who were kalangas and in which year they were resisted by attacking a dutch
Answers
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s recent remarks on the Kalanga people have stirred a hornet’s nest, attracting the ire of those claiming to be fighting the ‘cause’ of Matabeleland.
The remarks in question were made against the backdrop of unsubstantiated allegations that horrific xenophobic attacks in South Africa were because governments in the region were allegedly pushing their citizens into South Africa.
Failed politicians like the MDC’s Welshman Ncube and so-called Bulawayo-based historian, Phathisa Nyathi were quick to criticise President Mugabe, labelling him a ‘tribalist’.
Interestingly, President Mugabe’s remarks reminded me of my own family history.
Almost the entire Rusare clan is in South Africa.
That side, they are known as the Ngwenyas or Mokoenas, taking from our totem Dziva.
They are South African citizens.
We rarely go kumusha, kwaRusape, because there is only my grandmother.
My uncle, the first child in my father’s family, Robert Rusare left for South Africa in 1969; then he used to make reeds and sell them for a living.
He would go for three months and come back, but in 1977 he went for good.
His brothers and sisters followed suit, and so did their families.
Since then, they have only come back when a close member of the family dies. Those who died in South Africa are buried there.
Most of them are ‘merchandisers’ while three, including my bamunini, are serving jail terms for robbery.
This is the story of many families in Zimbabwe.
Thus President Mugabe’s remarks of Kalanga people as ‘uneducated and notorious’, is reference not only to Matabeleland people, but to Zimbabweans as a whole.
Kalanga refers to a group of people (a group of affiliated tribes) rather than a single tribe.
The Kalangas are the Karangas, the vaNyai in modern Zimbabwe.
The land stretching from the Kalahari Desert in Botswana to Mozambique was once occupied by a people with a common ancestry and language – the Kalanga.
In Zambia, there are the Lozi (Rozvi in Shona), Nambya in western Zimbabwe and Nyai eastern and northern Zimbabwe, while the Vahumbe and Batalaunda are in southern Zimbabwe and Botswana.
Ordinarily, where the Karanga use the letter ‘R’ in a word, the Kalanga use ‘L’.
The Kalangas and the Karangas are one and the same people.
Most scholars are of the opinion that Kalanga was the original term corrupted by the Portuguese traders as they replaced the ‘L’ with ‘R’
The Kalanga were ordinarily called the ‘Mocaranga’ by the Portuguese.
Hence the original name inevitably changed to Karanga.
Cauto, a Portuguese writer, bears testimony to the same point, that the Portuguese had a tendency to substitute ‘R’ for ‘L’ hence Karanga and Kalanga are the same words.
The letter ‘L’ was, however, retained in Plumtree and surrounding areas where the language spoken there is still very close to the original Kalanga language and where large numbers of the descendants of the original Kalanga people live to this day.
The Kalanga originate in the North East Africa region, specifically the Sudan-Egypt-Ethiopia region – the Great Lakes.
Like many Bantu groups, they trekked from the North down South, finally settling in the region now called Southern Africa.
By 100 AD, they had already settled in the lands now called Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Botswana.
The Kalanga had, from the 11th century, created empires and states on the Zimbabwe plateau.
These states include the Great Zimbabwe State (12-16th century), the Torwa State, and the Munhumutapa State, which succeeded the Great Zimbabwe State as well as the Rozvi State, which succeeded the Torwa State.
The Munhumutapa Kingdom, which existed for about 500 years (AD1000-AD1500) as the greatest polity in Southern Africa, later disintegrated as a result of external attacks and internal decay.
It would be succeeded by the Torwa Kingdom which was headquartered at Khami, about 22 kilometres west of Bulawayo.
The Torwa Kingdom, established by Madabhale Shoko/Ncube, arose from the collapse of Great Zimbabwe in the 16th and 17th century.
The Torwa dynasty of the baKalanga people developed both the stone building techniques and the pottery styles found at Great Zimbabwe.
The dynasty existed for about 200 years before being overthrown by Mambo Dombolakona Dlembeu, otherwise known as Changamire Dombo of the Rozvi Empire.
Between 1684 and 1696, Changamire Dombo expelled the Portuguese from Mutapa and Manyika, making the Rozvi Empire the most important empire in the Zimbabwe plateau, Zambezi Valley.
The Rozvi continued the stone building traditions of the Zimbabwe kingdoms while adding guns to its arsenal and developing a professional army to protect its trade routes and conquests.