The Indian envoy should be expelled

The Indian envoy should be expelled, fulstop. His ignorance of Shona culture and traditions does not amount to the absence of such traditions.

I also wonder exactly on what facts he bases his assessment that the Shona people are quiescent and undemanding. Who fought the first Chimurenga. Which war against colonialism was fiercer than the second Chimurenga.

The envoy's regurgitating of Rhodesian misrepresentations is an insult to us the people of Zimbabwe.

Did the envoy ever bother to listen to Zimbabwean programs like ChiKristu neTsika or Madzinza eZimbabwe which was presented by the fomer minister of education Mr Chigwedere and the late Boniface Gabarinocheka Dzvova.

If the Indian envoy is so convinced that the Shona have no history and culture then can he explain to us what the Munhumutapa Empire, Rozvi Empire, Great Zimbabwe civilisation, Torwa Empire and Barwe Empires were all about?

If the envoy is ignorant of Shona culture and history he should keep quiet rather than try to pass off insults and misrepresentations as facts. Especially if these are misrepresentations by our oppressors the Rhodesians who spent generations trying to prove that a white race built Great Zimbabwe and threw away crucial archaeological evidence calling it 'the filth of Bantu habitation' when in fact it was the proof of Bantu construction of the monument.

In fact Shona is the most widely spoken native Bantu language and the seventh most widely spoken native language in Africa. Such demographics certainly are not evidence of a lack of culture.

The ambassador's confusion may be stemming from the fact that he is trying to attribute the Shona to a single ethnic source. Let him be informed that Shona culture is a very large collection of cultures united by a common history and close geography but not by a single ethnic source.

This fact is recognised by the Shona themselves who identify themselves by clans such as vaHera (giving their name to Buhera), vaNjanja, maUngwe, vaRozvi, vaBarwe, vaTsunga, vaRemba and so on. Karanga, Zezuru, Korekore, Manyika and Ndau are language dialects and not definers of ethnicity, another common misunderstanding about Shona ethnicity.

Indeed that the Shona have a diverse background is commonly acknowledged. The Shona are not the descendants of a single tribe but a collection of tribes and peoples who moved into the region over a millenia. For example vaNjanja (vazungu vemachira machena) are commonly acknowledged to be descendants of Portuguese traders and this evidenced by their clan praise name Sinyoro which is a derivative of Senor.

Other Shona clans such as vaHera are thought to be descendants of Arab and Indian traders who plied the Indian Ocean coast with their dows long before Vasco da Gama was guided to India by an Arab or Indian guide. Other clans such as the vaTsunga have folklore which openly acknowledges that they came from north of the Zambezi. Vakarova mvura netsvimbo ikazaruka.

My own clan the vaBarwe are often referred to as maSena because we are said to have come from around Sena is Mozambique. Clans such as my clan, the vaNjanja and vaHera who are relatively recent arrivals in the region have no hand and have never claimed to have any hand in the construction of Great Zimbabwe.

Other clans such as vaRozvi have a much longer history in the region and I have no reason to doubt that they had a hand in the construction of Great Zimbabwe.

What there is absolutely no doubt about is that some of the descendants of those who built Great Zimbabwe are to be found among the people called the Shona today. Due to migration and assimilation, some are certainly found in neighbouring cultures. Nobody has ever claimed, certainly not us the Shona, that all the people now called Shona are descendants of the builders of great Zimbabwe, or that those known by other names never had a hand in it.

That misconception is often carried by people who underestimate misunderstand the size of the monolith called Shona culture. We are a very large group who even differ in physical characteristics ranging from tall dark people like the vaRozvi (mostly Karanga speakers), light skinned people like vaHera, short people like vaManyika, slight people like maKorekore. Most of us Shona can easily tell another Shona's clan or origin from their appearance and the moment they speak the first few Shona words.

We are also known by surrounding African tribes for stubbornly sticking to our traditions. Indeed some say we have a reputation of being very difficult to deal with in marriages and other traditional ceremonies, if things are not done as per our clan traditions.

Certainly we are not docile. We simply do not jump to agendas set by others.

When we do choose to put up a fight you can guaranteed that it will be ferocious and accompanied by cunning and deviousness. Cecil John Rhodes is said to have referred to the Shona as 'peace-loving but cunning' people. That is about the only thing he was right about.