CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 2
2.3 THE SOCIO-CULTURAL FAMILY AND THE CLAN
2.3.3 LANGUAGE CLASSIFICATION WITH RERERENCE TO THE SHANGASE CLAN
supervised by the American Board of Missions. The Glebe was totally out of the hands and control of the tribal iNkosi. But, in 1959 iNkosi Simangenduku, son of Zukhulu, of Macebo, of Mnguni, celebrated an occasion where the administration and control of Thafamasi Mission Glebe was taken back to the tribal iNkosi.
Other denominations were allowed to establish themselves within the Shangase tribe.
These were churches such as the Roman Catholic Church at eMbuyeni, The Nazareth Baptist Church at eN singweni, The Pentecoastal Church at eN singweni, The Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa at eNsingwini, The St. John's Apostolic Church at eMbuyeni, and different Zion Christian Churches. All these Christian and secular denominations are still presently preaching the word of God to the people of the Shangase tribe. The arrival of the missionaries changed the names and naming systems which were practised by the Shangase people to Western naming practices.
Children were thus given English names by Priest when baptized at church and even when they were going to school e.g. Paul for Sigwegwe and Elijah for Siwula, Moses for Ndoda, Zacharia for Nsuze, and Jotham for Zidlubha.
2.3.3 LANGUAGE CLASSIFICATION WITH RERERENCE TO THE
to their contact with the descending stream of Sutu-Bantu, assumed so many phonetic and morphophonological changes of which the changing of (z) into a closed (t) was the most striking and consequently gave rise to the tenn "Tekela" and to have become a new language. The Tonga-Nguni did not only pick the vocabulary of the Tonga- Bantu but also the customs and much Tonga blood and distinguishing appellation.
The following are examples of sound changes in Lala and Zulu:
Lala Zulu
u-fa!i (wife) umu-nu (person) i-yomo (cattle) i-nombi (girl) ke!Ulu (above)
(See Bryant 1929:233,479-480)
um-f~i
umu-n!U i-n-komo i-n-thombi
Qhe~ulu
In Ngubane's (1991:28) brief history of the Nguni people, Bryant, and quoted by Ownby (1981 :62) postulates a Nguni migration into Southern Africa as follows:
The "Sutu-Ngunis". Who interacted with Venda and Karanga people in the North- Western Transvaal.
The "Tonga-Nguni's, who went East and then broke into two sub-groups, the Mbo (or Dlamini or Swazi) who moved South and the group which went East and interacted with Thonga people coming South.
The "Pure-Ngunis" who moved into Zululand, Natal and Eastern Cape.
Ngubane (1991 :28-30) further discusses each type ofNgunis as follows:
Pure-Ngunis
They are said to be pure because their speech (language) fonn has never been tainted by Sotho or Thonga influence (Msimang 1989). These were the ancestors of Mntungwa from whom sprung the Zulus, the Thembus and the Xhosas.
Suthu-Ngunis
Ownby (1981 :62), in Ngubane (1991) further maintains that the classification of Sutu-Nguni only reflects assumption of a link between Sutu and Nguni. Ngubane (1991:28) and other agree with Ownby since the link between "Sutu" and Nguni"
may not be acceptable because of the fact that these languages are not mutually intelligible, and that it is best to put them into two separate sub-zones.
T ekela-N gunis
Scholars like Ownby (1981) and Msimang (1989) accepted Bryant's account on the Tekela-Nguni. The Embo-Nguni tribes were the Dlamini who moved towards the wilderness of Eastern Lubombo. Matsebula (1988) states that most of the families split into several groups which migrated Southwards. The Swati remained behind and established themselves around the Tembe River near a place known as "Maputo".
Bryant (1929) maintains that their stay was long enough that they intermarried with the Thongas and even picked up their language. Mswati I and Mthonga were blood brothers as this is mentioned by Matsebula (1988) and Msimang (1989).
Matsebula (1988) states that Mswati and Mthonga were sons of the same father Dlamini 1. They both became leaders of identifiable groups as a result of individual characteristics or perculiarities. Mswati I has come to be the father of the present Swazi nation, whereas Mthonga has come to be the father of the Thonga nations. The Thongas (Mabhuda - Tembe group) later expanded southwards. By the end of the 17th century, they had occupied the coastal area stretching right down to the St. Lucia Bay.
Lala-Ngunis
The Lala-Nguni is the final group of the Tekela-Nguni. Bryant and Soga suggest that the Lala group members were the earlier inhabitants of Natal. Lala tribes (Tonga- Ngunis - Mthethwas, Lalas and Debes) were mostly absorbed and integrated into the Zulu nation. (Msimang 1989:49) Bryant (1929:313) maintains that the Lalas are those Ngunis who on reaching their nucleus, east of the Lubombo, lived more with the Thonga further north. They wheeled around descended southwards along the coast, occupying all the present-day Natal North of Mngeni River, and along the Thukela from below its confluence with the Mzinyathi, and down to the Indian Ocean. The close relationship between these two Nguni groups becomes apparent immediately. We compare their speech, in which both showed identically the same divergences, grammatical and lexical from the Zulu or Pure-Nguni; thus their common peculiarity ofukutekela (using (t) for (z) etc.), the change ofzO ka-(ot) into wa-, of (z); yo into -ko; Swazi nata (drink), Lala nyata; against the (z) puza. (See Bryant 1929:313).
Generally, speaking, language is a body of phenomena whose laws can be ascertained by a study of the facts. Colet in Power (1962:363) further states that anything concerning a language should not be left out, but should be noticed and analysed, i.e.
elements like semantics (meaning of words) should be given and morphology (structure of words) should be analysed. Vrery -1979:152, argues that language is a medium of thought by means of which we symbolise objects, concepts, generalisations and attitudes. The word or linguistic symbol then represents the situation or the generalised concept that we have in mind. Thoughts are formed and expressed in the mind of a human being by means of a language that a particular person speaks. A Zulu speaking for instance, thinks within the framework of the mind in Zulu in particular, i.e. all ideas are formed within the parameters of a language which a person speaks.
As a medium of thought, the language helps "memorising" by committing events or observations into memory, and "remembering" by recalling the information that has been stored. Problem-solving is another mode of thought which requires a convergence of mental activities. Fowler (1990:665) defines and explains language as a method of human communication, either spoken or written, memorised or remembered consisting ofthe use of words in an agreed way.
Ngubane (1991:18) mentions that in South Africa we have four language groups, namely: Nguni, Sotho, Tsonga and Venda. The Nguni and Sotho groups can be further divided into minor subgroups e.g. Nguni: Zunda and Tekela. Zunda comprises the Zulu and Xhosa; Tekela includes Swati and Lala. Sotho: Western, Southern and Northern subgroups. The subgroups prove the point of relationship among these languages. Ngubane (1991) further states that language is the means of human communication within a particular community. This means that the cultural habitats, as conditioned by the physical and ethnological habitat, will be widely reflected in the language and its system.
Since the habitat is often constituted by a continuum of land and only exceptionally by isolated pockets of humans such as those living on islands which are difficult to reach, it follows that the language of one area is not absolutely and clearly isolated from the system of communication used in a neighbouring area. Each area, however, may present some peculiar characteristic of a particular community. Therefore, language is a living entity, exposed to concepts, ideas, cultural aspects, etc., to neighbouring language community. This means that it keeps changing and borrowing.
Language use could be seen as an aspect of establishing social identity and membership in speech community, apart from serving the purpose of mere communication. Though the Shangase people are all Zulu speaking, some of them (about twenty five percent can speak English fluently, and the rest, though not fluent, have a loose vocabulary of English words, some of them not properly pronounced for
they get these as employees from their employers, and also because of the fact that English, though it is a language of the minority group, has a great influence on Zulu, and also because of the fact that English is the medium of political debate which is used by political leaders, no matter what first language is used by most of their supporters, particularly when their addresses are broadcast through the National media, e.g. the use of 'khan' for can't, bIens for brains, Lipoli for leopard, sthupethu for stupid, and M's Peni for Mr Payne. (See Moyo 2000:123).
Fisherman (1972) in Moyo (1996:125) contains that domains of language behaviour are institutional contexts where language can be employed, and these are organised into specific sets of role relations between people, such as father and mother, parent and child, superior and subordinate, employer and employee, etc.