I heard the other a man say to another: “Don’t speak to me in Shona. When you are here in Bulawayo speak to me in Ndebele.” The other guy said, “Okay, let’s speak in English then,” to which the first guy retorted, “How can you expect me to speak English that comes all the way from Britain when I cannot speak Shona here in Zimbabwe.”

I couldn’t figure whether this was just buddy-based banter or this was indeed a no nonsense exchange, yet it raised once again the emotions that surround the issue of language in Bulawayo where there is an increasing outcry by Ndebele-speakers concerning how the language is being decimated. The first guy’s response was exactly what got senior Zanu PF official Joshua Malinga into trouble when he told off a cop who had addressed him in Shona. Malinga fumed and told the cop that he had no business addressing him in that language here in Bulawayo.  He was promptly arrested.

The other day, a letter writer to one of the dailies complained about the wrong Ndebele spellings on the Zimbabwean passport. Again the other day, one was complaining about place names carried in street signs about the appalling misspellings. Inevitably for many here, this has been interpreted as part of a grand agenda to render the Ndebele language second class and this among other things is what no doubt has given “secessionists” here ammunition to call for self-rule or whatever. Yet you just have to ask yourself what is simmering underneath because we know what has happened elsewhere based on violated tribal and ethnic sensibilities.

The next question of course is how are the country’s political leaders themselves reading this obviously divisive issue of language especially at a time when we already know that some of them have traded barbs labeling each other tribalists.  You do get the sense that this is an extension of the troubles of the 1980s which the government men who choose to explain “salutes” instead are so reluctant to address. Touché.

This entry was posted on August 1st, 2011 at 8:54 am by Marko Phiri and is filed under Reflections, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.