Mzilikazi’s Legacy: Alternative Histories and the Fear of Diversity

The fear of celebrating the distinct culture of Mthwakazi and restoring traditional institutions like the house of Khumalo is rooted deeply in the political desire to retain a singular narrative of Zimbabwe. Which makes me wonder if simple, less diverse, more homogeneous societies are easier to govern? Or controlling vote banks is easier if there are manufactured (to the point of seeming natural) and often disproportionate/ asymmetric social cleavages.

Evidence of this fear can be culled from the Government’s frustration over, for example, Bulawayo Mayor, David Coltart, meeting with King Bulelani and the subsumption of ZAPU in the Unity Accord of 1987 following a bloody massacre of many Ndebele people during Gukurahundi by the Government of Robert Mugabe (this year, his death anniversary coincided with the King Mzilikazi Day Celebration) . Unfortunately, Gukurahundi is often reduced to a dissident problem  instead of a violent and brutal crackdown (some call it a genocide) on Ndebele people which left wounds and scars which have not been addressed until today. Kindly watch the documentary by CITE to learn more about Gukurahundi. 

Moreover, this fear can be seen in the unspoken anxiety of “the possibility of having a Ndebele president” or both the ruling and opposition parties having to have a mixture of both Ndebele and Shona speaking candidates or cabinet ministers. Or the ahistorical lie that Lobengula sold the country (I recommend that people read the contents of the Rudd Concession and also that at the time Zimbabwe was not even a place, even Rhodesia itself) or that Ndebeles were punished during Gukurahundi or are still being punished because King Mzilikazi used to raid Shona-speaking tribes.

Moreover, the celebration of the Ndebele identity exposes the lack of a historical socio-cultural cohesion in the dominant “Shona” tribal identity. Shona is not a tribe but a colonial anthropological grouping of different tribes of largely unrelated origins - hence the dialects differ in language, norms and practices. Award winning journalist, Hopewell Chin’ono has repeatedly criticised the idea that there is a unified Shona tribe in Zimbabwe. ZANU PF internal fights have also been marked by these internal distinctions between Shona dialects, for example the Zezuru and the Karanga.

I also believe it to be a lie that there is an irreconcilable rift between the dominant Shona and inferior Ndebele - although the percentage of the Zimbabwean population that is Shona Speaking is 87%. I also recognise that the Ndebele kingdom was marked by its own diversity, such that its constituents are just as diverse. However I think it is wrong for either “Shona” people or Ndebele people to see each other as enemies or perpetual adversaries, because that is simply not true. We must be wary of how we use language, especially when we seek to apportion blame for past mistakes.

I have  not conducted research or thoroughly accessed any to definitively claim that the Government of Zimbabwe systematically disempowers or under-develops Ndebele speaking provinces and cities, although this has been claimed. It is no secret that since independence the Government has been largely “Shona” dominated. There has been, for a while, a push for a separate country, the Mthwakazi republic that would take up most of western Zimbabwe - with its own government - and entirely new state. Expounding on this would need a separate blog.

This blog simply wants to laud the Mthwakazi Nation, Ndebele people, and the people from different parts of Zimbabwe and from other countries, for keeping an important part of Zimbabwean culture alive. Mostly because the annual celebration of King Mzilikazi calls us to realize that there are alternative ways to think about identities and how society can be organized beyond the norms imposed by colonialists and western imposed standards. This is to say, perhaps one day we will realize how violently western concepts of life, politics and religion have violently erased indigenous ones - and we would cease to seek to justify ourselves using templates written for us not by us.

Lastly, the presence of special guests from South Africa and Zambia, whose own cultures and traditions are related to that of the Nation built by King Mzilikazi, unveiled the artificiality of colonial borders. Colonial borders were drawn without regard for local relations and concepts of territory and power, which makes it sad to see Africans alienate, brutalize (think "Operation Dudula") and fight each other on the basis of these colonial identities.