Enocent Msindo, Cambridge University

Abstract
Building on the thesis that language difference provides an anchorage for ethnic identity, this paper comparatively examines the use of language by the Ndebele and Kalanga to express their ethnic identities between the 1930s and 1960. I argue that as for the Kalanga, debates about Tjikalanga, their language, were born out of a quest for ethnic revival and the desire to resist a broad-based Ndebele identity, which seemed apparent when government policy and predominantly Ndebele cultural activists sidelined Tjikalanga as a regional language after 1930. As for the Ndebele people, they were divided between those who advocated the Zulu language believing it to be the impande (root) of their life and those who advocated for Sindebele. Such debates, I argue, illustrated different social and moral standpoints about the meaning of being Ndebele, which in any case is important in understanding ethnicity.

Ndebele and Kalanga people, together with other smaller ethnic groups are joint inhabitants of a largely neglected, dry, but politically assertive region of Matabeleland (Southern Zimbabwe). Today, it would seem that both Ndebele and Kalanga have now developed a joint politically community (what Joshua Forrest would happily describe as subnationalism). But this development, which has a long history, is often mistaken for a joint ethnicity. It is therefore imperative that we understand the relations between Kalanga and Ndebele over a longer period and over a number of themes: one being the way these two main ethnic groups have developed and expressed their ethnic identities through language.

This paper demonstrates how complex Ndebele ethnicity was conceived by different groups. Whilst some educated elites from Zululand; some Missionaries; Government and Nguni Ndebeles (abezansi) tried to promote Zulu language and culture, commoners were indisposed. This provoked debates about who a real Ndebele was and whether Ndebele shared a common identity with Zulu. The commoner or popular opinion was that being Ndebele entailed a hybrid of traditions mixed up to form a new ethnic group, discrete from Zulu. Language debates therefore naturally provoked internal ethnic debates. By the 1960s, the focus on defining an Ndebele was no longer as great a priority as it was in the 1940s. It was assumed that Ndebele identity was ‘given’, and given as a broader regional, one in which Kalanga could possibly imagine themselves to belong. Such a broad identity sprouted up, especially, as a factor of increasing ethnic competition in town.

On the part of the Kalanga, some people saw things differently. Whereas some got overwhelmed and claimed fellowship into the wide Ndebele net, some remained more conservative with their ethnicity. In the 1950s conservatives were busy, trying to modernise Kalanga ethnicity by using education and the press. But the activists of the 1950s were not operating in a vacuum. They had the support of their parents who in the 1930s and 1940s had maintained Kalanga ethnic identity through inculcating a culture of ethno-linguistic conservatism in their children, who faced Sindebele at school. Some of these children became Kalanga activists in the 1950s and beyond. Kalanga community also maintained strong links with the Botswana Kalanga who were in the same situation, making the clamour for their ethnic space more pronounced.