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Laiton Mkwandawire
Not many people come to Kariba and bother to find a scion of the displaced Tonga people and see how they have fared after their forced evacuation, paving way for the construction of the massive Kariba Dam wall and the hydro-electric scheme it houses, or how they have benefited from the developments arising from it, if at all.
I was, therefore, understandably excited when the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen German television senior producer, having read my previous published work on the Tonga people and their river-based spirit medium, Nyaminyami, requested that I arrange some filming in Kariba culminating in the capturing of a Tonga fisherman’s normal day, from home to work.
As part of their documentary covering the Zambezi River from source to mouth, the television station saw it fit to interview a thoroughbred Tonga scion. I didn’t know what to expect when a Tonga is given back his voice, as it were, and speaks for himself instead of someone else expressing his viewpoint. The result was quite revealing.
Tongas are ordinarily publicity-shy people who prefer to keep to themselves, if it can be helped. Even coaxing Julius Siakaloba to agree to being interviewed was a big mission. His initial response was “have you tried others beside me?” Obviously others he thought were better placed that him to give their views.
Typical Tonga mannerism! Always deferential! It had to be someone better, not him.
It took a while for me to convince him that he was that special someone with the vital Tonga voice that would have to be recorded for posterity’s sake.
It should be stated right here that the Tonga culture has a rich history of external conceptualisations which have gone on unmitigated. What is “known” about them is mostly not told by them but by outside observers who mostly misread or deliberately chose to advance and insert their own opinions.
A certain critical aspect of their life remains “dark” from the days of Africa being described as the Dark Continent, both figuratively and literally. External scholarship, until now, perpetuated the misconceptions.
The image of the Tonga being viewed as primitive, uncivilised and unredeemable savages has endured. Their bodies of knowledge and ways of thought were not acknowledged, let alone propagated and preserved.
This is why the ZDF documentary is special – it values the local input and places it before external interpretation.
There has been little documentation of the scion of the Tonga relocated out of the Gwembe Valley. Material available on them seems to have been written beforehand and tells their story from other people’s viewpoints.
That the documentary itself was being undertaken by a western broadcaster speaks volumes of Africans’ inability or unpreparedness to tell their own stories in their own way and languages. Answering posed questions, one can only speak on what he/she is asked, limiting the scope of the storytelling to external viewpoints, not the interviewee’s.
This way, the colonial narrative persists – externally generated theories, methodologies and frames of reference. A lot of meaning is lost in the translation. I could feel that what Siakaloba put across could not be captured and put to a German audience with its original meaning. A gap exists which needs to be closed.
On the day of the filming we had to pluck Siakaloba out of the local municipality-run Mahombekombe Beerhall, a favourite haunt for the hardworking fishermen. I cannot say he was drunk, but it did not escape the filming crew’s attention that the guy was walking straight out of the bar and heading for work.
This, however, is a typical fisherman’s day, so it was not the exception but rather the rule.
We drove Siakaloba home in the Impresit section of Mahombekombe Township. Mahombekombe was the first settlement established for African workers who toiled on the Kariba hydro-electric project.
The workers were housed according to their areas of origin and the sections were accordingly named. Resultantly, we have here names like Umtali, Shabani (Southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe) Chikwawa, Blantyre, Ntcheu, Liwonde, Fort Jameson, Limbe (Nyasaland/Malawi), Isoka, Lusaka, Petauke, Ndola (Northern Rhodesia) and Beira (Mocambique).
We also have the inclusively-named “Africa” and “Old Market Square” which must have housed a mixture of the settlers coming to a new front, most of them arriving in the later stages of the five-year project. Impresit was named after the Italian company that won the tender to build the dam wall.
The blocks are older than the dam wall itself and they are in a very bad state, with no hint of any tender loving care from the Municipality of Kariba which charges a rental to occupants of the old blocks. It was here that the filming started for our Tonga fisherman.
Siakaloba explained that as a lowly paid fisherman he could not afford to rent decent accommodation in more affluent areas of the resort town as it was beyond him.
The residential blocks, originally meant for temporary bachelors’ accommodation, have been overcrowded in recent years and hygiene has taken a nosedive for the worse.
With falling fish catches, Siakaloba fears the Tonga may lose their livelihood and be forced to engage in other economic areas in which they lack both training and experience. Success is not guaranteed for them.
Online Reporter