Country: Zimbabwe

Group: Tonga

Date Finalized: 10/09/2022

Name: Juwairiah Afridi (lead), Vianney Mancilla, Jacob Kebe, Esha Kubayat, Madison Schultz

Content Warnings: Forced Away, Ethnocide

Approximate Time Period: 1957-present

There is substantial evidence from reliable sources that the Tonga people of Zimbabwe were forcibly resettled, the effects of which still impact the Tonga people in current times.

In 1957, the Rhodesian government, present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe, forcibly resettled the Tonga people from their local land near the Zambezi River (Muderedzi and Ingstad, 2022). Today the Tonga people reside in the northwest of Zimbabwe close to the Zambezi River in the Matabeleland North Province (Muderedzi and Ingstad, 2022). The displacement resulted in the discrimination of the Tonga people through the dictation of land ownership, occupation of ancestral land and religious shrines through eminent domain, and marginalization of the group in the education system. Prior to the resettlement, Tonga people heavily relied on the river and farming as means of sustenance. The new land the government resettled the Tonga group in was not fertile and there were several laws restricting the use of hunting for sustenance (Matanzima and Marowa, 2022). As most individuals were subsistence farmers, the population faced increased rates of poverty and malnutrition. The marginalization through the education system furthered the discrimination against Tonga. Despite common usage at home, schools did not include it as a language of instruction The language became an endangered language and did not hold the same importance as the Shona and Ndebele, both national languages (NARLC, n.d.). There have been government efforts to rectify past discrimination through development programs. One initiative that has had successful results was the revitalization of the Tonga language, Chitonga. In 2005, the language was implemented in education systems, improving its status as an endangered language (NARLC, n.d.). However, most of these programs have not produced significant improvement in the condition of the Tonga people. The group heavily relies on both international and national food aid to sustain the population (TNH, 2007).

The data quality is rated at 2.5 because there were substantial and reliable sources (a well-established news organization, New York Times as well as peer-reviewed journals). However, due to the geographic location of the Tonga people, many sources pertained to the group in Zambia and not in Zimbabwe. Moreover, there was a sufficient amount of general information, but a lack of demographics and statistics both historically and currently.

Sources

  1. Gambahaya, Z., & Muhwati, I. (2010). Tonga orature as historical record: An Afrocentric exegesis of the dialectics between African Human Factor Agency and the European enslavement of place. Journal of Black Studies, 41(2), 320–337. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934709351661
  2. Matanzima, J., & Marowa, I. (2022). Human–Wildlife conflict and precarious livelihoods of the Tonga-speaking people of north-western Zimbabwe. In Springer Geography (pp. 107–122). Springer International Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94800-9_6
  3. Mashingaidze, T. M. (2013). Beyond the kariba dam induced displacements: The zimbabwean tonga’s struggles for restitution, 1990s–2000s. International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, 20(3), 381–404. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718115-02003003
  4. Muderedzi, J., & Ingstad, B. (2011). Disability and social suffering in Zimbabwe. In Disability and poverty (pp. 171–188). Policy Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781847428851.003.0010
  5. Mumpande, I., & Barnes, L. (2020). The revitalisation of the Tonga language in Zimbabwe: The strategies. Language Matters, 51(3), 43–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/10228195.2020.1839122
  6. National African Language Resource Center & Indiana University. (n.d.). Tonga .
  7. Ngandini, P. (2016, November 1). The marginalisation of Tonga in the education system in Zimbabwe. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/22593
  8. Serpell, N. (2020, July 22). Learning from the Kariba Dam. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/22/magazine/zambia-kariba-dam.html
  9. ReliefWeb (n.d.). Zambia-Zimbabwe: The Tonga – Left high and dry – Zambia. (n.d.). Retrieved  September 28, 2022, from https://reliefweb.int/report/zambia/zambia-zimbabwe-tonga-left-high-and-dry