Are the Kalanga (Bakalanga, Banambya and Vhavenda) Really a Shona People?

[The]Makalanga in the region of Southern Rhodesia… seem to be of different stock from other Mashona tribes and apparently are of alien origin. [They]… have preserved their distinct physical features, so many of the royal families of Rhodesia seem to have retained “Hamitic” characteristics for some time. The early Portuguese noticed the difference in appearance between the Batonga, Barwe, and Monga on the one hand, and the Makalanga on the other, the latter appearing to have been “not of a very black color” and “men of great stature”. Many other physical attributes have been ascribed to the Makalanga in order to distinguish them from the other natives; “They are a noble race, and respected among the Negros”; “they are very strong, light and agile” and “are very proud” and “each one seems to be a king of the woods” – H. A. Wieschhoff 1941 The Zimbabwe-Monomotapa Culture in Southeast Africa.

When reading Zimbabgwean school history textbooks, one finds everywhere plastered the word Shona in connection with vast swathes of the country’s precolonial and postcolonial history. One is told that the people with whom the Portuguese interacted beginning in the 16th century were the Shona. From school history books to Wikipedia entries, one finds the record that it was the Shona who were responsible for the Zimbabgwe Civilization, claiming that the Shona built the archaeological sites of Maphungubgwe, Khami, Great Zimbabgwe and others. One is informed that the Monomotapa, Togwa and Lozwi polities were Shona institutions. In fact, one would say that all of the pre-colonial history of Zimbabwe is attributed to the ancestors of the people called Shona today.

Curiously, over the years the move has been to declare all that portion of history exclusively Shona history, whereas in the early years after independence it used to be cast as Karanga history. One finds nothing about Bukalanga or Vhukalanga peoples (Banambya, Bakalanga, BaLobedu and Vhavenda) recorded, and yet, going back to the earliest recorded sources available, one finds countless sources mentioning these people. One finds the Kalanga mentioned in association with Portuguese trade in the region, and as the race that was responsible for the Zimbabgwe Civilization. Yet, reading school history, one hears absolutely nothing about them, or they appear just in footnote form. The only exception among the Wikipedia entries is the one on the history of Zimbabwe which rightly records much of the precolonial history especially before 1700s as Bukalanga history, which is in line with Portuguese documents from 1506, archeological findings, and oral traditions of most groups in Southern Africa.

Let us start of with contemporary Portuguese documents. We know that obviously there is no mention of the Shona because the word Shona was not in existence then. But, do we find anything at least in those documents that identifies the people that are called Shona today? Perhaps in the 18th and 19th century documents. Here and there we find references to some of the Shona dynasties that we know to exist today. But it seems that prior to 1700, there is hardly anything that can be pointed out as referring to the Shona. We do not hear much about them. And this is as it should be, for as we shall see later, the Shona only arrived in the Zimbabgwean plateau at the opening of the eighteenth century.

According to Professor George Kahari, former Professor of African Languages and Literature at the University of Zimbabwe and a Zimbabwean diplomat:

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Shona is an artificial term used by linguists to refer to an agglomeration of mostly, but not completely, mutually intelligible dialects found within and outside Zimbabwe. Within the borders of Zimbabwe, the language consists of six clusters: Korekore in the north, with ten dialects; Zezuru in central areas; Karanga in the south; Manyika in the northeast; Ndau in the southeast; and Kalanga in the west. Outside Zimbabwe the language is spoken in Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique... Today the total number of Shona speakers exceed 9 million within Zimbabwe (Kahari 1990, 5).

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As we can see above, claim is laid that Bakalanga (and by extension Banambya since TjiNambya is generally regarded a Kalanga dialect) are a Shona people group. This can obviously be seen from the geographically locations given where the 'Shona' are supposedly settled. But is there much truth to the above information? To answer that question let us start off with a consideration of the idea that TjiKalanga is a Shona dialect.

The Southern Rhodesia Missionary Conference (SRMC) held its first meeting in 1903 with a view of developing a Shona orthography, and in doing so, it advocated the unification of a number of dialects that were considered to be mutually intelligible for the purposes of publishing one version of the Bible which could be understood by the speakers of all the supposed main dialects of Shona: Zezuru, Karanga, Manyika, Korekore and Ndau.

In 1913, one of the missionaries, the Rev Neville Jones, proposed a motion to the conference on the need for the compilation of vernacular readers for use in both Mashonaland and Matabeleland. By 1927, the missionaries had managed to get the cooperation of government in the teaching of indigenous languages. Pursuant to that, the Native Commissioners Conference was held in the then Salisbury which endorsed the missionary idea of creating one language out of a diverse number of supposedly mutually intelligible dialects. The Colonial Secretary and the Director of Education at the time are reported to have been interested in the value of vernacular education and also in the unification of Shona dialects into a common language (Kahari 1990, 11-12).

In 1928, the Conference passed a resolution which advocated the standardization of Shona orthography, but could not come up with conclusive action on the way forward as there was no agreement that indeed all the considered languages could fit into the ‘Shona’ corpus. It was then resolved that expert advice be sought to help on the matter, and the International Institute for African Languages and Cultures (IIALC) was approached to conduct research and advise the conference on the matter. Professor Clement M. Doke, then Professor of Bantu Studies at Wits University, was tasked with this job. He conducted a year-long intensive and extensive study of the language groups across the country that were considered to be of the Shona cluster.

Professor Doke’s findings revealed that there were ‘five’ main ‘Shona language’ divisions, namely, Korekore, Zezuru, Karanga, Ndau and Kalanga. However, his research into the structure of Kalanga showed that it is phonetically different from the other dialects and was of such a divergent vocabulary that it was seen not fit that it be included in the Shona language group with the other languages which all showed an underlying common vocabulary, as well as phonetic and grammatical features (ibid.,12). In his own words after his research, Professor Doke stated that Kalanga, comprising the so-called Kalanga proper (I have proposed in my book, The Rebirth of Bukalanga, that this particular dialect be renamed TjiLozwi since there is no more separate Lozwi dialect today), Lozwi/Rozwi, Nyayi, Lilima, Peri, and Talawunda, was sufficiently different from the other clusters to preclude its participation in the Shona unification. Let us quote his own words to capture this point well. He wrote:

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In 1929 a survey of the linguistic position of Southern Rhodesia was undertaken, resulting in the acceptance of a new unified orthography and proposals for unification over most of the area. Western Shona [meaning Kalanga] was excluded from this unification owing to too great a divergence from the other clusters … It was further decided that the unified grammar be standardized on the basis of Karanga and Zezuru, while for vocabulary purposes words from Zezuru, Karanga, Manyika, and Ndau be drawn upon, the introduction of words from other dialects being discouraged … This western type of Shona (Kalanga) was sufficiently different from the other clusters to preclude its participation in the Shona unification (Doke 1954, 23, 205., 252).

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Since the time that Professor Doke concluded that TjiKalanga could not be regarded as a Shona dialect (and by extension Bakalanga could not be regarded as Shona), an almost 100 year-battle has been raging on about the same question. In the modern era on the frontlines of that battle as far as arguing that Kalanga is a Shona dialect is a group of scholars at CASAS - the Center for Advanced Study of African Society - among whom are Professor Herbert Chimhundu, one of the architects of Zimbabgwe’s assimilationist language policies. The other leading figure there is Professor Kwesi Prah, a believer in the creation of a few African ‘super-languages’ through the assimilation of the so-called minority languages.

On the opposite side has been man and women working with the Kalanga Language and Cultural Development Association (KLCDA) and the Nambya Language and Cultural Organization (NALACO) who, happily, have scored a number of successes with the Ministry of Education in opposing the idea of CASAS that a ‘super-Shona language’ be created by assimilating Kalanga Group Languages (TjiKalanga, TjiNambya, TshiVenda, and others) into Shona, and creating one 'standard Shona' which would then be taught across the country.

Of course for those of us who have been involved in this kind of work for some time now are aware that this is part of a broader plan to turn Zimbabwe into Shona country. For what this amounts to is that once CASAS’ goal is realized, from Plumtree to Mutare, from Venda to Victoria Falls, and from Gwanda to Chirundu, the so-called standard Shona will be taught, and a few years down the line, government might turn around and say after all there is no more need for Ndebele in this country since the majority of people currently learning isiNdebele in the schools are Bakalanga, BaNambya, and Vhavenda. After all, propositions are even being made by certain Shona scholars that Kalanga is a “corrupted version of Shona”, supposedly corrupted through the influence of Ndebele, despite the fact that TjiKalanga hardly contains any Ndebele words. But as we shall see later, this is part of the Big Lie that ‘Shona history’ generally is.

Now that we have established that Bakalanga, Banambya and Vhavenda are not Shona peoples, let us turn to answering the question of when the people now called Shona arrived in this country, with the view of establishing in what way the two cannot be said to be one, and how the two are not necessarily the same people group, or why Bakalanga, Banambya and Vhavenda are not a sub-group of the Shona. We already know from previous installations that Bukalanga peoples arrived in the Zimbabwean Tableland about 100 AD, and we have argued that the people now called Shona arrived in the same land area at least 1700s years later in the early 1700s (for more details on the arrival of Bukalanga peoples please see Chapter One of the The Rebirth of Bukalanga).

When did the Shona arrive in Zimbabwe?

Concerning the time of the arrival of the Portuguese on the east coast of Africa and the ethnolinguistic situation in the region in the early 1500s, Dr George MacCall Theal wrote in 1896:

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About the close of the fifteenth century, white man encountered a number of groups in southern Africa, and there were three major groups of these people. There were the Bushmen, the Hottentots and what became known as the Bantu. The Bantu occupied a greater part of southern Africa south of the Zambesi for many generations, and not having intercourse with each other, naturally developed differences. The Bantu tribes could be classified into three groups, though it should be remembered that there are many trifling differences between the various branches of each of these.

In the first group can be placed tribes along the eastern coast south of the Sabi River, and those which in recent times have made their way from that part of the country into the highlands of the interior. The best known of these are the Amaxosa, the Abathembu, the Amampondo, the Amabaca, the Abambo, the Amazulu, the Amaswazi, the Amatonga, the Magwamba, the Matshangana, and the Matebele. This group can be termed the coast tribes, although some members of it are now far from the sea.

The second group can include the tribes that a century ago occupied the great interior plane and came down to the ocean between the Zambesi and the Sabi rivers. It will include the Batlapin, the Batlaro, the Barolong, the Bahurutsi, the Bangwaketsi, the Bakwena, the Bamangwato, all the sections of the Makalanga, and the whole of the Basuto, north and south. This group can be termed the interior tribes. The third group will comprise all the Bantu living between the Kalahari and the Atlantic Ocean, such as the Ovaherero, the Ovampo, and others. These have no mixture of Asiatic blood. They are blacker in color, coarser in appearance.

… The individuals who composed the first and second groups varied in color from deep bronze to black. Some had features of the lowest negro type: thick projecting lips, broad flat noses, and narrow foreheads; while others had prominent and in rare instances even aquiline noses, well developed foreheads, and lips but little thicker than those of Europeans. Among the eastern tribes these extremes could sometimes be noticed in the same family, but the great majority of the people were of a type higher than a mean between the two. They were of mixed blood, and the branches of the ancestral stock differed considerably, as one was African and the other Asiatic (Theal 1896, 39-40).

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In a later work Dr Theal wrote

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In 1505, when the Portuguese formed their first settlement on the southeastern coast, the Makalanga tribe occupied the territory now termed Rhodesia and the seaboard between the Zambesi and the Sabi rivers. Before the commencement of the eighteenth century that tribe was broken up by wars … and about that time a considerable immigration began to set in from the north … These immigrants, who were the ancestors of the people now called by Europeans Mashona, came down from some locality west of Lake Tanganyika in little parties, not in one great horde. The first to arrive was a clan under a chief named Sakavunza, who settled at a place near the town of Salisbury. The details of this immigration were not placed on record by any of the Portuguese in the country, who merely noticed that there was a constant swirl of barbarians, plundering and destroying, and replacing one another; and when recent investigators, like Mr. R. N. Hall, of Zimbabwe, and Mr. W. S. Taberer, the government commissioner, endeavored to gather the particulars from the descendants of the immigrants, it was found impossible to obtain more accurate information from them concerning the events of distant times than the general fact that their ancestors came down from the north about two centuries ago (Theal 1907, 63. Italics mine).

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The outstanding statement as far as the topic of when the Shona arrived in Zimbabgwe is concerned is the one that has been italicized in the paragraph above. It clearly sets the date of Shona arrival in Zimbabwe in the early 1700s.

The record of Sakavunza is also attested to by F W Posselt. Posselt served as Native Administrator in Matabeleland from 1908, and was transferred to the then Marandellas [in Mashonaland] in 1922, where he served for ten years before being again transferred to Plumtree in 1933. He also stated that several Shona tribes have traditions of their ancestors coming into Zimbabgwe under one Sakavunza, corroborating the Portuguese records of Dr. Theal.

That the Portuguese record is indeed true cannot be doubted, for it is supported by the oral traditions of the Shona themselves, though this is the kind of tradition that today one will not find referred to in Zimbabwean school history books. One such tradition was recorded by Professor Stanlake Samkange concerning the Zwimba people who are considered the real MaZezuru, or Central Shona. Of the Zwimba people Professor Samkange wrote:

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In the land of Makonde, in the Chinhoyi district, near the Chitombo-rwizi Purchase Area, towards the Karoyi River, are people known as The People of Zvimba who live in their land called Chipata. These people are real MaZezuru. Their cognomen or Mutupo is Ngonya pa Nyora. Their honorificus - Chidawo is Gushungo; or Owner of the fruit forest, Pachiworera, Tsiwo, Terror of the Waters! … Now where did these people come from? Listen! Hear! These people of Zvimba came from Guruwuskwa. No one can tell you the exact location of this place called Guruwuskwa. All our elders only point to the North saying: “This way, that is where Guruwuskwa is, this way” (Samkange 1986, 1).

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Samkange states that when the then District Commissioner inquired as to the history and origins of the Zezuru people (or Central Shona) in 1955, he was told by one Mr. Chakabva, who was the elder brother of then Headman Dununu, that “Neyiteve, the son of Chihobvu, the Progenitor, left the area where Chihobvu lived in Guruwuskwa and came west in search of new land. At that time, the Rozvi’s ruled this country. A Mu Rozvi named Tumbare [Tumbale], gave land to Neyiteve when Neyiteve said: “My feet are swollen.” He became the first Zvimba” (Samkange 1986, 5).

The District Commissioner also wrote in 1965 of the Zwimba people that “These people formed part of the general migration from the north. They say they came from a place named Guru Uskwa (probably in Tanganyika). They were led by one Nemaunga and his son or younger brother Neyiteve. The country they occupied was originally occupied by Chief Svinura’s people (Chiwundura?) but they were driven out by the VaRozvi” (Samkange 1986, 5).

There are two points of interest here. If the ‘Chief Svinura’ is indeed Chiwundura as Samkange thinks, then the proposition raises very interesting questions about the date of the settlement of the Shona in the Zimbabgwean Tableland. Chiwundura is the Shona rendering for the Kalanga-Venda-Nambya King, Tjibundule, called Netshiendeulu by the Venda. Tjibundule is known to have been conquered by Mambo Dombolakona-Tjing’wango Dlembewu Moyo in the late 1600s (Rennie, in Schoffeleers 1978, 260).

We of course know that half of Zimbabwe was at that time under the leadership of King Tjibundule, with the other half having been under the leadership of the Monomotapa (a Kalanga king as we saw in last week's installation). Whilst Tjibundule was a dynastic title dating back to the 1500s or so, here the tradition collected by Professor Samkange clearly states that when the Zezuru arrived it was around the time at which the reigning Tjibundule was overthrown by the Lozwi, and the country under Lozwi rule, with Tumbale allocating them land. That would have been in the late 1600s, for that is the time the Lozwi Mambos took over power from the Tjibundules, and the mention of Tumbale confirms this date, for he was the leading medicine-man and army general at this time.

The other point is that of the place named Guruwuswa. Where was the land of Guruwuskwa? In Lozwi-Kalanga traditions we are told that it is a place where the people, in their migrations, could not find firewood, and had to use grass for wood. They then exclaimed, “guni buhwa!”, meaning we can also use grass in the place of firewood as fuel, in TjiKalanga, Guruwuskwa being the Shona rendering. We know that this is a place in southern Zimbabwe because we are told that it was near the Crocodile River, that is, the Limpopo (Posselt 1935, 143-144). In Kalanga oral traditions collected by Mr. Kumile Masola in the early 1920s, the region is also identified as southern Zimbabwe, for we are told that the Lozwi/Nyayi crossed the Tuli River before they conquered the Togwa Kingdom of the Tjibundules.

But was the land of ‘Guruwuskwa’ of the Zezuru the ‘guni buhwa’ of the Kalanga? That seems very unlikely and confusing. For if the Shona Guruwuskwa was in the north as their elders pointed out, how could it be in the south at the same time? That is, south of Makonde where the traditions by Professor Samkange were collected. Is it not possible that some Shona oral informant had heard about the guni buhwa tradition from the Lozwi-Kalanga, and assumed that it was the place of Shona origin? That seems very likely since “it was found impossible to obtain more accurate information from them concerning the events of distant times than the general fact that their ancestors came down from the north about two centuries ago” when enquiry was made into their particulars. This trend of mixing up of Lozwi-Kalanga traditions with those of the Shona has been extensively dealt with by Professor David Beach in his 1994 book, A Zimbabwean Past: Shona Dynastic Histories and Oral Traditions.

Zimbabwe’s former Education, Culture and Arts Minister, Aenias Chigwedere, in one of his works (From Mutapa to Rhodes) identified Matabeleland as the land of Guruwuswa of Shona oral tradition (Chigwedere 1980, 2). Of course Mr. Chigwedere got this information from the highly unreliable works of Mr. Donald P. Abraham who first came up with the idea that Guruwuskwa was a province in the south-west of Zimbabgwe, yet according to the traditions collected by Professor Samkange, the Zwimba elders pointed to the north as the location of their Guruwuskwa (Samkange 1986, 1). How could they have come from the north and south at the same time?

(That the works of Donald Abraham are totally unreliable has also been extensively dealth with in Chapter 7 of The Rebirth of Bukalanga and in Professor Beach's book mentioned above).

The above also in a sense proves as false the proposition that one sometimes hears made that the people now called Shona (specifically in northern Zimbabwe) were once all “Karanga” who migrated to the north from the south of Zimbabwe. It is clear their elders pointed to the north as their original homeland, and they certainly could not have migrated from the north and south at the same time. This of course has a huge bearing on the common proposition that the so-called Matebeleland was once Shona land!

In The Karanga Empire, Chigwedere identifies Guruwuswa as a region “to the west of Lake Malawi” with “tall grass and rather few trees”. Mr. Chigwedere identifies this region as the place where the Mbire, supposedly the ancestors of the Shona, according to him, temporarily settled in after they “started to trek out of Tanganyika towards the Zambezi River” in 900 A.D. (Chigwedere n.d.,32). Interestingly, Chigwedere comes up with this new position in 1982, two years after he had identified Guruwuswa as Matabeleland in From Mutapa to Rhodes in 1980, but he does not attempt to make any explanation for his new position!

Commenting on the term guruwuswa, Professor Beach pointed out that “Guruwuswa was first noted as a land of [Shona] origin in 1904, and further references appeared in the 1920s, 1940s and 1950s. The publications of Donald Abraham in 1959-63 converted Guruwuswa into the province or empire of Guruwuswa [modern Matabeleland], writ large on the political map of the Zimbabwean plateau, and school books have now made this place of origin very well known indeed” (Beach 1994, 259-269).

It is partly on this basis that the Shona claim that Matebeleland was once their land that was stolen by the Ndebele. But it is interesting to know that the Shona have never at any point in history settled in Matabeleland, a region which has always been Bukalanga [Bakalanga, Banambya, and Vhavenda] since about 100 AD, and of course the non-Bukalanga Khoisan and Tonga. The histories of Abraham, later popularized by other writers, and more specifically Chigwedere, have come to thoroughly influence the Zimbabwean school history syllabus, and indeed to impact on the political economy of the country, distorted as they are!

We also have more evidence that the Shona indeed arrived in what is now Zimbabwe about 300 years ago in the works of Professor Beach. After conducting extensive research among the various Shona dynastic chieftaincies in the 1980s and 1990s, Professor Beach wrote: “For all I knew, it might not have been possible to get any sort of coherent pattern any earlier than about 1750 … ” (Beach 1994, 8). Beach’s research findings revealed that virtually all Shona dynasties that have no Kalanga or Tonga (for example, the Ngezi and Rimuka Dynasties are now regarded as Shona but were originally Tonga (Beach 1994: 53)) connections could not provide any coherent oral tradition that dates back to anything before 1700, and this is the case amongst dynasties in Mashonaland and Manicaland today. With reference to the Central and Northern Shona (the Zezuru and Manyika) and the dating of their dynasties, Professor Beach wrote:

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According to the traditions, we have a series of migrations, nearly all moving from the north-east to the south-west, which overcomes very nearly all of the aboriginal inhabitants [Bukalanga] of the area in the period 1700-1850. This, one could say, is practically the stereotype of Shona traditions. Yet there are some odd features about the southern plateau history. Although it is most unusual for Shona genealogies to go much further back than 1700, even without the help of Portuguese documents it is possible to see that some dynasties in the center, north and east, have genealogies starting at about 1700… (Beach 1994, 133).

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The obvious question that arises from the above is: if the Shona have been in this land for as long as they claim today, why is it that none of their dynasties has a history going back beyond 1700? Or are we to assume that all their informants forgot their pre-1700 history in the land that is now Zimbabwe? Is that just not testimony enough that there is actually no such history in the first place? The challenge is for Shona scholars and students to tell us what happened to lead all their informants to forget the pre-1700s history if that is what we are to assume.

Professor Beach has also raised a very interesting point in this regard. He informs us that in his extensive researches amongst the Shona groups, except in a very few instances, he did not find any oral traditions whatsoever that linked their dynasties to the Zimbabgwe Ruins. No traditions existed amongst the Shona about the origins of the Zimbabgwe Ruins, even though in some places Professor Beach found that the communities were living close to the edifices. He noted that “Apart from the case of the zimbabwe on Gombe mountain in Buhera, there is no connection between the dynasties of the shava belt and any zimbabwe-type buildings, and their history cannot be projected back to the Great Zimbabwe period” (Beach 1994, 29).

The shava belt that Professor Beach is referring to is made up of the following Shona groups that are found mainly in Mashonaland and Manicaland:

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in Bocha, in the angle of the Odzi and Save, Marange; in Buhera, on the south bank of the upper Save, the Nyashanu and Mutekedza dynasties, once part of the Mbiru dynasty; south of Buhera, the Munyaradze dynasty; west of the watershed…the Mushava, Nherera and Rwizi dynasties;…on the middle Mupfure, the Chivero dynasty; far to the west of Chivero, in the angle of Munyati and Mupfure, the Neuso dynasty; and west of the Munyati, on the Mafungabusi plateau, the Chireya, Njerere, Nemangwe, Nenyunga and Negonde dynasties, … the NeHarava and Seke dynasties of the upper Mhanyame, the Nyavira dynasty of the Gwizi flats and the Hwata and Chiweshe … dynasties of the upper Mazowe (Beach 1994, 28).

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The same trend reported above is similar for most of the Shona dynasties that Professor Beach studied. For all we know, most of the Zimbabgwe Ruins were already constructed by 1700, except for a few that were constructed in the 18th century. This explains a lot about the date the Shona groups should have arrived in the country, for it would be impossible for them to have been in the land before 1000 A.D. and yet have no traditions about such major historical edifices as the Zimbabgwe Ruins. Interestingly, traditions connecting Bukalanga to the Ruins in the south and south-west of Zimbabgwe, where most of the ruins are located, are in abundance [please see Chapter Nine of The Rebirth of Bukalanga].

Towards the conclusion of his book, Professor Beach wrote:

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I began this chapter [Chapter 7] on an optimistic note, and it is on the same optimistic note that I wish to end it, and to bring this book to a close. Leaving aside details to an appendix, I can sum up by claiming that Shona oral traditions give us a reasonable basis for a history of the Zimbabwe plateau, but one going only back to about 1700 and often not as far (Beach 1994, 273).

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One thing is very clear from the evidence presented above - from Portuguese records, Shona oral traditions and the researches of Professor Beach - that the ancestors of the people called Shona today arrived in the Zimbabwean Tableland around the 1700s, at least 1500 years later than the Kalanga peoples!

Is it possible then to reasonably identify a people whose migration was separated by such a long period of time as one and the same people, or to classify the earlier immigrants as a subgroup of the latter? Can a son be older than his father? And in any case, assuming that the Shona were descendants of the Kalanga as some writers have proposed, why then is nothing mentioned in school history books about Bukalanga, and why has none of the Shona scholars made any reference to that Kalanga ancestry? Why is the record in school books talking of the Shona and not Bukalanga? Shouldn’t we actually be saying that Shona is a dialect of Kalanga instead of the other way round, if indeed the Shona are descendants of the Kalanga? Do we say this father looks like his son or this son looks like his father when we are making comparisons in a father-son relationship? This last statement applies especially to the proposition that TjiKalanga sounds like ChiShona. Is it not Shona that sounds like TjiKalanga? (in a later installation we shall deal with the question: If Bakalanga and the Shona are two Different Groups, how then do we explain the relative similarity of their languages?).

Whilst such a distinguished historian like Dr Theal could have made a statement like “The people we call Mashona are indeed descended from the Makalanga of the early Portuguese days, and they preserve their old name and part of their old country” (1896: 122), it is apparent that this was just in keeping with the view of certain other writers (before the research findings of Professor Doke as shown above) that Bukalanga Group Languages are of the same group with the Shona ones.

Judging by Dr Theal’s other statements as presented in above, such as those concerning the date of the arrival of the Shona in the Zimbabwean Tableland, it shows he was here refering to Bukalanga, not necessarily to the whole lot of the Shona. If he were refering to the Shona we do not expect to find him saying that “they preserve their old name and part of their old country”, for we certainly know that the Shona do not call themselves Makalanga and have never at any point in history occupied all of Zimbabwe such that it can now be said they occupy “part of their old country”.

Instead, we do have the Makalanga or Bukalanga (that is Bakalanga, Banambya and Vhavenda), who once occupied all of Zimbabwe - in their various tribes - still existent to this day, and occupying a great portion of the country that is now called Zimbabwe, and still referred to by their southern neighbors the Sotho-Tswana as Makalaka as in the past, and this Sotho-Tswana name for the Kalanga in itself speaks a lot.

Even if we were to allow for some latitude and say the European writers incorrectly recorded the national or generic name of these builders of the Zimbabgwe Civilization - Bukalanga or Makalanga - then how would we explain the name by which the Sotho-Tswana refer to us, that is, Makalaka? The letter /r/ is so prominent in the Sotho-Tswana languages that it would be very far fetched to suggest that they were somehow refering to the supposedly ‘Shona’ Karanga by Makalaka and were failing to pronounce Karanga as I have heard some suggest in private conversations.

And it is not only the Sotho-Tswana who referred to us as Makalaka, but we find the Tembe in the Delagoa Bay region speaking of their origins in the Kalanga country and greeting each other as n'Kalanga, as the Reverend Junod found out. Professor G. P. Lestrade and N. J. van Warmelo found the Venda claiming origins in Vhukalanga too, and the Lobedu also told Dr J. D. Krige and his wife Eileen Jensen Kridge that their origins are to be traced to Vhokalaka, and so on, which claim has been lately made by Professor Mathole Motshekga, the ANC Chief Whip. I think it would be a very audacious claim to make to suggest that all the European recorders from the Portuguese days in the early 1500s to the British in the 1900s all got it wrong!

This also again raises the question that we previously asked: does it mean that the names of the Shona groups - the Zezuru and Manyika - are so new that they were never heard of to these neighboring peoples? Does this not just prove that they were not yet in the land, which some Venda still refer to as Vhukalanga up to today? It remains with the reader to make their own judgment, but what we can satisfy ourselves with now is that Bukalanga and the Shona are two different people groups. Bukalanga are certainly not a Shona group!

Bakalanga, Banambya, and Vhavenda, known throughout history before their 'break-up' in the 1700s by the generic or national name of Bukalanga or Vhukalanga, are an independent people group with their own proud and separate identity, heritage and languages. They are not only independent and different from the Shona only, but also from the Ndebele and Ngwato-Tswana, they who also seem, like the Shona, intent to 'swallow' us and make us a sub-clan of theirs.

All these we love and care about, but what we shall not do is allow our identity to be suppressed such that we are always subjected to a Shona, Ndebele and Ngwato public image. Now is the time for the giant that our nation is is to arise, and the Rebirth and Renaissance of Bukalanga shall see the resurgence of our great languages, TjiKalanga and Tshivenda, as important languages of Comerce and Science and Techology. (I have not mentioned TjiNambya here since it is aparent that it is a dialect of TjiKalanga and the two, I believe and propose, can still be amalgamated into one language for writing purposes).

Bakalanga, Banambya, and Vhavenda, I say to us the 21st century is our century. Now is the time for the descendants of the builders of the Zimbabgwe Civilization to arise, now is the time for the descendants of the builders of Maphungubgwe, Great Zimbabgwe, Khami, Bumbusi, Dzata, etc [the Monomotapa, Togwa and Lozwi Mambos and Tavhatshinde and Khwinde kings] to arise and be counted amongst the nations of the world. Now is the time for us to rediscover the greatness of our ancestors, they who established one of the three greatest civilizations in precolonial Africa - the Zimbabgwe Civilization, the other two being the Egyptian and Axumite Civilizations.

Now, Bukalanga, is our time. From Venda to Victoria Falls and from the River Shangana (so-called Shangani) to Palapye, the world is going to hear from us, and we may well be the people that will establish the greatest, most prosperous, most democratic and most technologically advanced homeland in Southern Africa. Our ancestors did it in the past, so can we in this 21st Century. Now is the time for that old Kalanga-Nambya-Venda Alliance to be rebuilt. Ndaboka. Ndaaa.

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Ndzimu-unami Emmanuel Moyo is a Kalanga Justice Activist and the writer of two books, The Rebirth of Bukalanga and Zimbabwe: The Case for Federalism. He can be contacted by email on ndzimuunami@gmail.com.