The Sunday News
Micheal Mhlanga
IN my view, most countries in the continent face a daunting task of attempting to redeem themselves from colonial hangovers which linger on all walls that make up our lives.
Our political systems and economies are foreign dominated and it is an everyday task to remodel and discover ourselves as an independent governing people. Our public systems are still Rhodesian, our literature is still marked with a Victorian schedule and our geography still remains a Berlin cartographed image.
We are still piddling with comprehension of gender equality and equity when our struggles have not divorced themselves from European dominance; we are far from discovering what Professor Sabelo Gatsheni Ndlovu calls the ontological density of blackness.
Our struggles have not departed from fighting mental slavery which arrogates us as inferior to other races, they are still impinged on identity conflicts, we can’t define ourselves outside of others but here we are in a city of 600 000 multicultural politically conscious and unconscious persons faced with a myriad spurt of political dissent clad in a Mthwakazi cloak.
Bulawayo, to be precise may probably be the less populated city with a legion of political parties all contesting against each other on who is more angrier than the other, who is more Ndebele than others, who has the most legitimate monarch candidate than all others and who can wail louder about Gukurahundi than the rest. These are some of the characteristics that best describe the secessionists/restorationists/royalist political parties that have since emerged.
If you remember well, a couple of weeks back I articulated why Matabeleland doesn’t need such discordant ethnic politics arguing that it affects even those who do not pledge to such paltry politics for the effects of the social recoil are not discerning, they are stereotypically reactive and anyone who speaks Ndebele, stays in Matabeleland is glued to the same group and perceived as a hater of other Zimbabwean tribes, which is effectively unfair to some of us who think Mthwakazi politics is too irrelevant to follow. We just witnessed a clash of secessionists over graves, of all the things, the two moribund groups disputed reburial and we were left wondering if restoration rejects the respect of the dead. My cultural knowledge infuse the utmost respect of the dead and their deserved decent burial.
In this Part One, I shall look at how this is a failed model in culturally restoring the individual and the family, then next week we shall discuss how the nation state is not achievable along ethnic boundaries. Before I delve into the misconceived political behaviours of the political clowns, let me briefly narrate what one Dr Mpiyezwe Guduza who happens to be the vice-president of another faction which calls itself Mthwakazi Liberation Front (MLF) says in their small blog.
As the voice of the Front he condemns their competitor, Mthwakazi Republic Party, another secessionist cabal of tempering with Gukurahundi evidence through reburials. What is more disquieting is that he does not give any normative reason as to why it’s uncouth to rebury your loved ones who surely deserve such ritual respect, he further fails to address their credible political point of clash, save for a response to Facebook comments which is the space they have come to be champions of.
Of everything one is taught in Ndebele culture, it’s inhlonipho, that is absolutely absent as old men and women compete to slur invectives and call each other names even hard for me to paste here. Their clashes have heightened so much that one fails to understand the possibility of tranquillity if ever the restoration agenda succeeds (in dreams of course).
If clashes within the same ethnic group are this rampant at such a micro-scale we very much doubt if they can succeed to co-exist in Mthwakazi state, it’s clear that we would have decentralised and devolved conflict. It will be right at our door steps and no one to protect anyone residing in that Kingdom.
The visible hatred between MLF and MRP leaves nothing to be questioned except confirming untrue stereotypes that Ndebele people are violent and devoid of civic reasoning, which is ultimately untrue.
MLF and MRP are bound by the same principle of secession confused as cultural restoration. First, I want to rebut the bad strategy of cultural restoration as presented by the two. Their arguments are born by so much anger which has blurred their decision making, comprehension of political economy and strategy, skewed ambitions and has carved an unexorcised political demon. They argue that restoration is about recovering and restoring that which has been lost and bringing back into existence that which used to exist but is no longer there or is there in bad shape, these are the words of one Khumbulani Moyo. He further talks of principles of restoration which are individual psychological restoration, family unit based-restoration, community-based restoration, cultural restoration and nation-state restoration and I would like to believe that they coined these concepts on their own, which is not bad on an academic level, let’s give them that, at least they can theme their thoughts.
These two parties or whatever you choose to call them would do a marvellous job if they were cultural activists. Listening to their grievances that necessitate restoration, it would be unorthodox not to sympathise with them, however, their strategies and some reasons of restoring are far too stretched.
It is true that there has been cultural dissipation over the past years which have affected Ndebele identity. This is not peculiar to the Ndebeles only as Tonga, Xhosa, Sotho, Shona and Venda also suffer the same predicament. It becomes very naive of the groups to single themselves as the only culturally suffering group thus they need to restore themselves politically. Language and traditional loss are rampant the world over and they are not best addressed by a confrontational and exclusive model.
Selective amnesia is a dangerous disease, it cripples even the noblest motives because when you play victim in the face of worse-off victims, they will notice and discredit your plight. What the two groups should know is that they are not the worse victim of cultural loss and political confrontation is not a remedy to rehabilitating lingua-cultural disappearance.
It’s true that policies crafted towards revitalisation and protection of cultures serve best in restoring what is lost but creating your own nation as a breakaway from the whole lot does not in any way guarantee safety, re-acceptance and embracing of the lost culture. Such conclusions by the secessionists are a result of a failed problem identification strategy.
The underlying reasoning within them is that the fall of the Ndebele nation was inaugurated by the advent of a solid democracy in 1980 among a drum of other reasons such as their repetitive rhetoric of a “grand-plan”, Gukurahundi and blame on the late Vice-President Joshua Nkomo’s alleged failed politics. The Ndebele State’s fall can be arguably dated way back to 1897 when the British conquered at Gadade (this is subject to debate).
They blame failed politics by Zapu’s then President who refused to take heed of Chief Khayisa Ndiweni’s advice in 1979 to halve the country, they are religious to Maphenduka’s book which talks of rule by conquest, they harbour anger on anyone who is not Ndebele as they claim that the 1982-85 civil unrest in Matabeleland was solely against them. This plethora of misdirected anger and reasons refuses to accommodate a gamut of credible reasons of why the Ndebele culture became unfavourable.
Basic learning teaches that when two cultures come into contact one assumes the higher level and the other lower level, it’s called diglossia. This is necessitated by the number of speakers each language has, the political muscles the speakers and their leaders have and above all, language strength is a social construction.
When individuals are numerically less and do not see the political strength of their language they resort to new languages and cultures. It is an individual decision to denounce affiliation to a culture they are born to. When a multitude of individuals adopt the same mindset of not celebrating their native culture, a gap is created and preservation is threatened, this is when language loss occurs.
The adoption of English and cosmopolitanism as super cultures in Ndebele realms is the reasons why Ndebele became an endangered culture. Believe it or not, indigenous languages are at a threat world over and Ndebele became probably unfortunate that it has been on threat for a long period. This however, does not warrant a restoration of a culture so that it dominates other cultures. I witnessed this on a Tuesday when a Sakhile Nkomo, a staunch UK-based believer in the restoration agenda misrepresented that Kalanga, Venda and Tonga are all Ndebele, that is absurd in all levels. Ndebele is an amalgamation of kingdoms and chiefdoms that were conquered by the Nguni troops of Mzilikazi. It consisted of three social classes which our model of democracy since 1980 denounced.
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