Ndebele House Painting

Ndebele house painting is the practice, mainly by women, of decorating the walls of homesteads with bold geometric patterns. It is associated above all with the Southern Ndebele of South Africa, and is also practised by Northern Ndebele communities in the Matobo area of Zimbabwe. It is one of the best-known forms of African architectural decoration.

Origins

In the early 18th century the Ndebele lived in grass huts. From the mid-18th century they began building mud-walled houses, and symbols began to appear on houses and walls; the Ndzundza Ndebele developed their characteristic style during the 18th century. The war with the Boers in 1883 and the hardship that followed are often linked to the development of expressive symbols in the paintings. In 2016 the US Ambassadors' Fund for Cultural Preservation funded documentation of the tradition.

Technique

Walls are first whitewashed. Early paints were natural earth pigments in browns and black, applied with the fingers in V shapes and triangles, often based on beadwork patterns. Later painters used bundles of twigs and feathers as brushes, and the palette widened to red, yellow to gold, sky blue, green and sometimes pink, outlined in black on a white ground. Large tools fill flat areas and small brushes do outlines and detail.

The house and its roof

The painted wall is part of a homestead of thatched houses. A Southern Ndebele building vocabulary recorded by Franco Frescura includes:

• amakapa: the roof; amakapa ibalelo: a roof rafter.
• ibalelo: a member spanning between posts, used as a batten or ring beam.
• apokorwana: the eaves overhang.
• intuthi: a tie-beam at the inner apex that holds a central post during construction and remains after thatching.
• isidlogorwana: the capping at the roof apex.
• iboda: the drum wall of a cone-on-cylinder house.
• amathuri: the verandah; ithuri: a low wall enclosing a verandah room.
• ikhuphu: clay wall plaster, often mixed with cow dung; ubulongo: clay and dung floor finish.