HomeOld_PostsThe Shona and Ndebele are Nyai/Karanga

The Shona and Ndebele are Nyai/Karanga

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A FEW days ago I was in a meeting among whose tasks was to map Zimbabwe’s cultural grouping.
An ‘authoritative contributor’ effortlessly gave out Karanga, Korekore, Tonga, Venda, Sotho, Nambiya, Hwesa, Ndau, Ndebele, Kalanga and Karanga as some of the cultural groups that are found in Zimbabwe.
When someone added Zezuru and Manyika the ‘authoritative contributor’ showed reluctance to accept these, his view being that these were not cultural groups, but dialects.
He argued, these, like the Shona, could not be assigned specific cultural traits.
Later in the evening and over a beer someone weighed in on the topic of the day; the upcoming ZANU PF Congress.
He reasoned that we are about to witness a shift of power from the Zezuru/Korekore block to Karanga/Ndebele/Manyika block.
On whether this would be an ethnic or linguistic realignment we were not advised.
To both views what angers any elementary historian is the fact that these labels have no ethnic or cultural significance of reasonable antiquity.
They are dialect/language labels tribalised by agencies of colonialism during the last 150 years.
Ethnically the people of Zimbabwe have, over centuries, morphed into one major grouping, the Shona.
Shona is a recently coined term for groups of people with a long history in Zimbabwe.
Recently the term ‘Shona’ has been used as an umbrella term for recent, mainly 19th and 20th century’s ethnic/tribal creations.
The tragedy of all this has been to reduce Shona history to recent history of the umbrella or that of its ‘tribal’ creations.
That is why in the mind of my ‘authoritative contributor’ Shona is synonymous to Zezuru and also ‘cultureless’.
Part of this confusion can be traced to the tragedy of the invention and attempted implementation, by white academics of Shona, of so-called Standard Shona into the school syllabi.
My former history professor recalls this tragedy as they were left to ponder on whether ‘mugwagwa’ would now become ‘murwarwa’, taking a cue of the transformation of ‘kugwara’ to ‘kurwara’!
Anger around these linguistic experiments by Professor George Fortune and company helped sow seeds of tribal confusion among the Shona.
That today’s favoured ethnic labels are mere dialect labels is indisputable.
My friend, a Mhofu/Musiyamwa is a Karanga kuChishanga, Masvingo, perhaps a ‘Manyika’ in Buhera, kwaNyashanu and a Zezuru in Chishawasha and a Korekore in Chiweshe.
At Great Zimbabwe Mutapa was Karanga and today his descendants in Rushinga are Korekore.
It is for this reason that Chief Gutu is Karanga in Masvingo, but Korekore in Musana.
My own maternal uncles are Korekore in Musana and Zezuru in Nhohwe.
I trace my paternal roots to Ushiri in Zvishavane where I am Karanga moving through Gutu (as a Karanga), then Magangara, Chikomba, as a Zezuru and for part of the family to Dorowa/Bocha now where there are Manyika.
Shona is an umbrella label for people that have lived in this country for over 2 000 years.
It is safe to appreciate that nothing materially separates the ancestry of today’s Shona from the Bantu people that populated this country in the later centuries of the first millennium AD.
These people today include the Ndebele, vaZezuru, vaKaranga, vaManyika, vaNdau, vaKorekore, vaNambiya, vaVenda, and vaKalanga
If we had to search for an ethnic identity for the Shona we would have to settle for terms like vaNyai, vaKaranga and vaGova.
Some historians contend that Nyai is the oldest collective term for most people that lived on the Zimbabwean plateau and later came to be called Karanga/Kalanga or Hole or Shona or Ndebele.
These Karanga/Kalanga/Shona/Ndebele have over time incorporated other immigrants in the formation of a largely Shona/Ndebele identity block.
Ndebele here refers to the Nyai who took up Ndebele language and customs and today dominate the Ndebele ethnic grouping.
Within the body politic especially from the 1970’s we have seen spirited attempts to further break these broad identities along dialect lines.
Karanga, meaning children of the junior wife, or people of the sun, Kalanga, are antique ethnic labels for most Zimbabweans.
The late Zvobgo was right on the mark when he jokingly said, with reference to the Unity Accord, “Hakuchina muShona kanamuNdewere, tese taamaKaranga!”
We have always been.
Nyai was a ‘Karanga’ term for a client son-in-law.
This was born out of the kutema ugariri marriage arrangement.
In the Mutapa State the term came to refer a warrior client class of vatumwa that formed the core of the Mutapa army.
When Changamire Dombo and a Nyai regiment broke up to found the Rozvi state, Nyai came to be used interchangeably with Rozvi.
Nyai was also understood to mean ‘follower’, consistent with client mukuwasha or client warrior concepts.
Historically vaNyai have also been associated with plateau/highland settlements. Other subordinate concepts associated with the Nyai include ‘inferiors’, ‘slaves’ and ‘messengers’.
Today we use munyai as a marriage messenger and so by extension we see munyai/saDombo as a son-in-law, mukuwasha.
We know that 19th century Europeans initially referred to part of this country as ‘Banyailand’ before later splitting this to Ndebele State and Mashonaland.
Therefore any attempt to map Zimbabwean cultural identities must be grounded on a historical appreciation of these as Nyai/Karanga identities.
Let there be minimal tribal excitement at Congress.
The Shona/Ndebele are one people.
Whatever happens, power will move from the Nyai/Karanga to the Nyai/Karanga.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Munhamu Pekeshe – seems you don’t even read History about the Ndebele and the Shona populace of Zimbabwe. This page is full of manipulated lies. Mficane, do you know what it is? Do you know the difference between ma”shona” ne”madzviti”. You should be shy by now.

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