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Bongani Ndlovu, Showbiz Correspondent
A lecture series for, Queen Loziba, senior queen in the Ndebele Kingdom will be held at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo as a way to promote female narratives and profiling powerful historical figures.
The lecture series will be held on July 11 by award-winning novelist and essayist, Panashe Chigumadzi.
Queen Loziba was King Mzilikazi the ruler of the Ndebele people’s wife.
The Bulawayo director of the gallery Butholezwe Nyathi said they wanted the public to note that there were many female leaders in the past.
“The introduction of the Queen Loziba Lecture Series is meant to draw public attention to the presence of a multiplicity of historic female leaders in our national history beyond singular figures such as the much-storied anti-colonial heroine, Mbuya Nehanda, and to a lesser extent, Queen Lozikeyi,” said Nyathi.
The Queen Loziba Lecture series was a follow up to the Queen Lozikeyi Series that the gallery ran from 2000 to 2007.
Nyathi said the history of Bulawayo was incomplete without mention of Queen Loziba.
“This woman who was central to the founding of the Ndebele nation and like the Queen Lozikeyi Lecture Series, the NGB aims for the Queen Loziba Lecture Series to inspire further research on this and other historic female figures,” said Nyathi.
He said the lecture series would be held in two formats.
“Two Queen Loziba Lectures will be delivered every year, in each half of the calendar year. Presenters will either be local or international and will tackle various elements of Zimbabwe’s socio-cultural and political fabric, with biased reference to understand gender and class relations in Matabeleland in particular and Zimbabwe in general. Each lecture will be followed by an open discussion chaired by a discussant,” said Nyathi.
As part of efforts to immortalise Queen Loziba, the new maternity wing at Mpilo Central Hospital and Loziba Primary School near Inyathi Mission were named after her. Recently a UCCSA Church at Mahamba Business Centre at Inyathi was named after her, while a restaurant at the Rainbow Hotel
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