In recent years, Zimbabweans and concerned parties across the globe have deployed politico-sociological historical analysis in the examination of the provenances, firmness and resilience of Ndebele particularism across pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial epochs in Zimbabwe.
Historically, Ndebele particularism is depicted in two key aspects. First, successive pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial historical processes contributed to the construction and consolidation of Ndebele particularism. Second, this particularism is a product of a lump of grievance and resentment to Shona triumphalism. The politico-sociological, historical analysis meshes with a social constructivist perspective of understanding the complex politics of identities in general. The discussion is taken up to the current reverberation of Ndebele particularistic politics on the internet, including the creation of the United Mthwakazi Republic (UMR) that symbolises the desire for a reconstructed pre-colonial Ndebele nation in the fashion of Swaziland and Lesotho.
While the issue of Ndebele particularism might be currently clouded by the recent political and economic crisis that has seen Zimbabwe becoming a pariah state, it has continued to haunt – to some extent – both the project of nationalism that ended up unravelling along the fault-lines of Ndebele-Shona ethnicities and the post-colonial nation-building process that became marred by ethnic tensions and violence of the 1980s.
As near as dammit a conversation that’s sure to pop up on social media almost daily, the issue has pitted the Shona and the Ndebele tribes, with both groups ratting on historical implications and the modern-day context of those. Many a time, when the Ndebele people raises the extend of Gukurahundi – a series of massacres of Ndebele civilians carried out by the Zimbabwe National Army from early 1983 to late 1987 which left 10,000 to 20,000 civilians dead – the Shona tribes usually goes automatic on reminding them that “well, remember you raided and killed us first in the wake of Mfecane/Defecane.”
Today, a Twitter user who goes by the name @denvern3 opined that comparing what ensued in pre-colonial Zimbabwe to the green wounds of Gukurahundi, whose agony is still raw for survivors, is warped.
In case you missed it, read the full thread on Twitter or below:
1. When we draw comparisons between Gukurahundi and Mzilikazi’s raids which are from a time when there was no governing international law on conduct in war and sparing of civilians; when all tribes engaged in barbaric behavior of claiming territories we betray the tribal origins.
2. I am surprised though, that those who raise these raids go on to deny that GKH was tribal in its implementation. Bazalwane you can’t have it both ways. Was GKH payback or not. It is ok, you have already come close to admitting this, we won’t judge you.
3. By straining to “equalize” GKH through raising of Lobengula and Mzilikazi’s raids which every other tribe engaged in because in that epoch that is how tribes lived to a period after formal organization of ZImbabwe as a State we reveal a serious blindspot.
4. It shows clearly that we might claim to be a literate nation, but our hearts are clearly not in the right place. Mugabe knew what he had done was punishable under international law this he clung onto power as long as he could.
5. These claims also show a deliberate preference to silence talk of GKH so that we just claim that Ndebele’s killed Shonas in the 1800s and then Shonas killed Ndebeles in the 1980s so let no one claim to be a victim. We all square🤙 🤞
6. It sounds absurd, but hey this is the Zimbabwe and the Zimbabweans we have. We say we want a nation that respects citizens but some of us have no qualms whatsoever in “eliminating” any and all discussion on an ethnic genocide.
7. Perhaps this is the one thing that we need to come around and build a consensus, and boldly place it on the authorities to address it. We won’t get there if our minds and hearts are not RE-formed. Asakhe!
[editorial: the original text has been slightly edited to enhance readability but the sense and context is maintained]
