Conclusion

I have taken my discussion up to the late 1940s but I cannot leave this chapter without some attempt to connect up my story with the questions raised at the beginning. What were the connections between the development of the sense of a wider Manyika ethnicity and the assassination of Chitepo, the faction fights within ZANU, or the support given to Muzorewa in the 1979 elections? Did the surviving loyalty to a Manyika identity surface destructively in these ways?

There are various possible answers to this. One, which is certainly true, is that the ethnic component in nationalist disputes and in the voting support for Muzorewa has been greatly exaggerated. But other answers speak to what ethnic component does exist. Just as migrant labourers in the past found a principle of mutual assistance in dialect ethnicities, so exiled nationalists in the 1970s did begin to group together on the same basis. The regional politics of development and patronage of today's Zimbabwe also make these identities pertinent—no one doubts that Edgar Tekere, as Chairman of the Manicaland regional committee of ZANU/PF, speaks for 'Manyika' interests. But there is another dimension.

The developments that I have been describing were in no sense a monolithic process. A Manyika identity emerged, but it emerged as the distinct work of three different missionary churches, each appealing most to different areas and to different classes or proto-classes. The African groups interested in developing the Manyika identity were also distinct from each other, both in their experiences and their interests. Hence 'the Manyika' never existed as a bloc, entirely at the disposal of any leader or party. Indeed, it seems to me that where Manyika-hood did play a role in recent politics it was in this particular rather than general way.

Thus in December 1975 Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe Star attacked Muzorewa for 'appealing to the African of the Mushona tribe using him or her as a cover while in reality the group leadership is interested in . . . the Manyika tribe. . . . The death of Herbert Chitepo and Bishop Muzorewa's United Methodist Church are cleverly used as baits to woo the Vamanyika.'^[108] It was not in fact true that Muzorewa cared little for the support of other groups, but it was true that in Manicaland his support was founded upon his control of the old American Methodist Manyika network. The stalwarts of the church, who had previously been unwilling to commit themselves to mass nationalism, came solidly behind a leader who had himself been brought up in Makoni district and whose family represented the quintessential ambitions of the Methodist entrepreneur.^[109] As I have argued elsewhere, Muzorewa's essential support came from this particular strand in the 'Manyika' tradition.^[110]

In February 1980 James MacManus of The Guardian brought out clearly the distinct strands in the 'Manyika vote':

There lies St Augustine's, the most famous mission school in the country, whose old boys, including the late nationalist leader, Herbert Chitepo, have risen to positions of influence in every sphere of African life in Rhodesia. The Anglican school has strong nationalist connections which . . . explains the loyalty among the staff and students to Robert Mugabe's party and army. . . . The arguments advanced at St Augustine's can easily be reversed at Old Umtali Mission a few miles away which counted Bishop Muzorewa among its old boys. Here one hears lurid tales of ZANLA activity.^[111]

I have tried to show elsewhere that the Catholic strand of Manyika-hood played the most radical role of all during the guerrilla war.^[112]

Nevertheless, though certainly not 'traditional' or 'natural' or monolithic, the

continued existence in this multi-layered way of the idea of an extended Manyika identity does offer, along with the continuance of the other sub-Shona ethnicities, a potential danger to the Zimbabwean state. During the war the Rhodesian regime belatedly picked up and exploited the notion of this 'traditional' ethnic division—hence the maps setting out their exact percentages. In January 1976 the Zimbabwe Star alleged that the Rhodesian Front had a secret plan. Operation Shaka. 'According to this document the first task of the R.F. is to divide the Ndebeles and Shonas by inciting tribalism and magnify their tribal differences. The second task is to divide the Shonas themselves and break them into the constituent clans—the Manyikas, Makaranga, Mazezuru, Makorekore, etc, etc, etc.'^[113] The Zimbabwe Star feared 'good-for-nothing megalomaniac so-called leaders who cannot impress anybody and resort to tribalism as an instrument for manufacturing support'. It might be that strands in the Manyika identity could again be manipulated. For this reason it seems useful to set out, as this study has tried to do, how and why the notion of the extended Manyika identity arose in the first place; not indeed as the fruit of megalomaniac tribalism but as a very human and often constructive response to socio-economic change, a response however which now needs to be replaced by the development of other kinds of consciousness in a period of even sharper transformation and contradiction.