Ndau

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This page is about the Ndau ethnic group and language of Africa (S 15a according to Guthrie's classification). Ndau is also an alternate name for Pendau, an Indonesian language.

The Ndau ethnic group inhabits not the Zambezi valley but parts of the two provinces Manika and Sofala in central Mozambique between eastern Zimbabwe /Mutare and the coast.

The ancestors of the Ndau were warriors from Swaziland who intermarried with the local population, constituted ethnically and linguistically by Manika, Barwe, Tewe (in the Manika province) and Ndau, which itself includes several sub-groups (in the southern part of the Sofala province).

Only in a large sense of the term is Ndau considered as part of the Shona linguistic family. In a strict sense of the term the Ndau language is mainly spoken in the following southern districts of the Sofala province: Machanga, Chibabava, Machaze (Danda), Buzi and in Nhamatanda, Dondo and Beira (Bangwe). It is also partly spoken in Mambone (Inhambane province) and Mossurize. They also speak Portuguese in Mozambique and English in Zimbabwe.

Along the railway line between Beira and Zimbabwe the Sena language, originally only spoken in the Zambezi valley, has become a kind of lingua franca. During the final phase of colonialism (sugar and textil industry in Mafambisse and Chimoyo) and later during the civil war (until 1992 fostered by Apartheid South Africa with five millions of displaced Mozambicans and one million killed) the social infrastructures and ethnical boundaries were completely upset and became obsolete - yet politically instrumentalised. One of the lessons from all these sufferings is a challenge and willingness to overcome any form of ethnocentrisme, latent tribalism or ongoing socio-political polarisation.

[edit] Demographics

As of 1997, it was estimated that there were 581,000 speakers of Ndau in Mozambique.

Ndau is also one of the languages used in churches in Beira.

[edit] Politics

Renamo, the Mozambican National Resistance Movement, draws support from the Ndau in the Sofala province of Mozambique (to where its leader Dhlakama belong, as well as the Catholic archbishop fo Beira), in part due to their poor socio-economic conditions and their so far too weak inclusion in foreign financial investments and socio-economic developmental programs of the governing party.

[edit] See also

• Sena people

The Sena language (cf N40 in Guthrie's classification) is spoken in the four provinces of central Mozambique (Zambezi valley): Tete, Sofala, Zambezia and Manica. According to an actual estimate of Sena speakers in 1997 there were about 900,000 with Sena as mother-tongue and at least 1.5 million including those who speak Sena as second language. (Every Mozambican understands or speaks more than two languages, most importantly, Portuguese!).

Sena itself may be sub-divided into several variants: Sena mainly in the districts of Chemba, Caia, Cheringoma and Mutarara, Sena-Phodzo in Marromeu, Chinde and Mopeia, Sena-Tonga in Canxixe and Maringwe, Sena-Chweza in Doa, Tambara and Chiramba, Sena-Bangwe in Dondo and Beira, Sena-Gorongozi...

Historically the auto-cephalous Sena groups were situated between the two major centralised kingdoms of Monomotapa (cf. Great Zimbabwe) and of Maravi (in today's Malawi) or between the two cultures of Shona and Nyanja-Chewa. In the 16th century Portuguese traders and missionaries arrived in the Zambezi valley (stations in Sena, Tete, Zumbo, Quelimane), during the 19th century Portuguese descendants built even small military states involved in the ongoing slave trade. Finally during the scramble for Africa the weakened Portuguese crown leased this region to British compagnies, which built the railway connections between the Indian Ocean and their colonies, in this case the TZR, Trans-Zambeze-Railway between Beira and Njassaland/Malawi via Sena. Once Portugal under Salazar during the 1940ies had gained control over the region, then it introduced forced cotton growing and forced labor "contracts" with British colonies.

Thus Sena people, who had no opportunities to receive formal education beyond the first classes of primary school, underwent exposure to social and political organisation in the mining centres of neighbouring English speaking colonies and acquired civic awareness through domestic oppression and even massacers. Therefore Sena were very involved in passive resistance to the colonial system and in the active liberation struggle, which led to independence in 1975.

The region suffered soon again very heavily from the global East-West confrontation, from a proxy-war first of Rhodesia and then of Apartheid South Africa against the Frontline States, which led finally to an internal civil war between Renamo and Frelimo. In the beginning of the 1990ies all the a.m. districts were physically and socially devasteted.

Although Mozambique has a good record of economic growth, this is not evenly distributed and specially Sena claim of not profiting at all from development. This and various other forms of polarisation constitute a major challenge. Also Mozambique never dared to confront a kind of "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" as Post-Apartheid South Africa has done. But an enormous reconstruction process is 2006 on the way and reaching slowly also sensitive zones of Central and Northern Mozambique.