The Sunday News
Cultural Heritage Pathisa Nyathi
OUR luxury coach leaves Gloucester Green in Oxford promptly at 10am. Yvonne Cassim, Marieke Clerke and I are headed for Milton Keynes to the north of Oxford where we have been attending a Britain Zimbabwe Society (BZS) Research Day meeting at St Antony’s College one of more than 30 colleges that make up the famed University of Oxford.
We pass through swathes of extensive fields of ripening wheat and barley. On some farms we encounter several sheep donning thick white wool. Now and then we see a lone deer foraging on the lush green vegetation. We proceed past Bicester and Buckingham. After an hour’s drive we get to Milton Keynes.
One cannot help noticing a vast difference between Milton Keynes and Oxford. The latter is an old historic city characterised by old buildings with protruding chimneys and narrow streets. There were no automobiles at the time the city was laid out. Horses ruled the roost of transport. On the fringes of roads you see black trimmed stones akin to the tradition in Rome in Italy.
Milton Keynes is totally different. Tall impressive glass buildings characterise the town which is a post-World War II phenomenon. London was, in that period, characterised by slum conditions and many of her buildings had been on the receiving end of Adolf Hitler’s sustained aerial bombings. As a result a number of towns were built where Londoners and other people would be settled. Milton Keynes, characterised by wide tree-lined boulevards, was one of such relief towns.
Our destination is 1 Oakley Gardens, Downhead Park, the Milton Keynes Quaker Centre. A handful of people are already settling down to their Yearly Business Meeting (YBM). Most of the people within the august building are trustees of Hlekweni Rural Service Centre a few kilometres south of Emganwini, a suburb in Bulawayo.
There is evident gloom on the faces of the trustees. You can immediately tell that not all is well. There is reason for all this despair and seeming misery. Hlekweni Rural Service Centre, an institution of 47 years standing, is closing down on 30 June 2014. The last graduation ceremony took place a few days ago.
I have just picked up a newsletter from a rack on the wall. Screaming titles draw my attention. The newsletter goes by the name of “The Friends of Hlekweni UK.” My eyes dart to a depressing sub-title, “Hlekweni To Close But Friends of Hlekweni To Continue.” Yet another shattering sub-title calls, “After 47 years, Hlekweni Rural Service Centre To Close.”
Hlekweni Trustees endorsed a Mrs Sipho Nsimbi-led board decision to close the facility. That sad but inevitable decision was taken on 2 April 2014. Trustees attending the meeting will brief the rest of the Quakers on the latest developments relating to Hlekweni’s impending closure, in particular why the decision had to be taken. The following trustees are in in the meeting: Lee Taylor (clerk), Roger Moore (treasurer) Ruth Findlay, Don Rowe. Jessica Bishop from the Johannesburg Montly Meeting (JMM) arrives during the course of the meeting.
Taylor, who chairs the meeting, has placed a bouquet of English roses on the table: orange, maroon and yellow. Next to these flowers is a sprouting pumpkin seed from Kezi. Its two thick green cotyledons immediately cast my mind back to rural Kezi in Matobo District where I was born. Both the pumpkin plant and the bouquet are symbolic. Milton Keynes Friends of Hlekweni assist two schools in Matobo District: Mashumba and Ratanyana.
The meeting starts with a few moments of silence as if in honour of the passing on of someone important. That presents me with an opportunity to reflect on the history of Hlekweni, not the 1960s institution but the pre-colonial settlement during the heyday of the Ndebele State.
While King Mzilikazi and his people were settled in the Marico Valley (1832-37) a wedding party arrived. The esteemed party was accompanying Queen Fulatha Tshabalala who would be the mother of future Ndebele king Lobengula. Among the people who accompanied the wedding party, umthimba were the Mlilo people, of the Thonga ethnic group who, included in their midst the famed traditional doctor Nkumba Mlilo. Brothers Mtotobi and Mnanayi Mlilo were part of the group.
Once the Ndebele were settled in south-western Zimbabwe the nucleus of this group was constituted into a village called uMncwazi (eMncwazini). The village (some prefer to call it a regiment) was given the name for a reason. Women in a party accompanying a bride don themselves with brow bands known as imincwazi (singular umncwazi). Let this not be confused with isincwazi (plural izincwazi) which is worn by widows in mourning.
The women wearing imincwazi would later return to the home of the bride to have their imincwazi removed (ukwethula imincwazi). Apparently this was not the case with Fulatha Tshabalala’s party. They found conditions so nice and conducive that they decided to stay on in Matabeleland. When the village which included these people was set up the attending historical reality was remembered and memorialised through the ritual of naming.
Mtotobi Mlilo was appointed by King Mzilikazi as chief over uMncwazi Village which was located south of Emganwini within the district which aptly got the name Samathonga in reference to the ethnic identity of the Mlilo people who were in charge. Kwesamathonga (isigodi or isigaba) is today remembered through the name of the school where the Quaker Friends of Hlekweni are running a feeding scheme for schoolchildren.
Oral traditions have it that at eHlekweni there was a tree which caused people to laugh. The tree species has not been identified to this writer. Suffice it to say the said enigmatic tree has given rise to the name of the place; the Rural Service Centre, the school and the farm. Umncwazi is also famous for providing a maiden who enchanted King Mzilikazi during the umhlanga ceremony.
The king was already advanced in age. The people of eMncwazini took time to ensure their maiden was well groomed. Indeed, Nyembezana, okaThebe, was chosen ahead of all other parading maidens. There was great joy and jubilation among uMncwazi residents. Queen Nyembezana would later conceive the king‘s last born son, Nyanda.
EHlekweni, the place of laughter is no longer a laughing matter as the Centre faces imminent closure. Next week we shall turn to the institutional history of Hlekweni as a rural service centre that has left an indelible mark in fostering rural development in Matabeleland and beyond.
