You Are Not a Colonial Invention: The Truth About “Shona,” Great Zimbabwe, and Who We Really Are
Some of us have been told that “Shonas did not build Great Zimbabwe,” or that “there was no Zimbabwe until 1980.” These are not insults to laugh at — they are wounds of a curriculum that hid our own history from us. So pull up a chair. Gently, warmly, and in the plainest language, let us return what was taken: the names that were ours before they were swapped for a colonial box, the civilisation that raised stone cities, and the simple, steadying knowledge of who we are, people of the Plateau.
First, a Word of Gentleness
Before anything, let me say this plainly: if you grew up believing there was “no Zimbabwe before 1980,” or that our ancestors could not have built those great stone walls, that is not your shame to carry. It is the achievement of a system that was designed to make you forget. Colonial schooling, and much of what followed it, taught us the history of the settler and called it the history of the land. So this is not a quarrel. It is a homecoming. I write the way an aunt talks to her nieces and nephews by the fire — warmly, honestly, holding nothing back, but wanting only your good.
Because here is what I have come to believe after years in this work: a great deal of the confusion, the arguing, the strange self-doubt among us, comes down to one thing — we were handed someone else’s map of ourselves and told it was the truth. Today, let us quietly fold that map away, and draw the real one together.
Where Did the Word “Shona” Come From?
Let us begin with the word that causes so much of the trouble. Many of us say “I am Shona” the way we say our own name. So it can be a shock to learn that, as a single people or a single language, “Shona” is a young, colonial-era construction — not an ancient identity our ancestors carried.
The unified “Shona” language was formally standardised by the Doke Report of 1931 — the Report on the Unification of the Shona Dialects, prepared by the linguist Clement Doke at the request of the government of Southern Rhodesia. Its honest purpose was administrative: to make one written standard for schools, missions and government out of several distinct related tongues. The collective label “Shona” itself was an outsider’s word, popularised in the colonial 1800s and 1900s — it was never the name by which the peoples of the Plateau called themselves.
The real names, spoken every day
The languages that were standardised under the “Shona” umbrella — and the kindred peoples of the Plateau too often erased by that same box — carry the true identities:
When you call all of these simply “Shona,” you flatten a rich, varied civilisation into one colonial container. And notice — peoples like the Tonga and Kalanga are not even part of that language standard, yet they too get swept into the box, their distinct identities quietly erased. The box both invented a false oneness and rubbed out real difference at the same time. That is what colonial labels do.
If Not “Tribes in Boxes,” Then What?
Here is the part the curriculum never taught, and it is the most beautiful part. The peoples of the Plateau were not organised into neat colonial “tribes.” We were organised by something far older and cleverer: the Totem System — mitupo. Address a Zimbabwean by their colonial box and you meet an empty container. Address them by their real identity, and a whole architecture of belonging opens up.
Your mutupo (totem) — Soko, Moyo, Shumba, Nzou, Shava, Tembo and the rest — is your oldest surname, far older than any national ID. Through it flow the totem clans and totem houses, the Exogamy Law (you may not marry within your own totem — a rule that protected the health of the bloodline and wove distant clans into one family), the Mambo courts that governed and judged, and the Plateau Protocols — the proper ways of greeting, marriage (roora), worship, and respect that each totem nation kept. This is governance. This is law. This is a civilisation. It simply does not fit inside the word “tribe,” and it certainly cannot be seen through the keyhole of “Shona.”
“There Was No Zimbabwe Until 1980“?
This one is easy to clear up with love. 1980 is when the modern Republic of Zimbabwe was born — the flag, the government, the seat at the United Nations. That is true, and worth celebrating. But the land, the people, and the civilisation are ancient. In fact, the country took its name from our ancestors’ achievement: Zimbabwe comes from dzimba dzemabwe / dzimbahwe — “houses of stone” — the great stone city built more than 800 years ago. We did not invent the name in 1980. We reclaimed it from the ruins our forebears raised.
So let us not learn our story from the 1890s. Let us learn it from when the caves at Matobo were painted. Here is the real timeline — read it slowly, and feel how deep your roots actually go.
“Africans Didn’t Build Great Zimbabwe” — the Colonial Fairy Tale
Now to the wound at the centre of it all. For decades, colonial Rhodesia insisted that the great stone city could not have been built by Africans — that it must have been Phoenicians, or Arabs, or the Queen of Sheba, or some “lost white race.” This was never science. It was propaganda with a purpose: if Africans had never built anything great, then taking their land and ruling them could be dressed up as a favour.
But the truth would not stay buried. As early as 1905 the archaeologist David Randall-MacIver, and then decisively in 1929 Gertrude Caton-Thompson, examined the site carefully and concluded what was always obvious: Great Zimbabwe is wholly, unmistakably African — built by the ancestors of the very people living around it. The Rhodesian government was so threatened by this that, for years, it pressured guides and museums to downplay or deny the African origin. They did not hide the truth because it was doubtful. They hid it because it was certain — and because a people who know they built cities are a people who cannot easily be convinced they are nothing.
If You Are Nguni, Be Proudly Nguni
Let me be very clear, because this matters and is too often twisted: reclaiming Plateau identity is not an attack on anyone. The peoples who arrived later — the Nguni, whose migrations during the Mfecane founded the Ndebele kingdom in the 1830s — are a real, proud, rooted people with their own true kings, their own true history. They are part of Zimbabwe now, fully and forever.
The point is not to rank anyone. The point is the same for all of us: own your true identity, not a colonial box. If you are of the Plateau farming civilisation, know your totem and your Mambo. If you are Nguni, be as proud a Nguni as the Ndau-Nguni were — claiming the real royal house you descend from, not a made-up one. Every arrival onto this Plateau — and there were many waves — is part of the whole. As we say in our work on the arrivals: this is where I come from, and this is who I am now: a Zimbabwean. There is no shame in any honest root. There is only the quiet strength of standing in your real one.
Twenty Myths, Twenty Truths
1Myth“Shonas didn’t build Great Zimbabwe — there are no Shona.”
Half-right, then wrong. “Shona” as a single people is indeed a colonial-era label — but the builders were real: the ancestors of today’s Karanga, Zezuru, Manyika and kindred Plateau peoples. The city was built by our direct forebears, whatever later name was pinned on them.
2Myth“There was no Zimbabwe until 1980.”
1980 birthed the modern republic — the state. The land, people and civilisation are ancient. The name itself, dzimba dzemabwe (“houses of stone”), comes from a city raised over 800 years ago. We named the new nation after a very old glory.
3Myth“Shona is an ancient tribe.”
It is a language standard, unified on paper by the Doke Report of 1931 for colonial administration. The real, older identities are Karanga, Zezuru, Manyika, Korekore, Ndau — bound across each other by the totem system, not by a “tribe.”
4Myth“Phoenicians or the Queen of Sheba built Great Zimbabwe.”
A colonial fairy tale invented to justify conquest. Archaeologist Gertrude Caton-Thompson confirmed in 1929 — as Randall-MacIver had in 1905 — that the city is entirely African, built by local ancestors. No outsiders required.
5Myth“Africans couldn’t build in stone.”
There are more than 200 stone madzimbabwe across the Plateau — Khami, Naletale, Danangombe and more — plus Mapungubwe to the south. Mortarless masonry, standing for centuries. Two hundred ruins is not luck; it is a building tradition.
6Myth“We have no real history — just stories.”
Oral genealogy and praise-poetry are disciplined record-keeping, checked by whole communities. And our history is also written — in Arab and Portuguese accounts of the Mutapa state — and dug from the earth by archaeologists. Three kinds of record agree.
7Myth“The totem system is mere superstition.”
Mitupo is identity, governance and law in one. Its Exogamy Law — no marriage within your totem — protected the health of the bloodline and tied distant clans into one extended family across the whole Plateau. That is sophisticated social engineering.
8Myth“Before the whites we were just one big Shona tribe.”
We were a succession of organised states — Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe, Torwa/Butua, Mutapa, Rozvi — with kings, courts, armies and tribute. Not one undifferentiated mass, and not a “tribe.” A civilisation with chapters.
9Myth“Mwari was a primitive idol-cult.”
Mwari is the Creator — without gender, without image, beyond the skies (kumatenga). No idols, no “cult.” The shrine at Njelele in the Matobo Hills is one of Africa’s oldest places of continuous worship. We knew the one Creator long before any missionary arrived.
10Myth“The Ndebele are foreigners” — or — “only the Ndebele had a kingdom.”
Both extremes are wrong. The Ndebele are Nguni arrivals of the 1830s with a real, proud kingdom — one of many waves of arrival onto the Plateau. They belong here fully; and they are one royal story among several, not the only one.
11Myth“Zimbabwe’s history begins in 1890.”
1890 is when the colonisers arrived — the beginning of the disruption, not of us. Our story runs back through Rozvi, Mutapa, Great Zimbabwe and Mapungubwe, thousands of years before the Pioneer Column.
12Myth“Our ancestors were isolated and backward.”
Great Zimbabwe traded gold and ivory across the Indian Ocean. Chinese porcelain, Persian glass beads and Arab coins have been excavated from its soil. Our ancestors were plugged into a global economy six centuries before “globalisation.”
13Myth“There were no kings or government before colonisation.”
We had Mambos and Ishe, the emperors of Mutapa whom Portugal treated with, and Changamire Dombo who built the Rozvi and expelled the Portuguese. Courts, armies, tribute, diplomacy — full statecraft.
14Myth“Shona and Ndebele are ancient enemies.”
That bitterness was sharpened by colonial divide-and-rule, which always profits when the colonised fight each other. Both are peoples of one Plateau and one modern nation. The “ancient enemies” tale serves whoever wants us weak.
15Myth“Knowing your totem is pointless today.”
Your totem is a surname older than any passport. It tells you who your kin are, whom you may not marry, how to greet and honour. It is ziva kwawakabva — know where you came from — alive in the present. Lose it, and your children will spend years searching for it.
16Myth“Great Zimbabwe was just a small village.”
At its height it spread across roughly 720 hectares and held an estimated 18,000 people — the capital of a state that commanded the gold trade of a vast region. A city, by any age’s measure.
17Myth“The name ‘Zimbabwe’ is modern and made up.”
It is one of our oldest words — dzimba dzemabwe / dzimbahwe, “houses of stone.” Far from being invented in 1980, it was reclaimed in 1980. The name is a monument our ancestors left us in language.
18Myth“We had no science, calendar or learning.”
A 13-month lunar calendar ordered the farming year, with the sacred rest-day Chisi. Our people smelted iron and gold, engineered drainage into stone hillsides, and read the seasons in the stars. Deep, practical science — just not written in Latin.
19Myth“Morality and God came with the missionaries.”
Unhu/hunhu — our ethic of dignity, community and personhood — and the worship of Mwari, the one Creator, were here long before. We were never a people without God or goodness; we simply knew them by our own names.
20Myth“Reconnecting with your ancestry is backward or demonic.”
Ziva kwawakabva is a Covenant with the Land and a foundation for the mind. Knowing your lineage is not worship of the dead; it is honour of the living chain you belong to. A people who know themselves stand firmer than a people trained to forget.
Know Thyself — and End the Cycle
So here is my heart, laid plainly. The confusion we sometimes see — the arguing over who is “real,” the strange embarrassment about our own past, the readiness to believe we began only when a flag was raised — I do not see it as foolishness. I see it as the symptom of a wound: the deliberate erasure of a people’s memory. And the cure for erasure is not anger. It is knowledge, gently and stubbornly returned.
You are not a colonial invention. You are not a box ticked on a settler’s form. You are the descendant of stone-builders and gold-traders, of Mambos and rainmakers, of a people who governed themselves by totem and covenant for centuries before anyone arrived to “discover” them. That is your inheritance, and no curriculum can repeal it once you have claimed it. Ziva kwawakabva — know where you came from — is not nostalgia. It is the law of a steady mind and the foundation of a strong family.
So learn your totem. Ask your elders the genealogy while they are still here to give it. Teach your children the real timeline, the one that starts at Matobo and not at the Pioneer Column. If you are of the Plateau, stand in it; if you are Nguni, stand proudly in that; whatever your true root, stand in the real one and not the borrowed box. Do this, and you spare your children the years they would otherwise spend searching for what you could have simply handed them. That is how the cycle of identity crisis ends — not in one generation’s grievance, but in one generation’s decision to remember. Let it be ours. Pamberi nekuziva kwatakabva — forward with knowing where we came from.
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