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Elliot Ziwira, At the Bookstore
“Ngatisimuke: Nhapitapi yenhorimbo”, edited by Ruby Magosvongwe, Keresia Chateuka, Bernadette Deve, and Memory Chirere, explores language’s vital role in preserving culture and identity.
Contributors to the collection, published by Zimbabwe Women Writers, are Magosvongwe, Colette Mutangadura, Virginia Phiri, Chiedza Musengezi, Maureen Mataranyika, Gloria Musi Katerere, Pelda Hove, Keresia Chateuka and Zandile Makahamadze, among others.
The timeless anthology highlights the significance of mother languages, emphasising their importance in conveying communal realities and cultural values. It is a direct response to the challenges confronting mother tongues globally.
Technological advancements have exposed many languages to imminent death in an increasingly globalised village with at least 43 percent of the 6 000 tongues spoken across the world facing extinction.
Colonial education systems have led to the reliance on mainly a few hundred languages, which disadvantage 40 percent of the world’s population that neither speaks nor understands them.
The Information Revolution has further threatened thousands of languages as the digital world only makes use of less than a hundred.
The subtle nature of colonialism and its attendant efforts to destroy cultural ethos through destruction of shrines, and all that made colonised people tick, created individuals who hated themselves more than they did their colonisers.
It is such a status quo that the poets confront in “Ngatisimuke: Nhapitapi yenhorimbo”.
Magosvongwe’s poem, “Dama Rangu Ndiwe”, illustrates the limitations of foreign languages, stressing the need to remain true to one’s heritage. The poet weaves the intricacies of identity, heritage, self-pride, and dignity emanating from one’s appreciation of the mother tongue.
In the poem, a mother admonishes her child to be mindful of the world’s illusory beauty, reminding her that she is the custodian of her people’s identity, mores, and values enshrined in their language.
She schools her:
Paumire ipapo,
Paugere ipapo, Paunyerere ipapo,
Dama rangu ndiwe . . .
Inhodzerwaiko idzodzo,
Kufana mai kunga kurima,
Kufana kwakabva mombe,
Kufana vaimedzerwa zvavo rute,
Ukavaona unovaziva?
Vanobvunza vanokanuka nerwako rukono
Usafe zvako wakazvinyengera.
The poem’s refrain, “dama rangu ndiwe”, accentuates the importance of indigenous languages, and the essence of regeneration and posterity. Emphatically, the persona implores the child to remain true to herself as the custodian and epitome of all that she symbolises as a mother, or the Motherland, intimating:
Dama rangu ndiwe
Ndiwe mbirimi yangu.
Ndiwe mhizha yangu.
Ndiwe mboorera yandakatushura.
Ndiwe mboni yangu.
Dama rangu ndiwe.
As evidenced in the poem’s sustained use of reflective Shona words like “dama”, “mbirimi”, “mhizha”, “mboorera”, and “mboni”, indigenous languages uniquely carry idioms, riddles, and proverbs, facilitating shared meanings across African societies. However, linguistic diversity has been impeded by institutionalisation and education systems emphasising foreign languages.
As such, shared meanings are often lost through translation into alien languages. Regardless of linguistic competency in translation, a foreign language falls short in enunciating the lived realities expressed in the original form.
Nonetheless, owing to collective realities, indigenous languages can easily carry messages across African communities. For instance, Bengani Ncube’s translation of Magosvongwe’s poem into Nambya captures the profound feelings in the original form.
The poet admonishes:
Pomile pakalepo,
Paugele pakalepo,
Paulonyalala pakalepo,
Idama lyangu ndiwi . . .
Kutojana kulichini yoko,
Kutojana kunofana nokulima,
Kutojana nokwakava ingombe,
Kufanana naabo bakabedonelelwa inthe,
Ungobabona unobaziba?
Usufe wazuchengeja.
To both ChiShona and Nambya speakers, the linguistic similarities are astounding. Using the refrain “Idama lyangu ndiwi” (dama rangu ndiwe), the mother drives her point home:
Idama lyangu ndiwi,
Ndiwi imphuwo yangu,
Ndiwi imhizha yangu,
Ndiwi mhiwa undakatombula,
Ndiwi izhisho lyangu,
Idama lyangu ndiwi.
Such is the beauty of mother languages. Such also is the beauty of a shared identity and vision. However, even though meanings can be shared in African societies, some socio-cultural aspects peculiar to a community may not be adequately captured through translation from one indigenous language to another.
Historically, colonised people lost their languages, which they were made to believe to be the source of their backwardness. As a consequence, they lost their identity, self-pride and dignity.
Language carries a people’s culture, and culture is the backbone of societal aspirations. Loss of language equates to loss of culture, and eventually, loss of confidence, as everything the colonised should be cherishing is reduced to “a quintessence of evil” (Franz Fanon in “The Wretched of the Earth”, 1967).
Fanon maintains that the best way to destroy a people is to rob them of their confidence.
It is norm for the formerly colonised, particularly Africans, to boast eloquence in alien languages, like English, French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese, without realising how much they have lost in terms of tangibles and intangibles of heritage.
They invest a lot of resources towards their children’s acquisition of the said languages, and the cultures that come along with such folly.
It is lost on them that the first human right to inherit is one’s mother tongue.
The death of language leads to loss of indigenous knowledge systems, which are an inheritance. As more and more people migrate from their countries of birth to the Diaspora, and artists abandon their local languages in pursuit of sponsored themes, the rout is complete.
Research shows that a language dies every fortnight and takes with it a whole cultural and intellectual heritage. Such a loss cannot be ignored.
Naturally, when language suffers, culture becomes the biggest loser. Some languages and cultures may never be redeemed as they collapse under the guise of industrialisation and progress.
On engaging the poets in “Ngatisimuke: Nhapitapi yenhorimbo”, the discerning reader soon realises that for global citizens to live in harmony, there is a greater need for linguistic diversity which puts more emphasis on multicultural education through promotion of mother tongues.
The need arises to reflect on the importance of culture in moulding the individual as a crucial cog in the machinery that drives communal aspirations.
Sociologist Emile Durkheim observes that culture is the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, and meanings, acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
Culture also relates to a community’s hierarchies, religion, notions of time, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, material objects, and possessions.
All that can only be expressed through language, with each community, nation, region, gender, social and corporate inclination taken on board.
In the book “Zimbabwean Literature in African Languages: Crossing Language Boundaries” (2012) Emmanuel M. Chiwome and Zifikile Mguni explore the liberating nature of language in its expression of a people’s way of life and the preservation of beliefs.
They argue that the use of indigenous languages is the first step in decolonising mindsets, for “language embodies and is a vehicle of expressing cultural values” (Chinweizu, et al, 1982:7).
Therefore, artists must converse in mother tongues to authentically voice communities’ concerns.
Colonisation and technological advancements pressured African traditions, stressing the need for linguistic preservation. Examples include the Tonga people’s displacement to pave way for the construction of Kariba Dam and Cyclone Idai victims’ cultural losses.
The Tonga people had their own songs, proverbs, idioms and folklores, directly linked to the Zambezi Valley—their cherished ancestral abode before the Kariba Dam flooded their area.
Their feelings can only be captured through their own language and not any other. It is in language that a people’s realities are mirrored.
Commendably, Zimbabwe’s Constitution recognises 16 official languages, mandating institutions like the Zimbabwe Media Commission to promote indigenous languages.
Mother language-based education can safeguard cultural heritage, but requires teacher training and mindset shifts.
The Zimbabwean education system emphasises the use of local languages for instruction to learners from Grade One to Grade Four. However, a lot still needs to be done both in training of teachers in indigenous languages at tertiary institutions, and changing learners’ mindsets from an early age.
A mother tongue-based education system may be effective if the issue of indigenous knowledge forms is enforced in primary school, where it is inculcated in young minds that nothing out speaks the mother tongue. They should be inspired to safeguard their homeland through preservation of their heritage—language—no matter what the world throws at them.
Language is a powerful vehicle for cultural conveyance, and foreign languages fall short in articulating communal realities. No wonder why Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s commitment to his native Gikuyu inspires linguistic liberation.
Ultimately, “Ngatisimuke: Nhapitapi yenhorimbo” (2006), underlines language’s crucial role in shaping identity and culture, accentuating the need to reclaim heritage and promote linguistic diversity in a fluid global village.
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter