NOT FOR PUBLICATION SEMINAR g 6 DECEMBER 1974 .UNIVERSITY OF RHODESIA DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY HENDERSON SEMINAR PAPER NO. 30 A BRIEF OUTLINE OF THE POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE KALANGa O) The Areas The country of the Kalanga is a vague area to the west and south of Matabeleland - no demarcated lim its - so no one can be exact about th is. ' For fie ld work purposes a ll the area west of the Mzingwani riv e r extending into Botswana where in 1954 it was roted that ’ the numerically strongest tribe in Bechuanaland are the Kalaka numbering 33,200*(3) and the area north of the Plurntree-Bulswayo railway right up to the Zambezi riv e r, shall be taken to be the area of the Kalanga. I t should, however, be pointed out that the country of the Kalanga is by no means an area exclusively resided by the Kalanga."- There are many other groups the principal ones being the Venda, Sotho and Shangaan in the souths the Tswana tribes in the west5 the Ndebele almost intermingled with the Kalanga a ll over the ’ Kalangaland’ and the Karanga in the east. The Language g The Kalanga language can best be described as a ’ clu ster’ comprising a number o f-d ia lects. The principal dialects areg Twamanba spoken in the Northern Transvaal west of Messina and in the Gwanda and Belingwe d is tric t 5 Lilima or Humbe in the Bulalima-Mangwe, Nyamandhlovu d is tric ts and in the Tati Concession and Eastern Botswana. In the Belingwe d is tr ic t there are some Humbe under Chief Bangwe who emigrated from the Plumtree area fle e in g the constant raids made upon them by the Ngwata at the beginning of the nineteenth century.(4) other dialects are, Peri, spoken in Botswana| Ngai, spoken in the Bulalima-Mangwe and Nyamandhlovu , v districts - a possible result of the fusion of the Rozvi and the•Kalanga^ ' and the Nanzva in the Wankie and Nyamandhlovu d is tric ts . According to tra d ition , some Kalanga under Hwange s p lit from the -‘SNyai Kingdom’ during the reign of the Rozvi mambo, Dendelende. They trekked from Domboshava just west of the Matopo H ills to the V ictoria F alls and defeated the Leya with whom they fused to form the Nanzva.'®' (1) Kalanga is sometimes referred to as Kalaka. Sometimes what is referred to as Kalanga is in fact meant to be Karanga. (2) P.A. Clancey, 'Subspeciation in the S.A. population of the Erythropygia Leucophys’ Arnoldia i , 2, August 1964, p.7. (3) H. von Sicard, 'Rhodesian Sidelights on Bechuanaland History', NAPA. 31, 1954, 67. ( 4) H. von Sicard, ’ The origin o f some of the tribes of the Belingwe reserve", NADA, 25, 1948, 93* ( 5) G. Fortune A Bantu languages of the Federation s A preliminary Survey, (Lusaka, 1959), 8. ( 6) H.N. Heman, ’History of the Abenanzwa Tribe', Proceedings of the Rhodesia Scientific Association, XII, Dec. 1913, 85-89 2 As a language, however, the Kalanga cluster is characterised by certain linguistic features like (a) the prevailing use of /l/ where central Shona uses the ro lle d consonant /r/ cp. pfumo ledu and pfumo redu (our spear) | limwe gomo to rimwe gomog (h) the absence of implosives in Kalanga where central Shona has them cp. bhuda to buda (come out)| (c) the use of nasalised /u/ for the prefix of classes 1. and 3 - v iz /mu-/ as in ukadzi cp. mukadzi (woman) Usukwa Cp. musungwa (beer) ugwi cp. mugwi (w arrior) uti cp. muti ( tree) I t should however be noted that there are some deep differences in the grammatical structure and grammar between the d ifferen t Kalanga dialects. These can be attributed mostly to the influences that have come over the different areas. Thus Nanzwa has been increasingly influenced by Ita - Tonga in the Zambezi valley whilst Lilima in the Belingwe d is tric t has been much influenced by Karanga while in the Bulalima - Nangwe district Lilima is equally influenced by Tswana and lldetele. Be that as it pay, Kalanga has managed to withstand to a large extent the influences of the other languages and to date Kalanga is s t i l l very distinguished as a language. The Political History of the Kalanga; Very l i t t l e is known about the history of the Kalanga who are taken as ’ an ethnic backdrop to the a c tiv itie s of the R ozvi, Sotho — Tswana, Ndebele and Europeans. Very few traditions are available and few of these predate the late eighteenth century ................ S pecific Kalanga h istories are rare and most refer to nineteenth century developments* Dr. T.N. Huffman has however shown that as an archaelogical culture, the Kalanga date back to the earliest Shona settlements, nearly_a thousand years and that the Kalanga country ran down to the Limpopo Valley and the sites of the major centres of Napungubwe and Mapela which were important Leopards Kopje culture settlements flourishing up to the sixteenth century. In short, Huffman's thesis is that the Kalanga are the direct descendants of the Leopards Kopje culture.(8b) This thesis would seem to vary from the evidence provided by linguistics. As has already been shown, elsewhere, there are certain d istin ct s im ila ritie s between Kalanga and Western Shona. So strong are these s im ila ritie s , that Doke has concluded that the whole of Southern Rhodesia was once a 's o lid block of Shona-speaking peoples.* (° ) and that 'the intrusion of the Ndebele in the mid-nineteenth century meeting an e a rlie r intrusion of the middle Zanbezi Tonga from Northern Rhodesia cut o ff the main body of the Shona*. This would seem to .lend support to the hypothesis that the Kalanga are a 'Zulu-ised' Karanga.(9) This too simplified an explanation, however, does not hold because the Ndebele invasion was much too recent to explain the ( 7) D.N. -Beach 'An Outline of Shona History' unpublished work, 1974? Chap, 4? l8 . (8) C.1T. Doke, Report on the U nification of Shona D ialects, (London, 1931)? 27. (8>) T.N. Huffman, personal communication, 5 March 1974. ( 9) C. Bullock, The Mashona and the Matabele, ( Johannesburg, 1950), 27. differences that exist 'although it was due to that invasion #iat the Rozwi began to lose their distinctive western dialect". (l-0) True there is some Kalanga - Karanga link. Using the glottochronological method - a system akin to carbon dating (having the same defects) - based on the theory that the vocabulary of any language changes at a relatively constant rate, Professor Fortune came to the conclusion that Karanga and Kalanga separated about 460 years ago - that is, about 1500 A .D .(ll) Kalanga and Ndau separated about nine to ten centuries ago. Though i t might seem that the archaeological evidence does not tie up with the linguistic evidence, this is in fact not so. The Karanga and Kalanga cultures indeed are separate. I t is possible the Leopards Kopje culture might have given rise to both the Kalanga and Eastern Shona groups, yet the line of development was d ifferen t. The Leopards Kopje culture gave rise d irectly to the Kalanga culture but possibly indirectly or very differently to the Eastern Shona groups. If the origin was the same, this would explain the close linguistic ties between Western Shona (Kalanga) and Eastern Shona (Zezuru, Ndau, Karanga, e tc .) The ’ eastern culture' climzaxed in the Zimbabwe culture while the ’ western culture’ climaxed in the Leopards Kopje - Kalanga culture which flourished up to the sixteenth century especially that part of it based on Mapungubwe in the Limpopo va lley . The whole question can graphically be shown by the diagram below. From i t , i t can be explained how the Eastern Shona group and Western Shona group have linguistic but not cultural similarities. Characteristic of this Leopards Kopje culture was KALANGA KARANGA, NDAU, j . ZEZURU, ETC. t ti ! * Direct link some form of lin k between between the the two although area of Kalanga contact have not yet been and Leopards proved. Kopje culture DEVELOPMENT INTO EASTERN SHONA GROUPS LEOPARDS KOPJE CULTURE the predominance of cattle rearing as indicated by cattle remains and beast burials. This was because ’ their environment which they inherited from the early Iron Age Zhizo people was notably d rier than the rest of the plateau to the north-east♦ ’\13) However, they were not en tirely pastoral but grew some crops as shown by the carbonised seeds that have been excavated from Leopards Kopje sites. Their pottery was also very d ifferen t from that found among the Eastern Shona.(14) (10) G, Fortune *A .Rozwi Text with translation and N otes', NAPA, 33, 1956, 8. (11) G. Fortune ’ The Principal Dialects of Shona and the development of the standard language' unpublished U.R. work. (12) Beach, 'An O u tline', 21. (13) D.R.Beach 'The Shona and Ndebele Power', U«R.Renders on Seminar Paper, 26, 27 Oct 1973, 3. (14) K.R. Robinson Kharni Ruins, (Camb. Univ. Press, 1959) , n s . 4 The Leopards'Kopje culture reached its climax about 1500 A.D. when it was apparently absorbed by the new immigrants. There is no archaelogical evidence as to why. the culture was absorbed but what is plain is that there is no evidence of force and destruction by a people who later gave rise to the Khami state, (l5) and generally called the Rozvi.