NAMES AND NAMING: How some places get their names

Pathisa Nyathi

NAMES do capture events that take place as shown last week in the name Advance, a name of one of Nhlanhla Jimmy Mabhena’s sons. Driving along the Kezi-Maphisa road these days one comes across a screaming sign post which bears the name “SOFASONKE” in bold. A conspicuous sign post bears the words, “SOFASONKE.” It is two words which carry a lot of meaning. Whoever came up with that name for a side road store not far from Matopos Dam, must have known the history behind the name. Names capture both sad and happy moments.

The name loosely translates to, “We shall all perish,” or “We shall perish together.” The question is who said the words, under what circumstances, where, when and why? Kezi-Maphisa road passes through the Matobo National Park. Parks were swathes of land set aside for animals at the time the Land Apportionment Act (LAA) was promulgated in 1930. Essentially, that Act racially divided the land in Southern Rhodesia. There was land for whites and land for blacks. The former allotted themselves a bigger chunk of the land which was more fertile and better watered. Most of the land was in the Highveld. Blacks, on the other hand, got less land which was characterised by poor soils and low and erratic rainfall.

There was also land for the parks. Examples are Matobo, Gonarezhou, Wankie (now Hwange), and Chizarira, among others. There was also land for purchase by wealthier and more progressive Africans, in agricultural terns. These were called the Native Purchase Areas (NPAs). There were many of them dotted all over the country: Tuli NPA, Lupanda NPA, Gwatemba NPA and many others. These were going to serve as some kind of buffer zones between the white commercial farms and the reserves for the blacks.

Before the promulgation of the LAA blacks could, in theory, buy land anywhere within the country. Indeed, the likes of Madloli Khumalo, Prince Lopila’s son, and Joyi son of Prince Muntu did own a farm along the road to Solusi Mission. Following the Carter Commission of 1925, the recommendation was to racially divide the land. What prompted that was disillusionment when gold was not found in amounts that had been anticipated. There simply was no “Second Rand” in terms of gold reserves. White settlers decided to anchor their economic enterprises on the land. Besides, the British South Africa Company’s rule came to an end in 1922. In a referendum of that year, the settlers voted for dominion status rather that become a province of South Africa.

Many Africans continued to reside on alienated private and crown land. They were paying rents and taxes while at the same time providing labour for squatting on land owned by land speculating companies overseas. It was not to remain so for much long. Whites returning from World War II after 1945 were to be rewarded with land while Africans were rewarded with bicycles and overcoats. When more whites sought to use their land, the Africans were to be moved out particularly to the two reserves created in 1894 following the demise of the Ndebele State. The two reserves were Shangani (Nkayi and Lupane) and Gwayi (Tsholotsho). In the Bubi District movement had started earlier and was less violent in comparative terms.

From 1948 the drive to push Africans out of alienated and crown land was scaled up. The areas that were affected the most in Matabeleland were Insiza District: (Godlwayo and eMakhandeni) and Matobo. Africans did try to resist evictions but, in the end, failed miserably and painfully. Lawyer and trade unionist Benjamin Burombo’s British African National Voice Association did try to fight a legal battle but only succeeded in delaying the implementation of the LAA. It was reformed a bit and took effect in 1931.

In Matobo the area earmarked for the creation of a national park was inhabited by the Banyubi people and other groups who had moved when their land was taken over. Places such as eNyandeni, Mgadla and Mhlonyane had their former settlers booted out and went to live within the land that was soon to be taken over by animals. There was resistance from the black settlers. As part of their resistance they constituted themselves into a resistance organisation which they named Sofasonke. Its leading light was one Nqabe Tshuma.

They solicited assistance from the Voice Association and the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICWU) led by Masotsha Ndlovu. They even approached a lawyer in the name of Paddy Lloyd to represent them. All these efforts came to naught. The Matobo villagers were evicted especially as from 1951. Some of them were taken to Mbongolo further south. The government had bought off some commercial land from the whites in order to settle the evictees. The names of places there bear testimony to the previous existence of white commercial farms. One is Dry Paddock and another is eNkunzini. Both point to the existence of paddocks, the latter paddock set aside for the bulls, inkunzi, and the former, a description of the paddock’s dry condition. Others were pushed to the southern part of the district to places such as Mambale, Seula, Sigangatsha and others. Those at Mambale had some of them relocate to Patalika in Tsholotsho.

Further east some people were pushed to Gomoza and Mpahlwa in Lupane. At the time Nkayi had been filled up with evictees from both Bubi and Insiza districts. My father’s sister Gqoko, married to Siphala Jijiji Ncube, ended up at Pupu. Nqabe and Sofasonke had their resistance finally neutralised. Government lorries arrived early in the ungodly hours and the villagers were commanded to load their belongings onto government trucks. Some men had decided to climb up mountains and hid in shelters. They imagined by so doing they would be spared the wrath of evictions. They had not bargained for the white man’s cruelty and resolve to clear Africans and create space for game.

Steel chains were tied to granaries and pulled. All the grain spilt onto the ground. When the men nestled in caves on the rocky mountains realised the white man was not backing off, they came down and were taken to where they were going to be resettled as imikutulwa or amadingandawo, as evictees were known in the Shangani Reserve. Nqabe Tshuma and his people were resettled at a place that was appropriately named eNkanini, on the banks of the Kafusi River where the Babirwa, under Chief Mgodla Kgwatalala, had lived prior to moving off to Mawaza in 1927 after finding the water in the area too salty. Mafa, Siqomaphi, Solomon Malaluka and Nqabe himself were some of the people who reluctantly went to live at eNkanini which is not far from Sankonjana, my rural home. At eNqameni, a similar resistance association had been established, going by the name of Sofa sihamba. The likes of Chief Sigombe Mathema were the leaders of the movement.

Researcher Professor Terence Ranger travelled to eNkanini to interview some of the evictees in preparation for his seminal book,  Nqabe Tshuma himself was late then. The man that Sofasonke had engaged to represent them ended up owning a farm exactly where the evictees he represented had lived. To this day, his homestead, along the road to Kezi-Maphisa, just beyond La Concorde road to Figtree, is known as eGqwetheni, the place of the lawyer who betrayed his clients.

Sofasonke today is but a fading memory that elders outside the park at Whitewater still remember. By naming the store next to Matopo Dam Sofasonke, the memory of pain and bitterness has been given a new lease of life. Beyond identity, names play an important role in documentation of historical events. Sofasonke, eNkanini, eGqwetheni, all these are names that tell history, a painful history of land appropriation and the concomitant evictions and humiliating experiences of settlement in less productive lands.