The Sunday Mail
Cuthbert Zulu Hillside Teachers College
WHETHER you are in the capital city or in a village in rural Zimbabwe, by now if you have not heard of STEM, then you are probably very ignorant.
STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Indeed most students are well familiar with the term but has anyone ever attempted to associate science and technology with the Mutapa, Rozvi or Ndebele State. It is very hard to imagine our ancestors ever having anything to do with technology, it seems. The all-erroneous assumption circulating nowadays is that STEM is a western fabrication, fashioned, designed and implemented exclusively by western systems.
Therefore as an exhibitor at the ZITF Hillside Teachers College stand, my principal focus was clear. I had to show people how our very own forefathers stemitised their ways of life,
Very few people are aware that the bow and arrow used in the Mutapa State was a grand demonstration of modern day aerodynamics and the principle of conversation of energy. The material chosen was elastic which, when deformed could store potential energy and release kinetic energy when required. Furthermore it has long been incorrectly assumed that the feather they put at the end of the arrow was for decoration. In actual fact, that feather served to create a region of high pressure below the arrow and a region of low pressure above thus creating an upward lift. This is the same scientific concept that makes an aeroplane fly and in the early 1800s our forefathers had developed this concept long before the American Wright brothers had even dreamt of building the first aeroplane
So when teaching the concept of energy conversions today our ‘learned modern day teachers’ would be better off citing such concepts, not in western inventions but in our own indigenous systems!
Just to cite a few more indigenous cases, most civil engineers have reached the consensus that the structures at Great Zimbabwe are of great architectural design. A variety of compressional and tensional forces had to be in equilibrium or else the entire work would tumble to the ground.
Our ancestors, without any modern day mathematical skills had the expertise to balance these forces and the fact remains; the Great Zimbabwe is no haphazard creation. It is a result of structural engineering at its best. Instead of referring to the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal civil engineering lecturers must look at our own Great Zimbabwe.
At Hillside Teachers College, the aspiring teacher is therefore encouraged to school his/her students to appreciate STEM in our own indigenous knowledge systems and not just in western inventions. The aspiring teacher is encouraged to use media and models from easily available indigenous raw materials.
Next time you hear of technology, do not think of Japan, think of our own Mutapa State.
Think of great names such as Nyatsimba Mutota and the King Lobengula because the discernible fact is that we literary invented technology. Talk of medicines, pharmaceutical drugs, music instruments and the art of making fire. The so called ‘western inventors’ only came along and developed concepts that were already there!
We invented STEM. All that remains is to tap it from our own indigenous knowledge systems, or we lose out because there exists in the world individuals shrewd enough to do us this favour and reap all the glory.
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