The Sunday Mail
As we seek to debunk the tribal myth, the Zhuwao Brief will this week submit that the Hunhu/Ubuntu concept offers a vastly superior and more coherent philosophical and ideological base for identity than the created notion of tribalism.
This is primarily because Hunhu/Ubuntu is fundamentally unifying as opposed to the divisive and colonial notion of tribalism.
Hunhu/Ubuntu is a value system that has been ingrained into our collective being as a people for over four thousand years. On the other hand, tribalism is an alien concept that was imported into our continent a few centuries ago as part of the divide and rule strategy that formed the bedrock of colonialism and imperialism.
In this article, the Zhuwao Brief will recount and narrate the origins of the Bantu people from the Cameroon Grasslands that are referred to in vernacular as Guruuswa.
All the indigenous people of Zimbabwe are of Bantu origin. We are all the same people. The Zhuwao Brief will posit that the defining feature of the Bantu people is the value system that is centred on the concept of Hunhu/Ubuntu.
The exposition of indigenous Zimbabweans as Bantu people with the Hunhu/Ubuntu value system serves to define that we have more that binds us as opposed to the so-called divisions occasioned by tribalism. The Zhuwao Brief advocates that we base our identity on our origins as the Bantu people and our value system of Hunhu/Ubuntu as opposed to tribes.
This article also serves as the precursor to next week’s article that narrates how the tribal divisions in Zimbabwe were created and formalized through the work of South African linguist, Professor Clement Doke in his 1931 “Report on the Unification of Shona Dialects”. As such, identities that are premised on tribe are inimical to unity and harmony, and are consequently dangerous to our empowerment, developmental and transformational aspirations as Zimbabweans.
The Expansion from Guruuswa
I grew up being told of a place known as Guuruswa. To me, this was a mythical area somewhere in the north. As my consciousness expanded, I started to firm up on Guruuswa as some savannah grasslands in Central Africa. As I struggled with addressing the issue of tribalism during this past month, my conceptualization of Guruuswa transgressed from being informed by conjecture to become informed by fact and evidence. Thanks largely to conversations with Professor Pedzisayi Mashiri and in part to the joys and wonders of the internet.
Malcolm Guthrie and Joseph Greenberg held competing theories on Bantu migration during the 1960s. Greenberg used wide comparisons including non-Bantu languages to propose that people with Bantu languages migrated east and south from the Cameroon grasslands around 3,500 years ago. Guthrie’s comparison focused more exclusively on relationships among Bantu languages and argued for a single Central African dispersal point spreading at an equal rate in all directions. My initial conceptualization reflected Guthrie’s theory.
Jan Vansina, in the 1990s, proposed a resolution of the 1960s competing theories of Guthrie and Greenberg. Jan Vansina proposed a modification of Greenberg’s idea of a migration emanating from the Cameroon Grasslands with the incorporation of Guthrie’s central node idea in which dispersions from secondary and tertiary centres resembled a number of regional centres rather than one, thus creating linguistic clusters. This is in agreement with Professor Mashiri’s submission that we originate from the Cameroon grasslands.
Newman, Ehret and Shillington appear to build on Jan Vansina’s modification of the theories Greenberg and Guthrie to provide a chronology of the Bantu migration. Several researchers place the ancestral proto-Bantu homeland in the Cameroon grasslands around 4,000 years ago. The first phase of the migration is in accordance to Greenberg’s theory of migration east and south from the Cameroon grasslands 3 500 years ago to reach the Central African rain forest. Around 3 000 years ago, major Bantu migration centres of the eastern migration had grown around the Great Lakes region. 2 500 years ago pioneering groups of the Bantu emerged into the savannah in the south.
According to Guthrie’s idea, there were rapid movements by small groups southwards with initial settlements widely dispersed close to areas with water along the coast and along river basins. Because of the harsh farming conditions in areas farther from water, migrations tended to move southwards until they reached the coast of Southern Africa. Pioneering groups are thought to have reached KwaZulu-Natal around AD 300 with some having crossed the Limpopo around AD 500. Some of these groups include the Zulu nation and the Kalanga people.
The Kalanga people are believed to have first settled in Mapungubwe in South Africa. Where ever the Kalanga went, they left monuments of their impressive masonry and stonework and a group of Kalanga remained at every site. Knowing that there was no more land further south, they later moved to the Masvingo area where they erected the Great Zimbabwe Monument to be the headquarters of the Mutapa Empire. This was followed by a migration to Khami, near Bulawayo, where the Khami state occupied Matabeleland region in Zimbabwe and parts of Botswana.
The Ndebele are part of the Zulu nation that migrated from KwaZulu-Natal during the Mfecane period in the early 19th century. Under the leadership of Mzilikazi, they initially founded a settlement called Mhlahlandlela. They then moved northward in 1838 into Zimbabwe and settled in Bulawayo. In the course of the migration, large numbers of local clans and individuals were absorbed into the Ndebele nation adopting the Ndebele language and culture.
This means that the indigenous people of Zimbabwe share a common ancestry and history which spans millennia as opposed to a few centuries. That history emanates from the Cameroon grasslands, Guruuswa, to the Central African rain forests, the Great Lakes Region, the southern tip of Africa, and back up north of the Limpopo River. Surely, our identity should be defined by the larger history outlined above. That history of four millennia is replete with the developed value system of Hunhu/Ubuntu.
Hunhu/Ubuntu Value System
As Bantu people we are distinguished by the fact that we subscribe to the principal value system of Hunhu or Ubuntu. This is a value system that defines a person in terms of their behaviour, character and relationships with others. One is a member of the human race because one subscribes to basic standards of behaviour that qualifies them to be such. It is those standards of behaviour that form the basis of social order and morality. Those of other ethnicities are not recognized as human primarily because they do not share the same belief system.
Early recorded writings of the concept of Hunhu/Ubuntu were in the black owned South African newspaper known as “Inkundla YaBantu” (People’s Forum) during the early 1950s. Jordan Kush Ngubane, who was the newspaper’s editor after Govan Mbeki, articulated what he referred to as African Nationalism to be the natural ideology of the ANC. Ngubane was also a founding member of the ANC Youth League.
Political thinkers in the 1960s propagated what they referred to as Africanisation during the period of decolonisation. The concept of Hunhu/Ubuntu formed the basis of a specifically African kind of socialism and/or humanism that was found in black people but not in whites. Kenneth Kaunda, who was President of Zambia from 1964 to 1991, developed a left-wing nationalist-socialist ideology called Zambian Humanism. Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere also developed a similar ideology that was called “Ujamaa”.
In 1980, Professor Stanlake Samkange published what is considered to be the first philosophical exposition of Hunhu/Ubuntu in his book entitled “Hunhuism or Ubuntuism: A Zimbabwean Indigenous Political Philosophy”. He presented it as a political ideology for the newly independent Zimbabwe. The concept was taken over to South Africa during the 1990s as a guiding ideal for the transition from apartheid to majority rule.
Professor Stanlake Samkange’s philosophical treatise on Hunhu/Ubuntu highlights three maxims that shape the philosophy. The first maxim asserts that “To be human is to affirm one’s humanity by recognising the humanity of others and, on that basis, establish respectful human relations with them”.
The second maxim requires that “if and when one is faced with a decisive choice between wealth and the preservation of the life of another human being, then one should opt for the preservation of life”.
The third maxim is a principle deeply embedded in traditional African political philosophy which states that “the king owed his status, including all the powers associated with it, to the people under him”.
Whilst the concept of Hunhu/Ubuntu has been defined variously, the overriding conceptualisation recognises society as giving humanity to the human being. Michael OnyebuchiEze captures the essence of Hunhu/Ubuntu by stating that “Humanity is a quality that we owe to each other”. This is in tandem with the Golden Rule, or ethic of reciprocity which is a maxim that requires that one should treat others as one would like to be treated by others. Conversely, the cautionary form, which is also known as the Silver Rule, requires that one should NOT treat others as one would NOT want to be treated.
The most visible manifestations of Hunhu/Ubuntu include the extroverted community aspect in which both strangers and community members are treated with sincere warmth. Such overt displays of warmth results in the formation of spontaneous communities whose resultant collaborative work gives functional significance to the value of warmth and guards against instrumental relationship.
There are many virtues of Hunhu/Ubuntu which include the notion of sharing. The notion of sharing manifests itself in how visitors are provided for and protected in every home that they pass through without payment being expected. Similarly, bereavement in any family becomes the responsibility of the whole community in as much as all community members are invited to a wedding.
Professor Tafataona Mahoso argues that the Hunhu/Ubuntu redefines the individual identity according to the maxim “I relate therefore I am” as opposed to Rene Descartes’ philosophical proposition “I think therefore I am”. Descartes’ proposition is a fundamental element of Western philosophy which informs current narratives on how human rights are individually centred.
Due to the importance of relating, the community becomes larger than the individual. This is reflected in how senior people and the elderly are referred to by their totemic identities. Even young people are called by their totemic identities as a signal of respect and approval. Such references replace the individual identity with a larger societal identity which connotes the family and clan.
Individualism is banished and replaced by a representative role in which the individual effectively stands for the people from whom he or she comes at all times. Families are portrayed and reflected in the individual. This places high demand on the individual to behave in the highest standards and portray the highest possible virtues that society strives for.
The banishment of individualism and its replacement with a representative role constitutes the kernel of Bantu traditional jurisprudence. A crime committed by one individual on another extends beyond the two individuals and has far-reaching implications on the families from whom both individuals come.
The crime of committing murder requires that reparations are made. How can reparations be made to a deceased person? The concept of replacing individualism with a representative role means that the victim represents his or her family. This therefore enables reparations to be made to the victim’s family by way of the perpetrator’s family giving a “living” life to the victim’s family.
Bantu traditional jurisprudence does not cater for a death penalty due to the belief in the sanctity of life. This means that the Hunhu/Ubuntu philosophy ensures that the literal concept of a life for a life is practiced as opposed to the Western concept of a death for a death. Law and order is maintained through the representative role of an individual in that the whole family bears responsibility for a perpetrator’s transgressions in taking a life by giving a life as compensation. Failure to provide a “living” life, as reparations,has the consequence of visiting a perpetual curse on the family of the perpetrator until reparations are made.
There are several other manifestation of the representative role subsuming the individual identity. These manifestations include genderised roles such as recognising each male of your spouse’s totem as a father-in-law, and recognising every female of your mother’s totem as a mother. Furthermore, it should not be possible for there to be orphans within a society that has Hunhu/Ubuntu since children do not belong to their biological parents only but to the families which their parents represented.
By conceptually subsuming the individual into their representative role, the individual cannot have rights to private and individual property. It therefore follows that the piece of land that an individual crops cannot belong to them as an individual. It becomes communal property that they are required to safeguard for the community. This explains the reluctance by ZANU PF to issue title deeds for land in a manner that disposes the community.
The Hunhu/Ubuntu political philosophy has aspects of socialism that propagate the sharing of resources and wealth. Such a type of socialism presupposes a community and society in which individuals empathise and concomitantly have a vested interest in collective prosperity. Michael OnyebuchiEze submits that Hunhu/Ubuntu induces an ideal of shared human subjectivity that promotes a community’s good through unconditional recognition and appreciation of individual uniqueness and differences.
As I conclude this piece, I am engulfed in such a warm and overwhelming sense of contentment. It is a wonderful feeling to have as we start the year. The Hunhu/Ubuntu value system, to which I am proud to be a part of, is so inspiring and morally uplifting. I am buoyed that my identity derives from my relationship. I wish to thank Professor Mahoso for introducing me to the philosophy that defines my identity.
As we prepare for next week’s article which unpacks the concept of tribe, I would like to pose a few questions. The first lot of questions seek to determine the basis on which we define the tribe of a person, whilst the second lot of questions interrogate relationships based on totemic identities despite differences in so-called tribes.
The fact that I speak English does not make me Englishman. So can I ask Professor Welshman Ncube whether he is an Englishman because he speaks English? By extension is he Ndebele because he speaks Ndebele? Would I be wrong to suppose that if Professor Ncube is not an Englishman despite speaking English, then it does not follow that he is Ndebele by virtue of speaking Ndebele?
Ndiri mwana waJohannes Zhuwao Zomba; vanoyera Phiri. I am a monkey because I am the son of a monkey. That is my totem. Would I be wrong to suggest that Professor Ncube’s totemic identity is monkey because his father’s totemic identity is monkey?
Would that not make Professor Ncube my father’s son, and also make me the son of the learned professor’s father? If the answer is in the affirmative, then would that not make Professor Ncube my brother, and I his brother?
If Professor Ncube is my brother and I am his brother, how then does the issue of tribe separate us? Professor Ncube my brother, can you make my existence real by relating to me? Apart from which it would be nice to have a brother who is a professor. I relate, therefore I am. Icho!
About the writer
Honourable Patrick Zhuwao is the Chairman of Zhuwao Institute which is an economics, development and research think tank that focus on integrating socio-political dimensions into business and economic decision making, particularly strategic planning. Zhuwao is the holder of a BSc honours degree in Computer Systems Engineering and an MBA degree in Information Technology Management (City University, London). He also holds BSc honours and MSc degrees in Economics (University of Zimbabwe), as well as a Master of Management (with distinction) degree in Public and Development Management (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg). [email protected] [email protected]
