Academic literature on the topic 'Tonga (Zambesi)'

The colonial Southern Rhodesian government displaced the minority Tonga people from the ecologically rich Zambezi River plains due to the construction of the World Bank funded hydroelectric power generating Kariba Dam in the late 1950s. The dislocated communities were resettled in the adjoining uplands of Binga District where they did not access the electricity and waters of the Kariba Dam as well as the wild animal resources in the safaris and national game parks abutting their new villages. This state regulated decoupling from the local natural resource asset base generated a politicised sense of entitlement to those resources spearheaded by a generational cohort of educated Tonga activists that emerged in the 1990s. Besides everyday realities of socio-economic marginalisation, these activists also drew inspiration from the prevailing global discourses of indigeneity and anti-dam politics to form organisations such as Binga Development Association, Binga Catholic Commission for Peace and Justice, and Basilwizi Trust that coordinated local assertions for increased access to resources in the uplands and around the Kariba waterscape. Through these emerging networks of solidarity, I argue, the Tonga activists constructed and deployed persuasive claims for the exigency of rehabilitating their embattled people’s deprived post-relocation livelihoods. These Tonga articulations and actions reveal how marginalised ethno-class categories within countries align their claims for increased access to local resources and general socio-economic empowerment to national and international activism and discourses.

This study critically interrogates representations of the San and Tonga in the Chronicle and the NewsDay Southern Edition/Southern Eye newspapers in 2013. It makes sense of how these representations and the journalistic practices that underwrite them position the ethnic groups as ‘minorities’ - in relation to other ethnic groups - within the discourses of Zimbabwean nationalism. Underpinned by a constructionist approach (Hall, 1997), the study makes sense of the San and Tonga identities otherwise silenced by the “bi-modal” (Ndlovu- Gatsheni, 2012: 536; Masunungure, 2006) Shona/Ndebele approach to Zimbabwean nationalism. In socio-historic terms, the study is located within the re-emergence of ‘ethnicity’ to contest Zimbabwean nationalism(s) during debates for the New Constitution leading to a Referendum in March 2013. The thesis draws on social theories that offer explanatory power in studying media representations, which include postcolonial (Bhabha, 1990, 1994; Spivak, 1995), hegemony (Gramsci, 1971), and discourse (Foucault, 1970, 1972; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985) theories. These theories speak to the ways in which discourses about identity, belonging, citizenship and democracy are constructed in situations in which unequal social power is contested. The thesis links journalism practice with the politics of representation drawing on normative theories of journalism (Christians et al, 2009), the professional ideology of journalism (Tuchman, 1972; Golding and Elliot, 1996; Hall et al., 1996), and the concept of journalists as an ‘interpretive community’ (Zelizer, 1993). These theories allow us to unmask the role of journalism’s social power in representation, and map ways in which the agency of the journalists has to be considered in relation to the structural features of the media industry in particular, and society in general. The study is qualitative and proceeds by way of combining a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 1992; Richardson, 2007) and ideological analysis (Thompson, 1990) of eight news texts taken from the two newspapers and in-depth interviews with 13 journalists from the two newspapers. This way we account for the media representations journalists produced: sometimes reproducing stereotypes, at other times, resisting them. Journalists not only regard themselves as belonging to the dominant ethnic groups of Shona or Ndebele, but as part of the middle class; they take Zimbabwean nationalism for granted, reproducing it as common-sense through sourcing patterns dominated by elites. This silences the San and Tonga constructing them as a ‘minority’ through a double play of invisibility and hyper visibility, where they either don’t appear in the news texts or are overly stereotyped.

The study interrogates the marginalisation of the Tonga language in the school curriculum of Zimbabwe. It explores the causes of marginalisation and what can be done by the Zimbabwean government to promote the Tonga language in the school curriculum at all levels in the education domain in Zimbabwe. In the study, the researcher uses a mixed method approach where qualitative and quantitative research techniques are used to corroborate data from different data gathering sources. The postmodernist theory is used in this research because of its encouragement of pluralism in society so as to enhance social cohesion. This is so because all languages are equal and they share the same functions and characteristics. There is no superior or inferior language in the eyes of the postmodernists. Participants for this study were drawn from district officials, selected primary and secondary school educators, primary and secondary school heads, all from Binga district of Zimbabwe and three university Tonga language lecturers, all purposefully selected. Focus group discussions, interviews, questionnaires, documents analysis and observations were used to collect data for this study. The data collected was then analysed using qualitative and quantitative analysis for triangulation purposes. The research established that the marginalisation of the Tonga language in Zimbabwe is caused by both exogenous and endogenous factors. The major factor is Zimbabwe‘s lack of a clear language policy exacerbated by attitudes of the different stakeholders which has also facilitated and enhanced the peripherisation of the Tonga language in Zimbabwe. The government of Zimbabwe has a tendency of declaring policies and not implementing them. Consequently, the government reacts to language problems as they arise. The study also reveals the importance of the Tonga language in the school curriculum in Zimbabwe. It also establishes that, for the Tonga language to be promoted there is need for the expeditious training of educators by the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development. There is need for the government of Zimbabwe to strengthen their language policy so that the status of Tonga is enhanced and uplifted. A strong language policy will compel different stakeholders to stick to their mandate thereby improving the place of the Tonga language in the school curriculum at all levels of the curriculum in Zimbabwe.
African Languages
D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)