Battling for cultural survival in a hostile environment: The case of the myths about the Tonga people and their names in Zimbabwe

Battling for cultural survival in a hostile environment: The caseof the myths about the Tonga people and their names in Zimbabwe

Isaac Mumpande

Introduction

The development and promotion of marginalised indigenouslanguages and cultures in post- colonial Zimbabwe has remained arather inconsequential item on the government’s priority list.This is evinced by the absence of a comprehensive and clearlyarticulated national language policy several decades after theattainment of independence in 1980. The extant thinking on thelanguage issue is rather jaundiced and skewed as it follows theasphyxiating ideological position of the erstwhile colonialgovernment which empowered a few languages at the expense ofothers. These languages, which are Ndebele and Shona,subsequently developed into hegemonic presences sitting andstrutting on other languages like a giant tarantula. Thus, thedevelopment of the Tonga language and culture should beunderstood in this broader context of the government’s attitudetowards some of the African languages and cultures in Zimbabwe.This chapter therefore explores the cultural development of theTonga people in Zimbabwe by identifying and analysing thechallenges they have encountered in preserving their surnames andidentity. An analysis of the Tonga surnames reveals three basiscategories which are these are the original ones; ‘Ndebelelised’or ‘Shonalised1; and then the corrupted surnames. Without aclear identity, in form of names/surnames, the Tonga struggle tomaintain their identity and culture in a hostile culturalenvironment eager to assimilate them into either Shona or Ndebeleis seriously haemorrhaged. The reconstruction of such an identityis critical because it enables a people to become visible andauthentic while increasing and vitalising group confidence.Concerning the profundity of identity and history to any given1 ‘Ndebelelised’ or ‘Shonalised’ surnames are those surnames that have been changed from Tonga into either Ndebele or Shona. Ndebele and Shona have for a long time been considered official indigenous languages.

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people, Malcolm X (1970: 53) makes a revealing argument: “A[group] of people is like an individual man; until it uses itsown talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its ownculture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfil itself”.

Before discussing the tragedy engendered by the corruption andcontortion of the Tonga surnames, the paper gives a background ofthe Tonga people of Zimbabwe and an overview of the negativemyths created about them by other groups and the Europeancolonisers. These myths have had an enormous influence on theTonga people’s ability to self-name and self-define in positiveand culturally authentic ways. By and large, the Tonga people’sexperience mirrors the predicament of most marginalised ethnicgroups in Zimbabwe such as the Xangani and Venda. The identity ofthese marginalised groups in Zimbabwe has been contoured in termsof the debilitating and stultifying binary of ‘self’ and other.The ‘othering’ of their presence means that they are notconsidered a vital component in the nation’s agenda fordevelopment.

The Tonga people of Zimbabwe

There is limited literature in Zimbabwe on the history of theTonga people. What is known is that, like other Bantu groups, theTonga migrated from East Africa in the early centuries downwardsto Southern Africa (Colson, 1971: 10). Oral tradition has it thatsome of the Tonga groups remained along the way in present dayMalawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. While the Malawi Tongalanguage is different from the other Tonga varieties, Zimbabweanand Zambian Tonga language and culture are quite homogenous,sharing numerous commonalities and similarities. These two(Zambian and Zimbabwean Tonga) are separated by the Zambezi Riverwhich historically has never functioned as an insurmountablebarrier in the relational transactions of the two groups.However, this giant water body which used to serve as a unifying

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force for the Tonga on the either side of the river regrettablybecame a barrier in the 1950s after the construction of theKariba Dam. This is part of the indelible legacy of Europeanpresence in Africa which destabilised and dismembered the manyconnections that for millennia had defined and identified variousAfrican cultural groups as one.

While the Tonga people of Zimbabwe are currently found in theZambezi Valley, they were settled around many parts of Zimbabwebefore other Bantu groups such as the Shona and the Ndebelearrived in what today is modern Zimbabwe2. This claim is backedby evidence from oral tradition including some Tonga toponymsdotted across Zimbabwe. Some of these toponyms found in placeswhere the Tonga speaking people no longer reside, have retainedtheir original forms while others have been slightly modified byother ethnic groups currently residing in the areas where theyare found. For example, there is the name, Sazukwi, in Matobodistrict which is originally a Tonga name – Sianzuki (meaning aperson who likes bee honey). In Kwekwe, which is in the Midlandsprovince of Zimbabwe, there is a place known as Mwembezi, whichis a Tonga name meaning one who looks after goats/cattle. Whilethe former has been modified, the later has remained the same.Upon enquiring from elders living in the area about the aetiologyof the name Mwembezi, it emerged that it is a Tonga name becausethe area was inhabited by the Tonga people in the past. Othertoponyms include the name Mutare (one of the eastern highlands cities inZimbabwe) which was originally Mutale (one of the standard Tongasurnames).3 Although the Tonga people had occupied many parts ofcurrent Zimbabwe, currently they reside in only seven districtsof Zimbabwe which are Hwange, Binga, Nyaminyami, Gokwe North,Gokwe South, Nkayi and Lupane. Of these districts, Binga has thehighest concentration of Tonga speaking people while they co-exist with other ethnic groups such as the Shona, Nambya andNdebele in other districts.

2 Interview with Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu on 31 July 2012. He is a senior citizen of the Kalanga origin and has vast knowledge about the pre-colonial history of Zimbabwe. 3 Ibid

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In terms of the total Tonga population in Zimbabwe, it is notknown exactly how many people speak Tonga (Hachipola, 1998: 37;Mumpande, 2010: 195). This is a national challenge because thegovernment has never made an effort, through a national census,to establish the exact percentage of each ethnic group throughdisaggregation. The national census merely classifies theZimbabwean population as African, European, Asian or Mixed(Hachipola, 1998: 1; Zimstat, 2002: 8). What is known is that inZimbabwe there are Tonga, Nambya, Venda, Ndebele, Sotho, Kalanga,Xangani, Shona ethnic groups, inter alia, but their specificpopulation percentages remain a mystery. As such, it is quiteflabbergasting to realise that there are some scholars who makereference to ethnic specific population percentages when thenational census has not been disaggregating our population intoethnic groups since independence. For example, Chimhundu (1993:80) pegs the Shona population percentage at 80% while Hachipola(1998: 2) puts it at 75%. Ndhlovu (2004:4) argues that percentagefigures for the Shona range between 75% and 80%. The Ndebelegroup comes second to the Shona and its population percentage isalso pegged differently by different writers. Chimhundu (1993:80) argues that the Ndebele constitute 17% of the nationalpopulation while Hachipola (1998:3) pegs them at 15%. As for theformer marginalised ethnic groups, which are the Tonga, Nambya,Kalanga, Venda, Sotho, Xangani, Xhosa, Chewa, and others, asingle percentage representing them all is just given and with aseemingly perfunctory attitude. Notably, this percentage variesfrom one scholar to another, that is, from 6 - 10% (Chimhundu,1993: 80; Viriri, 2004: 3). Unfortunately, the government makescrucial decisions, policies and other social development plansbased on these percentages.

Exact knowledge and information about the percentage of eachethnic group in Zimbabwe would be very useful for planningpurposes as well as socio-economic and political development inthe country. It would be more useful for Zimbabwe to have suchdisaggregated information about the composition of its ethnicgroups. As it stands today, the mere identification of thevarious ethnic groups and knowledge of their physical location inthe country is not known by most government officials. The

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question that naturally arises is: How then does governmentpromote the languages and cultures that it does not know wherethey are found in the country? How does government develop andpromote the literature of a people whose numbers it is completelyignorant of?

The Tonga people and myths

Culture is a living entity. It grows or dies depending on variouscircumstances. Culture constitutes various visible and invisibleelements such as language, songs, dances, architecture, religion,rituals, identity and etcetera (Ngugi, 1986: 20). However, likeany other culture, the Tonga culture has not been stagnant. A lotof cultural changes, some positive and some negative, have takenplace in the Tonga community. However, there has been a generalmisconception in Zimbabwe that the Tonga culture is one of themost preserved and possibly ‘stagnant’ cultures in the country(McGregor, 2003: 102; 2009: 40; Mumpande, 2006: 27). The Tongapeople perceive such views as not only a mockery but also a hugeinsult and irony. How could Tonga culture have remained‘stagnant’ when it has been besieged from all angles by theimposition of Shona, Ndebele and English cultures throughlearning these languages since the 1890s for English, the 1960sfor Shona and the 1970s for Ndebele?4

One of the key factors behind the rapid changes in the Tongaculture in Zimbabwe has been the various myths levelled againstthe Tonga people. Today the Tonga people are at the centre ofridicule in Zimbabwe because of sickening cultural jokes andnegative myths that are said about them (Manyena,2013:25). Beloware some of these negative myths:- the Tonga are uncivilised and uneducated;- the Tonga have two toes and six fingers; - the Tonga have tails;4 Interview with Duncan Sinampande, Binga, 27 June 2012

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- the Tonga still wear old pre-colonial traditional attire of animal skins;

- the Tonga sleep in trees or small shabby huts;- the Tonga are legally allowed to smoke marijuana/mbanje;- the Tonga run away from vehicles5.

These negative myths, which are bereft of any verisimilitude,have no basis at all and find no corroboration in the Tongacommunity. Surprisingly, in Zambia where the Tonga speakingpeople constitute the third largest ethnic group, these mythsabout the Tonga do not exist. The Tonga in Zambia are perceivedas ‘normal people’ just like any other human being. This suggeststhat the social status of the Zimbabwean Tonga, being among themarginalised ethnic groups, could have influenced the way theyare perceived in the country.

Due to these myths, the Zimbabwean Tonga have been finding itvery difficult to openly identify themselves among other ethnicgroups because it attracts ridicule and embarrassment6. Howthese myths started remains a mystery but they date back to thecolonial era and have been spread through the print andelectronic media such as the newspapers (Manyena, 2013:37). Theunpalatable myths about the Tonga people compel them to gounderground, hiding their identity through aligning themselveswith either the Ndebele or the Shona people. Making the Tongalose confidence in themselves had a huge effect on the loss oftheir culture and identity. Firstly, they hated their identityand their culture. If one hates her / his culture and identity,she / he is bound to do whatever it takes to disassociate herself

5 All interviewed Tonga elders who have travelled to large cities confessed that they have been victims of these myths and came across people who challenged these Tonga elders to prove that, for example, they do not have tails or six toes/fingers. Also see Manyena (2013:26)6 Interview with Mr. Siabulovu, Mr. Mudenda, Mrs. Muleya, Mr.Siakabenge, Binga/Hwange, 27/28 June 2012

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/ himself from the hated culture as evidenced by what Siabulovupointed out during an interview:

We hated everything about ourselves, our food, our names, our traditionaldances, our rituals, our architecture, everything. Anything that had to do withTonga was perceived and seen as inferior and an embarrassment as it attractedridicule from the broader society. This societal harassment of the Tonga people,based on the myths, has been and continues to be very strong today throughoutZimbabwe.7

Siabulovu further argued that most of the Tonga people foundthemselves face to face with victimisation and the culturalhostility which associated them with all sorts of barbarism,especially in the urban areas. Consequently, most of the Tongapeople who mixed with other ethnic groups in both urban and ruralareas changed their names and/or surnames in the face of theunbearable societal hostility. They found themselves as identityrefugees in the cultural and linguistic spaces dominated by theNdebele and the Shona to the extent that they would end upadopting Shona and Ndebele names. Being identity refugeesseverely haunted the Tonga people and continues to haunt themeven today as the Ndebele and Shona surnames have been passed onto younger generations. To those who wish to change thesesurnames into Tonga again, the process has been made ratherdifficult by the astronomic legal expenses involved of which themajority can not afford.

Some of the Tonga men who came back from cities started todisassociate themselves from some of the Tonga cultural practicessuch as ngoma buntibe, chilimba/makuntu dances, eating bullfrogs andpiercing the ears which they now viewed as inferior culturalpractices8. This was a result of the contact they would have had7 Interview with Mr. Siabulovu, Binga, 26 June 2012.8 Interview with Mr. Mukuli, Mr. Muleya, Mr. Siamajiti, Binga/Gokwe, 20/22 June 2012

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with the Shona and Ndebele. This situation reflected astultifying lack of self esteem. Instead of standing up to defendtheir cultural practices, the Tonga people lacked courage becauseof the ‘hostile environment that has been created around them’and due to the fact that most of them were not very educated.Living within a hostile environment, where they were outnumberednumerically, it was difficult for them be assertive as someelders rightly pointed out in interviews with the author of thischapter:

We found ourselves in a very weak position to stand up and defend our culture inthe

cities because it was like a lone voice among millions of people who shared thesame

belief and perceptions about the Tonga. We were also not well educated to havethe

courage to be assertive. Eventually we found ourselves slowly looking down uponour

cultural practise after many years of being told that everything about us isinferior.9

One would think that the contemporary Tonga youngsters are nowimmune from the impact of these myths because of the educationthey have received. Unfortunately, the impact of these myths isstill as effective among the Tonga people as before. Although theelders pointed to lack of education as one of the factors thatmade them fail to be assertive, the author has encounteredseveral well educated Tonga people in urban areas who are stillhesitant to openly identify themselves as Tonga because of themyths associated with the ethnic group.

The tragedy of Tonga surnames9Interview with Mr. Mukuli, Mr. Muleya, Mr. Siamajiti, Binga/Gokwe, 20/22 June2012

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Personal and family names are a very important constituent inmost cultures including the Tonga culture. Thus, naming is vitalin any people’s individual and collective visibility and self-worth. Naming is important and one of the problems of being namedby some other person or group is that you are not who you want tobe. This motivates Richard Moore, cited in Hudson-Weems (2004:xix), to argue that, “slaves and dogs are named by their masters.Free men (and women) name themselves”. For that reason, thedistortion of names simultaneously becomes the distortion of apeople’s identity and worth on the map of human geography. It isalso noteworthy that names provide a window into a people’sculture. In most African cultures, the name links someone withtheir past, their historical background and their ancestors(Deluzian, 2012: 2). There are many factors that influence thename-giving process. However, the hopes of parents, eventssurrounding the birth of a person and the historical backgroundof the clan are some of the strong factors that influence thename given to an individual (Harrell, 1995: 17). A name is loadedwith parental wishes, family history and cultural heritage.Therefore, changing a name makes one lose these crucialexistential aspects which are associated with their names.

Despite the importance of original and authentic names andsurnames to an individual in particular and society in general,the Tonga people had no option but to change their names/surnamesdue to societal hostility. The issue of names and surnames is avery prickly one among the Tonga people of Zimbabwe. An analysisof these surnames across the Zambezi Valley reveals that thereare three sets of surnames among the Tonga people. Firstly, thereare indigenous Tonga names/surnames, secondly there are those ofeither Ndebele or Shona origins and thirdly there are corruptedand unidentifiable surnames/names.

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The first category of surnames largely comprises those Tonganames /surnames that have been resilient in the face of culturalhostility. Such names have been passed on by Tonga parents totheir children. For example, surnames such as, Siamvula,Chimwaju, Cumanzala, Siakwenga, Chaliyanika, Siamwebo,Siambwenzele, Simoonzyo, Sinampande, Sialukuba, Kabanze, andetcetera, are not totemic in nature and are identical to thesurname system used by the Zambian Tonga. These surnames arederived from the first names of the father or grandfather andchanged into children’s surnames. Other indigenous Tonga surnamesinclude, but are not limited to the following: Mumpande, Mugande,Mudenda, Muleya, Mwiinde, Mudimba, Mukonka, Mweembe, Muzamba,Mungombe, Munsaka, Munkombwe, Munkuli, and Mutale, among others.However, some Tonga elders argue that the extent to which thesesurnames are original is also questionable owing to the fact thatthey are totemic in nature. Others maintain that the surnames areoriginal in nature only that they use the naming system whichseems to have been borrowed from neighbouring cultures. TheZambian Tonga people rarely use these totemic surnames but tendto use mostly family names as surnames. This therefore suggeststhat the totemic surnames among the Zimbabwean Tonga could havebeen influenced by the Ndebele culture, which uses totemicsurnames. The Tonga and the Ndebele have been interacting datingback to the 1830s when the Ndebele arrived in Zimbabwe. However,what consoles those Tonga with totemic surnames is that theystrongly argue that they still retain their original Tongaidentity since the totemic surnames used are Tonga.

The second set of Tonga surnames is that which comprises surnameschanged into either Ndebele or Shona. Under this category, thesurname change happened in two ways. Firstly, there were someTonga people who ‘voluntarily’ changed their surnames intoNdebele or Shona to seek identity refuge and legitimacy afterundergoing psychological trauma due to hostile attitudes

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especially in urban areas such as Bulawayo, Gweru, Mutare, Kwekweand Harare, just to mention a few. In Bulawayo, the Tonga peoplewere pejoratively and derogatorily referred to as amazambezi. Inaddition, this derogatory nomenclature is quintessentially anegation of urbanity and civilisation as it casts the Tonga as apeople who do not bath and therefore uneducated and barbaric.This term is a corruption of the Zambezi Valley where most of theTonga people come from. It is the negative connotations attachedto it that made it resentful. Adopting names/surnames thatsounded more Ndebele / Shona helped the Tonga people avoiddetection, discrimination and enhance their chances of easyassimilation into the new communities and get friends or do theirbusiness freely in urban areas. They also risked beingcontinuously labelled ‘amazambezi’ if they maintained their Tongasurnames.

Secondly, there are those Tonga people whose surnames wereforcibly, arrogantly and nonchalantly changed by officials forthe Registrar General’s office during registration. Such peoplewere forced to use the Ndebele or Shona totemic surnameequivalents to their Tonga surnames during the registrationprocess. According to the Tonga elders who were interviewed, thefollowing Tonga surnames were given equivalent Ndebele or Shonasurnames. For instance, Munsaka in Tonga is equivalent to Ndlovuin Ndebele and Zhou in Shona, Mumpande is equivalent to Sibanda /Mlalazi in Ndebele and Shumba in Shona, Mwiinde is equivalent toNyathi and Mudenda is equivalent to Dube in Ndebele.Mukuli/Mutale is equivalent to Ngwenya in Ndebele and Ngwena inShona while Mungombe is equivalent to Nkomo in Ndebele; Muleya isequivalent to Tshuma in Ndebele. Upon providing the Ndebele orShona equivalent of the Tonga surname, it was the Ndebele orShona surname that was written on their national identificationdocuments yet the person would be Tonga (Mumpande, 2006: 30).Upto this day it is not clear why the government officials used the

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Ndebele or Shona equivalents instead of the Tonga surnames inwriting Tonga people’s identity documents. In an interview,Siabulovu, who is an elder in the Tonga community, suggested twotheories as possible explanations behind this linguistic crimeagainst Tonga humanity. One theory that gained currency among theTonga people is that these equivalent surnames were deliberatelyadopted so as to assimilate the Tonga people into the Ndebele orthe Shona people. The officials wanted to assimilate the Tongapeople as the newly independent nation-state hinged on theNdebele and the Shona languages as official indigenous languages.The other ethnic groups were perceived as ‘minority.’ Since thecolonial times, these two languages received more attention fromgovernment while the other languages and their speakers wereseriously neglected and marginalised. The second theory pointsout that the Ndebele / Shona speaking officials who were manningthe birth/death registration offices despised the Tonga assubhuman beings whose existence was not worth recognising hencetheir surnames were to be wiped out. This hinged largely on themyths that these officials harboured against the Tonga speakingpeople as outlined earlier.

The third set consists of surnames that have been wrongly speltwith the effect that they have assumed completely new meanings.Within this set are two sub categories namely; surnames thatbecame meaningless and could not be identified with the Tonga orany other linguistic grouping in Zimbabwe as well as those thatbecame derogatory at least from the perspective of the Tonga. Thesub category of surnames that were misspelt to the extent oflosing any meaning are among the many surnames being currentlyused by the Tonga people. For example, some of the identitydocuments identified during the research had the followingcorrupted names; Sialumwandu (means one with a big gap between buttocks)was changed into Charumwani (Charumwani does not mean anything),Siampongo (means one who likes goats or owns many goats) was wrongly

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written as Siampongoro (Siampongoro does not mean anything) andSialumbale (means one who likes lumbale) was erroneously changed intoSiyarumbare (Siyarumbare does not mean anything). Thus, people withsuch unidentifiable surnames have been completely dislocated anddismembered. Similarly, they have been moved off Tonga ancestralfoundations.

The second sub-category of wrongly spelt names comprises namesthat turned into vulgar insults after being corrupted. Researchhas revealed that there are a number of people whose misspeltnames/surnames refer to unprintable insults such as human privateparts in Tonga. For example, a Siamatondo (one who loves Ntondo fruits)in Tonga was written as Siamatoto (Siamatoto means somebody who likes avagina or has a big vagina). Siantome (means one who likes tasting food beforedishing) but was changed to Siantoni (Siantoni means somebody who likes apenis/has a big penis). Makonko (means poles that makes the roof of a hut) but waswritten as Makongo (clitorises). Mudimba (one of the original Tongasurnames) was written as Mudidi (an anus in Ndebele). It is indeed adeplorable situation for somebody to bear an identity documentwith an insulting name or surname for the rest of their life.This is the situation some of the marginalised ethnic groups inZimbabwe have to endure.

Questions continue to be asked as to what exactly prompted theofficers from the Registrar General’s office to corrupt namesresulting into meaningless and insulting labels. This questionnaturally arises against the background that, “names can be morethan tags; they can convey powerful imagery. So naming –proposing, imposing, and accepting names – can be a politicalexercise” (Martin, 1991: 83). Interviews with some of theofficials from the Registrar General’s office who served in Tongaspeaking communities during the early days of independence werevery difficult to get. Most officers were not cooperative while afew cooperated and pleaded for anonymity. Nevertheless, the

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interviews revealed that there were a number of factors that ledto name corruption. It was argued that some officers hadattitudinal problems towards the Tonga people because of themyths and perceptions that they had in their minds about theTonga people. It was also noted that most of the offices wereunderstaffed resulting in burn-out among officers. In theprocess, they never sought clarity from clients on the exact namepronunciation and spellings of names provided. Other officerspointed to the issue of communication breakdown between the Tongaand the officers since they were either Ndebele or Shona speakingwhile serving a predominantly Tonga speaking community. Quizzedon why they never sought assistance from the younger generationwho were well versed with the Tonga orthography? The officersargued that due to understaffing and burn–out most people neverconsidered those options.

People whose surnames / names have been corrupted continue tocarry the national identification cards bearing either Ndebele /Shona / some insulting and at times meaningless names andsurnames because they cannot afford to pay the legal fees neededin effecting corrections. Moreover, such surnames have beenpassed from one generation to the other which obviously meansthat changing surnames will not only involve a few individualsbut clans. The effect of such surname distortions has been thepainful loss of identity on a large scale.

Further analysis of the corrupted documents depicts that thelevel of corruption and distortion of names/surnames worsenedafter independence as compared to the pre-independence era.During the pre-independence era, it is argued that the colonialregime ensured that the Registrar General’s office in most Tongadistricts had a few people who were proficient in Tonga. Thisemerged from an interview with Sikazamba:

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‘Sikkanyaana ensured that there was somebody who knew how to write Tonganames and surnames properly in the office of births and death registration. Thisensured that our names were correctly written. However, after independence allthis varnished and we saw new faces of either Ndebele or Shona speakers whohave been very arrogant. Whenever you tell them that my name has been notspelt correctly, they tell you they can not rewrite it because they have no papersto waste. Was this not a deliberately planned idea to assimilate us into eitherNdebele or Shona?’10

Sikazamba’s assertion finds vindication from the fact that asurname that appeared correctly presented on the father’sidentity card would surprisingly appear differently on a child’s’identity card and appear even more distorted on a grandchild’sidentity card. This was simply because the officers failed tocopy names correctly. A typical example is one family where thefather’s surname, as it appears on the identity card, is Siamwibuthen the son’s surname was wrongly spelt as Siamwembo. The twobear no connection whatsoever although both are Tonga names.Given this concatenation of distortions, one can only predictthat this unfortunate scenario will yield even strangernomenclatural identities for the next generations.

The corruption of names and surnames seems to be a challengefacing most of the previously marginalised ethnic groups. Namecorruption is also prevalent among the Xangani. Among the Xanganipeople, for example, a name such as N’wanedzi was wrongly writtenas Mwenezi, Phahlela was written as Pashera, Hlambela was writtenas Chamvera, Khazamula was written as Gazamura (The Daily News, 4May, 2012). It is not clear how the situation is like among theNdebele and the Shona people since they were and are stilllargely manning the offices of the Registrar General today. Thisis an area that needs scholarly visitation.10 Interview with Sikazamba on 27 June 2012, Binga. Sikkanyaana was a nick name given to the District Commissioner for Binga during the colonial era. Today this name has become the official Tonga name for the office of the District Administrator.

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Cultural pollution and learning other languages

The Tonga people stopped learning their language in late 1960swhen the liberation war in Zimbabwe commenced (Mumpande, 2006;2010;Manyena,2013). Since then the Tonga culture has beenundermined by the imposition of Shona, Ndebele and Englishcultures through learning these languages since the 1890s forEnglish, 1960s for Shona and 1970s for Ndebele?11 Learninganother language at the expense of one’s own, whether consciouslyor unconsciously, leads to learners adopting cultural practicesof the new language. In the process, they slowly dilute theirlanguage and culture in favour of the new language(s). This ispremised on the fact that language is a vehicle of culture. Aculture of people is embedded in their language and by learning alanguage you also learn the culture of those people (Ngugi,1986). This has been the predicament of the former marginalisedethnic groups including such as the Tonga. Learning English andNdebele or Shona obviously forced them to absorb culturalpractices from these languages. They had to battle to maintaintheir culture while at the same time absorbing new cultures.While human beings are capable of absorbing new cultures, themost regrettable part is that the original cultures have tosuffer from cultural pollution.

The degree of cultural pollution varies from one culture toanother. However, the marginalised ethnic minority cultures areusually found to be on the extreme negative end of the culturalpollution continuum. This is due to the fact that they have tobattle to preserve their cultures in the face of majoritycultures that are imposed upon them through learning the majoritylanguages. Alternatively, the governance systems make itdifficult for minority ethnic groups to be incorporated into the

11 Interview with Duncan Sinampande, Binga, 27 June 2012

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national culture. Being out of the national cultural radar, theminority groups’ cultures tend to be eclipsed hence not promotedby the national print and electronic media.

The Tonga people have been learning Shona / Ndebele since the1960s and 1970s. There has been a gradual process of culturalpollution and the acceleration of generation gaps as Siakubwakaand Siambare pointed out:

We have been and still continue to have challenges in communicating with ourchildren who learn either Ndebele or Shona at school. When they write letters tous their Tonga is heavily Ndebelelised or Shonalised to an extent that we find itdifficult to understand what they are trying to say. Even in oral communication,the words they use are difficult to understand. Even in singing songs, thesechildren sing Ndebele or Shona songs which they are taught at school at theexpense of our songs. How do we impart our Tonga culture onto suchyoungsters?12

The cultural dances, songs and other practices that the childrenlearn at school are internalised within their systems.Consequently, these children end up looking down upon theircultural practices as inferior. It is important to note thatchildren treasure things they are taught at school than thingsthey are taught at home. Interviewed elders pointed out that whenthe Tonga elders teach their children cultural practices such asngoma buntibe, makuntu/chilimba, ntuuntu, the youngsters simply frown atthe practices and passively resist them.

This challenge of cultural pollution, through language learning,will gradually wither following the successful lobbying ofgovernment by the Tonga and other marginalised ethnic groups toamend the laws governing the teaching of languages in 2006. Thisled to the first Tonga grade 7 national examinations which werewritten in 2011. Everything progressing well, it is expected thatby 2015 the first O’ level Tonga examination will be written.Currently, the Tonga language is being taught in Binga,Nyaminyami (Kariba Rural), Gokwe North and Gokwe South districts.12 Interviews with Mr. Siakubwaaka, Mr. Siambare, Binga/Gokwe, 29/30 June 2012

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In Hwange, the government has been interfering with the teachingof Tonga despite the glaring fact that the district constitutes60% of Tonga speaking people according to the survey conducted bythe Curriculum Development Unit in 1990 on the ethnic compositionof Hwange district. This survey was not focussed on Hwangedistrict only but covered all districts perceived to be inhabitedby the previously marginalised ethnic groups. However, at thebeginning of 2014, the Ministry of Education permitted theteaching of Tonga in Hwange after a marathon of meetings betweenthe Hwange Tonga Language Committee and the Ministry. It isimportant to note that the National Constitution adopted byZimbabwe in 2013 recognises sixteen languages including Englishand the Sign Language as part of languages to be promoted anddeveloped by the government. These languages are Chewa, Chibarwe,English, Kalanga, Khoisan, Nambya, Ndau, Ndebele, Shangani,Shona, Sign Language, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda and Xhosa.Against this new national linguistic landscape, it is thereforepossible to minimise the extent to which the former minorityethnic cultures will continue to be polluted.

As a way of resolving the corrupted names/surnames, the Tongacould lobby the Registrar General for a waiver on legalrequirements for those affected by the name/surname corruption tochange their names. I am aware that the challenge of namecorruption is also prevalent among other former marginalisedethnic groups such as the Xangani, Nambya, Sotho, Venda andKalanga. These ethnic groups could unite and then lobbygovernment to assist them to have their names and surnamesrectified. This is possible because these language groups havepreviously mobilised the esprit de corps and pressurised thegovernment to incorporate their languages into the newconstitution. Conclusion

This chapter has given the geographical location of the Tongapeople in Zimbabwe. It has also pointed out the injustice done tothe Tonga people as a result of the contortion and mutilation oftheir names. This scenario has engendered a debilitating identitycrisis that makes it difficult for the Tonga people to easily

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trace their ancestral heritage. Identity is one of the keycomponents of cultural preservation and promotion. If people donot freely identify themselves with a certain ethnic group, itbecomes difficult for them to participate in the promotion andpreservation of the language and culture of that ethnic group.Without a proper identity, people find it difficult to claimtheir space and place in world affairs. As the chapter hasdemonstrated, this cultural chaos and onomastic crisis appears tobe a legacy of post-independence Zimbabwe in which the supposedlyminority groups such as the Tonga mattered less on thegovernment’s priority list. The preservation and recognition oftheir language and culture was inconsequential as the oldcolonial policies on language remained unchanged. The result wasthat the Tonga continued to learn other languages and cultures atthe expense of their own.

References

Baker, C & Galasinski, D.2001. Cultural Studies and Discourse Analysis. A Dialogue on Language and Identity. London: Sage Publications.Chimhundu, H. 1993. The status of African languages in Zimbabwe.In SAPEM, Literary Series: Harare, pp 65-87.Colson, E. 1971. The social consequences of resettlement: The impact of the Kariba upon the Gwembe Tonga. Kariba Studies no 4. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Deluzian E (2012), Names and Personal Identity, Found at:

http://www.behindthename.com/articles/3.php (Accessed 10 June 2012).Hachipola, J. 1998). A survey of minority languages in Zimbabwe. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications.Harrell, S. 1995. Language Defining Ethnicity in Southwest China.In L. Romanucci-Ross & G. De Vos (Eds.) Ethnic identity, creation,conflict, and accommodation. London: Altamira Press, pp14-30.Hudson-Weems, C. 2004. African womanist literary theory. Trenton.:Asmara: Africa World Press.Machangana, Please save our ethnic names. The Daily news (Letters tothe Editor). 4 May, 2012.

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Malcolm X. 1970. By any means necessary. New York: Pathfinder.

Manyena S.B .2013. Ethnic identity, Agency and Development: The case of the Zimbabwean Tonga,’ in Cliggett. L & Bond ,V(eds), Tonga Timeline: Appraising sixty years of multidisciplinary research in Zambia and Zimbabwe, Lembani Trust, Lusaka. pp 25-65.

Martin, B. L. 1991. From Negro to Black to African American: The power of names and naming. Political Science Quarterly. 106(1): 83-107.McGregor, J. 2003. Living with the River: Landscape and memory in the Zambezi Valley northwest Zimbabwe. In W. Beinart & J. McGregor (Eds.) Social History & African Environments. Oxford: James Currey. pp100-120.McGregor, J. 2009. Crossing the Zambezi: The politics of landscape on a central African frontier. Oxford: James Currey.Mumpande, I. 2006. Silent voices: Indigenous languages in Zimbabwe. Harare:Weaver Press.Mumpande, I. 2010. Destroying walls of exclusion: Marginalised ethnic groups and language policy change. In D, Kaulemu (Ed.) Political participation in Zimbabwe. Harare: AFCAST Publications: pp 190 -222Ndhlovu F.2004. Is there anything minor about minority languages? Found at

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http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/_jar/ILAC/ILAC_4.pdf (Accessed 10June 2012)Tremmel, M. 1994. The People of the Great River. Gweru: Mambo Press in association with Silveira House.Viriri, A. 2004. Language Planning in Zimbabwe: The conservation and Management of Indigenous Languages as intangible heritage. Found at

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Zimstat. 2002. National Population Census Report 2002. Harare: GovernmentPrintersWa Thiongo, N. 1986. Decolonising the Mind, the politics of language in African literature. Nairobi: Heinemann.

Biodata

Isaac Mumpande is a Programmes Director at Silveira House. He hasworked in Civil Society Organisations for the rest of his life sofar, as an activist for the promotion and development ofmarginalized ethnic groups languages and cultures in Zimbabwe.His research interests are around the political participation ofmarginalized ethnic groups, and their social organisation(cultures). He has been part of the Zimbabwe Indigenous LanguagesPromotion Association (ZILPA) which successfully advocated andlobbied for the amendment of the Education Act (between 2000 and2006) to allow for the teaching of previously marginalizedlanguages in schools and tertiary institutions. Being part of thepreviously marginalized ethnic groups himself (being Tonga) hehas devoted much of his time to writing about the marginalizedethnic groups. He has also been part of the Tonga group thatspearheaded the production of the Tonga language teaching andlearning material for the primary and secondary school levels inZimbabwe.

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