THE iSiNDEBELE language is facing serious challenges including being eliminated, suppressed, bastardised and corrupted despite efforts by speakers and writers to promote it at all levels, it has been revealed.
Concerns were raised by various speakers during the late academic, politician, cultural activist author and democrat, Mthandazo Ndema Ngwenya’s Inaugural Memorial Lecture organised by the Public Policy Research Institute of Zimbabwe and Ibhetshu Likazulu in partnership with the Centre for Information Technology (Cite) in Bulawayo last week.
Ngwenya, who was born in 1949 in Nkayi, Matabeleland North province, died on October 19, 1992 in a car accident at the Heaney Junction together with his friend Themba Nkabinde on their way to Harare.
His brief political activism and academic excellence elevated him to the doyen of democracy, culture and language expertise.
He authored IsiNdebele novels such as Umhaso Zhi Mthakathi, Ungcingci Kandoyi, Ngitshilo Ngitshilo among others and most of them became set books in schools.
Speaking during the memorial, former National University of Science and Technology spokesperson Felix Moyo, who is also an actor, author and ISiNdebele books publisher, lamented the challenges the language was suffering.
“Ndema was my best friend. At some point we would meet at my house and we would talk until 10pm. We would discuss drama and iSindebele language.
“The IsiNdebele was the major thing that made us meet. The issue of ISindebele we had realised that it has a serious challenge in this country. Even if we say we must tell the truth, we have a serious problem of iSiNdebele in this country,” Moyo said.
He said they were making efforts to come together and promote iSindebele adding that he started a publishing house called Usiba Publishers which focuses only Ndebele books.
“I have started publishing and editing iSiNdebele books only. I will always be there whenever you are doing anything to do with Ndema Ngwenya,” he said.
Ndema's widow Elizabeth said her husband would not even eat her delicious food when he was writing books.
“When he went into his creative works, that is writing books, not even my food will draw his attention away from his writing work,” she said.
“He would be so engrossed in his work until completion. He was exemplary in our lives and those who came across him.”
Presenting a memorial lecture, academic and public policy researcher and analyst Samukele Hadebe said the appreciation of Ngwenya as a writer and academic may be inadequate without contextualising it further.
“It is important that we cast our eyes wider for an African view, particularly Africa after liberation,” he said
Hadebe said Ngwenya was in essence raising the Matabeleland question by showing the incompatibility of the British system in our Zimbabwean context.
“Ngwenya lived up to the expectations of a writer to his community as articulated by Chinua Achebe that: ‘ — as a cultural nationalist, as teacher, a social critic, an actor rather than a reactor and as a literary critic’ the writer had to be ‘an involved participant in his society’s destiny,” he said.
“His life as a novelist, poet, actor, critic, educationist, and public intellectual rolled into one uniquely humble, sociable, and affable character whose only visible pride was in his undying love for his culture.
“He unassumingly interacted with people of all classes and different ethnic, racial, and religious background with ease and modesty and still radiated the same warmth, charm and gentility,” he said.