Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- 1 A Mixed Pot: The Crafting of Identity
- 2 The Historical Landscape of Southeast Africa
- 3 Early Exchanges: Political and Economic Contexts
- 4 Ties That Bind: Social Structures and Cultural Practices
- 5 Keeping up Appearances: Identity and Adornment
- 6 Brewing Beer, Making Rain, and Holding Court
- 7 Memories and Identities in the Shadow of Ngungunyana
- 8 Past and Present in the Ndau Region
- Notes
- Glossary of Ndau and Portuguese Words
- Bibliography
- Index
- Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
7 - Memories and Identities in the Shadow of Ngungunyana
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- 1 A Mixed Pot: The Crafting of Identity
- 2 The Historical Landscape of Southeast Africa
- 3 Early Exchanges: Political and Economic Contexts
- 4 Ties That Bind: Social Structures and Cultural Practices
- 5 Keeping up Appearances: Identity and Adornment
- 6 Brewing Beer, Making Rain, and Holding Court
- 7 Memories and Identities in the Shadow of Ngungunyana
- 8 Past and Present in the Ndau Region
- Notes
- Glossary of Ndau and Portuguese Words
- Bibliography
- Index
- Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
Summary
Ngungunyana was a problem. … We are called Ngungunyana's people yet we are Ndau. We were changed into Changana (Shangani).
—Jona Mwaoneni MakuyanaPeople who were staying here were called Machangana (Shangani), but they were Ndau. Their leader was Ngungunyana.
—John KunjenjemaWhen speaking about history long ago (kare kare), many Ndau in central Mozambique and eastern Zimbabwe recall a past marked by a shifting political and cultural terrain of invasion and domination in the nineteenth century. This turbulent period, known by many as a time of terror, began with the migrations of several northern Nguni peoples, most notably the Gaza Nguni, who first settled in the Ndau heartland in the 1830s and returned later for an extended occupation from 1862 to 1889. Most of the population in this corner of southeast Africa submitted to Gaza Nguni overrule and came to be known as Ndau partly in response to the presence of these outsiders. This conquest by the Gaza Nguni in the nineteenth century acted as a foil for the Ndau to re-create their identity and assume a sense of Ndauness with a powerful salience that reverberated into the twentieth century.
The previous chapters argue that Ndau speakers shared a collective identity long before these more recent events. However, this nineteenth-century episode of common suffering at the hands of others reinforced a sense of being Ndau as earlier relationships had not.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Crafting Identity in Zimbabwe and Mozambique , pp. 91 - 105Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007