With associations and societies based on a plethora of identities, Bulawayo provides an important case study for historians of urban ethnicity and nationalism in Zimbabwe. Apart from being one of the first colonial cities, Bulawayo emerged as a rich mosaic of different ethnic groups (Shona and their subgroups, Ndebele, Kalanga, Venda, Sotho and others); its inhabitants also came from different countries including Northern Rhodesia, Congo and Nyasaland and from varied social and cultural backgrounds. Because of its multi-ethnic composition, combined with identities such as trade unions, burial societies and sporting clubs, the city's history illuminates the way in which one of these prominent identities, ethnicity, related with another rising identity of the mid-1950s, nationalism.
Economically, Bulawayo was a major employment centre, boasting the headquarters of the Rhodesian Railways, plus numerous, small but viable, gold mines that attracted labourers from beyond Southern Rhodesia. Bulawayo was also a temporary stopover for Central African labourers trekking to the better-paid industries in South Africa, though some of them never reached their intended destinations and settled permanently in Bulawayo. Because of its industrial infrastructure, it attracted and raised a generation of young men from different ethnic groups, some of whom, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, became prominent intellectuals in tertiary and government institutions, important trade unionists and leaders of active political associations, recreational organizations and pressure groups. Among them were key figures in the first significant African nationalist political party, the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (ANC), which emerged in 1957.
This essay argues that, despite the town's situation in an Ndebele area of the country, there were more Shona political and civic leaders in the city than Ndebele and that by virtue of their exposure to the mixed character of the city, key figures in ethnic associations were at the same time committed cosmopolitans who mixed with others in their workplaces and in varied non-ethnic platforms.
The period studied, 1950 to 1963, marks several important transitions in Zimbabwean politics. Beginning in 1950 highlights the evolution of African social and political thought both before the short-lived Federation of Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland (established in 1953) and thereafter. The year 1963 is an appropriate cut-off for two reasons. First, politically it is a transitional period in white politics, marking the shift from the United Federal Party to the Rhodesian Front, which won elections in 1962, a year before the demise of the Federation. Second, for Africans, the first and most significant split in nationalist leadership occurred in 1963 with the formation of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), a breakaway group from the Zimbabwe African Peoples' Union (ZAPU). The period also saw an increased African permanency in town along with a commensurate increase in African participation in urban politics through ethnic associations, Advisory Boards and the nationalist movement.
The relationship between ethnicity and nationalism is not straightforward. It is problematic in part because of the popular, but erroneous, perception that these identities are either polar opposites or successors to each other. The notion that ethnicity was inimical to nationalism was shared by most African nationalist elites of the 1960s and by those of the present, both of whom have condemned it as an outmoded and parochial attachment to tribe that ought to have been swept away with the rise of African nationalism. Writing in praise of urban nationalism, Ndabaningi Sithole, once co-leader of ZAPU and later first ZANU president, summarizes this belief succinctly: ‘African tribalism was on the way out as a result of the onslaught of industrialism, and the writing on the wall read, “From tribalism – what's next? Of course, African nationalism”’.Footnote 1 Lampooning ‘tribalism’ as a precolonial relic, Sithole argued:
fundamentally, the tribal concept arose out of a common need of a group of people who had a common goal. Since this common need was no longer there, and since a new era of common interests had been created by the colonization of Africa, a new common goal was formulated and nationalism was the expression of that goal.Footnote 2
Sithole's argument summarizes a dominant political school in Zimbabwe today which casts most ethnic expression as a form of tribalism that retards nationalism.
This paper will argue that the naïveté of this assumption arises from a failure to distinguish ethnicity from tribalism. Whereas (political) tribalism is normally the mobilization of ethnically conscious people to ferment political enmity and disunity between ethnic ‘others’ to the detriment of nationalism, ethnicity, its variant, is that capacity in people to classify themselves as social ‘others’. In defining itself, an ethnic community is more inward-looking than a political tribe.Footnote 3 Ethnic groups do not exist primarily as political institutions to fight off their opponents, but to preserve their cultural artefacts, their traditions and that which they imagine as the stuff from which their group is made. In this endeavour, ethnic groups do not always stand as opponents to the development of a nation, but instead may complement efforts at developing an inclusive nation. This analysis of the way that ethnicity and nationalism have fed into each other over a period of time is the central concern of this paper. I will argue that in Zimbabwe during this period, ethnicity was not essentially pitted against nationalism. The case study of Bulawayo will show that ethnicity provided precolonial heroes for nationalists, platforms for political mobilization, and monuments that nationalists were able to turn into national symbols. Moreover, ethnic groups and related associations provided local expressions of anti-colonial discontent. Thus, during this period, ethnicity co-existed with and worked to the benefit of nationalism.
Despite the importance of both ethnicity and nationalism, current Zimbabwean historiography has been relatively silent in its analysis of their relationship. Most scholars who wrote after Zimbabwe's independence limited their analysis of nationalism to the war of liberation (1966 to 1979). Their focus on the contradictions between nationalist parties and personalities,Footnote 4 the rape of women under the shadow of war,Footnote 5 the appeal to African religion for mass mobilization,Footnote 6 the role of the church in the liberation war,Footnote 7 and the nationalists' methods of mass mobilization and recruitmentFootnote 8 all produced a critical review of wartime politics, but not necessarily a more illuminating understanding of nationalism itself.Footnote 9 Moreover, most of these works were on Mashonaland and Midlands, which left Matabeleland untouched. This focus on the war came at the expense of analysing the social history of nationalism before the war, and has led indirectly to the belief that nationalism was synonymous with the violent liberation struggle. In fact, nationalism was not the fight for independence but rather the ideology, the rationale and the spirit behind those political movements against colonialism. The fight for independence was, in part, simply a manifestation of nationalism.
Recent work has transcended some of these limitations by focusing on the development of nationalism in specific areas of Zimbabwe. Terence Ranger has tried to bring in aspects of the history of rural nationalism in Matabeleland by demonstrating the importance of Mwali worship in the emergence, legitimation and mobilization of nationalist sentiment in the Matopos.Footnote 10 Jocelyn Alexander, JoAnn McGregor and Terence Ranger did a similar analysis of the Shangani in which they unveiled the conflict between evictees from Filabusi and the Shangani originals.Footnote 11 The former made up the bulk of the ‘proto-nationalists’ of the African National Voice Association who were bitter about their eviction from Filabusi.Footnote 12 By that time, these authors argued, the Matabeleland Home Society (MHS), which had a narrower ethnic and regional vision than the more ‘populist’ body, the ‘Voice’, had ‘faded away’ and its leader Siphambaniso Manyoba died in 1952.Footnote 13 Whilst it could be true of the Shangani that ethnic associations were losing importance to more broad-based organizations,Footnote 14 it is not true of Bulawayo where such associations were strong and co-existed with and complemented nationalism. These scholars are, however, correct in their assertion that the ‘Voice’ instilled in the Shangani people some key nationalist ideas and provided leaders who later joined the nationalist movements of the late 1950s,Footnote 15 in a situation parallel to that in Bulawayo.
Alexander and others also briefly trace how the Shangani people, evictees and originals, made places like Pupu appeal to both the Ndebele and non-Ndebele by celebrating the last Lobengula – British South Africa Company battle and at the same time accepting its sacredness as the shrine of the original inhabitants (Tonga, Rozvi and Shangwe), who were mainly non-Ndebele. Pupu became an area where ‘differences of ethnicity and ideology could be synthesised’.Footnote 16 This is an important point, but nonetheless these authors fail to trace the specific ways in which ethnicity co-existed with and complemented nationalism in this region.
A COSMOPOLITAN CITY: CLUBS, SOCIETIES AND UNIONS IN BULAWAYO TO 1950
In the period before 1950, the numerous non-ethnic associations in Bulawayo lacked a coherent focus. Although some of these organizations championed African causes, they were not well organized in their articulation of these problems and had neither effective leadership nor a nationalist ideology that might have helped to overcome the forces that divided them. Nonetheless, these organizations prepared the groundwork for later territory-wide nationalist movements in that they inculcated a widespread culture of activism in the African community.
Inclusive organizations such as trade unions were undoubtedly important, especially from the 1920s. By 1929, the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU) under Charles Mzingeli, Masotsha Ndlovu and Job Dumbutshena had already popularized itself in both urban and rural Matabeleland, especially in the mining areas. The ICU was not exclusively an urban labour movement speaking against poor housing, low wages and poor working conditions;Footnote 17 it also delved into many non-labour-related and rural matters such as land shortage, racial discrimination, the violence of native commissioners and other issues.Footnote 18 This duality may have responded to the needs of contemporary urban Africans, still steeped in both rural agrarian and urban industrial worlds. It also reflected colonial law that defined urban space as exclusively European.Footnote 19
Suspicious of its activities, the government closely monitored the ICU, intimidating its leaders and labelling them communists; moreover, the government formed a parallel structure to express ‘African’ opinion: the Native Welfare Societies. This all limited the ICU's appeal until it collapsed in the mid-1930s.Footnote 20 From the 1940s, however, the situation was changing. Africans were becoming more permanent urban residentsFootnote 21 and trade unionism had a resurgence. From the mid- to the late 1940s, the ICU, under Mzingeli tried to revive itself into a single Reformed ICU, mainly based in Salisbury. It co-existed with two new organizations, the Federation of Bulawayo African Trade Unions under Jasper Savanhu and the British African Workers Voice AssociationFootnote 22 which, under the leadership of Benjamin Burombo, organized the 1948 strikes.Footnote 23 While this strike action revealed the high level of worker frustration in the absence of a united leadership, its goals were mainly limited to the demand for higher wages and fairer dispute resolution between employee and employer, and it did not reflect a high level of union organization.Footnote 24
These early ethnically diverse organizations accomplished little because of their general ineptness, power-hungry leadership, diverse class interests and personality differences.Footnote 25 There was also little logistical support from the Union of South Africa, from which the idea of trade unionism had been imported.Footnote 26 However, such organizations helped to promote broader urban identities. Nationalist writer Lawrence Vambe credited these trade unions with breaking down ethnic loyalties: they ‘assailed, as no black person had done before, all forms of tribalism and those at the head of burial societies and other tribal groupings’.Footnote 27 He viewed these early trade unionists (Dumbutshena, Mzingeli and Masotsha Ndlovu) as epitomizing nationalism. They ‘stand out as key figures in laying the foundation of modern African nationalism in Zimbabwe’; their ICU was ‘a militant organization embracing all the characteristics of a truly nationalist movement, transcending tribal differences, and supplanting them with the concept of a common African crusade against white economic, political and racial supremacy. This approach was new and unique’.Footnote 28
Vambe's defence of fallen heroes must be appreciated, especially since his book was produced when nationalism faced a leadership crisis. In the mid-1970s, most African leaders were divided, ideologically confused and power-hungry. In this collective disillusionment, intellectuals such as Vambe, feeling betrayed by contemporary nationalists, overstated the contribution of the ICU. In fact, by the mid-1950s, the popularity of the Reformed ICU under Mzingeli had greatly declined. He was not able to link the grievances of urban workers with their family problems in the rural areas. In opposition to him rose the City Youth League in Salisbury, which in 1957 combined with the old ANC based mainly in Bulawayo to form the Southern Rhodesia ANC.Footnote 29 Unlike their predecessors, the political organizations of the late 1950s were less concerned with wages and employment than with the political project of constructing a nation. Zimbabwean nationalism was not therefore strictly a brainchild of trade unionists, as Vambe alleges, though it benefited from the contributions of some leaders of trade unions – such as Joshua Nkomo (from the Railways African Workers' Union), Jason Moyo (from the Artisans Union) and Francis Nehwati (Municipal Workers' Union) – and though, at times, the new ANC operated from the offices of the Southern Rhodesia Trade Union Congress (SRTUC) led by Nkomo.Footnote 30
Bulawayo also had many burial societies. Some of them served the interests of existing ethnic groups (e.g. the Manyika Burial Society or the Malubale Burial Society); some mirrored regional identities in formation, such as the Mashonaland United Burial Society or even smaller units like the district of origin, such as the Mhondoro Reserve Burial Society and the Dotito Mount Darwin Burial Society. Others expressed territorial and geographical loyalties, such as the Nyasaland Burial Society. Still others, like the Young Fort Victoria Burial Society, were both regional and generational.
There were also sporting and recreational clubs. They ranged from those drawing membership from an ethnic constituency (the Manyika Boxing Club that existed from as early as the 1920s),Footnote 31 to others with a multi-ethnic image, despite struggles for leadership positions that mirrored ethnic loyalties. To this group belonged the Bulawayo Football Association, often controlled by Shona people, with a few Ndebele in the upper ranks.Footnote 32 Other organizations, however, were truly non-ethnic, including the African Ballroom Dancing Club and the Rhodesian Dancing Clubs.Footnote 33
As for so-called ‘Alien’ Africans (those from other countries), they were not particularly united, but were beginning to be organized in the late 1940s. Because of rising anti-colonial protests in their original countries, they were beginning to form strong diasporic ‘nationalistic’ groups whose meetings and public views were often articulated in the African press. By 1955, the Nyasaland ANC was listed as one of the nine most robust associations in Bulawayo.Footnote 34 Evidence shows that aspiring Zimbabwean nationalists usually attended Nyasaland ANC meetings as both speakers and delegates before the formation of the new Southern Rhodesian ANC.Footnote 35 Foreigners were also organized through other groups, including the Northern Rhodesian Chiefs Association, the Barotse Association, Nyasaland Community representatives, and the Club dos Indegenas da Republic Portuguesa, which comprised leaders of various ethnic and communal groups from outside the territory who tried to maintain contacts with their original homes. These leaders helped to settle disputes between their members, resolve family quarrels and enforce ‘tribal’ custom amongst their members. They also met government representatives from their countries when they visited Bulawayo and acted as spokespersons before the Southern Rhodesian authorities.Footnote 36
Notwithstanding the proliferation of associations, some of which were non-ethnic such as the dancing clubs, sporting associations, territorial organizations, trade unions and others mentioned above, ethnic associations were also on the increase in Bulawayo. Before 1950, the most common groups were the Matabeleland Home Society (MHS), the Kalanga Cultural Society (KCS) formed in 1946 and the Manyika Society. In the 1950s, they were increasing rapidly in number and becoming more organized, perhaps because of advancing African urbanization.
CONCEPTUALIZING NATIONALISM IN THE EARLY AND MID-1950SFootnote 37
Southern Rhodesians of the early 1950s might not have defined themselves as nationalists, nor had they imagined a named nation and its social boundaries. They were not technically Zimbabweans. They had many identities that at times fed into each other, including those based on ethnicity, region, gender and trade union membership. In town, the colonial economy further divided Africans by class. In the early 1950s there was a growing middle class composed of highly qualified teachers, clerks and football referees, social workers, artisans/cabinet makers and shop owners. Some of them, especially Advisory Board members, were closely monitored by the colonial administration.Footnote 38 Although members of the middle class were better paid than other Africans, they also had complaints, particularly lower pay than white workmates. In addition, some African graduates were underemployed, and at times supervised by untrained white personnel.Footnote 39
Perhaps most importantly, black urban elites lacked political power, which made them identify more with the poor African masses than with their rulers. Because their intellectual position and experiences afforded them a more privileged and more informed interpretation of current political affairs, they became an African ‘think tank’, publicizing their views in the African-edited newspapers. Political debates in these publications, the Bantu Mirror and the African Home News, showed an intelligent grasp of colonial problems, which was important to emerging nationalist ideology.Footnote 40 Even the Chief Native Commissioner (CNC), though doubtful that Africans would mature from their ‘adherence to tribal custom’, admitted that by 1956 there was ‘a growing nationalism among Africans’.Footnote 41
By the mid-1950s, Africans had a broader understanding of racial segregation, thanks to expanded Western education, the African press and informal political forums at beer drinking sessions. This popular understanding of colonial injustices cemented the concept of ‘blackness’, creating the notion of ‘the African’ as an oppressed ‘other’ who had to move beyond the limits of ethnic loyalties to fight a collective cause.Footnote 42 Since colonial injustices were racially motivated, it is not surprising that African nationalism became, to some degree, racially construed. According to Ndabaningi Sithole, African nationalism was ‘a political feeling seeking relentlessly to eliminate eurocracy by supplanting it with afrocracy … an effective instrument of establishing African rule'.Footnote 43
Racially construed black nationalism invited its own opponent, white nationalism, an alternative official nationalism of the Rhodesian Front, which I would call ‘Rhodesianism’. Radical Rhodesians like Cliff Pocket saw African nationalism as an illegitimate movement seeking a violent ‘total surrender of one race to another’ instead of respecting the status quo.Footnote 44 Moderate Rhodesians of the United Federal Party believed in racial partnership, an undefined phenomenon which was thought to mean that all inhabitants of Southern Rhodesia were identified primarily as ‘Rhodesians’, retaining their racial identities and the positive aspects of their cultures and adopting English as the official language of the Rhodesian nation.Footnote 45 To many Africans, however, this quasi-racial partnership was meaningless and would not change the political situation. Its major supporters, the United Federal Party and the non-racial forum the Capricorn Society, collapsed with the dissolution of the Federation in 1963.
Nationalist ideas were also generated from African participation in international politics. In the early 1940s, some Africans fought against Germany on the side of the Allied powers in the Second World War. The bloody wartime killings of Europeans by other Europeans exposed to them the barbaric side of their supposed superiors, further eroding the myth of ‘white superiority’. A decade later, Nkomo and Savanhu travelled to England for the Federation talks.Footnote 46 For the first time, they engaged in international discussions about the future of their country. The publicity surrounding these talks contributed to Nkomo's developing reputation as one of the most important budding nationalist leaders.
At home in the early 1950s, anti-Federation talks were creating a broad African political consensus, though there was not yet a viable political party. African leaders in Bulawayo tried to unite major social and political organizations into a Convention, but, despite significant popular opposition to the federal project, they were unsuccessful because of personality differences. Nkomo and others urged fellow Africans to boycott beer halls as a protest against the proposed Federation of the two Rhodesias and Nyasaland, believing that Federation would discourage the rise of nationalism.Footnote 47 They also suspected that the Federation would harden colonial control by entrenching white rule, countering the spirit of decolonization that was developing across Africa. They also feared that this proposal was being imposed against the wishes of the Africans and that it would erode the little authority that ethnically based leaders exercised over their people.Footnote 48
African opponents of Federation were justified in their fears. Roy Welensky, the premier of the Federation, admitted that its major political objective was to halt emergent African nationalism. Federation existed ‘to inject stability into Central Africa and to contain this disruptive movement’, those ‘forces of African racialism [which] were on the move’.Footnote 49 By entrenching European power and turning a blind eye to African political aspirations, the architects of the Federation were underscoring racial divisions in the country. Such attitudes, in combination with new racially biased legislation, helped to increase the gap between black and white, a gap that played to the advantage of nationalism.
Another notable feature of the 1950s was the increasing importance of the precolonial era in popular memory. By appealing to precolonial traditions, modern African nationalism obtained its much-needed legitimacy. With the increase in ethnically based cultural societies in the 1950s, mostly responding to cultural decay in Bulawayo, Africans sought to discover their roots. Ethnic associations such as the MHS, the Sons of Mashonaland Cultural Society (MCS), the KCS, and many ‘Alien’Footnote 50 societies appointed respectable elders from their rural areas as official ‘tribal’ historians. Most of these ‘historians’, having lived through and witnessed the last years of their precolonial states, and some having fought against colonization in the 1890s, became eminent heroes for the urbanized dwellers who sought to re-traditionalize themselves. The MHS, for instance, used Ginyilitshe Hlabangana, an old Ndebele imbongi (poet) who had served under the Ndebele King Lobengula. As a respected elder, he played a part in the attempt of the MHS to regionalize Ndebele identity from the mid-1940s. He also helped revive the notion of King Mzilikazi and Lobengula as Ndebele heroes. He became the official MHS adviser, gracing major Ndebele events.Footnote 51 Showing their respect to precolonial culture, nationalists made frequent visits to the graves of Mzilikazi in the Matopos and that of the heroine Lozikeyi (Lobengula's senior wife) in Nkosikazi, Matabeleland, in the late 1950s. Nationalists believed that by frequenting the graves of these local heroes and heroines, they would receive new energy and courage to fight colonialism. By the late 1950s, these graves had been transformed from artefacts for Ndebele ethnicity into popular national monuments.
ETHNICITY AND NATIONALISM IN INFORMAL ASSOCIATIONS AND SOCIETIES, 1950–1963
During this period of emerging nationalism in Bulawayo, ethnicity and nationalism co-existed, sometimes as complementary identities. Whilst members of ethnic groups valued these identities, they were not necessarily inimical to nationalism. When nationalists denounced ‘tribalism’, they did not advocate the abolition of ethnic societies. Some nationalists even retained their membership of such associations. Indeed, for some ethnic groups, identifying with nationalism helped to enhance their pride and increase their popular legitimacy and recognition. Nonetheless, architects of nationalism were also able to take advantage of the divisions between ethnic groups to assert a broader, overarching Zimbabwean identity.
The history of Bulawayo's three main ethnic associations – the MHS, MCS and KCS – clearly demonstrates the ways that advocates of nationalism drew from the language, culture and reinterpreted histories of the country's largest ethnic groups. The MHS, founded around 1923 or earlier,Footnote 52 championed the cause of the Ndebele as an ethnic group. It existed to secure ‘mutual understanding and unity of action among the Matabele people’; to foster Ndebele comradeship; ‘to exhort, guide and lead the Matabele people in the ways of purity, peaceful advancement, good and right living in their homes, in urban and rural areas’; and ‘to assist the Matabele people in representing them to the Government in all matters concerning them and their welfare in urban and rural areas’.Footnote 53 During the 1940s, the group was concerned with a number of key cultural issues, particularly lobbying for a royal Induna Enkulu (paramount chief), encouraging pilgrimages to Entumbane (the burial place of Mzilikazi)Footnote 54 and fostering debate about the morality of Ndebele women.Footnote 55 By the late 1940s and early 1950s, in response to a sharp drop in membershipFootnote 56 caused by poor financial accountabilityFootnote 57 and its pro-royalist leanings, the MHS tried to increase membership by redefining ‘Ndebele’ as a regional identity and initiating debates on de-stocking and the Land Husbandry Act, which affected all people in Matabeleland (and indeed all of Southern Rhodesia), both urban and rural, regardless of ethnic affiliation. For the first time, being Ndebele became synonymous with ‘belonging to Matabeleland’, a more democratized, regionalized identity, that included Kalanga, Venda, Tonga and other ethnic groups from the region. Ndebele history also got a new interpretation, with Ndebele kings (Mzilikazi and Lobengula) idolized, and tales of their precolonial violence banished from the new Ndebele oral traditions. For the first time, the two were portrayed as nationalists who ‘stood against tribal purity’.Footnote 58 In the interests of Ndebele regionalism, Kalanga became ‘Mandebeles by “nationalization” and they should not claim a separate language from that spoken by Amandebele’.Footnote 59 Nationalist historians further codified this glorification of precolonial heroes.Footnote 60 With the forming of the first African nationalist party, the ANC, Ndebele became the official language of nationalism in Bulawayo.
Apart from broadening Ndebele identity, long-serving associations such as the MHS were readily available platforms, usually hijacked by early nationalists who, in the absence of an effective political party, took advantage of their membership in such groups to discuss political ideas. At one MHS meeting in 1955, Joshua Nkomo and Peter Kumalo, though fearing the presence of colonial spies, found a ready audience before whom they made strong remarks about the unfair annexation of the country by the Europeans.Footnote 61 Nkomo used the MHS meetings to stress his arguments against the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland,Footnote 62 resulting in his election to represent Africans at the Federation talks in London.Footnote 63 Common urban problems and harsh colonial legislation such as the Land Husbandry Act were also discussed at MHS meetings.Footnote 64 Because of the increasing significance of ethnically based societies in debating broader issues in the 1950s, the Chief Native Commissioner's 1956 report alluded to ‘a growing nationalism among Africans’.Footnote 65 Before 1957, however, Africans were still divided into many associations, with leaders sometimes clashing over personality differences that left them unable to unite.Footnote 66 The first broad nationalist party, the ANC, only emerged in 1957.
Urban nationalism also benefited from the internal divisions within various ethnic groups. Since such divisions weakened these organizations, there was less likelihood of regional ethnic blocks turning into dominant political ‘tribes’ with the power to subvert nationalism. Although the regional initiative of the MHS was created to benefit Ndebele by subjecting weaker ethnic groups to a public Ndebele image and culture, this regionalized identity-in-formation had its own challenges. It annoyed the Ndebele royalty. Members of the royal family thought that by broadening its agenda, the MHS vulgarized Ndebele identity and misrepresented their affairs. They later split and formed their own Sons of Mzilikazi Home Society, which often clashed with the MHS on interpretations of Ndebele culture.Footnote 67 There was also a rise in Kalanga ethnic activism in Bulawayo, which sought urban social space and to free its advocates from a domineering Ndebele public image.Footnote 68 Kalanga resurgence in the 1950s and early 1960s depleted MHS membership in Bulawayo,Footnote 69 further weakening possible Ndebele regionalism, to the benefit of nationalism. Particularly undermining a regional Ndebele identity were Kalanga attempts to reconstruct history by emphasizing a populist, counter-Ndebele narrative that stressed the ‘Maswina’ (Shona) origin of the Kalanga. To this effort, some Ndebele reacted by giving an ‘Ndebelecized’ version of the Kalanga past with a view to countering this ‘rebel’ history. Reporting one such Kalanga Society meeting he attended, one Ndebele regional activist said:
At their meeting held last Sunday morning at the Stanley Hall strange things were said against the Matabele speaking people. Some of the speakers went so far as to say that the Kalanga were an offshoot of the ‘Maswina’ and that therefore the Kalanga and the ‘Maswina’ were one people. I was annoyed at some of the things said there because being a Mndebele and knowing the truth about the history of the Kalanga from my grandfather, I saw that the real object was to annoy me, in particular, because it seems as if most of what was said there was directed to me. I was also surprised to see present at this meeting Mr. Male, Mr. Lazarus Nkala and Mr. W. Ngwenya. When are these young men going to learn that the Matabele and the Kalanga are one group, though they are divided into smaller unimportant sections, namely Nguni, Sutu, Kalanga, Lilima, Nanzwa, BaNyai and so on the same way as the ‘Maswina’ are divided into smaller sections such as the Karanga, Mazezuru, Mahungwe, Manyika, Korekore, and so on. Is Mr. Moyo now going to represent the Kalanga workers or all of us as he is doing? I suggest that Mr. Moyo should resign at once.Footnote 70
Kalanga critics also suggested that the headquarters of KCS should be in Plumtree rather than Bulawayo and that Kalanga should stop teaching their culture in a ‘foreign land’,Footnote 71 confirming their vision of Bulawayo as an Ndebele space. Interestingly, the editors who queried Jason Moyo's nationalism because of his leadership of the Kalanga Society never queried Joshua Nkomo's nationalism, though he was a staunch member of the MHS. Despite all this, Kalanga celebrated this ethnic activism as a breakthrough against the inferiority complex created by Ndebele in the precolonial period and perpetuated by current zansi chiefs, colonial administrators and Ndebele cultural activists.Footnote 72 Because efforts to convince some Kalanga to merge into a regional Ndebele network were not so successful, Ndebele–Kalanga interactions remained loosely defined, but competitive, until the mid-1960s.
The situation was similar with the Shona in Bulawayo. They had been active there before the 1920s and constituted a larger proportion of Bulawayo's early non-Matabeleland labourers.Footnote 73 Although the Shona were very influential and often held lucrative jobs, they were not well co-ordinated and had no strong cultural society to represent their collective needs, especially before 1950. In the 1950s, the MHS was urging urban Ndebele to be more assertive and to consider themselves as permanent urban dwellers with property rights and security of tenure,Footnote 74 something that was not the case earlier. Responding to their internal division and to the rise of Ndebele regional power, in 1952 the Shona formed a Sons of Mashonaland Cultural Society (MCS), a rival movement to the MHS that existed, according to Joseph Msika, ‘to interpret the soul of the Mashonas’,Footnote 75 suggesting a revival of Shona culture. The Shona leaders included men who became ‘nationalist leaders’ such as Simon Mzenda, Joseph Msika, Clement Muchachi,Footnote 76 and other members who were on the Bulawayo African Advisory Board, including Patrick Rubatika, J. Vera, T. Z. Chigumira, James Chimsoro, D. A. Masunda and many other Shona dignitaries. The 100 leaders who gathered at their 1954 conference stressed the need to ‘appreciate all that is noble in all that is Shona’ and spoke of the ‘necessity of developing latent powers amongst the Mashona and the African people generally’.Footnote 77 Their preponderance in city politics must have been one of the manifestations of their ‘latent’ powers. The MCS, also known as the Monomotapa Offspring Society by 1957, was a brainchild of Shona elites, some of whom were nationalists. By 1957, it boasted a regular membership of 300 people in Bulawayo, and often generated resources by lending money to African business people.Footnote 78
Though African nationalists publicly denied ‘tribalism’, which they believed to be an unreasonable hatred of other ethnic groups, they were not against ‘ethnicity’ which they christened a ‘healthy patriotism’ helping to preserve ‘the bit that is left of our customs’,Footnote 79 or saw as a ‘natural cultural movement which had no quarrel with people of other ethnic groups’.Footnote 80 One could double as an ethnic activist and a nationalist. The members of the MHS considered both nationalism and the preservation of Ndebele ethnicity equally important. Thus, it is understandable why, at the height of nationalist unity in 1960, Stephen Nkomo, the chairperson of the Bulawayo National Democratic Party (NDP – a successor to the ANC) and brother to NDP President Joshua Nkomo, resigned from its leadership in favour of the presidency of the MHS. Asked about his resignation in favour of a ‘tribal society’, he asserted that he still believed in the philosophy and policy of the NDP and that the MHS was not anti-nationalist, but simply wanted to ‘foster and preserve the language, culture and traditions of the Amandebele’.Footnote 81 Influential Shona leaders in Bulawayo also believed in the healthy co-existence of ethnic groups and nationalism. The early founders of the MCS, although acclaimed nationalists, remained active members and patrons of the Society. Though Msika was an executive member of the NDP, he remained an active patron of the MCS. When he was released from political detention in 1960, the Society quickly organized a welcome party for him and other detainees, stressing that Msika needed a special reception as he was the chairman of the MCS and would remain so since he was now back.Footnote 82 This co-existence of ethnic groups and nationalism also explains the survival of the MHS and its insistence, as late as June 1963, that it would not disband.Footnote 83
Identifying with nationalism brought pride to certain ethnic groups instead of threatening their sectarian interests. The Kalanga, for instance, did not mind their ethnic identity co-existing with nationalism because nationalism promoted a Kalanga public image. This ethnic attachment was not necessarily political tribalism, but a yearning for recognition. Kalanga intellectuals and ordinary people in Bulawayo, long desiring a more public Kalanga space, found comfort in the fact that the top leaders of the NDP (such as Nkomo, Moyo, Silundika and Lazarus Nkala) were Kalanga. Nationalism therefore unwittingly complemented Kalanga ethnicity rather than conflicting with it. Commenting on the election of three Kalanga men to lead the NDP, Kalangas expressed their excitement in the Bantu Mirror. This article, originally written in Kalanga reads:
This election makes us Kalanga very happy as these men were elected to lead this party which has a membership of more than 100,000 people, most of whom are Kalanga. The leader of the party Joshua Nkomo is currently in London. His deputy, George Silundika, is a Kalanga from Nope. Another Kalanga man elected is Mr. Jason Moyo from Maphaneni. Joshua Nkomo also comes from Maphaneni.Footnote 84
Despite this picture of nationalism and ethnicity complementing each other, there were instances of conflict between these identities. A particularly important instance was the debate around the naming of the imagined nation, Zimbabwe. As Ndebele identity was becoming regionalized in the 1950s, members of this still-weak regional bloc began to lobby other nationalists to recognize its memorial monuments. At a public meeting of the NDP, one of its leaders suggested that the name of the country might change to Zimbabwe when their party had subdued the colonial government. Zimbabwe was a Shona name, derived from the Great Zimbabwe, an early Shona state credited as the cradle of Shona civilization. The MHS, suspecting Shona bias, condemned the suggestion as ‘promoting tribal feelings’. Fearing for the diminution of the Matopos, an important Ndebele monument, they instead advocated holding important political meetings in the Matopo Hills, not at Great Zimbabwe, and proposed that the nation be called Matopo. The Matopo Hills glorified a predominantly Ndebele and Kalanga religious and political culture dating from the pre-colony. About sixty years earlier, an indaba (political meeting) between Rhodes and Ndebele leaders held in the Matopos had ended the 1896 wars.Footnote 85 In the eyes of the MHS, the Matopos saved the country. From the early 1950s, the Matopos were no longer solely for local cultural societies. Bulawayo nationalists made frequent visits to the hills to consult their gods about the problems of their country.Footnote 86 The area was a sacred monument. ‘The Matopos’, explained Mbobo, ‘are both historically and traditionally of great significance and spiritual importance and attempts to belittle it would be seriously resisted by all in Matabeleland’.Footnote 87 The debate about the Matopos in 1960 was therefore partly regionalist and partly nationalist. The advocates of ‘Matopo’ were unsuccessful in their lobby, but the point had been made: that nationalism had to treat regional identities with caution, in the interest of nationalism. Had African political leaders addressed these concerns and perhaps pacified the MHS, the country's fragile nationalism might have been strengthened.
NATIONALISM, THE AFRICAN ADVISORY BOARDS AND TENANTS' ASSOCIATIONS, 1950–1963
In addition to ethnic associations, the politics of representation in urban administration also provide insight into both ethnicity and nationalism. The 1929 fights between Shona and predominantly Ndebele people caught urban administrators unawares and demonstrated the need to involve Africans in urban administration. From this time the idea of having ‘Native Advisory Boards’ was mooted. However, it was only with the enactment of the African (Urban Areas) Accommodation and Registration Act of 1946 that Urban Councils were empowered to establish African Advisory Boards.Footnote 88 This legislation was imported from South Africa where it had been introduced earlier.Footnote 89 In practice, Bulawayo already had such boards, which were created in 1940; but they only became effective in the 1950s.Footnote 90 Advisory Board members acted as a link between Africans and the white councillors. While Board members usually consulted the people and conveyed their wishes to the councillors,Footnote 91 they were also colonial mouthpieces, taking council decisions to the Africans.
In the 1950s, Advisory Board membership was contested mainly amongst African business and intellectual elites.Footnote 92 As an emerging elite class, their wealth and social exposure counted in securing the vote. However, sources show clearly that election also depended heavily on ethnic loyalties, as groups competed for control of social and political space in town.Footnote 93 Of the Advisory Board members whose two-year terms expired in December 1953, more than half were Shona (D. K. Mzenda, J. B. Patsika, S. V. Mzenda, D. A. Masunda and W. Ngwenya) and almost half were Kalanga (Amos Mazibisa, Juba, Ndhlovu and Grey Bango), with one Fingo, Charleton Ngcebetsha.Footnote 94 In response to this Shona domination, the usually pro-Ndebele newspaper, the African Home News, conducted voter education, with the result that in the 1953–4 Board elections, there were three new representatives from Matabeleland. They were J. Z. Moyo (Kalanga) and Lazarus Nkala (KCS member), who both became ZAPU nationalists, and another T. K. Mtiba.Footnote 95 By 1957, the number of leaders from Matabeleland had increased, slowly replacing some of the Shona. However, they were divided between Ndebele and Kalanga.Footnote 96 Explaining this increase recently, Makhoba Khulube, a Kalanga activist and former Advisory Board member in the late 1950s said, ‘It had become a matter of voting for our own sons who understood our culture and traditions. There were so many capable people of Shona origin that we could not vote for because they did not represent Kalanga and Ndebele interests’.Footnote 97 Candidates had to make their ethnic positions clear or risk losing elections.Footnote 98 Taking advantage of the division between Kalanga and Ndebele, Shona Board members usually won the vote on crucial decisions. This leverage gave them the latitude for corruption through their power to recommend the issuing of loans and shop licences to upcoming Shona business persons, promoting Shona names for popular streets in order to perpetuate their history in Bulawayo and encouraging white councillors to favour Shona housing applicants.Footnote 99
Though most of the Advisory Board members were ethnic patriots, they also had other broader experiences that made them well-rounded urbanites. They served in various capacities as trade unionists, sports executives, business directors, urban school teachers, Native Department clerks, tenants' association leaders and members of international Christian movements. Some, such as Erick Tikili, were in touch with international Communists.Footnote 100 Their experiences gave them the liberty to use Boards as political platforms to articulate urban African discontent before nationalist parties were launched. Reflecting rising African political consciousness, they debated and tried to agitate for the overturning of some Council regulations such as the legislation against skokian (an African homebrewed alcoholic drink) and discussed issues of public accountability in the City Council.Footnote 101 They were therefore not solely on the Advisory Boards to serve sectional ethnic interests. P. J. Taylor, the Bulawayo Location Superintendent, was not far from the truth when he remarked:
To a small, politically active, section of the urban population, the urban Adv. Board [sic] has become recognised as a useful instrument, and one of considerable prestige value: a Govt-sanctioned [sic] platform on which leaders, without undue risk to themselves, can give a daring and spectacular performance as ‘representatives’ of their people. And the Board is increasingly becoming a one-way instrument of communication, a loudspeaker for militant Afr. [sic] leadership aimed at governing authority. Even as such it has its uses, provided we are prepared to see that, inspite of obvious abuses and irresponsibilities, the sentiments voiced by this elected minority are shared, in a less articulate but nonetheless real sense, shared by a very large number of people. In this sense and in this manner they do, indeed, represent as well as create and stimulate mass opinion.Footnote 102
With the rise of national political consciousness characteristic of the late 1950s, Advisory Board positions were politicized further, becoming theatres from which enthusiastic African nationalists questioned colonial power and lobbied for direct African representation in urban administration. Such broadened agendas no longer required the candidates of those Boards to be elected merely on the basis of ethnic affiliation. Barely a year after its formation, the ANC fielded candidates to contest the 1958 Bulawayo Advisory Board elections. It garnered majority support, having fielded among others prominent members of its executive.Footnote 103 This remained the general trend until 1964 when nationalists decided to boycott the Boards, opting for a more confrontational approach.Footnote 104 Colonial rulers were slow to realize the force of African opinion in the late 1950s, and the extent to which these new politicians had infiltrated the Advisory Boards. The Native Department viewed urban African politicians as unorganized ‘rabid, fanatical power-seeking’Footnote 105 and ‘tub-thumping traders in politics … , hurling invectives and insults against Europeans, … [and] issuing insults against any native who might take a different view’.Footnote 106 However, belated admission by local colonial authorities showed that the top colonial administrators were simply presenting official propaganda. Dr. Ashton, the Director of African Administration, made a telling comment on the Advisory Board:
For the first time, politics has entered local affairs in that several NDP leaders contested the Advisory Board with active Party support. About half of them were successful. At first they adopted an intransigent party line, impermeable to facts, but with experience and participation they gradually mellowed to a more constructive and practical approach.Footnote 107
The election in June 1962, saw a return of the Zimbabwe African People's Union, whose leaders often played a prominent part in Board matters. At times, especially just before the National Democratic Party was banned, discussions were inhibited and decisions influenced by political consideration and fear.Footnote 108
The debates held and recommendations made by the Boards between 1959 and 1964 show that African leaders never lost sight of their political mission. In a Bulawayo African Township (Makokoba) Advisory Board meeting dominated by leaders of the NDP such as Msika, Stephen Nkomo, Leonard Nkala, Mrs. S. M. Lesabe and Mutuma, the Board recommended without opposition that an NDP application for office space in Makokoba be granted.Footnote 109 A more serious debate by the Advisory Boards was about the use of the Ikwezi Club. The idea of the Ikwezi Club came up when European liquor was first introduced to Africans. It was a brainchild of African middle-class city dwellers who wanted ‘a quiet venue to drink and play games’.Footnote 110 The debate underpinned conflicts between rising African bourgeois class interests and popular nationalism whose support base was the African poor. The club was built from public funds in the 1950s, but unfortunately the constitution adopted by earlier Advisory Boards prohibited non-members from entering the facilities. It was solely for rich Africans dressing ‘smart’. Commoners and those of the middle class who failed to dress ‘respectably’ were not admitted. This exclusiveness became a source of conflict. One informant who was blocked from entering the tavern told the author:
There was a year when I went to Ikwezi. On arrival, I was told to wear a tie and not to carry a knobkerrie if I was to be allowed in. I never went back there again. They wanted smart gentlemen. They thought that smartly dressed men were non-violent, being gentlemen. But my view was that suits were unsuitable for beer drinking. Suits were for weddings and special occasions. The people complained to the Advisory Board and there the matter was solved. They ended up admitting everyone into Ikwezi.Footnote 111
The exclusive membership of Ikwezi opened critical debates for nationalists. Such debates reflected a range of dichotomies and conflicts: colonial urban policies versus nationalism, middle-class elitism versus popular ‘communalist’ nationalism, middle-class non-political elites versus middle-class political elites, colonial ideologies of individual respectability and dignity against the idea of public utility, and popular democracy versus private claims. Nationalists on the Advisory Boards felt duty-bound to defend their populist-oriented political consciences against other members of the Advisory Board such as Hlabangana, Mathe, Sidindi and others who wanted the Club to remain restrictive. With the coming of nationalists such as Joseph Msika, Madlela, Mguni, Sihwa, Lazarus Nkala and others onto the Boards, successful efforts were made to overturn the Ikwezi Club constitution. They argued that since the Club was built from public funds, access must be open to all without regard to dress or social status. Reinforcing a belief in popular rule characteristic of emerging nationalisms, Msika told the Board how people had demonstrated against the operation of the Club. As if to intimidate the advocates of the status quo, Msika warned that if the people's wishes were ignored, the elites would regret it.Footnote 112 The threats made a strong impact since they were directed at middle-class people who had just suffered severe attacks in the nationalist-orchestrated zhii (violent political) riots of July 1960 in which they lost property and income. Following their party line, and aware that matters might end in the hands of nationalists outside the Board, Msika suggested that decisions about the mode of behaviour in Ikwezi should be ‘left to the leaders of the people’.Footnote 113 Further evoking the politics of the public, Madlela stated that ‘much talk about being decent or not’ (a European creation) annoyed the African public and made them ‘think evil about the Ikwezi Club’. He reiterated that unless Ikwezi accepted the African public, the Club would remain a target of the people.Footnote 114
The debate about Ikwezi was as sensitive to the nationalists as it was to middle-class apolitical elites; but the politicians won the debate because of their threats and numerical strength on the Joint Advisory Board. It is clear, however, that nationalists did not want Ikwezi opened to the public simply from democratic sentiment. Rather, they wanted to use the Club as a relaxed venue to discuss politics.Footnote 115 There was a popular belief that the Club was built as a place to debate the political affairs of the country, but because of the restrictions imposed, it only benefited parties whose constituencies did not involve the majority of poor blacks.Footnote 116 Nationalists also believed that unrestricted access to Ikwezi would help their cause by reducing the divide between the middle class and the urban poor. This, African political leaders hoped, would create an undifferentiated mass of people identifying with nationalist politics.
From the start, the Advisory Board system was structured as a powerless institution. These Boards could only make recommendations to the City Council,Footnote 117 which was not legally bound to accept them. As Africans became more politically informed and restless, the Advisory Boards ceased to be respected as platforms for expressing African opinion. From the early 1950s, there was suspicion amongst some Africans that Advisory Boards were tools to serve colonial interests. Because of this suspicion, Tenants' or Residents' Associations were born as alternative, unofficial platforms to express African urban grievances. As early as 1951, one such association, the Barbourfields Tenants' Association had already begun to trouble the Director of Native Development for official recognition and to question the legitimacy of the Advisory Boards as representatives of urban Africans.Footnote 118 The Bulawayo administration refused to recognize its Constitution, fearing ‘the danger of its developing political tendencies, particularly as a number of those associated with it already have political affiliations’.Footnote 119 Some members of this association, such as Simon Mzenda, Msika and Jason Moyo, became leading nationalists. The Bulawayo African Township also had its Rent Payers' Association, a very popular group that attracted huge crowds at its meetings.Footnote 120 The group criticized the Council's failure to solve the urban accommodation crisis and contended that Advisory Boards were ‘never popular’ in Bulawayo as their members were merely ‘Yes men’ of the Europeans.Footnote 121 The Board members were aware of their own limitations and often sought public sympathy, explaining that their views were not being considered by the City Council.Footnote 122
The new Advisory Board members of the late 1950s and early 1960s,Footnote 123 unlike their earlier non-political counterparts, were largely leaders of the ANC, NDP and ZAPU with a sense of a wider political mission. They wanted a share of power as city councillors in the African locations,Footnote 124 perhaps as a pilot project to demonstrate the administrative capacity of Africans. In this mission, they had the support of the Leaseholders Associations, some of which directly petitioned the City Council to repeal the Advisory Boards and replace them with elected African councillors.Footnote 125 Fearing a possible take-over of Councils by nationalists, but at the same time careful not to appear obdurate, colonial rulers suggested that Bulawayo Africans be represented by a paltry four African councillors. This recommendation, rejected by nationalists, triggered new debates about democracy and African self-rule. Commenting on the proposal to have only four African councillors, Jason Moyo, a ZAPU national committee member and Advisory Board member, shouted that it was ‘thorough nonsense’. He reasoned, ‘How can the people in the majority be represented by 4 and those in the minority by 16? The time [has] come for all people to be fully represented'. Quoting a number of African countries where the people were ‘fully represented’, he argued that Africans in Zimbabwe needed full autonomy as the only way to prevent racial animosities.Footnote 126 Clearly, the Advisory Boards had become nationalists’ political springboards.
Because of the intransigency of their colonial masters, the Advisory Boards in Bulawayo adopted a policy of low-intensity resistance to the Council. This included boycotting meetings, cancelling meetings for lack of a prepared agenda and delaying bringing their recommendations to the Council, arguing that they were taking matters back to ‘the people’.Footnote 127 The Director of African Administration thought that the tendency to defer to ‘the people’ was a response to their fear of the increasingly popular Tenants Associations, which he observed as having become ‘a feature of African political life in the African townships’.Footnote 128 This popular imagination of African power by the nationalists and attempts to democratize a colonial institution (Advisory Boards) was consistent with the politics of moderation and cooperation adopted by African politicians before the 1963 ZAPU–ZANU split. Because moderation did not work, African opinion turned against it and political leaders began to withdraw from the Advisory Boards. What also annoyed the Board members were attempts to have them endorse rent increases in 1964, which they knew would make them more unpopular. Consequently, they resigned in protestFootnote 129 and campaigned for the boycott of the elections. This stance led to the collapse of the Advisory Board system from 1964 to 1968, when it slowly revived.Footnote 130 With the temporary end of the Boards, coordinated underground urban activism increased. Unlike the zhii riots of 1960,Footnote 131 which targeted some African businessmen, perhaps for their political indifference, this new political activism mainly involved organized political sabotage. There were attempts to throw a grenade at the Prime Minister Winston Field when he visited Bulawayo; to sabotage installations in Bulawayo; to damage the shops and houses of perceived enemies of the nationalist cause; to destroy beer gardens; and to boycott Council beer to cripple the body's finances. Political groups also staged rent boycotts, damaged municipal water meters and withdrew children from urban schools in protest at fee increases.Footnote 132 In the minds of nationalists, local Council problems were part of broader national political problems. Unfortunately, confronting colonial power directly became more difficult as African leaders continued their failure to unite. There was a split in 1963 leading to the division of nationalist parties into ZAPU (People's Caretaker Council) and ZANU – a split, I have argued elsewhere, which had more to do with colonial harassment, personality differences and the struggle for power than with ethnic differences.Footnote 133 Political tribalism and regionalism only became an issue after the division, as the separated leaders sought methods of gaining membership. The split also must be understood in the broader context of 1963. With the collapse of the Federation, nationalists thought that the time was ripe for independence, which led invariably to issues of the country's future leadership.
CONCLUSION
The case study of Bulawayo suggests that the rise of nationalism did not necessarily require that ethnic groups be eradicated. Instead, it required that the groups play a complementary role in the development of nationalism. This article has demonstrated the ways in which this complementary relationship was instantiated, in the nationalization of precolonial ethnic heroes and in the commemoration of monuments such as the Great Zimbabwe and of critical historical sites such as the Matopos. In the early 1950s ethnic associations were beginning to operate as political forums for emerging African leaders, and by the late 1950s most leaders of ethnic groups occupied important positions in the successive nationalist parties, from the ANC through the NDP to ZAPU. While they were not elected to such positions as representatives of ethnic groups, the Kalanga case demonstrates that their promotion to leadership in the nationalist cause did give members of their ethnic group something to boast about – that nationalism had made them more visible.
Ethnic groups in Bulawayo did not create narrow-minded urban citizens, however, but left their members room to be cosmopolitan. Whilst ethnic identity was undoubtedly important in the early 1950s and beyond, most of the leaders of these associations were linked to various other non-ethnic identities, giving them exposure outside their particular groups. Thus, nationalists like Mzenda, Msika, Nkomo, Lazarus Nkala and Jason Moyo, apart from being staunch ethnic patriots, were both renowned trade unionists and leaders of prominent tenant associations. It is no wonder that, as nationalist identities intensified in the city, ethnic identity remained important and ethnic groups vowed not to disband. By depicting these groups as cultural societies with no political interest, nationalism could not render ethnicity irrelevant, but promoted it instead for the benefit that ethnic-based cultures offered to nationalism.
Although Africans had only vague ideas of nationalism in the early 1950s, they understood colonial subjugation, which made them a collective oppressed ‘other’. The denial of political power to African elites made some of them identify with the masses, thus undermining colonial efforts at dividing and ruling. From 1957, as African political leaders made inroads on the urban Advisory Boards, these Boards, together with tenants associations, became political platforms to lobby for African representation in urban administration. The failure of this project led to a boycott of the Boards and the beginning of the politics of sabotage and violent political confrontation. The Advisory Board experience nonetheless showed the organizational power of the African nationalists.
Up to 1963, the relationship between ethnicity and nationalism was generally cordial. It only deteriorated after the split that saw the emergence of ZANU as a rebel movement. We have maintained that the split itself was not caused by ethnic enmity, contrary to those scholars who thought that ethnicity and nationalism were always opposite identities.Footnote 134 Animosity between ethnic groups emerged well after the split as the two movements, ZANU and ZAPU, sought to build their bases of support.
