adminHis brother turned down the offer but instead sent across the river scores of people comprising BaHumbe (BaLilima) from the Jambizi (Jambezi) area and Nambya and BaNyayi from further inland. Those are the people whose descendants Ndzimu-Unami Emmanuel mentions to be living in what was formerly Barotseland, now Western Province of Zambia. They are of BaKalanga origin.
Ndzimu-Unami Emmanuel refers to one of the Mambos as “Dombo Lakona Tjin’wango.” The man who was the source of information for Kumile Masola (author of Nhau dzabaKalanga) was the venerable Pagiwa Nlongwane Sibanda who lived a couple of kilometres west of Tjehanga Primary School in the Bulilima District in Matabeleland South Province.
He was a maternal uncle of my father Gwakuba. In 1957 he told me that Mambo Nitjasike had a breech-loading gun whose pet-name was “Dombo Lakona Tjin’wango, dumulo lingatani” and that that weapon was officially handled by Ninjigwe, one of Mambo Nitjasike’s senior counsellors.
The names of the Mambos who came from the direction of Vendaland and eventually defeated Tjibundule, king of the BaKalanga, were in the following order: Madlazwegwenolo who was succeeded by his son Maluzapi who, in turn, was succeeded by his own son, Nitjasike.
It was Nitjasike who had the gun called “Dombo Lakona Tjin’wango . . . wabula mabgwe dumulo lingatani?” In fact, those were praises for the weapon, not a name for a Mambo; Nitjasike’s sons were Lukwangwaliba and Tjigadzike.
Maybe the author needs to research a little more and correct that in his stimulating book’s second edition. Incidentally, it is quite necessary that more proof-reading and editing be done before the second is printed.
Another very interesting chapter in the book is the Semitic origin or link of the BaKalanga. That is an old theory propagated, some traditional oral historians used to claim, by Jewish traders who used to be scattered in virtually every part of rural Zimbabwe as well as Botswana.
They were found in the early 1900s in the Bulilima, Mangwe, Matobo, Gwanda, Nyamandlovu, Mzingwane and all over the BuKalanga region in the Northern Botswana. It is most interesting for Ndzimu-Unami Emmanuel to quote DNA tests to support the theory.
We have been told that historically the human race originated in parts of East Africa, in Tanganyika, to be precise, and then scattered from there.
Tanganyika in TjiKalanga (the Rozwi dialect) means “where the earth began or started or originated.” The word “nyika” is also used to refer to “people” as you would say: “Nyika inobvubvumwa” meaning “The people are complaining.”
The conclusion that the human race’s cradle is Tanganyika (now mainland of the Republic of Tanzania) was made on very sound scientific archaeological excavations.
The Jews have their own biblical tradition about the origins of the human race: Adam and Eve.
In the case of Zimbabwe, we have well researched and documented evidence that indeed some of our ancient ancestors were living in various parts of East Africa and the Great Lakes region. It is possible that while still living in that part of Africa what we call BaKalanga today intermingled with wandering Semitic peoples and in the process reproduced with them.
Presently, ethnic communities living in today’s Uganda may be divided into four fairly broad linguistic groups, the first of which are the Bantu. These are the Basoga, the Banyankore, the Baganda, the Bakiga, the Bagisu and the Bangoro.
The second category are the Luo who are made up of the Langi, the Acholi, the Jonam, the Alur and the Jopadhola.
The third community is the Jie, the Karimojong and the Itseo. These are referred to as the “paraNilotic” peoples and live in Uganda’s north-eastern and eastern regions.
The fourth and last of these communities are the Sudanic tribes comprising the Kakwa, the Lugbara and the Madi. These live in the West Nile District of the country. Uganda is, incidentally, the socio-cultural geographical link between Bantu-speaking southern and Central Africa and Semitic north Africa.
There has been intermingling of the various races in that region for many centuries. That social phenomenon includes the King Solomon and Queen of Sheba encounter as recorded in the Bible’s Book of Kings. Children were born as a result, leading to what are now called the Black Jews of Ethiopia or, as they call themselves, the Falashas.
It is not at all likely that the BaKalanga are a result or a by-product of that royal paramour of the Jewish King Solomon. But it is quite possible that Semitic slave traders who eventually pushed the Bantu from North Africa southwards had numerous social and sexually criminal contacts with many black women, descendants of whom eventually drifted southwards down the centuries during tribal wars.
According to historical researches, armed conflicts occurred in parts of what we now call Uganda between the 10th and the 18th centuries whenever there was a vacant throne to be filled, and also in the event of a drought, a flood or a disaster caused by pests such as locusts.
The capture of slaves for sale to especially Arabs from Oman was another reason armed raids were conducted. Those raids led to clans and tribes fleeing southwards.
In about 1520, for example, a ChiNyoro (Kinyoro) army raided, defeated and killed Kabaka Nakibinge of Buganda, and proceeded westwards towards Rwanda but on the way the Chinyoro army led by their king, Omukam Olimi the First, attacked the forces of the king of the Nkore, Ntare the Omugabe of Nkore, forcing them to seek refuge on a small island on the Kagera River.
Omukama Olimi the First and his ChiNyoro forces continued westwards to Rwanda where, however, they were heavily defeated and their king was killed in battle.
The ChiNyoro army, now led by a senior chief returned to their territory. But they were ambushed by the Nkore forces of Ntare, the Omugabe of Nkore and were most badly routed.
Those incidents and many others caused waves of fear that were felt all over that region by virtually all the ethnic communities, leading to massive departures of people southwards into Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia, the DRC, Angola, Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
The BaKalanga were some of those who fled that highly turbulent region.
It is most interesting that here in Zimbabwe we also have the name “Mugabe”, one is Chief Mugabe (Moyo) in Masvingo and the other President Mugabe (Garwe, Ngwenya) of Zvimba in Mashonaland West.
In Uganda at that time, it was a royal title and not just a name. There are still people bearing that name but not title in Uganda today. I wonder whether or not they are not related by blood to some of Zimbabwe’s Mugabes.
BaKalanga belong to the group of ancient Bantus whereas the Jews are in historical terms a relatively new occurrence in that they emerged from other Semitic ethnic communities as Hebrews (MaHeberu) in the recent times of their region.
A theory that BaKalanga are what is called “the lost tribe of Juda” is obviously based on the Judaistic tribes that were said to have disappeared without trace while in captivity in Assyria. They could not have headed south, turned black and changed their name from Hebrew or Jews to BaKalanga.
If those Jews were not exterminated by those who captured them, they were most probably sold as slaves; they were most probably sold as slaves to either some oriental tyrants or some western Arab-dominated areas such as Liberia.
BaKalanga were themselves running away from slave-hunters, so they could not have enslaved the Hebrews. The possibility of consanguinity (sharing the same ancestry) is a non-starter unless we lend some credence to the Biblical origin on the human race at the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve being the dramatis personae.
However, what we know about the Jews is that they were at all the relevant time a very adventurous commercial people, and that they were found all over the world, selling and bartering and inevitably, breeding.
To the east of the Middle East they went and settled in Roumania and called themselves the Ashkenazim.
To the west, they went and settled in such countries as Spain and referred to themselves as the Serphadic Jews. We do not hear about them in ancient Zimbabwe, but we hear about the Phoenicians, another Semitic people from the same area, the Levant, as the Jews.
What the author of this critical review is driving at is that BaKalanga may be associated with the Jews through commerce but they are closely associated with such Shona tribes as Karanga, Manyikas, Zezurus through ancestry as there are several probable agnatic links.
Apart from those minor negative observations, Ndzimu-Unami Emmanuel’s book is a major contribution to the written history of Zimbabwe especially that of the BaKalanga whose territory was arbitrarily and clandestinely divided into two by British colonialists and their former allies.
Whether or not Ndzimu-Unami Emmanuel’s dream (which he shares with a large number of BaKalanga) that one day the past glory of the BaKalanga will be revived in what he terms a Federal Republic of Zimbabwe comprising all its former territories is a matter for destiny.
Meanwhile, we eagerly look forward to what he has promised in his “The Birth of Bukalanga Part 1” a second part of Ndzimu-Unami Emmanuel’s war against distortions of the history of his forebears whom he has listed as the great Shamuyemhazwa, Nkalanga, Malambodzibgwa, Dombo-lakona, Tjing’wango, Tjibundule, Tumbale, Thoho-yaNdou, Mphaphuli, Mpephu, Dzugudini, Tshivhase, Meng’we, Tjilangwane and John Nswazwi Khupe.
• Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a Bulawayo-based retired journalist. He can be contacted on 0734328136 or on email [email protected].
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