Lost in translation: How Hlubi language became marginalised

Siyabonga Hadebe

Pretoria - When questions about AmaHlubi and their identity surface, especially in KZN, they most often focus on their language.

In colonial Natal and Zuid-Afrika, language was one of the biggest catalysts in the process of the creation of mega tribes. Additionally, state formation in Europe encompassed a distinct language as a form of political identification. For example, the unification processes of Italy and Germany were both driven by nationalist movements that emphasised the importance of a common language.

Besides being a political tool, language in Africa, much like in other parts of the world, also serves as a common medium of communication among diverse groups with distinct identities and cultures.

Just as the Irish and Scottish maintain strong connections to their cultural identities while predominantly using English, many African communities exhibit a similar phenomenon.

Also, the people who identify themselves as AmaHlubi speak languages such as isi Zulu, isi Xhosa, Sesotho, Sepedi and other languages but without necessarily identifying with mega tribes that are often associated with these languages.

Why do AmaHlubi speak other people’s languages? What happened to their language, if they had one?

Many communities, including the Tembe, Matebele a Leboa, AmaBhaca, Mapulana and BaKholokoe, also fall into this category of nations whose languages are always questioned. While missionaries occasionally relied on African knowledge systems to determine how to categorise differences between indigenous languages, the overall process led to the development of new perspectives on language, particularly in terms of identity (the mega tribe phenomenon).

This article goes against mainstream Eurocentric historiography that promotes a mythical Shaka and his exploits. A number of scholars, including Shula Marks, Carolyn Hamilton and John Wright, have provided the most compelling evidence that the creation of the Zulu kingdom under Shaka in the early 1800s did not lead to the universal assimilation of the various conquered peoples into one Zulu ethnicity. Thus, a new perspective to account for historical occurrences is necessary to explain the contemporary landscape, including language and identity, comprehensively.

At the beginning of the 20th century, for example, missionary ethnographers, philologists and linguists held the belief that all the local languages in Natal, including the speech patterns of the Hlubi communities living there, were “spoken variations” of the standardised Zulu language.

Conversely, in the Cape, including among the Hlubi, they considered these vernaculars to be variations of the standardised Xhosa language. Classified as a “tekela language”, isiHlubi shared similarities with isiSwati, Sesotho and other Nguni languages. Very few people speak it today in its pure form, 100 years or so later.

Also, linguistic theory adhered to the notion of an inherent connection between language and nationality.

As a result, missionaries concluded that these standardised languages offered a more precise representation of the Zulu and Xhosa “nations” than any of the existing identity discourses. This led to the mislabelling of all Black Africans in these two regions as “Zulu” and “Xhosa”, respectively.

This perspective explains why German missionary Jens N Hansen, after seven years of service in Natal, referred to his Hlubi followers in 1870 as “hard, cold, extremely indifferent Zulus”. Michael R Mahoney uses the phrase “other Zulu” to characterise these mislabelled groups, such as the Hlubi, Ngwane and others.

The proliferation of language-based identity narratives gained momentum in the subsequent decades.

A significant catalyst for this shift arose from the increasing availability of publications such as schoolbooks, dictionaries, newspapers and books in standard Zulu and Xhosa. Notably, there was a conspicuous absence of similar materials in the isiHlubi language. This situation prompted philologist Clement M Doke to assert in 1928 that standard Zulu and Xhosa had established themselves as the acknowledged literary languages of “Natal and Zululand” and “Kaffraria (Ciskei) and the Transkei”, respectively.

Another impetus emerged from within the black African community, where individuals began to adopt and utilise these identity narratives to serve their own objectives. This phenomenon encompassed those who migrated from rural Natal and Zululand as well as from Ciskei and Transkei to urban centres like Johannesburg. In these cosmopolitan settings, the broader, language-centric concepts of “Zuluness” and “Xhosaness” became appealing to the migrants. They found strength in numbers and a sense of belonging in these language-based identities, especially in the context of intense competition for jobs and housing.

Furthermore, after the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, black Africans across these regions were confronted with racially biased laws, notably the Natives’ Land Act of 1913. This legislation encouraged them to rally and resist on the basis of these broader language-centric identity narratives. In Natal, for instance, ethnic nationalist groups, such as Inkhata kaZulu (1924) and the Zulu Society (1937), actively advocated for a trans-Thukela “Zulu” ethnic identity. This identity was based, in part, on the notion of a shared Zulu language among these communities.

Additionally, the racist South African state played a crucial role in further promoting and adopting these identity discourses as part of its strategy to entrench the system of indirect rule. In 1925, it established an ethnological section within the Native Affairs Department, and the members of this section embarked on a classification process. For example, they classified all the communities and “tribes” presumed to speak isiXhosa, including the Hlubi in the Cape Colony, as members of the “Xhosa group”. Simultaneously, they identified those “tribes” believed to speak isiZulu, like the Hlubi in Natal, as the “Zulu group”.

This co-optation of identity reached its peak with the enactment of the 1959 Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act and the 1970 Bantu Homeland and Citizenship Act. During this period, state ethnologists employed these language-based “group” identities as the foundational criteria for organising black Africans into so-called self-governing “nations” confined to designated homelands, often referred to as Bantustans.

As part of this process, Hlubi individuals holding “Xhosa” identity cards were officially designated as residents of the “Xhosa” homelands, ie, the Ciskei and Transkei, while those Hlubi bearing “Zulu” identity cards were recognised as legal residents of the “Zulu” homeland of KwaZulu.

This persistence of language-centred identity discourses continued beyond South Africa’s transition to non-racial democratic rule in the 1990s. These discourses endured because the post-apartheid state continued to recognise isiZulu and isiXhosa as the official standardised (written) languages of KZN and the Eastern Cape, respectively, and considered them as encompassing a series of subordinate dialects, including isiHlubi.

In this regard, the “best Constitution in the world” acknowledges that during the colonial and apartheid eras, English and Afrikaans took precedence, thereby marginalising indigenous languages. To address this historical inequity, it mandates that the state take “practical and positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of these (indigenous) languages”. However, the Constitution defines “indigenous languages” as “official standard languages” only. In practice, this mandate promotes isiZulu and isiXhosa while marginalising isiHlubi as a means of communication and markers of identity.

Renowned socio-linguists Robert Herbert and Richard Bailey, for instance, explain that the equation “language equals cultural group” continues to dominate post-apartheid South Africa, leading many to consider it axiomatic that all isiZulu speakers are “Zulu” and isiXhosa speakers are “Xhosa”.

Consequently, a vast majority of young and older people may not even be aware of the existence of isiHlubi, as they primarily use the languages taught in schools.

Recent efforts to revive the language are encouraging. Nonetheless, it is acknowledged that the Hlubi people in the Eastern Cape are the most knowledgeable about the isiHlubi language. Therefore, they are best positioned to teach people isiHlubi in KZN and other places.

* Hadebe is an independent commentator on socio-economic, political and global matters.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.

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