Matters of The Ndebele and His Place in Zimbabwe

In light of the recent 'changes' in Zimbabwe and the ongoing debate on matters pertaining to identity and history, I have the pleasure to introduce today's blog post, from Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, a famous writer friend of mine whom I am honoured to have on my blog. This post first appeared on her blog in 2010 and its thesis remains relevant today as it was then.

Her first novel House of Stone is available for pre-order here.

Well I was back home in Zimbabwe very recently, and had intended to stay for a couple of weeks, but I found myself eerily displaced from this place I call home, and it kinda scared me. I am back in South Africa, where I have always felt displaced from the moment I set foot, and I wonder if this displacement may be internal.

City Hall of the city of Bulawayo, former capital of the Ndebele Kingdom
(c) Scott Wheeler, GNU Free Documentation License

Close to Zim as SA is, I view it as another Diaspora. All the symptoms are there. The feeling, strong and stark and ever there, that one is an outsider; there are always these lines between one and the other; the insider and the outsider, and then lines between the outsiders themselves, the different nationalities; and then further still, from my experience with other Zimbabweans, lines between outsiders from the same place. The system itself is designed this way. Sometimes I think people hold an extra bag of fear with them, just in case an occasion rises up unexpectedly. In Johannesburg, it is advisable that if you are a foreigner, you carry a certified copy of your ID at all times; you may be asked to produce it by the authorities, failure to which may land you in a jail cell. I guess there are too many illegals around here. There is a certain hardening of the heart out here, and who can blame anyone? People, even relatives, are never really interested in you or your business. When they say, ‘How are you?’ they want to hear that you are ‘fine’, anything otherwise and you can see their eyes glazing over. Perhaps you may get a pat on the back and a gruff ‘Things will be ok’, and that’s that. Back home in Zim, that compact sense of family is ever there; it is the hall mark of our culture, and something to be proud of. And perhaps that is how many Zimbabweans have managed to survive these past years, because of this strong family support one could fall back on. Because one could approach the family with the confidence that help of some sort would be given. Because there was never any questioning of its existence. The case of Zimbabwe is sad; it feels new to us Zimbos, as it well should, and yet it is another ironical turn out of an African state. People carry this story with them, out of their country, brandishing it like a Food Pass at a refugee camp, only to get to the other side and realise that there is nothing special about this story. It reminds me of a passage in Parselelo Kantai’s short story ‘You Wreck Her’, a tale evolving around a prostitute in Nairobi:

‘They cackle and blow smoke in your face when you speak of a lost and painful childhood when you became your mother after she died…..They tell you to save it; everybody has a copy of that story. You can sell it for an extra 500 bob to a sad man in the short time car park.’

And so you come out into the big wide world to discover that ‘everybody has a copy of that story’. In fact, being away from home instils, more than ever, that sense of identification with one’s nation. The world ran out of empathy a long time ago; now, it has mostly a condescending type of pity. And nobody wants a condescending type of pity. It can be a good thing, this ‘condescending type of pity’, even if it is not meant to be; it is like a wake up call, that removes that sense of helplessness about one’s home and awakens a sense of responsibility that can motivate a desire for action.

It is even more ironical for the Nebeles; the Shonas have always been clear about where their home is and they have never sat on a fence about that. But the Nebeles, my tribe, oh! You just need to walk through the streets of Bulawayo to understand the devastations of the Ndebele misconception that South Africa is somehow that other home they are entitled to, that is just waiting with candles and a big creamy chocolate cake. This sense of kinship stems from history; the time when Mizilikazi broke away from Tshaka Zulu’s tribe in South Africa and moved into the Matabeleland region of what is now known as Zimbabwe. This desire for kinship with South Africa also delves from what is termed a complicated history, but may somehow not be so complicated. It is always complicated when a certain history in a people’s time is not acknowledged to the point that it festers into a series of tales that are sometimes delusional, emotional more than factual, and destructive in their unresolved state. Human beings have always been quick to lurch onto that sense of entitlement when wronged; it is a natural phenomenon, it very easily becomes the blemish upon which every subsequent wrong or fault, real or perceived to be so, is blamed. I think I may be speaking in riddles. For those who are not familiar with what I am talking about, just google Gukurahundi. I have heard many things being blamed by my tribe on this period; favouritism of other regions in the country, etc etc. It is not that simple. It never is. But it is never about what is or isn’t, it is about what is perceived to be.

This mind set, in my opinion, has made its effects felt in Bulawayo. Bulawayo seems to be slowly deteriorating; it seems devoid of people, like most of its occupants have left. People seem to be dragging their feet. Slow slow. A lack of enthusiasm about their city. A shrug of the shoulder in response to the problems. Complaining and complaining and more complaining. And then another shrug. It is sad. It is like a precious treasure that has been abandoned, in search of delusional riches elsewhere. You ask the people why; they shrug and say ‘they have never really felt a part of Zimbabwe’. Now this is a rich answer that stems from pain. But I think if the very same people who say this continue this exodus into South Africa, and then return to Zimbabwe, and you ask them the same question, they will be more careful about their response.

South African culture pervades Bulawayo at many levels; the fashion, the music, the way people come to South Africa for a month and suddenly every sentence starts with a ‘Mara ne?’, ‘ukukhuluma’ is suddenly ‘ukuthetha’ and so forth. It is a costly misconception; upon arrival in this ‘Promised Land’, it finally hits home that here, to the South Africans, you are Zimbabwean Ndebele or not, and that’s that. These ties of brotherhood are delusional. And so this kind of reluctance by Ndebeles to participate in matters of home, are disturbing. I heard talk of having a sort of ‘different governing body’ for the Matabeleland region, not a breaking away from the country, but a bit of ‘individualism’ if you could call it that. This was just talk between people, but it just reflects a certain state of mind, that is at times perpetrated in the limp attitudes of the way matters are approached by the Ndebele people in Zimbabwe.

Ceremonial Hall & East Wing, National University of Science And Technology
(c) Siphatha, GNU Free Documentation License

Again, if you ask them about the reasons for this attitude, there is always a reference to history, to how improvement is promised to the region but never followed up on. The Joshua Mqabuko International Airport, Bulawayo's airport, under construction for the past light years, is an embarrassing cluster of buildings more befitting of a growth point, and not worthy of an international status. There is also the Joshua Mqabuko Hospital, an impressive project that remains unfinished. And the National University of Science and Technology, again in Bulawayo, an impressive university which is in use but has not yet been completed. In fact, there is a crane that stands in the University grounds, rising high in the air. It now seems like such a natural part of the landscape that jokes have been made about how, even upon completion of the University, it should remain there, as a piece of artistic impression. And so, in spite of the hardships facing our country, according to my tribe, many of these half-done projects are seen as sabotage. That is what they perceive. And so they have retreated into what they see as a justified apathy. But sometimes this apathy is self-destructive. Somebody, a relative who is Ndebele and lives in Harare, the capital city, once pointed out to me what she perceived as a certain difference in attitudes between the Ndebele businessman and the Shona businessman. She said, the Shona business man will thrive, go to his home town/ rural home and improve the roads. The Ndebele businessman will thrive, bathe in the glow of his success and not lift a finger to improve his home town/ rural home. She gave a few examples of people she knew. This, of course, is a generalisation, but it serves to illustrate the detachment that the Ndebele seems to feel from his homeland. Which is not healthy. Not healthy at all. As the country moves towards ‘nation building’, it seems these are some of the issues that need to be addressed, for an effective way forward. The problem is, some of these issues are delicate (such as Gukurahundi) and are not even acknowledged by the leaders of the nation. See, the problem with issues such as Gukurahundi is that if they are not addressed, they become the powerful basis around which many ills, which may have nothing to do with them, are pivoted. There was a ‘Summary Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands 1980 to 1988’ entitled ‘Breaking the Silence and Building True Peace’, compiled by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe and the Legal Resource Foundation, in 1999, which sought to give something of a balanced view of the Gukurahundi period and advocate of peace and healing and not to, as they said, bring forth any accusations.

The report starts:

‘People who live in Matabeleland and parts of the Midlands know only too well what happened to them during the 1980s. Their lives were affected in serious ways by both Government troops and also by dissidents and Youth Brigades at this time.

However, most people from other parts of Zimbabwe still have no idea what it was like for those who were suffering. They have no idea how people still suffer as a result of the violence that took place. People who were affected also do not have ways of talking to people in other parts of the country about what happened. Ordinary people all over Zimbabwe, need to know what happened during those years in their own country….people in affected regions can read how their history has been told, and people in unaffected regions can learn about if for the first time.’

(c) Source

But really, the issue has never been addressed much. The result? You just mention Gukurahundi in Bulawayo, and see how people open their mouths. ‘Ah!’ they say ‘You want to disappear?’ These are residual effects of that time. Suspicion, to the point that even the mere mention of that name, instils fear. And the effects of people from my generation? I never really knew about Gukurahundi until I was a teenager, and I never heard about it from my family. I never heard them speak about it when I was growing up. There were usually a lot of tribal connotations about the Shona tribe. Up to today, I have a relative who does not even entertain job applications from people who come from the Shona tribe. A Shona name is enough to guarantee that one will not get a job in his company. He will not entertain the Shona language to be spoken in his home. When another relative got married to a Shona, he did not attend the wedding. So far go the extremes of his resentment. According to the ‘Breaking the Silence’ report, the Gukurahundi period was not designed to be a civil war; it was not meant to be a Shona versus Ndebele war, there was state involvement in a bid to contain dissident activities and other ‘clandestine’ activities and gruesome atrocities and all the other delicate things one should take care when talking about etc etc etc etc etc. But emotions do not distil matters so far, especially without much room for dialogue on the matter. Growing up, I was not exposed to excessive tribalism, I had and still have many great friends who hail from the Shona tribe, in fact my generation is viewed as the ‘hope generation’, that can transcend these tribal tensions. Mild tensions, compared to other parts of Africa, but tensions nonetheless.

So one day I asked my family about what it was like during the Gukurahundi period. You hear a few personal stories, and suddenly the matters of tribalism are no longer black and white. You begin to understand why people are the way they are. And the issue becomes how to address the root of the problem, not to chop down the tree but to totally remove its roots. A tall order. So, talking about Gukurahundi with my peers, both Shona and Ndebele, I could never understand why my Shona friends would quickly brush the matter aside and advocate that it should be a period that should be swept under the carpet and forgotten. Move on, they would say. The past is the past. I never understood it, until, when talking, I realised that they had no idea about what happened during that time. There are regions in the country that do not know what happened during this period. And so, on the one hand, you have a tribe that is nursing anger and resentment, and on the other, a tribe that seems to bear little grudge in return because they are not familiar with the roots of this resentment.

Many Shonas I know are simply baffled about the Ndebeles’ strong tribalism; besides the lukewarm tribal clashes in terms of cultures etc from both sides, for the Shonas, there is no bone to chew. And so in the end, it seems, for my tribe, that they are harbouring all sorts of hurt, nursing it and hating an enemy that seems unaware. It is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. In the end matters that in the present state of things have weak ties to this period are blamed on it; such as the Shona tribe’s economic power, for instance. Which should not be surprising, since the Shona people make up 80% to 84% of the country, and the Ndebeles only 10% to 15% (Wikipedia statistics). And so the matter should not be about the Shona people’s economic power, but the Ndebele people’s lack of innovative applications, their apathy, their hapless attitudes. And how, the nation as a whole, can aid in addressing these matters and putting the past where it belongs, behind and in a peaceful state. The Germans and the Jews dealt with it on a much larger scale; the Holocaust. And so we can too. It is a sad, sad thing and I wonder, on the way to ‘nation building’, where the Ndebele sees himself. Zimbabwe is our home, and as such, needs our nurturing and care. We, the Ndebele people, need to find our place in it, otherwise we may find ourselves literally belonging nowhere.

Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
Ms Tshuma is a Zimbabwean writer based in the USA.
Her more recent essay can be found on Elephant Info: ERASED MEMORIES: Re-couping Zimbabwe’s humanity

City of Bulawayo's Coat of Arms
Si Ye Pambili | Let Us Go Forward

The Ten Rules I Grew Up With, An African Love Story

Today, once again, I will be writing about home. Not the home where I live in but the home I came from. I grew up in Bulawayo, in Southern Zimbabwe. It's a city where I spent the first eighteen years of my life (back then my main aim was to leave) but it's a city that shaped me and whose very texture I miss. But more than the city and my friends, I miss my homes. And no, that is not a typo (see Rule 6), as an African, every home where a relative lived was my home. That's just how things were. Those were the rules and here are the top ten (in no particular order):

"A city whose very texture I miss"
Jacaranda's in Bulawayo (c) Frankie Kay https://frankiekayfotos.wordpress.com/

10. Elders are to be respected

End of story. There was no if, and or but about it.



9. Money does not grow on trees

This is a statement that was hammered into my head time and time again, my parents, uncles and aunts repeated it ad nauseam.

"Stop wasting water as if money grows on trees." 

"Why did you leave the lights on? Money doesn't grow on trees."

" Why is the Mazoe finishing so fast, do you think Spar gives them out for free eh? Money doesn't grow on trees!"

Growing up, one never quite understands the implication of all those rebukes and the place they were coming from but now as a working adult and with bank statements, tax declarations and bills pouring through my postal box like water, I now (quite sadly) understand. And living in Europe, where people do live as if money (and resources) grow on trees, I am grateful for the lesson.



8. There is no such thing as sleeping in

When I was in Algeria for university one of the (guilty) pleasures of life that I discovered was waking up at midday on a weekend. I would like to say that this was a rare occurrence but I have enough sins on my plate let me not add lying to the list. (In my defence though, once you live through 45° Celsius summers you won't be snickering so hard at me will you?) The joy of knowing it was a Saturday and that there was absolutely nothing to do was glorious and I would open one eye early in the morning, acknowledge the world existed and go back to sleep.

Why was slothful submission to sleep this glorious you ask? Because growing up, there was no such thing as a weekend. My mother would come and knock loudly on my door if I slept too late and if she didn't hear the patter of feet in a few seconds she would burst into the room and draw the curtains, sunlight streaming into the room like an uninvited guest at an African wedding. Any notion of sleeping a few more minutes would die there and there because my bedroom faced the East and the full glory of the day would blind me momentarily and chase sleep away. My mother would stand there to meet any complaints, "Ah, when I was growing up, we would be up long before the sun had finished charging its batteries, and here you are complaining in bed at 9am. Mxm. Vila voxo!"



7. You know nothing John Snow!

Fans of Game of Thrones and those raised in African households will know what I am talking about. The formulation is simple: as an African child growing up in an African household any complaints on why things were as they were would be met with the phrase: "ah, you know nothing shame. When I was growing up..."

Complaints about why we had to take the bus to school when the other children had cars: "you know nothing, when I was growing up we used to walk ten kilometres to school and we would arrive fresh and ready to learn." 

Complaints about why ZESA was gone: "ah when I was growing up, we had candles and gas lights to study with and when night fell it was time to sleep vele. If only you knew."

Complaints about being bored and having nothing to do: "hehe if only you knew. When I was a boy I would be woken before dawn to go and herd the cattle and only be back home after the sun had set. Children of today shame!"

Complaints about going to the rural areas for holiday: "you know nothing you child of the City. This is where I grew up. This was my home"

Looking back I really do realise that I really did not know anything.

(c) HBO

6. Family comes first

Without going too deeply into the drama that is family (my mothers family is Sotho and they speak Sotho which I don't understand, my fathers is Ndebele but they all speak Shona and that's just touching the surface), there was one thing that came as naturally as breathing. It was a rule that was hardly spoken, it just was. Just as it is in Game of Thrones (forgive me, I am a geek and therefore a superfan), family is everything. My parents once lived in Europe before I was born and they told me about siblings who would book appointments before seeing each other and that would be once or twice a year (this apparently was Sweden in the eighties). To illustrate how different things were in my African household, we once drove to Gwanda where my aunt lived when I was around six or seven. There I met my cousin who was a year younger than me. When it was time to leave, I calmly told my parents that they could leave without me, I would take the bus and follow on Monday morning. And that is exactly what I did.

No invitations necessary, no deadlines or schedules to work around. I would spend weeks in Harare at my cousins, a month at my aunts in Beit-bridge and weekends with cousins in Bulawayo on the spur of the moment. Because that is what families do.

Family. Duty. Honour
(c) HBO

5. Gratitude is not optional

My name, Bongani, literally is an instruction to 'give thanks'. One does not just walk into an African household and eat food then rub ones belly in satisfaction. One claps their hands in gratitude and lists the clan names of the house before thanking them from the bottom of their hearts. And that is that.

One of the best stories from my cousins was when they ate then sat to watch TV as if nothing had happened. Their mother, my aunt, quietly gathered the plates went to the kitchen and cooked a fresh pot of sadza and stew and served them again. When she registered their apparent dismay she innocently mocked, "I didn't hear a thank you so I assumed you were still hungry. Now finish those plates." 



4. When we buy new things one does not remove the plastic cover until it is torn and begging to be removed

We all know the TV remote that stayed wrapped in its plastic until it had holes. And in an age where we all now regularly buy smartphones with the processing capabilities of a 1980's supercomputer then replace them when the screen cracks, this is just a beautiful extension of rule number 9. And an application of rule 7. We know nothing.



3. Friends should be chosen carefully

I would like to think I was not the only one who was subjected to a full FBI interrogation when I asked that a friend come and sleep over. Who are his parents? How long have you known this person? Where does he live? But of course once they met my friends they would be granted the seal of approval and our home was theirs.

I only came to understand why when I was leaving for Algeria. My mother, a woman I had never been apart from for more than three months at a time gave me this parting piece of advice: "choose your friends wisely. They will be many acquaintances in life and you can afford to have bad ones but one thing you cannot afford is a bad friend." 

Now, looking back, regret says; if only I had understood exactly what she meant.



2. I am because we are

In Ndebele we have a saying, umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu. It is part of the concept of Ubuntu. (And no, white people, it is not Ubhuntu, it is Ubuntu) Simply put it means 'a person Is because of other people.' Notice the capital 'I' in 'is', that again is not a typo: our raison d'être (the French have a beautiful way of expressing that capital I: raison d'être; the sole or ultimate purpose of something or someone) is not for ourselves but to change the world around us and to serve those around us. In some households it would be expressed as don't waste food, children are dying in that country I don't want to name whilst you are busy here wasting food. Certainly that was true in mine as well. But it was also in the small things, stubbing your toe and squealing with pain and everyone around you says sorry. In Europe when I say sorry to a friend who has hurt himself, they laugh at me and say but it wasn't your fault. Yes, I know but I feel your pain.

I Am because you are. It was being reminded to do whatever one could do for those less fortunate than oneself. It was weekends spent at a children's shelter with my Dad, watching my mother give her time and effort to whatever cause she felt could help. And slowly learning that I could do the same.



1. This is not a democracy, it is a constitutional monarchy

I remember watching some America reality show and seeing the children swearing at their parents. And when I say swearing, I mean screaming 'fuck you' at their mother. For those who were raised in African households this needs no further explanation. For those who were not, let me just say a little demon whispered in my mind, imagine that happening to you and the rest of my mind revolted in horror. Because we all know what is like in an African household (if you still don't know refer to rule 10). And we all know that any bambini unfortunate enough to whisper back at an African parent will know that day what is is like to visit hell.

"I'm beating you and you are crying? Hahaha manje you will know what it's like to cry."

[Five minutes later]

"I'm beating you and you are silent? You are a man now? Let's see who is the older one today!"



Zeroth Rule. There is nothing an African Household will not do for its own

This is an extension to rule 6. But more specifically aimed at the household rather than the extended family. In Ndebele we have a saying, indlovu ayisindwa ngumboko wayo.

Literally put, an elephant is not weighed down by its trunk.

Simply put: there is nothing I would not do for them.

And there is nothing they haven't done for me. 

Remembering Home, Remembering You

I remember the sun peeking over the horizon as if it was scared of announcing a new day. But already the light of its glory has set the sky on fire and the day has begun. The rooster crows in agreement and I lie in bed, this feeling of deliciousness inside me. The joy at being alive, of being here, inhabiting this space, this time, being home. Outside, the dew covers the delicate fronds of grass and hangs from the rose petals, a delicate beauty dripping like diamonds from the soft pink of the buds.

I remember that beauty. Beauty of the garden I kept myself, worked every Saturday to water and mulch. I remember the stark blue of the sky in winter. Cloudless and stretching like the mind of God to the ends of the world as I lay in the grass watching it. Innocent. Guileless. Clueless. My world was limited to the borders of the city I had been born in, Bulawayo: the place of killing. I began each day as I always did; a bowl of porridge. On a good day, with a tablespoon of peanut butter and generous amounts of sugar. I never understood those who put butter in their porridge, I was always a peanut butter guy. I haven't had porridge in almost ten years.

I remember the avenues of Bulawayo lined with jacaranda's in October. That is the image most tourists have in their heads, the image that a quick Google search will give to you: streets covered in a carpet of purple, drops of perfume falling from the trees to the ground where they lay waiting to be squished by the wheels of cars or your feet as you passed by on your way to the shops to buy a loaf of steaming fresh bread from the Hot Bread Shop. But an image less know about is an image of the Flamboyants that bloom in early summer and explode in a red as deep as the eyes of the setting sun. Some are isolated trees, lost amongst the crows of the Jacaranda's, but some are armies that line Cecil Avenue on it's way to meet Hillside Road, standing guard over the narrow road like loyal red sentinels watching over you as you pass by.

"Loyal red sentinels watching over you as you pass by..."
(c) Mrs P. Wise

I remember my first high school. Nestled deep in the heart of Makokoba, its green solitary field, an emerald that I told myself would one day watch as I played soccer to the applause of a cheering crowd. That never happened. Instead I lost myself in the brown face brick buildings, discovering science and literature and a world I had never imagined existed. Hard working men and women showing up every morning to make sure one thousand children each got an education that would arm them for a life in a country that was beginning its slow decline into madness. But what did I know of that? For me life was scrunching up my noise on days when the sewage in Mazaye decided to smell and waft into our Maths class as we tried to concentrate hard on these things called variables. Or the smell of incense during mass at school that made me wonder if God smelt like that; mysterious, stuffy and holy.

I remember you. Remember the force of your being, the beauty of your soul. The way we laughed all day never once thinking that it would all end. Remember the way you and I walked through the streets of that City we both called home, looking for what it was we did not know. But perhaps it was just looking for the happiness of existing in each other's world, sharing the space that Universe had loaned us, given to us and whispered softly that she would take it back one day. But we never heard her did we? We walked carelessly past the white splendour that was City Hall, sat our buttocks on the hard pavements as we waited for our kombi to go home, the squalid beauty that was the flea market with old women selling tomatoes. The freshest tomatoes in the world they said, the most beautiful, juiciest and reddest of them all: all for just two dollars. Two dollars only. I would give every dollar I had to have those days back.

I remember Christmas. No, nothing like the spectacular December lights on the Champs Elysée in Paris. Nothing fancy that sparkled in the flash of tourist camera's and makes them catch their breath. More humble, more basic; static lights stretched over Gwanda Road, all the way past the greens of Centenary Park, in the shape of a fat Santa, reindeer and spelling out Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Or perhaps it was one of the Christmas' I spent in the village with my gogo, the smell of the manure that was used to create the hard floor of the huts fading more and more into the background as each day passed. I regret never having milked the cows, never having carried a bucket of creamy milk to gogo milked by my own hands and waiting for her to congratulate me in Sotho, a language that I still do not understand.

"I will be lucky enough to go and live out those memories waiting to happen..."
Source: RedJBishop

It's funny no? One regrets the things one never did. I don't regret the day I froze in front of the entire school when I was supposed to give a prayer. I don't regret the friends I made who would later leave me, the days I spent carved into the hard stone of my memory that I will pass my hands over till the day I die. Instead one regrets the roads untravelled, the sights unseen, the words unsaid said to you. But perhaps one day I will be lucky enough to go and live out those memories waiting to happen. Add them to my memories of a City that calls out to me in my dreams, whispers to me in my days and says only one word, a simple word that tugs on my heart with such force I fear it will break.

Home.