river
Lake Kariba is a thing of beauty to visiting tourists, but the Tonga people look on its glittering waters with sadness, and remember what they lost 40 years ago, writes Jonathon Tulloch
The night sky above Binga is dizzying. Here is power besides which the lights of even the great cities of the earth are eclipsed. Walking under it, the urban visitor takes a risk, for to look up is to encounter a profundity to which our street-lamps and ever-ready electrical switches have blinded us. It is to be confronted by the immensity of life while experiencing one’s modest place in it. It is to be offered the lost heritages of awe and humility.
Walking down through the hot springs of Binga which bubble deliciously from the rock, the eye is beguiled from the immensity of the stars above to the closer twinklings of the fire-flies. They merge and separate about you, forming shifting, head-height constellations, making it easy to give credence to the folk tales that lament lives lost in the intoxicated pursuit of these neon creatures – an occupation akin to chasing rainbows.
After the springs the road climbs, peaking at the grand cairn of a baobab tree. This road will eventually take you from the Binga district, uncoiling you through the Kamativi hills and on to the mining badlands of Hwange. But if you wish to leave and forget Binga, then do not turn, even for a moment, to look over your shoulder past that baobab. For, if you do, you will see, spread out below you like a sleeping giant, the mighty Lake Kariba.
It is spangled at this late hour with the lonely lights of the Kapenta fishing boats, which ply a nocturnal trade, and its tranquillity seems absolute. But the story of this view is one of such sadness that it will stop you in your tracks, and if not turn you to a pillar of salt, at least leaven your heart with aridity and fill your lungs with the dryness of the soil at your feet in which only baobabs can thrive.
It is hard to imagine how something as fantastically beautiful as Lake Kariba can be the cause of such sorrow. But it is true. There is something deeply biblical about the brief history of Binga, yet it is a modern story too. One of massive but unshared technology. One of plentiful water but perpetual drought. One of oppressed and their oppressors.
Until 1957 the river Tonga people lived on the banks of the swift-flowing Zambezi, which separated what was then the federation of Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe). Their life there, if not idyllic given the utter absence of health care and education, was at least one of peace, food and, most importantly, water. The rich alluvial soils gave a varied and frequent crop. The river supplied drinking water, irrigation for vegetable gardens and much fish. The peace grew from a way of life left undisturbed for generations, one in which the past and future harmonised in the present. Words from the Tonga poet Fanual Cumanzala capture this time:
Down the mountains lay the mighty river The Zambezi of the Tonga Gift of God, river of life The banks which yielded food for all.
But by 1958 this was merely memory, an Eden lost. The Rhodesian administration, under the auspices of the British Government, decided to dam the Zambezi at Kariba and build a hydro-electric installation. So that the growing cities and residences would have power, the realm of the Tonga was drowned beneath a huge lake, making it the Atlantis of an inland sea. Nearly 60 000 people were moved, their resettlement programme merely transportation in the back of a lorry to higher, drier, far less fertile lands.
Terrible hardship resulted from this lack of preparation, a disregard for humanity, particularly brutal when compared with the treatment of the Zambezi valley’s more famous inhabitants. Film footage of the time shows the animals being coaxed to safety from the rising water in what became known as “Operation Noah”.
“We had helicopters and motor launches for the animals,” recalls Peter Ndlovu, one of those involved in “Noah”. “For the people we had a dug-out canoe. Although the flood was coming, many didn’t believe us. They just drowned, although nobody will admit it.” By the silence surrounding this suffering, the next 40 years would be characterised.
Above all, the Tonga were promised that the water which they were being forced to leave would follow them. Without this pledge their compliance, although involuntary, would have been withheld. But their new lands are hopelessly arid. Boreholes have been sunk and some small dams made, but their supply is erratic and far from safe. In some places the water table is so low that the boreholes are drying up.
The elderly, the disabled and the sick, unable to manage the daily hike for water through the often crippling heat, drink surface water with the animals. Unable to grow their traditional crops in the parched places of their exile, nor easily able to use the distant fishing grounds allocated them, the river Tonga have become a malnourished people. Blighted by constant drought, the consequent relief aid is another burden on their independent spirit.
In such a desiccated exodus it is no wonder that the old fondly recall their lost existence, and that the young are unaware of the fine heritage of their name. For Tonga means “the people of the great river”.
It perhaps would have been some consolation if resettlement had been allowed on the banks of the new lake, but in the minds of the Rhodesian regime and the Zimbabwean government that followed, the area around Lake Kariba is one of prime tourist potential. In the pursuit of this end, people are clearly inconvenient. The area’s physical attractions, indeed, are manifest. At present most visitors come to fish, but there is also a growing hunting safari industry. In the Binga district alone it is estimated that there are 3 750 elephants, 4 000 buffalo, 500 leopards, 110 lions and 12 000 impala.
These animals are a constant menace to the people who have been placed in their domain. Elephants destroy crops, risky attempts at dissuasion proving fruitless. Also, since the buses reach the more remote areas after dark, passengers must chance the stealth of nocturnal predators. The Tonga are not allowed to adequately defend themselves, the limited quota of permitted kills going largely to hunting safari operators.
Smaller creatures are a fatal pest too. Mosquitoes infest their new lands, making malaria, despite attempts to eradicate it, an annual reality. Fatalities normally occur around Christmas.
But it is not the physical privations which are the cruellest, nor the hardest to bear. The Tonga had lived on both sides of the Zambezi and families are divided by the lake. After a few years, a ferry service began to operate, linking the separated, but, with the independence of Zambia in 1964, such traffic stopped. After Zimbabwean independence in 1980, a border was reopened, but with customs only at the distant Victoria Falls and Chirundu, actual access remained closed.
Largely a people without passports, visits between Tonga living on opposite sides of the lake have always been fraught with danger. For 40 years the only method of communication across one of the twentieth century’s great engineering feats has been by dug-out canoe, a precarious exercise given the habits of crocodiles and border officials, who often shoot on sight.
Inevitably, relationships between bululus (the Tonga term for relatives which does not discriminate between immediate or more extended ties) have languished, and this has taken its wear on the social fabric. Some parents have not seen their children since 1957. The extended family as an institution has been decimated. In the days when two brothers might have casually decided to build their homes on opposite sides of the river, they could not have known that they were parting for life. Shout as loud as they like, family news can no longer cross the water. With the sundering of families came another devastating blow. Ancestors are an integral part of Tonga society, but their graves now lie beneath deep water. Without their help and intercession, life becomes even more baffling.
As in any community, it is the older ones that bear the brunt of such upheaval. The young are putting down new roots, but the delicate flower of continuity has been uprooted. A way of life is all but destroyed.
None of this is to imply that the river Tonga are hopeless victims. Through co- operatives and church groups they have done much to help themselves. Their resourcefulness is well illustrated in their husbandry of the baobab, a tree prized both physically and spiritually for its hardiness. A valuable source of vitamin C, the chalk like fruit is sucked as a sweet. And in harsh drought when there are no mealies available for the staple of sadza, it is mashed into a life-sustaining porridge. From its tough fibre, blankets and rope are obtained.
Also, despite their situation, the generosity of spirit among the river Tonga is legendary. On our recent return trip to Binga, Elliot Mudenda cycled for over three hours to welcome us. He wanted especially to see my wife who had been his teacher, but he also welcomed me and Valentine, our travelling companion who is a Zambian Tonga, as brothers – an offer of kinship which is no mere gesture.
Elliot tells a story one often hears from his people – one of aridity and perseverence. His voice also has the familiar gentleness which haunts the listener long after it has fallen silent. Now a teacher himself, Elliot does think that education for the Tonga is improving with primary schools having recently won the right to instruct in the mother tongue. But opportunities beyond basic literacy, especially for girls, remain as scarce as the rain.
After mass we went with Elliot to visit an old friend Juliet Mungombe. Our visit became a celebration. During it, I listened to Juliet. Her story is typical. Although Tonga society is matriarchal, with property passing from mother to daughter, most of the work still falls, literally, on female heads and backs.
Juliet was writing her O levels in Binga secondary school when her mother died giving birth to her sister Maurine. Leaving school, Juliet, along with her other female bululus and friends, provided for Maurine. It is perhaps a good omen that Maurine is now at school herself. Despite her lost opportunities, Juliet is far from bitter. “A painful struggle,” she recounted as she respectfully offered me the water bowl in which to wash my hands. “But one of joy, since we were many mothers for Maurine.”
Her saddest memory is of Maurine searching her breasts for the milk that was puzzlingly not there, but even this is not enough to cloud her smile at the thought of the child. “Ndakulumba Leza,” Juliet says over again. “Thank you, God.”
After visiting Juliet and her bululus, we took Elliot home. He lives in Bulawayo Kraal, a village deep in the bush. His home is a room the size of a wardrobe. Here he prepares his lessons and marks his endless books through the long nights by the light of a paraffin lantern. He has more than 60 children in a classroom that often doubles as living accommodation for new teachers, but it is not these testing conditions which worry him. His whole family rely on his income and having already lost a brother in the drought of 1992, he is anxious about their future.
An intelligent and devoted individual, Elliot has met with the prejudice that frequently impedes the progress of the Tonga in Zimbabwe, where stereotypes of cannibalism and three-toedness are common. With a name like Mudenda (as Tonga as O’Donnell is Irish), he is finding it hard to gain entry to a teaching degree. As an unqualified teacher his income is unassured, apart from any notions of career development.
The river Tonga are a resourceful people, thriving where others wilt, but there is a limit to what they can do with the resources available. They themselves have become like the baobab they revere, and although the kernel of their culture may still be sturdy as a trunk, their needs, physical and spiritual, have been forced to taper to a thin canopy, bearing fruits which, although incredible – given the conditions – are only a famine relish.
Binga – the place where the goats are brought home – was created as a growth point for the new, riverless lands of the river Tonga. This year is its 40th birthday, but no one is brewing beer for the party. Binga’s is a tale of cruel dispossession, and, despite the pain of exile, of fidelity to a spiritual generosity born of better times. With the elements of plentiful water lying alongside thirsty lands, abundant electricity sitting by an education prepared by lanterns, and great technology cohabiting with utter lack of development, this is a story which could easily be read as the scripture of our own era: the diaspora of a lake in the decades of telephones and the Internet.
The gentle and forgiving nature of the Tonga can be no reason for inactivity in remedying their situation. At the very least, water must be made available to them as it was before. This is not a gift to endow, but a right to be restored. The birthday of this injustice is the perfect time to act.
The British government too must be called on to make reparation for the past. The Zambian and Zimbabwean administrations must also realise the high rhetoric of their respective religious professions and independence slogans. The blatant oppression of indigenous peoples by damming their lands in the name of progress should be shown up for what it is. For the Tonga and those relocated by the Volta dam in Ghana, the Kainji dam in Nigeria, the Aswan dam in Egypt and Sudan and innumerable victims the rural world over, the hope is only for meaningful compensation. But for the Himba of Namibia, can the sword of Damocles suspended above their Epupa falls still be parried? Can such suffering be justified? This is the question that we must ask, until it is answered.
“The eyes that meet will meet again,” Elliot told us as we unwillingly parted, and I know this proverb is true, because already my heart longs to return to the people of the great river.
On my last night in Binga I stood by that baobab with the night sky an infinity of wonder above and the lake a troubled sky of wonder below. Unable to sleep, I stayed there until the sun began to rise, extinguishing the Kapenta boat stars one by one, gradually revealing the full territory of the lake, and so I saw something of the dimensions of hope and despair.
The despair was immediate, a way of life lost, recalled only in the stories of the old, and in the branches of the submerged trees which materialise from the mist in the dawn, puncturing the smooth skin of the lake like the despondent arms of drowning people. The hope, though, was also clear, demonstrated in the tenacity to which the river Tonga cling to the barren breast of their new land even if that tenacity too is tinged with sadness. Only by action can the hope be maintained. Only by action can we hope one day for a true celebration on this the occasion of Binga’s birthday.
It is the words of a young Tonga poet Tom Chuma that call us like that night sky:
When I see the blood red sun set In the waters of the lake I hear the voice of the people Beckoning me. To know what they want Must we ask the stars?