An Account of Bukalanga: With A Description of their Character and Industries

The Makalanga…were to a large extent civilized and certainly well versed and expert in various arts, such as those of metalworking and textile manufacture; were admirable men of business, possessing the power of calculating money, and commercial instincts beyond those of any other tribes, and, according to Arab writers of the thirteenth century, themselves mined and washed for gold and traded it with the Arab merchants at the coast - Richard Nicklin Hall, and W. G. Neal, 1904. The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia: Monomotapae Imperium.

Having already held many discussions on Bukalanga history and identity on Facebook, I have met a whole lot of accusations from certain quarters who charge that I am presenting a fictitious history of Bukalanga that never was, and distorting the historical record more than it has already been distorted in a bid to prop up Bukalanga. In anticipatory response to those accusations, I have attempted to gather as many different sources as was possible, and presented the information from the original sources as is. Also, I have incorporated a lot of background information on the writers themselves as a means of helping us to decide on their reliability.

Let me begin by stating that the views expressed in this chapter about Bukalanga and other ethnic groups are those of the observers who encountered them in different times of their history. As to whether I believe the views, I would say yes, only as far as Bukalanga are described, but I would not commit my name to the comparisons that are made with other ethnic groups, except in factual matters that are not based on impressions. I want to affirm, from the beginning, my belief in the equality of all men, though we all know that much as all men are equal, our experience with history is that not all have the same capabilities. This does not in any way imply that there are races that are superior to others, nor does it imply that God created some better than others. All are created equal, and all possess equal potential. But again, history has taught us that not all use that potential the same way. I therefore want to state emphatically that as Bukalanga we are not asserting racial superiority over other African peoples, but simply affirming the fact that we are distinct, unique and different as all other African peoples are unique and different in their own ways.

To ensure that I capture well the views expressed concerning our nation, I have used extensive and verbatim quotations from the original writers on Bukalanga since the early 1500s. This I have done for two reasons. Firstly, as security against accusations of bias, for if these were my own words as a Kalanga; it would be natural to dismiss them as vain and biased. But they are the opinions of many different non-Kalanga writers from different countries encountering Bukalanga in different times over a period of 400 years. Secondly, I have in mind the following words from Basil Davidson:

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Good wine, they wisely say, should be left in the bottles that first contained it: pour it afresh, and the flavor will spoil. To this warning the maker of a selection of historical writings will reply, … that good old books, unlike good old wine, really need putting into new covers from time to time, for otherwise they become forgotten or unreasonably hard to find (let alone to buy); and that if the work is done with care and affection the loss of flavor will after all be small and easy to forgive. Indeed, the balance of advantage can well lie with the new, for what was previously set about with antique verbosity and obscureness of reference may now shine forth in fresh and even unsuspected clarity of meaning (Davidson 1964, 3).

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I do hope that I have done my best to keep the wine of historical information as good as it was in the old bottles [books], and that the reader will find it an enjoyable drink [read]. I have tried to preserve the old wine by using extended quotes from the original sources so that the information is presented to the reader as it was in the past. With that said, let us turn to the sixteenth century Portuguese encounter with the Great Nation of Bukalanga.

400 Years of European Encounter with Bukalanga from 1500-1900

The earliest recorded works we have on Bukalanga is that of the Portuguese, the first Europeans to touch on the south east coast of Africa, and indeed to penetrate into the inlands. The vast body of those works has been translated from Portuguese, Latin and Spanish by or under the coordination of Dr George MacCall Theal. Dr. Theal was Professor of History at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, and Foreign Member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Utrecht, Holland. He was also Corresponding Member of the Royal Historical Society in London; Honorary Member of the Literary Association; the Leiden Commission for preparing a History of the Walloon Churches, and the Historical Society of Utrecht. In addition to the preceding, Dr. Theal was formerly Keeper of the Archives of the Cape Colony and Historiographer of the Government of the Cape Colony.

His translation work resulted in his vast volume, The Records of South-Eastern Africa first published in 1898. According to him, he had done what was at that time arguably the most extensive study of Bantu peoples of southern Africa. It is likely that to-date no writer has yet recorded the history of Bukalanga as he has done in his several volumes. His works are to be highly commended to those who would like to know more about Bukalanga as he records our history starting about 1500. British archaeologist David Randal-McIver too has highly recommended Dr Theal’s work, writing: “My report [on the Zimbabgwe Ruins], being wholly independent and original, may be judged upon its own merits, and it will be sufficiently clear why little or no reference has been made to various books which it was impossible to praise and would have been invidious to criticize. A single honorable exception must be made. There is one work of sterling scholarship which ought to be known to all who profess an interest in these subjects, namely, Dr. G. M. Theal’s Records of South-Eastern Africa...”(David Randall-McIver, Mediaeval Rhodesia, 1906). In his detailed description of Bukalanga, Dr. Theal wrote in 1907:

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When the European fort and trading station at Sofala was formed in 1505 the predominant people in the country between the rivers Sabi and Zambesi were the Mokaranga as termed by the Portuguese, or Makalanga as pronounced by themselves…The Makalanga had developed their religious system and their industries more highly than any of the other tribes of Southern or Eastern Africa. Of all the Bantu they had the largest proportion of Asiatic blood in their veins, which will account for their mental and mechanical superiority. Almost at first sight the Europeans observed that they were in every respect more intelligent than the blacker tribes along the Mozambique coast. Their skulls more nearly approached those of Europeans in shape, many of them had the high nose, thin lips, and the general features of the people of South-Western Asia. Even their hands and feet were in numerous instances small and well-shaped, unlike those of ordinary blacks, which are large and coarse. Their appearance thus indicated a strong infusion of foreign blood, though not sufficient to denationalize them as Bantu. That blood may not have been Arab alone; it is likely that some was Persian, and possibly some Indian… Their language was regarded by the Christians as being pleasanter than Arabic to the ear (Theal 1907, 295-297).

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The next description of Bukalanga that we have is that of Messrs. Richard Nicklin Hall and W. G. Neal. Mr. Hall came to Rhodesia in 1897 when he was appointed Secretary to the Rhodesia Landowners’ and Farmers’ Association and the first Secretary of the Bulawayo Chamber of Commerce. He became editor of the Matabele Times and Mining Journal and later of the Rhodesia Journal. He also represented the leading London newspapers in Rhodesia. He did much to bring Southern Africa before the public by means of exhibitions. In 1902 Hall was engaged at Rhodes’ request to explore the Zimbabwe Ruins, the question of the preservation of the country’s historic monuments having become a serious political issue. Together with Neal he collated a wealth of original work at Great Zimbabgwe. In 1909 he traveled for five months alone down the Sabi and the Lundi Rivers collecting ethnological information. He was a fellow of several European and South African scientific societies and was appointed first Curator of the Ancient Monuments of Rhodesia at Great Zimbabwe.

W.G. Neal came to Salisbury in 1891 and discovered the Yellow Jacket property, and had previously been a prospecting partner and miner with one George Johnson in the Barberton district, South Africa, where they were the first to erect a crushing mill on the Pioneer Reef. He discovered coal on the Lebombo Flats, south-east coast of Africa, and moved to the Rand in 1887. In 1891 he met excavator Mr. J. T. Bent on the Mazowe, the next year he found gold on the Fort Victoria (Maswingo) district. In 1893 he served under Captain [Jameson] Lendy during the Matabele troubles there (i.e., uMvukela wamaNdebele war). With Johnson, Neal was a prime mover in the formation of the Rhodesia Ancient Ruins Company which was granted a concession over all ancient ruins by Jameson in 1895.

In reading the work of Hall and Neal, the reader is warned here that these two writers held the now discredited view that there was once an ‘ancient’ people who supposedly had previously established the Zimbabgwe Civilization in the country before the arrival of the Bantu. It will therefore be realised that in some instances they write within that context. But that does not mean that we can then have to fault their ethnographic observations on that basis. Of Bukalanga they had a lot to say that must be of great interest to anyone interested in the Rebirth and Renaissance of Bukalanga. They wrote in 1904:

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[t]here are unmistakable traces of these people (the ‘Ancients’ who were supposed to have lived in Zimbabgwe at some point in history as traders and gold miners and builders of the Zimbabgwe Ruins) still remaining to this day, and these are to be seen in the arched noses, thin lips, and refined type of Semitic countenance commonly met with, especially among the Makalangas and Zambesi tribes, the Jewish rites, particularly with regard to food, the superior intelligence and calculating capacities and business instincts, the metallurgical cleverness still in vogue, and knowledge of astronomy, and the polytheistic faiths learned from the ancients, and still preserving several distinctly Semitic practices (Hall and Neal 1904, 114).

[They continued,]

The old Makalanga were in their former semi-civilized state the dominant and most cultured of all South African tribes, and were always noted for their skills in mathematics, evidently acquired from the Semitic gold-workers, and today among the native tribes still retain the preeminence in matters requiring calculation…The Makalangas, whose ancestors had, under the influence of the ancients, become to a large extent civilized, still showed in their commercial capacities, their industries, arts, and religious faiths, the impressions left upon them by the former settlement of the ancients in this country, impressions that in some departments of life can still be noticed in the Makalanga of today (Hall and Neal 1904, 107).

[Writing on the civilization and industries of the Kalanga, Hall and Neal tell us:]

The Makalanga…were to a large extent civilized and certainly well versed and expert in various arts, such as those of metalworking and textile manufacture; were admirable men of business, possessing the power of calculating money, and commercial instincts beyond those of any other tribes, and, according to Arab writers of the thirteenth century, themselves mined and washed for gold and traded it with the Arab merchants at the coast (Hall and Neal 1904, 121-122).

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Hall and Neal continued to give a detailed description of Bukalanga, their culture, religion and industries in ways that I am very sure will be very unsettling to non-Kalanga readers, particularly the Ndebele. They had the following to say:

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Physical Features - Their Semitic cast of countenance has already been referred to. Arched noses, lighter colored skin, thin lips, and refined type of face are very commonly met with among these people.

Intelligence - In mental capacity they are more advanced than any other tribe in South East and South Central Africa. This fact is mentioned by almost every Portuguese writer since 1516, some of whom declare the Makalangas to have been far more intelligent than the natives of the coast, who for many centuries had the advantage of contact with civilized people. Their commercial instincts and shrewdness are their preeminent characteristics to this day. Their facility in calculating is beyond that of any other tribe. Matabele ‘boys’ receiving their wage will appeal to a Makalanga to count the money to ensure they are receiving the stipulated amount of wage, while the Makalanga play the Isafuba game, which is a game of calculation, in far more complicated form than any other tribe. Possibly their superior knowledge of astronomy may be a relic of their contact with the ancient star worshipers. In their musical proclivities they exhibit ideas of harmony which are quite exceptional among South African peoples. The “Makalanga piano” is of complicated construction, requiring great skill of manipulation, and resembles similar pianos found in Egypt and represented in the British Museum; while from a concertina a Makalanga will evolve chords and combinations which, though decidedly monotonous, are often somewhat surprisingly musical and correct.

Industries - The Makalangas are a nation of copper and iron workers, in which industries they are true artists. Formerly they worked extensively in copper, and to this day they manufacture ornaments such as bangles and beads from that metal. In mediaeval times they were to some extent goldsmiths, for native-made instruments for drawing wire have been found with gold wire still remaining in the gravitating holes…Also in the mediaeval times they manufactured linen interwoven with fine gold wire, for we find in the oldest Portuguese writers mention of this, and also of the fact that the King of Monomotapa would only wear such linen which had been manufactured in his own country. Probably these arts formed the basis of their present industry of weaving bark and grass, and manufacturing finely twisted wire bangles, which latter articles resemble those made in Europe by machinery.

Dynastic Names - the chiefs of all Makalanga tribes invariably have dynastic names in the same manner as the Pharaohs of old. Writers suggest that this shows a link with northern [African] people.

Totems - Every tribe has its totem, and as the lion was the totem of Judah and the bull of Ephraim, so the lion, the crocodile, buffalo, or one of the buck tribe, form the totem of the Makalangas. Kromer, in Akademie der Wissenschaften, states that the system of totems originated with tribes in Arabia. The totems of the Indians of North America have been suggested as resultant of the Punic influence, Carthage having been a Phoenician colony. [See also Chapter Three.]

Stone Buildings - Authorities agree that at one time the Makalangas were in the habit of erecting circular huts of stone. This practice is shown in the inferior buildings erected on the present floors of many of the ruins, the stones of which have evidently been removed from the ancient walls. The art of building with stone is believed to have been a heritage from the Semitic ancient occupiers (Hall and Neal 1904, 126-131).

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Next we have the record of the excavator Mr. J.T. Bent. Travelling on his way from modern-day Maswingo to Mashonaland during his explorations and excavations in 1891, Mr. Bent also made his own interesting observations about Bukalanga, and he wrote:

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We left Fort Tuli on May 9 1891, and for the ensuing six months we sojourned in what is now called Mashonaland…[where] we had ample time for studying the race which now inhabits the country, inasmuch as we employed over fifty of them during our excavations at Zimbabwe, and during our subsequent wanderings we had them as bearers, and we were brought into intimate relationship with most of their chiefs. The Chartered Company throughout the whole period kept us supplied with interpreters of more or less intelligence, who greatly facilitated our intercourse with the natives, and as time went by certain portions of the language found its way into our own brains, which was an assistance to us in guiding conversations and checking romance…

As for the natives themselves, I cannot help saying a few words in their favor, as it has been customary to abuse them and set their capabilities down as naught. During the time we were at Zimbabwe, we were constantly surrounded by them, and employed from fifty to sixty of them for our work, and the only thing we lost was a bottle of whisky, which we did not set down to the natives…In their primitive state the Makalangas are naturally honest, exceedingly courteous in manner, and cowardice appears to be the only vice, arising doubtless from the fact that for generations they have had to flee to their fastnesses before the raids of the more powerful races.

The Makalanga is above the ordinary Negro in intelligence. Contrary to the prognostications of our advisers, we found that some of them rapidly learnt their work, and were very careful excavators, never passing over a thing of value, which is more than can be said of all the white men in our employ. Some of them are decidedly handsome, and not at all like Negroes except in skin; many of them have a distinctly Arab cast of countenance, and with their peculiar rows of tufts on top of their heads looked en profil like the figures one sees on Egyptian tombs. There is certainly a Semite drop of blood in their veins, whence it comes will probably never be known, but it is marked both on their countenances and in their customs.

In religion they are monotheists - that is to say, they believe in a Supreme Being called Muali [Mwali], between whom and them their ancestors, or mozimos, to whom they sacrifice, act as intercessors. They lay out food for their dead; they have a day of rest during the ploughing season, which they call Muali’s day; they have dynastic names for their chiefs, like the Pharaohs of old; they sacrifice a goat to ward off pestilence and famine; circumcision is practiced amongst some of them (Bent 1892, 31-32 and 55-57).

[Mr. Bent continued],

A Makalanga is by nature vain, and particular about the appearance of his nudity; the ladies have fashions in beads and clothes, like our ladies at home, and before visiting a fresh kraal our men used to love to polish themselves like mahogany, by chewing the monkey-nut and rubbing their skins with it, good-naturedly doing each other’s backs and inaccessible corners. Somehow they know what becomes them too, twisting tin ornaments, made from our meat tins, into their black hair. Just now they will have nothing but red beads with white eyes, which they thread into necklaces and various ornaments, and which look uncommonly well on their dark skins; and though it seems somewhat paradoxical to say so of naked savages, yet I consider no one has better test in dress than they have until a hybrid civilization is introduced amongst them.

There are many odds and ends of interest scattered about a Makalanga village; there is the drum, from two to four feet in height, covered with zebra or other skin, plated baskets for straining beer, and long-handled gourds, with queer diagonal patterns in black done on them, which serve as ladles. Most of their domestic implements are made of wood - wooden pestles and wooden mortars for crushing grain, wooded spoons and wooden platters often decorated with pretty zigzag patterns. Natural objects, too, are largely used for personal ornaments. Anklets and necklaces, really quite pretty to look upon, are constructed out of chicken bones; birds’ claws and beaks, and the seeds of various plants, are constantly employed for the same purpose. Grass is neatly woven into chaplets, and a Makalanga is never satisfied unless he has a strange bird’s further stuck jauntily in his woolly locks (Bent 1892: 37-41).

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The religious system of Bukalanga as described by Mr. Bent had been described in similar terms twenty years earlier by the previously mentioned Herr Karl Mauch. Mauch was born near Stuttgart in Wurttemberg (Germany), on 7th May, 1837. In a lifetime of a little short of 38 years he spent nearly eight, from January, 1865, to October, 1872, in continuous travelling in southern Africa. In the course of his journeys he made notable and far reaching contributions to geological and geographical knowledge - the existence of gold-fields at Tati [North-east District, Botswana] and in Rhodesia, and the location of the Zimbabwe ruins. On 24th October, 1864, he left London (where he had been studying at the British Museum and learning English) as a crew member on a small German vessel bound for Natal. He landed in Durban on the 18th of January, 1865, from which he moved to Petermaritzburg, Rustenburg and finally to Potchefstroom. He left Potchefstroom in May 1866 headed for the territory that is now Zimbabwe, returning to Potchefstroom in 1869. He was back in Zimbabwe in 1870, seeing the ruins of Great Zimbabwe for the first time on 5th September, 1871. Of Bukalanga he wrote:

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The Makalaka believe in a God, called “Mali” [Mwali] who lodges “pa tenga” (in heaven), for he eats, drinks and has plenty of everything. At times he also descends to earth and announces his coming through a messenger. This messenger roams the country, eats only meat and fine porridge, drinks beer and dances throughout the nights. According to the way in which he is treated he either promises rain or he withholds it. In an earlier visit to the kraal I offered some “nice smelling” zebra meat to him [the messenger] after which he begged for some linen and then went away. “Mali” himself, however, never puts in a personal appearance, but makes himself known below the earth, that is, in a cave in the Makala Mountains [Matopos Range] which lie in the country of the Matabele to the west of here. Food is brought to that place and the priest, probably a cheating ventriloquist, lets the Mali talk from below the ground and answer questions. Mali is the sender of everything that is good (Bernhard and Bernhard 1969, 202).

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We also have interesting descriptions of Bukalanga given by the German colonialist Dr. Carl Peters. Peters was born in Hannover, Germany in 1856, and became one of the most determined colonialists and founded the Company for German Colonization in 1884. His mission was to take much of East Africa for the Germans, and was instrumental with his scheming in leading Otto von Bismarck to take action for the colonization of East Africa. As a diehard colonialist, Peters would hardly have found room in his thinking for embracing the idea that African peoples could have been responsible for the Zimbabgwe Civilization. He held to that worn out belief that certain ancients had appeared in the region, established the civilization and for some reason or other disappeared. But inspite of his theories, he still finds the time to study the Kalanga and report something about them. In his 1902 book, The Eldorado of the Ancients, Peters had the following to say about Bukalanga:

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I have observed the Makalanga during the six months I spent amongst them with great interest, and I have studied their manners and customs … As regards their blood, they belong essentially to the Bantu tribes of East Africa, but they have a stronger influx of Asiatic blood than any other nation which I know. Their type is not so much Arab, for they are decidedly Jewish; but this, perhaps, is just the type of the genuine original Phoenician population of South Arabia. Many of the men are tall and strong - real Bantu figures. Then, again, one sees small forms with very refined, clever expressions … The girls are prettier than those of most Bantu tribes, and at Misongwe they remind you of European ladies … They are graceful, and in their intercourse with strangers are not at all bashful. In this respect their manners are very different to the submissive behavior of the ordinary Negro girls. When they offer you anything they take it in both hands and make a deep curtsy, and withdraw backwards. When greeting you, they cross their hands over their chests and make two or three bows. The men greet by scrapping the ground regularly with their feet. This is just as we found it on the Zambesi … If a Makalanga passes the tent of a ‘great one’, he takes off his cap, and does not put it on again until he is out of sight; and he always remains bareheaded whilst talking to his superior.

They are all agriculturalists, growing barley, maize, groundnuts, sweet potatoes, and tobacco everywhere … Among their occupations agriculture takes first place. Gold is washed in rivers and is sold in quills; iron is dug in holes and purified in furnaces; they obtain it from ferriferous quartz, and from brown clay iron ore, which is found everywhere. The Makalanga are very clever ironworkers, and their knives are much sought for. They also know how to make hoes and hatchets. They are very smart joiners; their chairs and headrests are works of art, very finely carved, and at Misongwe we saw very elegant carvings on the outside of the houses. Their mats also show much taste and skill. All over the country the women make pottery, which they even understand how to glaze. I have often used their vessels as coldwater jugs, as well as for cooking pots (Peters 1902, 121-124).

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Further testimony on the metalworking industries of the Kalanga is to be had from the English missionary Dr David Livingstone who also wrote that the Kalanga had knowledge of how to manufacture iron and copper implements, as well as to manufacture cotton clothes. Livingstone had reached Kuruman from England on 31 July 1841, and it served as his base until the end of 1843. During that time he made four lengthy trips into the interior, each of roughly two to five months. From the beginning of 1844 until April 1851 he had his own mission station, first among the BaKgatla at Mabotsa (1844-5) and then among the BaKwena at Chowane (1845-7) and Kolobeng (1847-51), Botswana. During that time he paid at least four visits to tribes farther east, and also went twice into Ngamiland in the distant North-West. In 1851 he made his first successful expedition to the Makololo of what was North-Western Rhodesia, now Zambia, which marked the end of his connection with Bechuanaland. He returned south at the end of the year and proceeded to Cape Town to dispatch his wife and children to England in April 1852. In his descriptions of the Kalanga he wrote:

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Having remained with the people of Bubi for nearly a month, I proceeded Northward in order to visit the Bamangwato, Bakaa, and Makalaka, three tribes having their countries in Lat. 22o S. and stretching from 28o to 30o E Long. The last-named is the smallest of the three, but it is a section of a people of considerable numbers and speaking a language differing decidedly from the Sitchuana. None of the Bechuanas I had with me could understand it. But from some of the words which I caught, I am inclined to think it belongs to the same root with their tongue. Their manners, too, are somewhat different from the Southern tribes, inasmuch as they are not entirely dependent on the rude kaross for covering, but manufacture cotton cloth for shawls &c. And besides [they have a] knowledge of how to manufacture iron and copper [implements] (Livingston 1961, 17).

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Dr Livingstone’s testimony is supported by the Honorable A. Wilmot, who was a Member of the Legislative Council of the Cape of Good Hope. Despite a commitment to the theory that it wasn’t the Africans who were responsible for the Zimbabgwe Civilization, he wrote in 1896 that the Kalanga “of modern times were one of the mild and superior races of the South-east African continent. They tilled the land with some skill, were able to extract gold from quartz, and were not inexpert workers in metal” (Wilmot 1896, 165).

Another description of the character and industries of Bukalanga is to be had from James Chapman in his book titled Travels in the Interior of South Africa 1849-1863: Hunting and Trading Journeys from Natal to Walvis Bay & Visits to Lake Ngami & Victoria Falls. Part II, edited from the original manuscripts by Edward C. Tabler. The book deals with Chapman’s account of his journey to the Zambesi by way of Hereroland and Lake Ngami which lasted from 9 December 1860, when Chapman sailed from Cape Town, until early August 1863, when his trek reached Otjimbingwe on the Zambezi in retreat. In his 8th March 1863 diary entry, Chapman wrote thus of the Kalanga amongst whom he had been staying, also citing their honesty as we saw attested to by Mr. Bent 30 years later in 1892:

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I have ordered the people…on long errands as if they were my own, and have never lost the most trifling thing, although they, out of curiosity, squat amidst and handle numerous things, to them useless as well as useful, which in a Bushman or Makololo village would not be safe for 5 minutes. I have had a few hundred Makalaka in service at various times lately, and they stole nothing that I have missed… They frequently bring things lost from the wagons and today brought a tin pannikin lost some time ago. Consequently I felt some qualms at having today temporarily confiscated the spears, battle axes, corn and pumpkins of a score of men who came to trade, on suspicion they knew the person who picked up the lost skein. It turned out unfounded (Tabler 1968, 146).

In a letter dated Daka, Shapatani, 7th July 1862 to one Sir George, Chapman gave a long description of typical Bukalanga village life which many will recognize to be still the case even today about 150 years later. He wrote the following in that description:

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Unlike other natives, the Makalaka men build houses, make fences, and take a leading part in hoeing, weeding and planting. At this sort of work there are no sluggards, men, women and children … They do not use an ordeal, but decide all cases by the dice [divining bones]. In war their dead are left to the vultures. At home they are buried in a sitting position with the arms round the knees and the hands to the face. Their body ornaments, if not too valuable, and their dish, spoon and hoe are buried with them … Beer is called busukwa. They make a stir about of lebilebile [bilebile = hot chilli] called lupeesa meya [lupiza meya] which, eaten early in the morning, gives them wisdom and quickness of tongue for the day. Except in the heat of the day, the women generally stand in twos or threes over a large wooden mortar, pounding their corn into flour. They never use stones for this. Others on their knees separate the coarse from the fine by shaking it in a basket and returning the coarse to the mortar. In this way they obtain fine white flour. Large grain baskets, raised on three or four little pillars and plastered over with clay, stand in the open air, or are built in a granary, which is also a storeroom for tools, pots and dishes. Near the base of the baskets are small trap doors for tapping off grain…

Their huts are strongly made of saplings [sina] lashed together in cylindrical form, with a sloping roof resembling the hat of a Malay. The eaves project about 2 feet and afford a partial shelter to those who cannot find it within. Thirty to 100 or more huts generally form a village. Each chief has several villages, and his people constantly visit him to do homage or pay tribute of a share of any game they have killed. The huts are well thatched, and the ashes and slops are carried out and piled at a distance [tjihhalalota/tjizhalalota]. On the whole, the huts have an air of comfort, especially when new … The Makalakas are tall, muscular and broad-chested, face rather flat, features moderate, white and perfect teeth, rather open mouth … They have a fondness for and good knowledge of cattle, sheep and goats, but now have none, except a few people commencing again with a small stock of goats. Most are afraid to try, for fear of exciting the cupidity of the Makololo and Matabele … (Tabler 1968, 147-149).

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That Bukalanga were indeed great agriculturalists as described by Dr. Carl Peters and James Chapman is beyond doubt. We find evidence to that effect in descriptions of Bukalanga by missionaries of the Society of Jesus’s Zambezi Mission, Fathers Henri Depelchin and Charles Croonenberghs. The following information is taken from a translation of the compilation of their diaries and letters written during the first three years of the Mission - 1879 to 1881. The letters were first published in French as Precis Historiques between 1879 and 1882. They have been translated into English by Moria Lloyd.

Henri Depelchin (1822-1900) joined the Society of Jesus in 1842 and went to India in 1859 where he became the Superior of the Jesuit Mission at Calcutta. In 1877 he was put in charge of the Zambesi Mission, which he led to Gubulawayo [Bulawayo]. Later leaving Father Croonenberghs in charge there, Depelchin returned to Tati and then in May 1880 set out for the Zambesi. A station was established at Pandamatenga but plans to work among the Tonga were thwarted by fever. He visited Chief Lewanika [in today's Zambia] in 1881 and then went to Grahamstown to bring up new recruits for a station in Barotseland; but owing to exhaustion and a broken leg he decided, in late 1882, to reign as Superior and go on leave in Belgium. In the meantime he established Kalkfontein Mission, near Zeerust in the Transvaal (now North West Province) as a healthier base than Tati to support the more northerly stations … As Superior Depelchin wrote regular reports back to Belgium to the Belgian Provincial, Joseph Janssens (1826-1900); and many of the letters in the book were those written to Janssens (p.xxviii-xxix). Charles Croonenberghs (1843-1899) had joined the Society of Jesus in 1863, and too accompanied the Zambesi Mission’s expedition as far as Bulawayo, where he was put in charge of the station there upon Depelchin’s departure for Tati and then the Zambesi. He remained there until 1884 when he was transferred to the mission at Kalkfontein. In 1885 he was sent to North America to raise funds for the Zambesi Mission (Lloyd 1979, xxviii).

Writing of Bukalanga in the so-called Khama’s country [Central District of Botswana] in a letter dated Tati, 14 April 1880; Father Depelchin had the following to say:

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In Khama’s country [are] many exiled Makalakas who had fled from the Matabele yoke. These Makalaka tribes live between the Matoppo Hills to the north and the Limpopo to the south, between the Bamangwatos on the west and Umzila’s country to the east [ that is, the Maswingo Province]; and they seem to be the most industrious and the most apt for civilization of all the peoples of southern Africa. In the Shoshong district these refugees are growing excellent crops of maize and millet. Mr Taylor (presumably Robert Taylor, a dealer in ivory in Shoshong), one of the oldest European residents, assured Fr. Terorde that, if only the scattered tribes of the Makalaka could be freed and gathered together, it would be possible to found a mission among these natives that it would not take long to thrive well. Thanks to their help Khama’s kingdom is becoming daily more fertile and more prosperous (Lloyd 1979, 282).

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Such was the character and industries of the peoples of Bukalanga. It therefore should come as no surprise that the Kalanga established such great civilizations as Mapungubgwe, Great Zimbabgwe and Khami, three of the four man-made UNESCO World Heritage sites in Southern Africa.

But what happened, one may ask. We will come to this question in the last chapter of the book, Chapter Twelve, but for now let us hear what H. L. Gann had to say about this question in his book, A History of Southern Rhodesia: Early Days to 1934. He wrote:

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During the early [eighteen] ‘forties the Matabele sphere of influence formed the home of a great congerie of small tribes which collectively proved incapable of offering concerted resistance. Vast areas in the south and southwest of what is now Southern Rhodesia were inhabited by a group of peoples whom ethnologists have conveniently grouped under the common designation of Makalanga. The Makalanga, once the mainstay of the Monomotapa dynasty, by now had lost all their cohesion, and they became victims of all kinds of Matabele atrocities. But their cultural influence remained, and the bloodthirsty conquerors themselves to some extent fell under Makalanga religious sway. The native priests of Mwali, the Makalanga High God, continued to practice their rites in the Matopos, and received lavish gifts from Umziligazi, who would periodically summon them to his capital for advice on affairs of state (Gann 1965, 36).

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Indeed, in spite of the atrocities against them, Bukalanga have not lost the character, culture and industries of their ancestors. But are there any traces of these in the modern Kalanga? That there is no doubt. For centuries, Bukalanga did what no other sub-Sahran african race did before the colonial era, and they continue to stand out today, despite being oppressed for nigh two centuries. Perhaps to capture that, let us hear from an extract from Professor Richard Werbner’s book, Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana: The Public Anthropology of Kalanga Elites. It reads:

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Are self-interested elites the curse of liberal democracy in Africa? Is there hope against the politics of the belly, kleptocracies, vampire states, failed states, and Afro-pessimism? In Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana, Richard Werbner examines a rare breed of powerful political elites who are not tyrants, torturers or thieves. Werbner’s focus is on the Kalanga, a minority ethnic group that has served Botswana in business and government since independence. Kalanga elites have expanded public services, advocated causes for the public good, founded organizations to build the public sphere and civil society, and forged partnerships and alliances with other ethnic groups in Botswana. Gathering evidence from presidential commissions, land tribunals, landmark court cases, and his lifetime relationship with key Kalanga elites, Werbner shows how a critical press, cosmopolitanism, entrepreneurship, accountability, and the values of patriarchy and elderhood make for an open society with strong, capable government. Werbner’s work provides a refreshing alternative to those who envision no future for Africa beyond persistent agony and lack of development (abstract from backcover of the book).

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In August 2004, Mmegi newspaper of Botswana carried an article titled Author Explains Botswana’s Success in which the writer, Sechele Sechele, reviewed the same book by Professor Werbner, and it went thus:

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In a recent interview with the SABC Africa and during the recent African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Foreign Affairs Minister (now Vice President) Gen. Mompati Merafhe [a Kalanga identifying as Ngwato] said he does not know how and why Botswana has been able to build a politically prosperous country in a continent where economic and political crises are the order of the day. Merafhe said he leaves that to the journalists, academics and other commentators on Botswana to tell the world why the country has been a political and socio-economic success, and has development and political sanity in a continent where, as President Festus Mogae [a Kalanga himself] once put it, “there is a drought of good governance”. Werbner portrays the Kalanga elites as a group that did not use its enviable position at the pinnacle of economic and political power in the country as typical of “African Big Men, alias the kleptomaniacs”, or as “predatory tyrants” do. Nor did they use their center stage position in the economic and political affairs of Botswana for any vengeful political violence like has happened elsewhere on the continent. Instead, he demonstrates how this powerful minority contributed to nation building in post-colonial Botswana by advocating causes for the public good. It founded organizations (like SPIL) to build the public sphere and civil society and forged fruitful partnerships and alliances with other minority ethnic organizations like RETENG.

…After spending many months with Kalanga elites - from businessmen, politicians, academics, radical and passionate cultural activists, judges, lawyers and their daughters and sons - Werbner has come up with a book that demonstrates that instead of falling into the trap of widespread and typical African temptation of “mismanagement, swollen legions of self-serving and mindless bureaucrats”, the Botswana Kalanga elite used its powerful position reasonably. The Kalanga elite has “concerns for public good” and ethical conduct in their professional, personal, communal and commercial dealings with the rest of their majority compatriots and made popular demands for minority rights. Werbner did not only closely study the Kalanga elite, he dug into several Presidential Commission reports notably the Balopi Commission and Khumalo Commission (Sechele 2004, Online).

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Drawing a sharp contrast between Bukalanga political elites and others in Africa in general, Professor Werbner wrote:

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Reasonable radicals are apparently rare in postcolonial Africa. Commanding the center stage from one scene of crisis to the next, in innumerable accounts, are the vengeful agents of political violence, the dislocated and dispossessed; and, at their head, the predatory tyrants in the making, commanders of the “boys from the bush”, colonels, generals, and eventually presidents. Offstage, muttering their “hidden transcripts”, are the subaltern masses. The agents of political violence do not appear alone, of course. With them and often prominent in their midst stand the African Big Men, alias the kleptomaniacs, and somewhat behind their backs scurry the agents of mismanagement, the swollen legions of self-serving or mindless bureaucrats. Their unsavory reputations for turning the state into an amoral market for profit from the highest bidder or an extractive machine in the hands of a dominant class, beyond popular control overwhelm the Africanist literature of the postcolony, at least since the nineties (Werbner 2004, 1).

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Describing some of Bukalanga’s elites, whom he names the National Directorate, on the forefront of building a thriving democracy and civil service in Botswana, Professor Werbner wrote of them:

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material here removed due to copyright regulations. same material can be accessed in the book itself.

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Perhaps it is fitting that we close this section with the broader story of Bukalanga elites as Professor Werbner told it in a research paper of his titled Cosmopolitan Ethnicity, Entrepreneurship and the Nation: Minority Elites in Botswana, though at the risk of being repititive in some paragraphs. The article shows that despite being marginalized and treated as foreigners in the lands of their forefathers, the Kalanga remain a capable force to be reckoned with. The essential attributes and character of their forefathers remain in them to this day.

I am using examples from Botswana because it is in that country that the Kalanga have been mainly in charge of government, the civil service and business for many years. Their accent into high political office has, like in Zimbabgwe, been limited by the majoritarian forces that militate against their advancement. Let us turn to excerpts from the article by Professor Werbner:

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Of the [Botswana] ethnic minorities, Kalanga are the largest and most prominent, politically and economically most influential and culturally perhaps most assertive. They are often able and high achievers and proud, if not boastful, of their accomplishments. From the times of the early missionaries, prominent Kalanga were advocates of education, who recognized the link between education and social mobility, and rallied support for schools which, in the North East District, continue to have among the highest results in national tests. The last of the North East’s colonial district commissioners, Philip Steenkamp, remarked in a 1994 interview that ‘… many senior and very capable civil servants are from the Kalanage [sic] community because that community heavily agitated for and invested in schools during the colonial era’.

Kalanga themselves often say, sometimes in ironic banter with Tswana, that in the North East they were too short of land, even for ploughing, and so went to school, but having lots of land, Tswana were too busy herding their fathers’ cattle to go to school. As van Binsbergen puts it, ‘The Kalanga’s reliance on agriculture rather than animal husbandry made their children more easily available for schooling than, for instance, the Tswana, whose school attendance had to be balanced against the need to herd cattle.’ Why there have been such differences in educational accomplishment is itself a controversial point, and has been the subject of public debate at the University of Botswana. Having gained an educational head start, providing a good proportion of the country’s first cadre of university graduates, Kalanga have continued to be strongly represented in the University, among both staff and students, in the professions, in the civil service, and in the media.

Not surprisingly, of all the ethnic minorities, Kalanga are in many ways the most significant Other for the Tswana majority. It was thus the submission to the Balopi Commission [which sought amendments to the Constitution by removing or changing discriminatory clauses] by Kalanga elites at the capital – leading professionals, academics and business people – that provoked the most vitriolic exchanges in the press. Radical as the elite Kalanga submission was – and it called for scrapping the Constitution’s three contentious sections and replacing the House of Chiefs with a House of Delegates – that in itself was not the goad for their opponents. A widely shared view, among non-Kalanga and Kalanga themselves, was that the ire was aroused as much, if not more, by their identity, being Kalanga, as by their demands for radical reform for the sake of equality and an end to discrimination. For some of the Tswana majority, at least, the most irritating goad was: how could the greedy Other, already having more than a fair share of the opportunities, be the ones to call for equality? In addition, as if to rub salt in an open wound, the Other was rewriting history in the submission by their claim of belonging in the country before the Tswana majority arrived.

At the very start of President Masire’s first decade, a Tswana MP pronounced nepotism and ethnic favoritism to be the reasons why Kalanga hold so many jobs. The MP proposed, ‘That this Honorable House deplores discrimination practices in Botswana based on race, tribe, ethnic or political affiliation and urges Government to take measures to discourage these practices’. In the ensuing debate, a leading Kalanga MP, later Assistant Minister, responded, ‘We sacrificed our language for the sake of national unity. Now you come to Parliament and you say Bakalanga are depriving other Batswana of jobs. You are demanding too much.’ The MP was so moved that he wept openly, as Kalanga always stress when repeating the story. The episode, they felt, exposed both a Tswana denial of Kalanga merit and a Tswana desire to block their success by imposing quotas.

Besides the strength of public passion, the story also reveals that, by 1980 at least, arguments for universal rights and against discrimination were already being used to check minority advancement, as opposed to being used to protect minorities: in majority and minority usage, a shared moral argument against discrimination, the same human rights talk, but opposite meanings and conflicting intentions.

Only Kalanga have been repeatedly the target of ‘the takeover’ and ‘the hidden agenda’ – the popular imagining of an ethnic conspiracy consciously directed by the few against the many. These ideas are an expression of fear – that majority dominance is insecure; that the actual numbers of the minority and majority are now a matter of speculation (‘Perhaps they are really more than we are?’); that an enemy within is about to resort to violence, seize power and impose cultural or linguistic otherness. Or, in an alternative version, not violence but deliberate cunning in self-serving discrimination and clientelism favoring one’s own people – in a word much bandied about during the Balopi Commission exchanges, ‘nepotism’ is the more insidious means of ‘the takeover’.

Rumors about ‘the takeover’ have been rife in Gaborone since its founding as the national capital and have spread from it across the country. In the media, there first appeared a takeover story shortly before the first post-independence election in 1969. The tale set a notorious example for later ethnic defamation before elections and in other moments of political confrontation or crisis. Under the headline ‘Guns under the Bed’, wild allegations of a plotted coup d’état by Kalanga in top government posts were reported in the Bulawayo Chronicle, then a main source of news and gossip in the absence of a local newspaper in Botswana.

Within the government, I was told by one of the targets of the rumor that President Khama himself took direct action on being presented with an obviously fabricated CID report – unlike the fabricators, the President knew that some of the defamed Kalanga had been with him for Easter at his home in Serowe, at the very time of the alleged coup meeting in the capital. The President traced the rumor to expatriate police officers and sacked them. I found support for this version in the public staff lists for the police, showing an abrupt end in 1969 to the senior officers’ careers, and the rapidly accelerated promotion of Batswana to replace them.

The President’s reason for this promotion was kept secret, even among the police. The prominent Kalanga remained in their top posts but, as a matter of policy, within the working consensus and perhaps in line with President Khama’s attitude of being publicly disdainful of rumor, no government statement was released clearing them of defamation. Instead, the ‘Guns under the Bed’ tale took on a life of its own. It became widely known and widely believed to be true, or at least – in the way of conspiracy – to contain a germ of truth around which further stories about these and other leading Kalanga were propagated.

What is significant, reflecting a very different era for ethnicity from the present, is that the alleged plot was simply ignored officially, for public purposes, although not informally within government; not, so to speak, ‘within the system’. It is a subject that a high-ranking and long serving insider ‘within the system’ willingly agreed to discuss with me, but only on the basis of anonymity. According to this Tswana insider, the one among these leading Kalanga [Richard Mannathoko] who was regarded as a potential head of the civil service, never reached his potential there or became a minister, in part because being a tribalist plotter stuck as his reputation.

…‘Footloose’ Entrepreneurship

To understand the overall prominence of Kalanga, we need to recognize the unstable, perhaps footloose nature of their special positioning, which put some Kalanga in the vanguard of an emerging commercial elite. In the 1980s, from the ranks of the most senior civil servants came top businessmen and, eventually, businesswomen. Leading the way in this enterprising transfer, and thus gaining a valuable headstart, were Kalanga, some of whom felt not only pulled by their perception of the coming diamond-led boom but also pushed by their sense of a glass ceiling in the civil service, of being blocked from full advancement by majoritarian discrimination. Members of this enterprising minority saw others from the majority safely cocooned within ‘the system’, but not themselves. In the classically discontented style of minorities ‘of uneasy feet’ – to follow Thorstein Veblen’s characterization – they went further afield, took command of fresh opportunities and got ahead with the next phase of competition and cooperation. Commenting on this push from the top of the civil service and pull to the top of the commercial elite, one of the first Kalanga to make the move recalled the Kalanga proverb, Tjakulamba tjakuamula – what rejects you relieves you, or in his translation, ‘What has refused you could be a blessing’.

Options for Minority Identity

In the case of Kalanga, there are varied options for membership or identity. One is public self-identification. Another option is passing as Tswana. There are Kalanga in Botswana who consciously seek to be part of the majority by concealing any traces of Kalanga identity. It is also not unusual for Kalanga parents to give their children Tswana names out of fear of discrimination in jobs and in the award of places in higher education – this is despite a very widespread counter-rumor, perhaps first arising close to independence and rehearsed in parliament by an accusing MP in the late 1970s, that under the direction of a Kalanga Minister, Ministry of Education officials discriminated in favor of Kalanga by earmarking application forms with the secret Kalanga sign of a peanut. By their favorite food would they be known. With a touch of ironic humor, wondering why only Kalanga could draw peanuts, the official responsible for bursaries, herself originally from Lesotho, told me that at the time she hardly knew which names were Kalanga, and that her Minister was outraged by the accusation. I have been taken aback by how widely and strongly this ethnic slander is believed, even among university academics.

Still other options are for those completely assimilated in Tswana language, culture and tribal affiliation. Some only discover from others’ labeling that they are in some sense Kalanga, through an unknown father or remote ancestry or even the classification of a tribal category or ward to which they belong. They are, as it were, ‘outed’ by others, by Tswana or by Kalanga who may even taunt them for hiding their identity or for foolishly falling into ‘the wrong camp’ by not knowing where they really belong. Kalanga identity is most acutely politicized and readily becomes a publicized reality when jobs, promotions and elections are at stake, including election to the highest office in the land. Thus comes the best recent example, a tribal ward’s classification used for the public outing of Kalanga identity for well-known Tswana-speakers, such as President Festus Mogae himself , who has very recently been subject to public disparagement as a ‘Shona’ with origins in Zimbabwe (an apology was also made publicly), the Shona and Kalanga being lumped together as one ‘immigrant’ category.

Another option – the one I want to consider most closely – brings together shared occupation and ethnicity. This option is realized by a circle drawn from Botswana’s first generation of top civil servants. Notables of this circle of leading members of the state and commercial elites are among the most prominent of the self-identifying Kalanga in the capital. They all know each other well and most are, or have been, more or less close friends for decades. Among them are the Chief Justice [Julian Nganunu], the Attorney General [Phandu Tombola Chaka Skelemani], the Minister of Finance [Baledzi Gaolathe], former high commissioners, the former managing director of BP [Richard Mannathoko], the chairman of Barclays Bank [Mbiganyi Charles Tibone], directors of this and other financial or investment institutions, the retired head of one of the biggest retail chains who is now an Assessor on the Industrial Tribunal, and the managing directors and important shareholders in some of the capital’s largest private enterprises under citizen direction or ownership.

I want to qualify the phrase, ‘self-identifying Kalanga’. This does not mean that these notables define themselves exclusively or essentially by reference to membership in a single ethnic or moral community, by a mother tongue or by a tribal culture – in brief, by self-contained Kalanganess. The very phrase is misleading, at least for the notables and their practice of bringing together ethnic self-identification with a cosmopolitan life style – the merger of belonging and inclusion.

The point was driven home to me by one of the notables. He expresses his Kalanganess by, among other things, having kept an ancestral shrine by his late father’s old home in the countryside and serving his close relatives as their senior kinsman who blows away wrath on their behalf. In the capital, he has a well-earned reputation among other Kalanga elites for his ritual and other upright service to his home people and his home community. But as an elite cosmopolitan, he is also a very active Rotarian, who much enjoys that organization’s inclusive sociality, proudly wears the Rotary Club badge and very strongly supports its broad causes, irrespective of ethnic difference. Discussing this in the presence of his non-Kalanga wife (who herself learned to speak Kalanga for his parents’ sake) and his largely Gaborone-raised daughters, the notable repeatedly drew the conclusion, ‘I see no conflict between these things.’

It might be argued, however, that the tension in such cosmopolitan ethnicity is actually an expression of irresolvable contradictions, realized in one conflict and dilemma after another. With that in mind, we might consider the series of movements founded by Kalanga students, starting with the Bakalanga Students Association (BSA) in 1945 and culminating in the present Society for the Propagation of the Ikalanga Language (SPIL). Immediately before the birth of the original Kalanga student movement, its founders had recently experienced a revelatory moment of minoritization. From it, they took lessons which, in their later lives, continued powerfully to move and motivate them, and their children after them, following their unwillingness to let the moment’s unfinished narrative be forgotten.

This revelatory moment was in 1945, when the movement’s founders saw a widely respected Kalanga ruler, John Nswazwi (‘Mswazi’ in the colonial records), and his followers suffering from imprisonment with hard labor in the Gaborone jail. Having struggled for release from Ngwato tribal over-rule for decades, Nswazwi and his followers were being punished by the colonial government after an unsuccessful High Court appeal against a sentence handed down by the Ngwato tribal court for disobedience to Chief Tshekedi. The revelatory moment, intensified by later grievances against Ngwato over-rule, took on a lasting significance as a matter of conscience; it was a crisis moment for raising consciousness in the resulting colonial and postcolonial campaigns for equality and an end to tribal subjection. In immediate response, the original Bakalanga Student Association aimed, according to one of its founders, Richard Mannathoko, to unite the Kalanga, promote the writing of the Kalanga language, encourage the Kalanga to be educated by persuading the parents to send their children to school and to find scholarships for poor Kalanga children. Writing in 1978 in her remarkable University of Botswana undergraduate dissertation, his daughter Changu Mannathoko reports that ‘The Kalanga elite [students] were highly conscious of their ethnicity and wanted the Kalanga to enjoy the same privileges as those that were available to Tswana ethnic groups.’ But the movement and its successors were not tribalistic; nor were its accomplishments in conflict with cosmopolitan ethnicity.

There is an apparent paradox that links ethnic self-assertion and the transcendence of ethnic difference. The ethnic self-assertion in this and other student movements contributed to the creation of Kalanga as a super-tribe of people who, while coming from many different chiefdoms, find a collective identity with claims for respect and equality. But without abandoning their support for their own ethnic movement and its successors, its founders went on to take leading roles in inter-ethnic associations, becoming radical spokesmen for the Botswana Civil Service Association [Gobe Matenge] and eventually postcolonial founders of the Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry and Manpower (BOCCIM). Hence, as Changu Mannathoko also points out, the ethnically assertive students contributed further to ‘the emergence of a Kalanga elite whose loyalties transcended ethnic boundaries’.

…For this circle of leading Kalanga notables and elders, however, the balance between inclusion and exclusion is, and long has been, problematic. That is all the more so because of the connection such balance has with ethnic inferiority and superiority. What is taken for granted is that this elite circle is gendered, the Kalanga members being men, apart from one unmarried woman, but among them, within the inner circle of about ten men, inter-ethnic marriage is the norm. All the leading Kalanga notables who are now elders have married non-Kalanga wives, from Sweden, South Africa, Zimbabwe, from Tswana-speaking parts of Botswana, but mainly from the south’s communities near the capital.

Asked why they married out, these notables, looking back as elders, now say various things: for example, that as young men they married where they were working or being educated away from home and that in their midst were virtually no Kalanga women, given the gender bias against sending Kalanga women away for advanced education at a distance. The elite standing of the notables’ wives in their own right, as independent career women, is striking. Among them are senior civil servants, such as deputy permanent secretaries of ministries, leading academics, including a distinguished microbiologist and sometime dean of her faculty, other professionals and a former mayor of the capital. Although none of the notables volunteered the response that they were marrying up when marrying out, they were all well aware and accepted that, for Kalanga, the wife-receiver is the petitioner and the debtor, owing deference and much else to his wife-givers. ‘We have to get in bed with them’, one of the notables insisted on telling me, prophetically as it has already turned out, that the best way of dealing with the diamond cartel was to become more, rather than less, of a partner through greater investment by Botswana in Anglo-American and De Beers’ shares. The same logic is the one that, among the notables, has implicitly underwritten Kalanga inter-ethnicity.

The notables also remark upon a changing asymmetry in inter-ethnic marriage in the capital and its surrounding vicinity. In the past, their non-Kalanga peers, they said, tended to look down on Kalanga as inferiors and had not wanted to accept being below them as wife-receivers. Now, given the advancement of Kalanga elite women along with their own and their parents’ prominence in the capital, inter-ethnic marriage is becoming more common for them as well as for non-elite Kalanga women; they are sought after and married by their Tswana neighbors. Stories are told among the notables that reflect their sense of the comic in all this. Inferiority/superiority and inclusion/exclusion in inter-ethnic relations are not merely serious and problematic matters, which Kalanga deal with politically, economically and culturally. They are also matters to laugh over. One such tale is told by one of the notables whose face, as managing director of BP, inviting business calls, used to be blazoned at the head of that transnational company’s front-page ad in the telephone book. One evening, Mr. BP, to use his nickname, found himself safely hidden behind the fronds in the Grand Palm Hotel, at the time the capital’s Sheraton. In front were several Tswana women gossiping about men and marriage. One after another of the Kalanga notables was put on their scales, balanced against the opulence of his wife’s life style, until only one conclusion could be drawn, ‘You see, if you marry a Kalanga, you hit the jackpot – you get a big house and a white Mercedes’.

In relishing the story, partly as a joke on himself and his Tswana wife who has the white Mercedes, the notable pointed out, to much amusement among his listeners, that he had to hide behind the fronds until the women left, to avoid being recognized. The notable added, for my benefit, that in his opinion, ‘Since Independence whenever there has been tribalistic pressure, it has been a matter of Tswana men against Kalanga, never the women. All the anti-Kalanga talk even makes Kalanga men all the more attractive to Tswana women, who want what Kalanga are’ (Werbner 2004, Online).

Such is part of the larger story of Bukalanga. I know it would have been totally unacceptable to quote another writer so much if I was writing a dissertation, but as I said from the beginning, this is not a work in academic writing but a manifesto for the liberation of an oppressed people. I have also used so much of Professor Werbner’s material to show that the views which I hold about Bukalanga are not just those of the Kalanga that I am, neither are they only held by the Europeans who wrote the records that we cited above. The views and impressions still have evidence to back them up today, and even non-Kalanga agree. For interest’s sake, Professor Werbner is an American Jew living in the UK who speaks iKalanga fluently. I recommend his book to everyone interested in the story of Bukalanga in the modern era as it is perhaps one of the finest modern anthropological pieces on Bukalanga ethnicity.

Now, lest the reader be tempted to think that the Kalanga elites discussed above are just a rare exception, they will do well to remember that throughout the past 100 years, the Kalanga have been associated with some of the greatest movements that ever swept Southern Africa. Let us take a look at some examples. It will be well to remember that the Kalanga were responsible for kick-starting various liberation movements in Southern Africa. It was the Kalanga, led by Mambo Dombolakona-Tjing’wango Dlembewu Moyo, who ejected the first colonialists, the Portuguese, in 1693. It was the Kalanga priest of Mwali, Mkwati Ncube, a Leya born on the Zambezi Valley and married to Tengela, a wosana (priestess) of Mwali, working with his compatriots Tjiwha and Bonga, who first inspired the 1896 uprisings in Zimbabgwe, and through the efficient communication system of the Mwali Religion, the uprising was brought into action. It was also men of Bukalanga descent like Dr. Joshua Nkomo, Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo, Masotsha Ndlovu, George Malani Silundika, Lazarus Nkala, Gwisani Moyo, Mlobiseni Rolek Bango, John Landa Nkomo, etc, who gave birth to the Zimbabgwe liberation movement in the 1950s and early 1960s. It was the Kalanga Philip Matante who founded the first African political party, the Bechuanaland People’s Party [now Botswana People’s Party] in the then Bechuanaland Protectorate in 1960, and, with other leading Kalanga politicians such as Messrs K. Maripe (who completed his Industrial Relations doctorate in Belgium in the 1950s), T. Mongwa, and Daniel Kwele later, as commercial entrepreneurs, Kalanga ethnic activists and national-level politicians, were to play a prominent role in the modernizing and highly proletarianized situation of Botswana’s northeast, with its rapidly growing town of Francistown. And all these achievements give us Bukalanga a great degree of pride as a nation despite being looked down upon in the land of our forefathers. As was pointed out by Dr Enocent Msindo in writing of Ethnicity and Nationalism in Bulawayo in the 1950s and 60s against the background of Ndebele domination over Bukalanga and social exclusion by the Matebeleland Homeland Society:

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Identifying with nationalism brought pride to certain ethnic groups instead of threatening their sectarian interests. The Kalanga, for instance, did not mind their ethnic identity co-existing with nationalism because nationalism promoted a Kalanga public image. This ethnic attachment was not necessarily political tribalism, but a yearning for recognition. Kalanga intellectuals and ordinary people in Bulawayo, long desiring a more public Kalanga space, found comfort in the fact that the top leaders of the NDP were Kalanga. Nationalism therefore unwittingly complemented Kalanga ethnicity rather than conflicting with it. Commenting on the election of three Kalanga men to lead the NDP, Kalangas expressed their excitement in the Bantu Mirror. This article, originally written in Kalanga reads:

This election makes us Kalanga very happy as these men were elected to lead this party which has a membership of more than 100,000 people, most of whom are Kalanga. The leader of the party Joshua Nkomo is currently in London. His deputy, George Silundika, is a Kalanga from Nhope. Another Kalanga man elected is Mr. Jason Moyo from Maphaneni. Joshua Nkomo also comes from Maphaneni (Msindo 2007, Online).

Let us not forget too that some of the leading personalities on South African television today are men and women of Bukalanga ancestry. We can cite such examples as Duma Ndlovu (Executive Producer of the SABC2 drama series Muvhango), Mfundi Mvundla (also Executive Producer, of the SABC1 drama series Generations); such actors as Sello Maake ka Ncube of Scandal, Patrick Ndlovu of the Zone 14 cast, Ernest Ndlovu of the Sokhulu and Partners fame, and many others, as well as, interestingly, Olympic medalists Nigel Amos of Marobela, North East (Botswana) and Mokgadi Caster Semenya, a Mokgalaka (of Bakgalaka tribe) from Polokwane, South Africa. We can also mention such high flying business executives as South African cellphone giant MTN Chief Executive Raymond Sifiso Dabengwa Ndlovu; head of the Wits Business School and Chief Economist of the African Development, Dr Mthuli Ncube,; Peter Moyo, head of Vodacom; Junior Ngulube at the helm of Munich Reinsurance; and many others, heads of universities, international organizations and civic society. Even in government may be cited such individuals Sbu Ndebele, Minister of Transport; Richard Baloyi, Public Administration; Jackson Mthembu, ANC Spokesperson. Coming back to Zimbabgwe we find many sons and daughters of Bukalanga at the helm in many non-elective technocratic jobs. This perhaps has been one of the reasons for our predicament in the country since as technocrats most Bakalanga, Vhavenda and others are not political decision-makers but policy implementers. Those in elective positions are such as Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe, Speaker of Parliament Lovemore Moyo, Movement for Democratic Change President Welshman Ncube, Zanu PF National Chairman Simon Khaya Moyo, Zapu President Dumiso Dabengwa, MDC Deputy Secretary General Moses Mzila Ndlovu, and generally most of the top leadership both in MDC-T and MDC. Interestingly, most of the leadership of MDC-T is Karanga, as most of the MDC leadership is Kalanga. Could this be the revival of some old alliance? Are we seeing a shift of the balance of power in Zimbabgwe to the south from the north? Are we not seeing the rise of Bukalanga here. Perhaps this is the Rebirth of Bukalanga, the descendants of the Mapungubgwe, Monomotapa, Togwa Lozwi Kingdoms. Only time will tell. I have no doubt that a Kalanga-Karanga alliance will be one of the best things to happen to this country!

Yes indeed, Bukalanga we are a great people with a proud history nomatter how certain ethnic groups always want to appropriate to themselves our histroy and heritage. In fact, so great has been the reputation of our nation that liberation and civil rights movements from Africa to America could not help but take inspiration from the achievements of our forefathers. The independence movements of Zimbabgwe could not help but draw inspiration from the heritage of Bukalanga in the form of the Zimbabgwe Civilization by pointing to it as an example of what African peoples could do by themselves. Even the anti-apartheid movement could not help but draw inspiration from our ancestral city-state of Mapungubgwe. Not only that, the American Civil Rights movement pointed to Bukalanga as a people who demonstrate what Africans are capable of by themselves. Wrote one of the civil rights leaders, Dr. W. E. Du Bois, in 1915 in The Negro:

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Inland among the Bantu arose later the line of rulers called the Monomotapa among the gifted Makalanga. Their state was very extensive, ranging from the coast far into the interior and from Mozambique down to the Limpopo. It was strongly organized, with feudatory allied states, and carried on an extensive commerce by means of the traders on the coast. The kings were converted to nominal Christianity by the Portuguese (Du Bois 1915, Online).

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What a wonderful tale of a people! Perhaps by now some just can’t accept that this is true. Why has this story not been told for so long? Well, we will come back to that question in a later chapter. But this is part of the broad and untold story of Bukalanga. Indeed, it is an interesting thing to note that the name and symbols of Zimbabgwe originate with the heritage of Bukalanga - the Zimbabgwe Bird and the name of the country itself - Zimbabwe, from nzi mabgwe. So does South Africa’s Order of Mapungubwe, the highest national honor that that country can bestowed on anyone! Indeed, our heritage is a great one. Bukalanga we have something to be really proud of. Not only are we the descendants of the warrior man and women who sacrificed a lot for the liberation of our countries, but we are the descents of the builders of Mapungubgwe, Great Zimbabgwe and Khami. We are the descendants of the founders of the greatest human civilization known to precolonial sub-Saharan Africa, the Zimbabgwe Civilization. We shall be examining this civilization throughout this book, but for now let us answer what is perhaps the most important question that we have to deal with in this book: Who and what actually constitutes Bukalanga?