Chronicle Editor
Phathisa Nyathi
As our long and arduous journey draws to a conclusion, we refer to some recent research done by Shadreck Chirikure and his team at Great Zimbabwe to see how we may wrap up the work we have done to date.
Is there some working theory that navigates the divergent views with regard to who built the cultural edifice and why? There are deep-seated interests in the matter as it is about cultural pride, identity and legitimation of claim to political power.
In a nutshell, there are two claimants. In the first instance, there are the BaMwenye who include the BaLemba, predominantly found in Mberengwa, the Hwesa of Nyanga and Beta of Manicaland. On the other hand, there are the Shona who have placed great stakes on the iconic cultural edifice. How can we resolve the seemingly intractable impasse?
We shall argue that both have a claim, a claim that requires qualification. I have tried to write from a neutral and hopefully objective position. This is not an entirely easy position. As indicated, I have, at spiritual level, been involved from a tender age with Great Zimbabwe and similar stone structures. Why is this so? That has to be explained too. I am Nyathi/Nare and a Mmerwa(plural Babirwa) by tribe, though since Ndebelelised.
We do know the Nyathis/Nares were initially of Kalanga stock and origin and their traditions trace their history to Great Zimbabwe from where they dispersed either before or at the time of the collapse of the Zimbabwe State.
Like their relatives, the Lobedu of Queen Mujaji, they migrated to the south, to present day Limpopo Province. The same goes for the Babirwa who relocated to the Phalaborwa area in the same province and even trekked further south as far as Empangeni where they met up with the Nguni.
They retraced their footsteps back to the Limpopo Province and would later, led by Tshukudu set off to the western part of the province where they settled around Blouberg Mountain and the Mogalakwena River, a tributary of the Limpopo River.
However, the wanderings of the Nyathi/Nare people took them further deep into the KwaZulu-Natal Province as explained above. In the area west of Richards Bay, at Empangeni they came into contact with the Nguni, more specifically the Khumalos. There intermarriage took place when Mdabulantaba Khumalo married a Nyathi woman.
Following Mdabulantaba Khumalo’s death the Nyathi mother returned with her Khumalo children, including five sons, to her own Nyathi people. There the children were naturalised and raised as Nyathi and this has been the case to this day. In matters of spirituality both the father and mother lines hold claim to an individual. It is that claim, based on biological and spiritual lineages that links the Nyathi/Nare people to Great Zimbabwe. The Kalanga were part of the population at Great Zimbabwe.
Let us now turn to the research by Chirikure et al for the two claimants and see the middle of the road that we may take to come up with a possible theory of what happened at Great Zimbabwe. Essentially, Chirikure et al identify five periods of occupation at Great Zimbabwe.
Period One was from AD 300 to 900, a settlement lasting 600 years. Then followed Period Two from AD 900 to 1000. This seems a very short period and is followed by a very significant period from AD 1000 to AD 1200 and soon after that Period Four extending from AD 1200 to 1700. They identify Period Five as extending beyond AD 1700 and later.
It is periods three and four that are of interest and are associated with contestation. These are the periods during which stone walls were constructed, according to the researchers. It is the stone culture that claimants are laying claim on. The contestants are the BaLemba and Kalanga/Shona people. The period before is not contested as there is not much by way of heritage worth contesting. The research, in the form of excavations, was confined to areas beyond the stone built up zones. They refer to the stone built area as intramural and that beyond the built stones as extramural. This was an important consideration as earlier researches concentrated more on intramural areas.
The extramural areas yielded local pottery, imported glass beads, ostrich eggshell, metal objects, gold refining crucibles, slag and faunal (animal) remains. While we shall not go into details of implications of finds in these extramural areas, what we may allude to is that the areas beyond the stone built zones bear evidence of elements from all the periods of settlement, in particular Periods two and four . These are periods of trade with the East Coast, advanced metal technology, stone architecture and mining.
What we will find difficult to believe is that Periods two and four were a result of endogenous innovations and transformations. We argue that this is the period when the BaMwenye came to ‘Great Zimbabwe,’ when it was neither great nor a Zimbabwe (nzi wamabwe, a stone town). Elements of what would later constitute the Kalanga/Shona people were already living in the area just as the San had done so before them. Chances are that these were the Dziva/Hungwe people who would later melt into Shona society and acquire cultural identity of their conquerors.
We posit that the BaMwenye made an entry and brought in technological advances in construction in stone, mining and mineral processing and trade with the East Coast. These were people whose population was predominantly male and thus the males married Kalanga/Shona wives. The BaMwenye claim to have come from Sena and sailed to the east Coast where they ventured inland.
Their population became acculturated to that of the Kalanga/Shona as it is to this day in some parts of Zimbabwe and South Africa. In some instances they are not even distinguishable from members of local communities.
They were a people who submitted, we argue, to Kalanga/Shona political hegemony. They were not going to be allowed to lead a separate existence. Their technological advances and trade links were going to pose a political and economic threat to the rulers. The rulers would have devised means and measures to control them. This they did by allowing the BaMwenye to build the Great Enclosure where their culture, more specifically their initiation rites, would continue unhindered, but under the watchful eye of the rulers who wielded political power.
It would not come as a surprise if the rulers, wishing to maintain their prestigious position, instructed the BaMwenye to build for them, in similar fashion, stone structures which were perceived as prestigious and testimony to political power and wealth. However, the cosmology of the rulers would have demanded that their own stone structures be erected on higher ground, on the hill complexes way above the Great Enclosure below.
The Kalanga/Shona rulers would henceforth live on Zimbabwe type, that is stone built, residences. Of course such residences comprised stone walls , a new cultural trait infused by the BaMwenye and typical Kalanga/Shona huts(grass and wooden poles roofs and clay walls) which had been in existence prior to Periods III and IV).
Strategic rulers would not have allowed such knowledge and skills to be confined to the BaMwenye. Their own people had to get the same knowledge and skills to continue and perpetuate the same trades and skills even in the absence of the BaMwenye builders, traders and metallurgists. A wise king does not allow dependence on subjects. Later migrations from Great Zimbabwe to places such as Khami and other subsequent ones would prove the case; building is stone continued as far as Bumbusi and Shangano among the Nambya. Metallurgy and trade with the East Coast all continued. This phenomenon is taken care of in Period V in the researchers’ periodisation of Great Zimbabwe.
This, in our view, is the possible framework for the scenario of what transpired leading to conflicting and contested authorship of Zimbabwe’s leading cultural heritage site.
In our well considered view we do not think one culture explains the technological changes that took place at Great Zimbabwe.
Instead, there were exogenous inputs to spur new developments that were rapidly indigenized and supported by narratives of the ruling group.
The Kalanga, the Shona, the BaMwenye and related sub-groups all have a stake at Great Zimbabwe, its origin and rise to fame on two fronts in particular-political and economic!
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