Black Technocrat wrote ....
After the conquest of Zimbabwe, that being the combined middle and western section of historical BuKalanga/VuKaranga, British anthropologists brought from South Africa were appalled by what they found in the western section. These gentlemen had spent years in South Africa where they developed an affinity and curious fondness for the “Zulu” people, heritage and culture.
After the conquest of Zimbabwe, that being the combined middle and western section of historical BuKalanga/VuKaranga, British anthropologists brought from South Africa were appalled by what they found in the western section. These gentlemen had spent years in South Africa where they developed an affinity and curious fondness for the “Zulu” people, heritage and culture.
On arrival at the place they named Matebeleland, they found not a trace of the “Zulu” heritage and culture in the area. This angered them because they believed that a “Zulu” people occupied this area. The absence of “Zulu” people was blamed on Lobengula and the people. Lobengula had negligently allowed the Zulu culture to wither on the vine, so they charged.
The language spoken by the people was not the isiZulu the anthropologists were familiar with. Unlike what they had in mind whereby the society was arranged in layers of well-defined classes, the experts on “Zulu” culture, found people freely mingling with each other. There were no castes. In a typical Hunhu/Ubuntu-style egalitarian fashion, the people were mingling freely without any social barriers.
These pro-Zulu cultural warriors then set out to “re-impose” the Zulu character on the people they found in the so-called Matebeleland. Zulu customary laws were imported and shoved down the throats of the people, with the help of some local chiefs who were paid a cow here and a cow there as a reward. The “Zulu” language was “re-introduced” as part of the forced “reversion” of the people back to being “Zulus.”
It was an unprecedented agenda of the worst form of arrogant and ignorant social engineering. History was completely ignored as the know-it-all social engineers set out to militantly create a mythological “tribe,” history, heritage and culture. The terrible results of that wickedness haunt Zimbabwe to this day. An egalitarian people were turned into one of the most mutually but needlessly hateful mass of tribalists.
Here is a brief summary of the dangerous Zulus-in-BuKalanga myth. Mzilikazi left Ngome Forest, in modern-day KwaZulu Natal (KZN), with 300 amabutho.
Number 1: According to King Chaka’s military code:
(i).. No soldier was allowed to marry until he was out of the military, and;
(ii).. The soldiers joined the military as boys, amajaya.
The two points meant that Mzilikazi’s 300 soldiers:
(i) had no wives nor children at the time of their flight from King Chaka, and;
(ii) Since they were young when they joined the military, the 300 young men did not have the time and opportunity to observe and learn by imitation Zulu social skills, culture and history. Learning involved the sustained presence in the community as well as active participation in the daily activities of the community.
Number 2: As soldiers, the 300 men were isolated from the ordinary “Zulu” community. All they knew was fighting because that is what they had been trained to do. On departing their homeland, they were culturally blank slates. It was not possible to carry with them a culture that they had never learnt to begin with.
Number 3: Since “Zulu” men are incapable of mating with each other to produce children, they had to marry non-“Zulu” women. Inevitably, whatever “Zulu” character there was, time and procreation necessity led to the dilution of the Zulu character.
At this point, let us remember that the 300 bachelor soldier incorporated more people as they swept across the Transvaal. In one locality alone, KoMjekejeke, 19,000 young men and women were forcibly taken. By the time Mzilikazi’s group had crossed the Vembe/Limpopo River, he had about 70,000 people with him. Only 300 of them had the “Zulu” character.
Number 4: Another point overlooked by the ignorant social engineers is that Mzilikazi was not a Zulu. The Zulu were a very minor clan compared to the Ndwandwe of Zwide and the Mthethwa of Dingswayo. When Zwide beheaded Dingiswayo, Chaka took over the leadership of the Mthetwa.
Chaka was the exiled son of the Zulu clan leader, Senzangakona. The Zulu had actually rejected their own seed, Chaka. It was the Mthetwa that that protected Chaka from being killed by the Zulu. So, even the Mthethwa were not Zulus.
To call all the Ndwandwe, Khumalo, Langeni, Mthetwa et cetera Zulus because a son of the Zulus became the leader of all these people is as logical as calling every South African a Mthembu because Madiba Nelson Mandela, a Mthembu from Mvezo, brought majority rule in South Africa. In Zimbabwe, it is the equivalent of calling everyone Ngwenya because Ngwenya Robert Mugabe brought independence to Zimbabwe.
Number 5: The 70,000 refugee were easily assimilated into the indigenous society because of the totem system previously explained in a separate factoid. Even Mzilikazi himself was of the Dziva/Pool/Hungwe totem thereby making him a son of the soil with relatives in places like Buhera.
To get a good understanding of the type and the result of the assimilation process that took place from 1838 to around 1900, think of the fate of the Gaza/Shangaan people in the Chipinge area who came from KZN with Ndwandwe General Soshangana. They found their relatives in the area, got seamlessly assimilated and, without the social engineering that was mischievously started in the western section of the nation, became part of our one Bantu nation located between the Vembe River and Zambezi River.
With credit to Professor Terence Ranger’s work on the invention of tribalism, this is the Zimbabwean/African Factoid of the day, I’m Bvumavaranda BTechno Moyo. — with Nellie De Jongh and 77 others.
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