The Sunday News
OUR history resides in our names. The ritual of naming is one of scanning the context of what is to be named, be it a place or person. It is not just a process of picking a name from a drop box full of names. A name captures contemporary and historical circumstances surrounding one’s birth. A name is full of meaning. Sometimes it is a commentary or opinion of those engaged in the ritual. By analysing the names given to individuals and places we are able to understand historical times. Why would there be similar names given to persons born at different times? We need to interrogate the circumstances surrounding the time of naming for a full appreciation of the same.
King Tshaka of the Zulu nation named his capital town Kobulawayo. Much later King Lobengula living at a different place also named his capital town Kobulawayo. Could we then say King Lobengula copied the name for his own capital town from King Tshaka? Certainly not. However, there were similar circumstances under which the two monarchs ascended to the throne. King Tshaka faced opposition when he became king. Prince Sigujana had in actual fact usurped power. King Tshaka thus faced opposition when he sought to become king.
Facing resistance and opposition, Prince Tshaka became obulawayo, he who is being figuratively “killed”. But as we know names of places carry a locative formative or prefix. The place where he who is being “killed” lives becomes “Kobulawayo”, actually in its long form it is “Ko- Obulawayo” which in short form becomes “Kobulawayo”. In the history of the Zulu nation the name Kobulawayo has historical significance. It invokes memories of how Prince Tshaka faced opposition when he became king.
This is the famous seat of power in Zululand where Prince Mzilikazi Khumalo served under King Tshaka. The name lives in King Mzilikazi’s royal praises, “Wal’ ukudl’ umlenze Kwabulawayo” Prince Mzilikazi objected to being belittled at the time he served under King Tshaka. Umlenze, the thigh, is not a meat cut that is served to one who is politically important, such as Prince Mzilikazi kaMatshobana.
The same was true of Prince Lobengula within the Ndebele State. There was opposition to his becoming king in 1870. The village of Zwangendaba located at Engcekezeni just across the Mbembesi River and near the small stream called Ngazini River took up arms to oppose King Lobengula’s ascension. UMbiko kaMadlenya Masuku was chief of Zwangendaba Village and was King Mzilikazi’s son-in-law, having married Princess Zinkabi sister to the rightful heir Prince Nkulumane. Their mother was Mwaka Nxumalo.
Apparently, Zwangendaba Village opposed Prince Lobengula’s ascension on the grounds that he was not royal enough, being the son of a Swazi woman Fulatha Tshabalala, and okaMabindela. Further, they accused him of not having been exposed to royal issues especially issues relating to governance as he did not grow up at his father’s capital towns. The real opposition though was from Princess Zinkabi who wanted political power. If her brother Prince Nkulumane had become king she would have been close to the throne. Now she wanted her husband Mbiko Masuku to become king with her being connected to royalty.
King Lobengula, who in 1870 had become king, named his capital town Gibixhegu. But after the civil war against Zwangendaba he renamed it Kobulawayo. Like King Tshaka before him, he faced opposition in his drive to become king. His people were “killing” him in a figurative sense. Hence the similarity in names was not a matter of one copying from the other, but a similarity in the contexts surrounding each monarch’s ascension to the throne.
Given such a bloody civil war, hence the name of the stream Ngazini River, meaning where the blood flowed, King Lobengula was going to memorialise the event through the ritual of naming. In addition to the renaming of his capital town at Enyokeni/Entenjaneni (now known as Old Bulawayo) the king named one of his daughters Famona or Fanamona.
Zwangendaba and other villages that sympathised with her such as Inyamayendlovu (under Mkhokhi Masuku umfoka Klibhi kaNyanda) and Ingubo (under Fusi Khanye) were seized with jealousy, umona. By naming his daughter MaMkhwananzi Mfamona/Famona/Fanamona he was saying away with jealousy, or kill/bury jealousy. Ironically, this particular daughter after whom a suburb in Bulawayo is named got married to Chief Hole Masuku the son of Mkhokhi. A place in Matobo District is named Khumalo after this same royal princes whose famous son was Nzula. Nzula’s son Malaki Masuku is the incumbent chief.
This was not all. King Lobengula was to memorialise the nasty and bloody incident by naming one of his sons Mphezeni. According to Roma Nyathi who was told by his own mother the name means impi ezweni, war in the land. Quite clearly there was only one war that King Lobengula was referring to, the civil war that pitted him and his supporters against Chief Mbiko Masuku’s Zwangendaba Village.
All communities do memorialise important events taking place within their communities and among related, relevant or neighbouring communities. Mphezeni was certainly born long after the civil war. Even then the king remembered the incident involving his rejection which resulted in a lot of bloodshed. Whereas African communities memorialised through intangible processes such as naming, European communities did so through the construction of tangible monumental structures. This is the difference between a materialistic people and those who are spiritual in outlook.
Meanwhile, King Zwangendaba left KwaZulu-Natal under conditions of war, generally referred to as Mfecane. There was war on the land and for one who, like King Lobengula, shared a common Nguni naming tradition it did not come as a surprise that he named one of his sons Mphezeni, a name that captures the history surrounding their migration from KwaZulu-Natal. Names documented the present and the past and were generally not futuristic. Do we ever document what is yet to happen or we document what has already come to pass?
It was to the Ngoni of King Mphezeni that King Lobengula sought asylum, according to yet another narrative concerning his fate following attack on his nation by the white colonists in November 1893. It is to these people that we turn next.
