Dr. Emmanuel Sithole translates Ndau origin story.

Dr. Emmanuel Sithole is a linguist. He was born in Zimbabwe and is now working in the United States. Here in 2023, he provides an English translation of the chiNdau origin story recited in the 1950s by historian Samu Munodie (Munodeyi) Mukwakawami. Dr. Sithole is co-author of the Ndau Living Dictionary, part of an international effort to save indigenous languages, hosted by Swarthmore College. He publishes scholarship on the history, politics, and identity of the vaNdau who live in Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

[@promaticsa709]

Very educatiing story ❤

[@mervisnyaradzo]

Well done Mr Sithole 👏👏👏

[@user-xw6io3ci7f]

Hauzi mundau iwe uri mukaranga moyo Chirandu Gono

[@user-xw6io3ci7f]

Kana uchitaura ngezvana Murenga/Mbire hausi kutaura ngezve mandau original

[@HistorywithAbelAlvesandC-hi6dk]

“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.

[@user-xw6io3ci7f]

Are you a ndau or karanga of the Moyo Chirandu Gono?

[@HistorywithAbelAlvesandC-hi6dk]

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.