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Language, Resistance and Multilingualism in Post-Colonial Zimbabwe: The Kalanga and their Struggle for Recognition

The article focuses on language policy in Zimbabwe and argues that both the colonial and post-colonial governments advocated a unitary language policy in which English and the two major indigenous languages – ChiShona and IsiNdebele – were adopted as national languages. For the post-colonial government, this language policy was influenced by prevailing ideas about linguistic unity as a prerequisite for economic development and the construction of a cohesive national identity. This approach led to the marginalisation of minor languages and their associated cultures in education and the wider public sphere. The article shows how one marginalised linguistic community, the Kalanga of south-western Zimbabwe, responded to the government’s exclusionary policies. It traces the resistance to such government policies and the promotion of the TjiKalanga language and culture by two organisations – the Kalanga Cultural Promotion Society, relaunched in 1980, and the Kalanga and Language and Cultural Development Association, founded in 2005. It also engages with the various activities and interventions carried out by the two groups, leading to the introduction of TjiKalanga in schools, among other achievements. Furthermore, the article argues that the rise and development of the two TjiKalanga language and cultural promotion organisations illustrate the pitfalls of centralising and unifying tendencies in both the colonial and post-colonial governments in Zimbabwe. It also demonstrates the agency and resistance of minority groups in relation to these flawed policies. By assessing the performance of the two organisations, the article views their activities as a form of cultural resistance to the hegemonic and exclusionist policies of post-independence Zimbabwean government. Cultural resistance is used as a conceptual approach through which the limits of the impact of hegemonic monolithic language policies on minority groups, such as the Kalanga in the post-colonial Zimbabwean context, are illustrated and illuminated.