching flavour of my work in these past five years.

 Digging Tswana Roots has indeed been about, yes, digging into the primordial roots of the Setswana language and culture. And in the spirit of all good names, headings or titles, the choice of words must express things at several different layers such that the astute reader can delight in deciphering their various meanings – which must all say the same basic thing, but in different ways. And since this is not the time to be coy any longer, I will now obviate the said layers.

The first layer is fairly obvious and is just as I have expressed above. But knowing how people think, I knew that the first thing that will come to the mind of many will be the image of a traditional medicine-man digging for ‘Tswana’ roots – well-known in our culture to be the ingredients of healing. And because I so love etymology (‘the study of the root-meaning of words’…which is just as well, considering the title of column) I cannot help but obviate the various Bantu takes on the term ‘root’. In Setswana, ‘root’ is modi. With a little thought we can easily relate it to the Nguni term muti, but this fairly obvious link tends to be forgotten by Setswana speakers because our name for a medicinal plant is setlhare (literally: ‘tree’). Now, in one of my strictly-etymology miniseries, I explained that ta-ri – the evident root of  tlhare – is what I call ‘a proto-term’ – a  term still bearing vestiges of an ancient, common global language we all once spoke as averred in Genesis 11 – and I related it to the English term ‘tree’.

In that miniseries, I always took the trouble to also obviate the subtle shifts in pronunciation that take place between languages as they gradually drift apart. In the modi/muti example, we note the linguistically common shift from d to t – as consonants are hardened or softened. Within Setswana itself, we have the shift from thare (th being a soft t) to the harder tlhare (tlh is pronounced like the cl in ‘proclaim’) and I duly uncovered the exotic roots of the tlh pronunciation. Now, r was alternatively pronounced like the French r, and this discovery led me to unearth many proto-terms. For example, we can now see how se-tlhagi simply meant ‘that which appears out of the ground’. So, whereas Nguni emphasis the roots in medicine-making, Setswana emphasises the leaves (ma-tlhare/ma-thlhagi).

Since all African cultures believe that muti and ditlhare can be ritually employed for purposes of ‘magic’ – both good (protective, luck-inducing) and bad (harming one’s enemy, bewitching another) – I  knew that the title Digging Tswana Roots would have ‘magical’ overtones…which I took impish delight in evoking. (I myself am no great believer that a ‘witchdoctor’ can send lightning to strike another person, or can cause all sorts of bad luck to befall another…unless, naturally, that other believes that the doctor can indeed induce such back luck….in which case the victim basically ‘bewitches’ himself.)

In fact, I might have disconcerted some people when I obviated the little I know of what real magic (bo-loi) might entail – especially when I used the power of Setswana to seamlessly relate ba-loi (wizards/witches) to ma-illui (Sumerian) and ‘Illuii-ma/Elohim’ (Hebrew). But an important aspect of my work is to unearth the many primordial, now obscure and covered-up facts about our common roots…roots that dig down to the common, global origins of our various cultures and religiosity. Indeed, all of them speak of our ancient fascination with certain ‘sky-beings’: ba-dimo – literally: ‘Ones-from-Up-High’ in ancient, now-forgotten Setswana – and ‘angels’ in English – which latter term evidently stems from the Sumerian terms AN (sky) ELs (ma-illu/gods). Unfortunately, religion – as currently practiced – is bound to be very uncomfortable with such obviation: it runs counter to what the very Illui, the Elohim, would have us believe as they chartered our religiosity for us…a religiosity so bloody and atrocious in parts – just read the Old Testament – that I can only look sympathetically on those that cling to it even after my expositions on how it emerged and how, in the Daniel Blueprint. it planned for a Jewish Messiah…a Prince to be blamed as a Roman traitor; a Prince who will discourage the bloody, ongoing sacrifices in the Jerusalem Temple and, through “..the people of [that] Prince” precipitate the total destruction of the city [in 70 AD]’…all of which better suited the Roman-Jew Paul. Instead, Jesus had simply warned Jews (Matthew 24:15-22) that “…when you see the ‘Abomination’ that Daniel spoke of placed in the sanctuary…head for the hills…do not even pause [to pick up anything]”. And so, Jesus’ Gnostic message was primed to be completely swallowed up in seven years, “…leaving him with nothing” (Daniel 9:24-27) as, dead on time, Paul slew Stephen, the last, great, remaining Gnostic. Now, what of the last level to Digging Tswana Roots? Although this will certainly date me, in the ’seventies ‘dig’ was slang for ‘love’…

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