The Sunday News
Tshidzanani Malaba, Obituary
JULY 16 2021 marked the last journey of life for Tate Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu. I am too young and I was far less exposed to write about him except for the little window that God allowed me to interact with him somehow in a little less than 20 years. This means that I have 67 years of his life that I have no iota about. I am therefore, confined to the marginalised languages revival under the umbrella of Zimbabwe Indigenous Languages Promotion Association (Zilpa) and more specifically to Kalanga language through Kalanga Language and Cultural Development Association (KLCDA).
I started my self-identity intensive search in 1998 when more questions than answers reached the peak. I had always loved to speak Kalanga language even among non-speakers but I had not done a deep self-identity search. By year 2000, I was satisfactory done with my family history skeletal search and the lineage was clear. The biggest question was now on language identity which no one around me seemed to talk about. They all seemed comfortable with the status quo. Fortunately, historian Pathisa Nyathi began to profile the history of BaKalanga in the Sunday News and it drew my attention.
I then made efforts to look for him to link me to any people who could be promoting Kalanga. He said he was not aware of any group, but Saul Gwakuba could probably assist. I was a follower of Gwakuba on his Daily News column called “A view from the Matopos” but nothing in his writings was suggestive of him being a language activist. I reluctantly went to look for him at the Daily News offices at Dulys building in Bulawayo. The paper had now closed. Gwakuba was one of the last people who remained manning the offices with the hope of restoration. It was a little scary to walk into an office of a “banned” newspaper, it certainly required a bit of rehearsals.
Nonetheless, the less I made it through and surely, he was the only person in the office at the time. He was glad to see me and was able to give me a little lecture on our family history, legacy and the legends he had met in his life.
He however, disappointed me a little when he told me that there was no more functional Kalanga Association that he could point me to. He however, referred be to Raphael Butshe in Mpopoma for further information on who could be doing something on TjiKalanga.
I immediately set for Butshe who happened to be a neighbour by my parent’s home. I had known him for eight years. We greeted him as a respected elder of the community but I had not heard him speak a single word in Kalanga and I had even dismissed any possible link with the Butshe area of Bulilima yet he was from there.
Butshe chose an instant mentorship route. “Akuna thaka iyo inotongobhuzwa nekwetjiKalanga (there is no young man of your age who is keen on this language)” he said glowing with excitement. He then told me about Zilpa and its next meeting which was in a weeks’ time. Despite that this meeting was of delegates meeting by invitation only, he dragged me there as his guest. He introduced me as his guest who must be part of the Zilpa meetings and that he would rather be dismissed instead, as he described himself as “a monument of good intention which cannot add any value but only good for viewing.”
To my surprise Zilpa was chaired by Saul Gwakuba and he had not told me this. Each language group was supposed to send three representatives on the day, Kalanga had five excluding himself as chairman. The Kalanga delegates were Dr Butsilo Dabudabu, Raphael Butshe, Anderson Senegedze Moyo and Ethel Moyo (who had come to say goodbye due to her new appointment as District Administrator), and myself. This was a little uncomfortable for Gwakuba as the chair and for me too. I was probably 25 years younger than the youngest Kalanga delegate.
Gwakuba proved to be so passionate about linguist rights and the devolution of languages and he and colleagues had realised that the only way to win this, was to push collectively as six marginalised languages that included Kalanga, Sotho, Nambya, Tonga, Venda and Xangani. This was the beginning of my close encounter with Saul Gwakuba. I would learn later that he had a long history of language activism in the early 1980s through Kalanga Promotion Society where he was vice chairman to Million Nsala Malaba (whom I had not heard about). Further efforts had been done through Venda Tonga Kalanga (Vetoka) but with little success.
They had now realised that the limitation was in the Education Act which empowered the minister to allow the teaching of these languages at his discretion while another Act of 1931 allowed the teaching of these languages only up to Grade Three for transition purposes to Ndebele or Shona.
The organisation chaired by Gwakuba had already made major bypass achievement steps through a 2002 circular by the then Permanent Secretary for Education Dr Thompson Tsodzo which gave clear guidelines for the teaching of all these marginalised languages. Unfortunately, no resources were available from the ministry for this task. The call was now for individual language groups to sensitise their language speakers and pull resources to try and bring the dying languages into formal education.
The greater task was to get the language speakers to re-kindle their self-identity through cultural festivals, sensitisation workshops and writer’s workshops. For Kalanga it was a more daunting task. Kalanga chiefs were dethroned during the colonial era in the 1940s and earlier, the speakers were hopeless on the language possibilities of going into formal education and there was no standard orthography that was agreed on or ingested use on how to write Kalanga. The language was equally undeveloped in neighbouring Botswana.
As we worked on getting to the ground the name Kalanga Association was loosely accepted. I thought of adding the word ‘development’ to it since we didn’t just want to associate but to develop the language as well. When I put this to Gwakuba as the name we wanted to work with, he asked me if we wanted to do roads and dip tanks. When I said no, he then told me to add the words “language and culture” so that we are specific on what we want to do. “This will save you from any conflict of interest with the Government which has the mandate for other developments,” he said.
The name Kalanga Language and Cultural Development Association came on board and was approved by all the elders.
In 2007 Gwakuba stepped down as Chairman of Zilpa paving way for the new committee chaired by Maretha Dube and I became the secretary. Our number one task was to formalise the organisation through registration which we achieved in early 2009. The Government of National Unity had also brought in a new minister then Senator David Coltart who took over from Hon Aeneas Chigwedere. Through the guidance of Raphael Butshe, Ephraim Makwati and Isaac Mupande we were able to charter the new paths while Father Mukonori was our link and moderator to the highest office.
In KLCDA we chose to be selfish with Gwakuba once more and pulled him back closer home as a Trustee together with the seasoned elders Clement Majahana and Anderson Sole Senegedze Moyo, Dr Maclean Bhala as we formally registered KLCDA in 2010. As we chartered the waters of language revival Gwakuba remained our anchor and resource person both from academic point of view to basic vocabulary of a vanishing language. He was a creative writer who understood all rhymes of poetry and literature. His exposure to Spanish and Portuguese languages helped us to understand why our language seemed to be so difficult to accurately read if you are not a speaker.
“We should have followed the Spanish way of writing which comes with tone marking of aigu and grave (grava) and not the English way,” he would say.
In our writers’ workshops we pioneered the writing of our first ever Grade 1- 7 “Zwidiye TjiKalanga” textbooks series and he participated as resource person together with A. S Moyo and they were ready to give us difficult words that were vanishing for most writers. Simple words like polygamy, jealousy, opposite etcetera were now known in Ndebele and English, this required the services of people like Gwakuba. He remained our directional guide on all matters of language and culture.
He was so particular with correct spellings and grammar such that nothing skipped his eye. In all his life he was in sound mind, perfect memory, a wide reader and up to date on current affairs which he could easily connect with history and other events that have happened elsewhere in the world. He was an astute historian and analyst who would connect things that most of us would hardly link.
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu and his fellow Executive Committee of Kalanga Promotion Association went on a drive to add their fathers’ names as their middle names. This was a way of preserving their lineage identity. Gwakuba was actually his father who assisted missionaries in Dombodema with the translation of the first four books of the New Testament of the Bible into Kalanga in the 1920s. Yayizela Hhowu Nimeho. His legacy can never skip the eyes of Language Emancipators, Nationalists, Journalists and Educators in Zimbabwe.
My last significant encounter and advice from Tate Saul Gwakuba was in October 2019 when I was heading to Botswana Domboshaba Festival as the guest of honour to encourage them to stay resolute until they win on their language rights. I needed Gwakubas’ wisdom and he did not disappoint. He also gave me the meaning, role and origin of Domboshaba in riddles. “Dakami loshaba Phezha ekati lakafa,” that’s for another day. (For another tribute to the late Gwakuba Ndlovu see also B6)
- Tshidzanani T Malaba writes in his personal capacity. He is a Board Member of Kalanga Language and Cultural Development Association and former Zilpa secretary, obsessed with equal rights for all languages. He can be contacted on +263772255532 or [email protected]
