By Charles T. M. J. Dube

SOMETIME last year, I wrote an article on learning to love those living on the other side of the river.
The aim was to demystify tribalism.
My point though was that what we often refer to as tribes were regional variants of the same language.
Even those who spoke non-Shona dialects spoke languages that could be identified if you were multi-lingual and conversant with southern African dialects like some of us.
Now, the view from language experts is that those who belong to the Bantu group of languages all spoke a common language some 2 000 years ago.
There is nothing wrong in loving one’s language, for language is part of your culture.
However, there is something wrong in despising other people’s cultures and languages.
I come from an area with sandy white soils and there are those who came from areas with red soils whom we called ‘vokumushava or chivomvu’.
As we grew up, we always had this belief that these guys were not friends with water as they looked dirty to us.
There were also pockets of people who spoke different Shona dialects.
Thus there were areas we called kuvaRozvi, who spoke a Kalanga-like dialect which eventually fizzled out.
We had kuvaPfumbi, who spoke a dialect popularised by the late great artiste, Paul Matavire, aka ‘Dr Love’.
Then we had pockets of those who spoke only Ndebele and we called them kumaNdevere or maDingindawo.
There were the Shangaan who were settled by the Vupwa Mountain which had red soils and our vazukuru, the Madzivas, lived among them.
They occupied the richest soils in the district and while we shared prejudices against them with the Hoves who were the chiefs, I had to, later as I became an adult, discover why that was so.
Apparently these Hoves were original Shangaan from around Chipinge and hence their having favoured their late arrival kith and kin.
When my ancestors arrived in Mberengwa from around Matopos, they became close with the Lemba and formed an organised urban settlement together, Guta, which bound them together as a community in which they could intermarry also.
One of our common bonds was that we both despised mice which neighbouring communities relished.
As a little boy, I always used to wonder why those from maNdevere, who while bilingual, would often switch to Ndebele when speaking to people from my village.
It was only after I became an adult that I realised that they considered us traitors who had sold out by adopting the primary use of the Karanga language instead of Ndebele.
Although the majority of the people were Karanga, in the earlier stages, the more dominant language was Ndebele.
It so happened that the missionaries would change the linguistic structure of the district by accident and not design.
The Dutch Reformed Church ran some mission station around Manama in Gwanda called Bethesda. It gave them logistical problems to administer as it was far from their main centre, Morgenster in Masvingo, apart from printing costs as the area was dominated by the Sotho and Ndebele languages.
So the Swedish missionaries and the Dutch Reformed Church agreed to swap mission stations.
The Lutherans gave them Gutu and Zimuto Missions in return for the Matabeleland operations. Since the Dutch Reformed Church had already set up some printing press at Morgenster, they started sharing printing costs with the Lutherans.
All books used, in even the predominantly Ndebele-speaking corners of Mberengwa then, came in Karanga dialect printed at Morgenster beginning a gigantic linguistic transformation of the district.
But, even then, language had never been really an issue among our people as they could switch from one to the other or conduct a conversation with each using his/her preferred language without a hitch.
Besides, the Shona spoken in the district had sufficient Ndebele terms to sustain a conversation with others.
I remember each time we sat for national Shona examinations, we had to give ourselves time to cram the Shona equivalence of Ndebele terms we used in our Karanga to meet the ‘standard’ Shona requirements.
Now the reader could be by now wondering where my story is coming from and heading to.
Wait and ponder a moment!
I want to take you to ‘pride, bias and prejudice’ which we imprint in our minds as real and fact.
First to my Swazi ancestors.
They were very much integrated with the Lemba and lived as a symbiotic community.
But then, when each retired to their homes, they would regress to saying unpleasantries about the other.
I told you about kumaNdevere.
As much as they were very close to us due to our common Nguni ancestry, and yet because our outlook was now basically more Shona than Nguni, we shared common prejudices about them with those we now more identified with.
Then there were those vokumushava (from the red soils) whom we regarded as dirty and therefore inferior to us.
The exception though was kumaChangana, who I viewed differently and did not see the dirt in them because vazukuru vangu vokwaMadziva always brought us oranges and sugar cane when they visited our business for one reason or another.
My attitude was definitely different when it came to those from Chief Nyamhondo and would only change when we got to boarding school where we had this habit of pooling all our eats with my relatives from the area as schools opened.
They brought round nuts, my favourite, which grew very well in their area.
As I got to know them more, so did my appreciation of them.
As youngsters, we had our own funny ideas about those who lived across the river, in the next village or the other side of the mountain; let alone those like the Zezurus, Manyikas, Korekores, Venda, Sotho and Tonga from further afield, even those belonging to a different church, Pentecostal or mainline, worse still different religion or political party. Some of our elders continued to hold on to such ideas. As I grew up, the more they became acceptable.
My prejudices vanished with age and more knowledge. I got to understand that it was the red soils that soiled them and not their hatred of water. I could now appreciate that there was nothing genetic or scientific about my views about them.
What if being a Shona-speaking Ndebele I could hold prejudices against the Ndebele, would that add up?
And yet we have witnessed politicians trying to make capital out of these diversities. It all boils down to taking pride to the level of infantile regression; refusing to stop thinking like a child.
Not that we should not have prejudices against the other, but just that we should outgrow them and not institutionalise them, even for political mileage.
All you need is to take time to know the other people and you will certainly discover the joy and pleasure of diversity, the same way I have outgrown my prejudice against those who ate that smelly insect from Bikita called harurwa, to the extent that it is now one of my favourite delicacies.