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I am so happy that you found us. We will be posting more of the VaNdau history that we have already collected and Professor Sithole has recently been taping oral interviews with elders in Zimbabwe. We know there are more documents at Yale and Harvard University in the U.S.. But we did not think to inquire at the Smithsonian. Thank you for that advice.

@@HistorywithAbelAlvesandC-hi6dk I sustained to your channel I am amazed by this work of yours.Zim history does not have much on the ndau tribe, so it's good you are doing it. Dr Sithole is doing great as well, I listened to his translations on ndau history , it's cream. I am actually a ndau of the Dziva totem, my mum is moyo that's why.

@@louwsaviour6475 I am interested to hear about your totem. The history of totems and names in Zimbabwe can be hard to understand, since they are not always determined by being a blood relative. Now the regulations of the modern world make identities more permanent and based on biological kinship. But I have a friend that is 85 years old and he told me his family name was changed when a chief gave his great grandfather a new name to honor his heroism. Ndau names were not recorded until recent times, so that decision was kept in memory, not recored in some office. Totems are really fun to learn about, and so is knowing there was a time, a people, that knew being a family was about taking care of each other, related or not.

@@HistorywithAbelAlvesandC-hi6dk Hie, as far as I am concerned major totems, started in Guruuswa were the Bantu came from, it was a patriachal identity of those who became leaders, chiefs and spirit mediums.This they did to differentiate clans and tribes, just as the twelve tribes of Israel in the Hebrew bible. Of course some totems were changed after crossing the Zambezi, others were split into sub totems because of power struggles amongst patrikins. To some, totems started after leaving Tanganyika Guruuswa bur we were originally one big Bantu nation. I still need to research more on the Mutema and Musikavanhu clans as well as the Ndima/Mafuse clan cousins to Musikavanhu people.

@@louwsaviour6475 I hope you continue your research on Bantu totems -this is a fascinating subject. You use the word patriarchal. I would use the word communal. While chiefs and elders organize, Bantu women played a central role in maintaining cultural traditions, and most spirit mediums are women. They usually give voice to a male ancestor, but that goes to show, the men can not speak without the cooperation of women. And women are spirit mediums for females too -we will be posting a Chipunta ceremony for lost girls that was documented in the 1950s. I must research more on women and totems. Totems used to be common in most human societies when people understood they were part of the natural world. The Native Americans have many beautiful totem traditions with dramatic artwork. Women are well represented in that art and may have both a tribal and individual totem guide. For the Bantu, so much is oral tradition, and that makes it much harder to trace these traditions.

These are creation stories, if not myths, that are meant to explain where people came from. All societies have those. What is most remarkable about them is that they also have some grains of truth in them, for example, some parts of the Musikavanthu rain-making legend are quite true. Chiefs listed sequentially in the narrative are known historical figures. You can ask any Musikavanthu/mkwakwami/mbonyeya/jenya surname "holding" person, they will tell you that they know those people.

Aizve, saka anozonzi MuNdau ndiani manje? Maudzirwo atakaitwa ndeekuti Sithole, Mhlanga, Dhliwayo e.t.c. ndiwo maNdau chaiwo because mazita avo akabva kumphiri kwaGurugudhera (Limpopo) vachitungamiririrwa ndiSoshangana. Settled in Zimbabwe and Mozambique where they intermarried with local Ndau women and gave birth to us.

“Bantu-speaking communities were constantly dividing. Over a period of three millennia they developed into several hundred mutually unintelligible languages. So how does it happen that a stable African narrative method can still be recognized in Biblical texts that are so distant in time and space? What the vaNdau conserve from the past is a joint decision of elders in lieu of written covenants. In lieu of writing, elders prompted by the ancestral spirits, correct deviations in Ndau traditions. So I must conclude that the similarities between Ndau history and the Bible are connected by longstanding literary conventions.” -Charles Blakney, records from the 1960s after speaking with Samu.

I am a Ndau native from Chipinge. My entire clan lives under the Mutema and Ngaone jurisdictions. We (my grandfather's family), however, live in Chief Musikavanthu's area. The narrator of the story that I am reading here is Samu Munodeyi Mukwakwami. The Mukwakwami, Mabota, Mbonyeyas are also Musikavanthus as Samu is narrating here.

I like to imagine that this is what he hoped for. A new historian of his people would hear his voice someday and be grateful. And now a young professor that travels the world is listening! And your academic work is superb. I am delighted.

Thank you. A more accurate description of my intention -Carol.

@@HistorywithAbelAlvesandC-hi6dk I'm glad! The text is from Animals & Society Institute, where I got to know your valuable work!