The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
AS promised last week, today we turn to one family whose names seem to strike a common but unusual note of desperation and resignation to fate. Names, we have stressed the point in the past, are a form of documentation for a people who did not embrace literacy as a form of capturing events taking place at the time of birth of babies.
The degrees of intensity and accuracy in terms of expressing historical relevance may vary from family to family as we shall see next week when we deal with a certain family at Singwangombe under Chief Sikhobokhobo Nxumalo in Nkayi. The names in question were accurately given as both reminders of reality surrounding birth and yet inspired by events that took place a long time ago. A history of the clan was captured in the given names of children.
Just how much history and culture would we know if we knew the origins and meanings behind given names? What does the name Sikhobokhobo mean? The original Sikhobokhobo was that of a man who lived in Bubi and had the responsibility of providing milk to be used at the royal town KoBulawayo during the umthontiso ritual ceremony which preceded inxwala. Today the name is associated with a chieftainship in Nkayi and Madlela Sikhobokhobo the musician has further popularised the name.
The name Jonas itself is laden with historical meaning. The name is English and points to the English race as conquerors of Zimbabwean people. Their language, English, found its way into the names of children born after occupation in 1890/1893. Before occupation, a name such as Jonas would have been unthinkable. He would have been given a name in TjiKalanga, his native language. The reality of occupation was thus captured in the name Jonas, who was my mother’s maternal uncle.
I did refer in the last instalment to a man who, in old age, was known as Manyenyeza, the man who spoke in whispering tones. The name Jonas in itself was a documentation of yet another historical reality. Manyenyeza’s totem used to be wudo and changed to Ncube after the arrival of the Ndebele in the nineteenth century. What emerges is the fact that the language of the conquerors is adopted following conquest as happened when the English conquered the Ndebele. Wudo was not the only change in totemic rendition following Ndebele conquest of the BaKalanga. The same was true of Mbizi — Dube; Howu — Ndlovu, among several other totems.
Jonas’ people were of the Shazhamangwe section of the Ncubes. Last week we referred to his sister Tjililo, also known as Mashada who was my maternal grandmother. However, our interest in this instalment lies in the names that Jonas, uManyenyeza and his wife MaDube of the Mathanda section gave to their children. I never got to know her first name beyond her maiden totem of Mathanda. This is yet another deviation from the Kalanga rendition of the totem. It ought to be clear that some Dubes are Bango in TjiKalanga. Some of them have become Mathanda which, in actual fact, ought to be Matanda, itself plural of the word danda with the same meaning as bango.
Pessimism seemed to prevail in the names the family gave to their children. The eldest child — a girl, was named Saliwe, meaning we have been rejected or turned down. The family may, we may surmise, have known why they chose the name. It was relevant to them and remained a reminder and expression of the experiences they went through at the time of birth of the girl child. The name was circumstantial to the family. Names are chosen and given in relation to the family that is making a statement.
What makes the family unique is the choice of names with a running theme of pessimism, gloom and negativity. One son was named Bayanga, meaning they were a poor family. Indeed, the name was an accurate statement of the economic status of the family — poor unto death. The name, as it seems, was prophetic, some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Bayanga himself never performed better than his own parents.
Then came Mahlalela. I suspect the name was a translation from TjiKalanga. I still remember our mischief as children when Ranny, my younger brother and I used to sing a song to taunt targeted visitors that we thought were visiting us to get food from our family. “Wozogalila” was the song and the word galila, as we used it in the context translated to ukuhlalela. The term was not a positive description. To visit with the intention of being given food was not looked upon as a good thing, or at least that is how we viewed it, hence our breaking into the galila song when we thought one’s visit was more to do with seeking food than just visiting to see relatives with naughty children.
Mahlalela was employed by our father as herdman for our cattle and would also drive our father’s scotch cart. Meanwhile, their family was without cattle, goats or donkeys. Now I look back and wonder whether the family was indeed resigned to their fate as expressed in the names chosen for their children. Bayanga spent long periods in prison at Gwanda for one crime or another. But that was not all.
The next child was named Sidakwa, the drunkard. Obviously the boy child was not a drunkard at birth, indeed no one is. Only when he grew up did he imbibe. Sidakwa was to become a farm labourer who gathered no moss as he went from farm to farm in the areas of Gwanda and Khezi. He gathered no moss, and that was happening at a time when other children were attending Sankonjana School to improve their lot in future. None of Manyenyeza’s children ever went to school. Poverty was to remain their fate for generations to come with no prospect of ever breaking the cycle.
The last born child, also a son, was named Khanjana, the small headed one. Perhaps even at birth — baby Khanjana displayed an abnormally small head. That certainly was the case. At the same time, the name was symbolic. Khanjana did not go to school, he was to grow into a man with no prospects at all for a good life in adulthood. As a child, he accompanied his mother to beer drinks and was carried on his mother’s back till his feet almost touched the ground. Like his brothers Sidakwa, Mahlalela and Bayanga, he worked at several white farms: Maphitsheka, Simbavu and Springani, to name but a few. It was thus a pathetic situation which was foreseen by the parents and expressed through prophetic and self-fulfilling names.
The fate of men and women is captured and lives through the names they give to their children. Is this a matter of choice or expression of fate from whose jaws we cannot extricate ourselves? Such was the fate of my mother’s uncle’s family, Jonas Manyenyeza Ncube.
