Zimbabwe Must Move Beyond Shona-Ndebele Rivalries
Story By Maplanka Atterbell
National healing in Zimbabwe needs a holistic approach. It must move beyond the narrow Shona and Ndebele nationalisms and their historical rivalries. It must include all of the country’s ethnic groups.
Shona and Ndebele are the two biggest groups and the most widely spoken languages. Yet the constitution recognises 16 official languages. They reflect a rich tapestry of distinct cultural and ethnic communities.
Genuine nationhood needs democratic spaces for truth-telling, constitutional accountability and adequate minority representation. Zimbabwe cannot keep circling the myopic, self-defeating Shona/Ndebele rivalry.
When Speaking Plainly Sounds Like an Attack
One of the biggest obstacles to tribal unity is a simple reaction. When Ndebele people speak plainly about marginalisation, exclusion or wealth and power concentrated elsewhere, some Shona readers hear an attack on themselves.
That reaction fits a wider political pattern. A group used to being close to power, visibility or opportunity can feel threatened by demands from others. Researchers in Europe and the United States have repeatedly examined this zero-sum mentality. It treats one group’s progress as another group’s loss.
But equality is not dispossession.
Suppose a Ndebele person says Matabeleland deserves investment. That is not an attack on Mashonaland. Strengthening our language, culture, businesses and institutions takes nothing from anyone else’s culture. Asking why so much wealth, political access and economic opportunity cluster around Harare does not become tribal because it makes somebody uncomfortable.
Zimbabwe will never reach genuine unity by demanding silence from people who feel left behind.
Why History Matters
Matabeleland did not invent its sense of grievance yesterday on Facebook. The region carries the memory of the Gukurahundi Genocide. Victims and their descendants still face marginalisation and unresolved consequences decades later.
Amnesty International has documented how some survivors and their families struggled even to get citizenship documents. Officials never properly recorded the deaths of that period.
You cannot build unity by telling people to forget what shaped them.
The Same Pattern Elsewhere
The same argument plays out internationally. Minorities demand equal representation, equal policing, equal employment and equal dignity. Sections of the majority sometimes respond as though equality itself were aggression.
That is how privilege protects itself. It mistakes the end of advantage for persecution.
Learning From Powerful Networks
This is why the reaction to my previous column interested me so much. I never argued that Shona people are the enemy. My point was that Matabeleland should learn from powerful networks elsewhere. It should become more deliberate about financing its businesses, culture, institutions and leadership.
That should not frighten anybody.
A confident Zimbabwe can hold a strong Matabeleland, a strong Mashonaland, strong minority communities and strong regional institutions. It need not treat one group’s advancement as another group’s defeat.
What Real Unity Looks Like
Real unity is not everybody going quiet so the dominant group stays comfortable. It begins when people can hear another community say “we deserve more” without translating it into “you deserve less.”
Until Zimbabwe understands that distinction, people will keep mistaking every genuine conversation about marginalisation for tribalism. That misunderstanding may be one of the strongest forces keeping us divided.
