Chronicle Editor
Nqobile Tshili, Chronicle Reporter
MZALA Tom has become an authority on microblogging site Twitter, with his insights on the history of the Ndebele people.
In one of his Twitter threads, Mzala Tom – whose real name is Mr Thomas Sibanda, a Zimbabwean lawyer based in Botswana – unpacks who the Ndebele of Zimbabwe are.
“Many people struggle with defining the Ndebele people of Zimbabwe. Are Ndebeles a tribe, a nation, Khumalos, South Africans or is Ndebele just a language? These questions are complex and result in emotive debates and tribal slurs. Why do we have many different tribes or ethnicities but their location is defined as Matabeleland – the land of the Ndebele people? This is a complex subject. Is there such a thing as an original Ndebele?
“To unpack why people in Matabeleland and Midlands embrace the Ndebele label and others now openly reject it, the answer lies in how the Ndebele state was established by King Mzilikazi in the 1800s after breaking away from King Shaka,” Mr Sibanda, quizzes on Twitter while at the same time proffering answers.
“The most narrow and ill-informed definition reduces being Ndebele to being a Khumalo. This is a clannish definition that fails to take into account the complex processes of nation building evolved by Mzilikazi who continually added new groups to build his state. The second definition is one that defines Ndebele-ness linguistically – as comprising anyone who speaks Ndebele language as a mother tongue.”
He goes deeper into explaining what the Ndebeles are and has created several informative threads on various aspects of the Ndebele people and its various tribes.
His threads have attracted positive feedback from social media content consumers who acknowledge his work as it provides historic education that is not easily found in conventional narratives.
One netizen, Mr Raphael Makumbe, tweeted; “Surprisingly such simple knowledge is not known by many people.
Anyway, the problem is tribal identity issues are always politicised. So, people lose it. You summed it up in simple language. Same story with ChiShona.”
Chronicle caught up with Mr Sibanda from his Botswana base where he explained why he has taken a keen interest on the informative historic Twitter threads.
He said he was inspired by novelist and academic Ms Yvonne Maphosa and another scholar Ms Mitchell Mhlanga, who had been flawless in sharing educational information.
Mr Sibanda said since he started his threads more people from Matabeleland region have followed his tweets because of the information they are providing.
“In terms of writing those threads, I think it started early last year, after having followed and engaged those ladies Maphosa and Mhlanga from early 2019. Maybe because I write Ndebele history and I look at issues from our Ndebele historical point of view in relation with everyone else around us within Zimbabwe or outside, it has really attracted a lot of interest on who we are where we are today,” said Mr Sibanda.
“How we evolved to where we are today in relation to everyone around us. That has been the main thrust, so mostly people with a Ndebele background, Matabeleland are excited because it talks about their story. It’s a platform where their story is being talked about. It excites them, they also get to share those threads with other people, from outside the country and anywhere else. The threads have become the easiest way of telling their story.”
He said while most of the things he posts were not taught within the school education syllabi, through research he is able to generate new knowledge which appeals to his readers.
Mr Sibanda said even some of the feedback he gets from the public improves work.
“I get my information from reading historian Pathisa Nyathi’s books and I also go a step further to look for dissertation Honours, Masters, PhD thesis on particular historic thesis that have been written by various Zimbabweans. Some of them are studying in South Africa, Europe, they now go deeper to give various perspectives on the same topic that I might have learnt in school. It’s a communally shared knowledge which is outside the formal structures of school. There is a whole schooling of history outside the formal school framework that we went through,” said Mr Sibanda.
He said he wants to help in preserving history by writing on social media platforms which attract a lot of users.
The self-taught historian has over 14 000 followers.
Mr Sibanda said there is a lot of content that has been written about the Ndebele people, but most of it is not done in English, which limits the understanding of this group of people as well as their identities.
“The first black person to really write about Ndebele history in English should be (late) Stanlake Samkange.
Otherwise, the rest it would be whites, most of our people were writing in IsiNdebele, the first novel being that which was written by Ndabaningi Sithole, Umvukela WamaNdebele. It’s all about history but the difference is that this is written in Ndebele,” said Mr Sibanda.
He lobbied for the translation of some of the Ndebele novels saying they have rich history which should be understood at a global level instead of an enclave community.
Mr Sibanda said it was important to document history and this informs identity.
“It means our history becomes known, we tell our story, in our own way from our own perspective as it has been passed on generationally. Our story gets to be well known world-wide beyond us in a language that is well known worldwide. That’s why I do my threads in English not in Ndebele so that I attract a broader audience who can come and participate and we have people in Botswana, South Africa because it’s not an exclusive group kind of thing,” he said.-@nqotshili
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