The Shona People

In 1838 when the Ndebele first entered the country, they found a collection of tribes inhabiting the country living under conditions not dissimilar from their own. These tribes comprised the Makorekore, Makaranga, Manyika, VaHera, Rozvi, Bavenda, VaZezuru and many others, all of whom today are designated the "Mashona".

The origin of the name Shona is uncertain. It appears to have been used first by the Ndebele as a derogatory name for the people they had defeated, and particularly the Rozvi. It is thought to have come from the word ukutshona — to sink or go down.

The Shona did not call themselves by this name and at first disliked it; even now they tend rather to classify themselves by their dialect groups (Karanga, Manyika, Zezuru, Korekore, etc.), though most accept the designation Shona in contrast to unrelated peoples.

The Shona were never integrated into a single nation, so the extension of the term to all the tribes appears to have been a colonial innovation.

The currently accepted classification of Shona peoples into the main dialect groups is the result of a linguistic study on the possibility of developing a unified language from the various dialects.

The conclusion of the study was that the dialects spoken by the Zezuru in central Shona country, the Korekore in the north, the Karanga and the Kalanga in the south and the Manyika and Ndau in the east are all classifiable as a single linguistic unit: these together with the Barwe-Tonga comprise the peoples at whom we have been looking and whose histories are so interrelated.

The Zezuru, the Korekore, the Karanga and the Manyika all speak dialects which can readily be incorporated into a unified language based on the Zezuru dialect.

The language of the Ndau peoples is more distinct due possibly to the influence of the Shangaan invaders, and the Kalanga dialect is quite different from the other Shona dialects due no doubt to centuries of separation reinforced by the more recent Ndebele settlement between them and the rest of the Shona peoples.

Although these classifications are linguistic, and although the boundaries of the groups classified in this way are not precise, they do reflect the cultural patterns of the Shona peoples and also to some extent their various histories.

The Zezuru peoples of central Shona country comprise a number of independent chiefdoms, united by geographical propinquity, by their common language and culture and also by some of the greater religious cults which spread their influence beyond the boundaries of particular chiefdoms: The current chiefdoms, however, result from numerous migrations over the past few centuries and the Zezuru peoples do not have a common history.

Since the largest city is situated in the heart of Zezuru country, industrialization has affected the Zezuru peoples more than peoples in remoter parts of the country, and the central Zezuru are on the whole materially more progressive than surrounding peoples.

This has given a certain standing to peoples classified as Zezuru and, especially where the Zezuru and the Korekore meet, peoples traditionally associated with the Korekore may prefer to call themselves Zezuru.

To the north are the Korekore people, descended from the subject chiefdoms of the Mutapas, together with a few more recently settled chiefdoms. To the north-east of them are the Tavara peoples, who were also once incorporated into the Mutapa State.

The Tavara were originally the autochthonous people who lived in the Zambezi Valley before the Korekore came down from the plateau, but now the division between Korekore and Tavara corresponds roughly with the boundary between Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

There is little cultural difference between the Korekore and the Zezuru, though the Tavara and some others of the valley peoples have a distinctive kinship system which gives less emphasis to the male line than do other Shona systems.

In the south are the Karanga peoples, occupying the area covered by the ancient Zimbabwe State. The contemporary chiefdoms, however, are largely the result of migrations in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. In their religious cults and in the way they elect a new chief, there is no doubt that their culture is basically similar to that of the Korekore and Zezuru.

Also similar are the Manyika, to the east of Zezuru country, who have distinctive features in their public rituals and in their patterns on kinship. Originally the name Manyika applied only to the people around what is now Mutare, and the extension of the name to neighboring peoples occurred through the influence of missionary activity and white government administration in the twentieth century. The extension of the name is now accepted by the people themselves, who thereby acknowledge a certain unity between the chiefdoms so designated.

The Ndau peoples to the south-east, some of whom are in Zimbabwe, show marked differences from other Shona groups in their language, in their politico-religious structure, and no doubt in other ways.

Nevertheless, they do have Shona origins, and they are rightly still classified as Shona. The same applies to the Kalanga, who live in the southwest of Zimbabwe and stretch into neighboring Botswana, and who in some ways align themselves with the Ndebele rather than with the Shona.

Also of interest was a group of enterprising iron workers, the Njanja, who smelted the high class ore from Wedza mountain and traded their products widely in Shona country.

Their superior techniques of smelting and working iron produced high quality goods which were valued among surrounding peoples. Neighboring peoples preferred Njanja hoes to the local products of inferior iron.

Especially prized were Njanja mbira,, musical instruments comprising perhaps thirty finely tuned iron reeds set on a resonant wooden base and requiring good quality metal and skilled workmanship.

They traded their iron products for cattle and other livestock in areas a couple of hundred kilometers from their home. Their wealth from trade allowed expert smelters and smiths to gather growing communities of apprentices and dependents, who in turn could perform the communal labour necessary for smelting on a large scale.

Although militarily they were weak (they never succeeded in taking the mountain which was the source of their ore), they were able to acquire, through trade, wealth in cattle and other livestock.

Prior to the invasion of the Nguni, the Rozvi were once recognised as a paramount power in the land (their rulers being known as Mambo), but they held only a loose form of control over tributary tribes, who themselves exercised self rule.

This titular control was based on the Mwari cult. The Rozvi emissaries claimed they knew God, that is Mwari, and called themselves the children of God. The election to chieftainship in each tribe was, for example, one of the matters which required the approval of the Mambo.

The Shona tribal system lacked the vigour of the Ndebele, due to there being no central authority. Strict military discipline, which was prominent in the despotism of the latter, was absent.

If a chief were of a strong character, intent upon improving and maintaining discipline, he would most likely have been forsaken by those of his people who desired a more congenial life.

Tribal law, which was wholly traditional, was based upon a foundation of experience and logic and was understood by all.

The rules which constituted that body of law in the main were:

1. The subjection of the female sex to the male and of children to the father
2. Primogeniture among males as the general law of succession and inheritance
3. The incapacity of women to own property, except in exceptional circumstances
4. The perpetual minority of women
5. The recognition of polygamy
6. Implicit obedience to the chief of the tribe who was its embodiment and head
7. Communal responsibility—every individual was responsible to his kraal-head, headman and chief. A head of a kraal or family was responsible for its members and a district headman for the people under him
8. The recognition of the payment and return of roora (lobola) as a legal ingredient in marriage and its dissolution
9. The non-ownership of land, which was held by the chief in trust for his people

The only important tribe in the British South Africa Company's territories south of the Zambezi which has survived the Matebele invasion is the Mashona.

Thanks to the abundance of safe retreats among the granite hills of their country, they have escaped the partial extinction that has befallen their neighbors and cousins, the Banyai and Makalaka; but they have been so greatly reduced, that, though they occupy 100,000 square miles of territory, they only number about 200,000 persons.

The Mashonas are peaceful and industrious; they are laborious agriculturalists, and raise large crops of grain, including maize and rice. They keep herds of small cattle, flocks of goats, and large numbers of fowls.

Their houses are circular thatched huts, which are perched for safety in the least accessible places on the kopjes or granite crags: for the Mashona were weaker than their enemies the Matebele; and as they had no military organisation, but lived in small communities under local chiefs, and never combined for defense, they had no chance of successfully resisting the Matebele raids. (The Living Races of Mankind, 1898)

BECOMING URBAN, THE ATTRACTION OF TOWN LIFE
Increasing numbers of Shona are moving into the towns and cities, many on a permanent basis. In the black townships of the cities and towns in Shona country, different peoples from inside and outside of the country gather together.

Nevertheless, the Shona are by far the most numerous and the Shona language is widely spoken — or rather chitaundi, the language of town, which is basically the Shona language with the addition of a large extraneous vocabulary taken from English and other tongues.

"Chitaundi" can refer to the culture and customs of the towns as well as to language. The language, which is clearly Shona in structure and style though half the words may be English, typifies the many changes that have taken place as Shona culture adapts itself to town life: new institutions and new ways of life fit themselves into the older social patterns, with which the new town dwellers are familiar and which they adapt appropriately to produce a culture which is neither western nor traditionally Shona.

Electricity in most town homes provides lighting late into the night and heat for warmth in the winter and sometimes for cooking. Paraffin and electric stoves are easier to cook on than wood fires, and do not fill the room with the unpleasant wood smoke that commonly fills rural kitchens — or any rural room in the winter.

Running water to most homes obviates the necessity of women fetching water from some distant supply and allows more convenient washing facilities than are available in most rural homes. Brick houses with corrugated iron roofs are proof against rain, wind and dust, and are more readily defended against bats, mice and other creatures, all of which can make life very uncomfortable in traditional rural huts.

It is true that some town dwellers can find accommodation only in rough shacks made from plastic and cardboard and corrugated iron fixed onto a rough wood framework, but these are a minority and they normally aspire to the better style of dwelling that they see about them.

Access to monetary incomes and close contact with markets allow for furniture that provides some comfort and a smart appearance to a town home, and for radios and gramophones for entertainment.

In the towns people dress as smartly as they can according to their incomes and occupations. Most people have fixed hours of work during the day and fixed times for relaxation, when they can drink at beer halls or shebeens and enjoy cinemas, night-clubs, and football and racing at weekends.

All this contrasts sharply with the rural areas where families survive on their own with a minimum of outside help or interference and a minimum of expense. Many inhabitants of the towns have been born and brought up in an urban environment and many others have spent over half their lives in the towns.

It is hard for these to give up the comforts of town life to revert to the more primitive rural life, and few have any intention of doing so if they can possibly avoid it. Some have no real ties with rural relations and would find it impossible to find a rural home even if they wished to.

They are town or city people who would find themselves at a loss in the country: town is their home and they have no other. Nevertheless, there are a number of difficulties in living permanently in the towns, particularly those concerned with the lack of social security.

Since accommodation in towns cannot be based on patterns of kinship, people tend to live away from close kin, and may have no one on whom they can rely should they fall sick or find themselves unemployed or when they grow old; and those relatives who may wish to help are likely to find themselves barely able financially to support their wives and children, let alone other kin in need of sustenance, which is ever more expensive in the towns.

In the rural areas, one can always find some food from a plot of land; not enough to keep healthy, perhaps, but at least enough to keep alive. In the towns everything costs money: food, accommodation, entertainment, all of which can be had relatively cheaply or for nothing in the rural areas, even though there the quality may be inferior.

Accommodation in the towns is particularly problematic. Many town dwellers lodge in hostels or illegally in the homes of others, neither of which is satisfactory on a permanent basis. Others live in houses owned, or at least supplied, by employers and they have to move when they lose their employment, be it through old age or for any other reason.

Of those who rent their own accommodation few receive pensions in old age adequate to meet this cost and few earn salaries sufficiently large to enable them to save for old age or other times of need. Some own their urban homes which they have built for themselves, but there are still rates to pay and people believe they can be, and are likely to be, evicted for any of numerous minor offenses: although they are not entirely justified in this belief, only a few of the wealthiest black people have freehold rights to property in the townships.

Until independence, township residents generally felt themselves to be completely at the mercy of their white rulers, and since the establishment of black government in the administration of townships is changing but slowly. So a home in an urban area rarely provides the householder with a sense of security.

Then there is the need for physical care in old age. Since social services are not adequate to care for all the urban aged, they must rely on kin, who in the urban situation rarely have room in their cramped housing to take in any extra persons, and who are usually financially unable to support aged parents or relatives.

It is often difficult for adult children even to visit aged relatives to do their chores: the aged are concentrated in the oldest townships, while married sons and daughters have had to take accommodation in the newer townships, many miles from the homes of their parents.

Sometimes a married son occupies the house of his aged parents while they are still alive and living in it; although this may save him years of waiting for accommodation on the ever growing waiting lists, the arrangement lacks permanence where the house is rented, since the son might be evicted when his parents, in whose name the house is let, die.

So in old age, many are forced to leave their urban homes and to search for a new home in a rural area where they can hope for a little support. Most urban residents maintain some contact with rural relatives, both for social reasons and as a security against old age or unemployment. But this does not mean that they regard the rural area as their home, nor does it mean that they will go to live in a rural area if they can possibly avoid it.

Even elderly townspeople may try to keep going in the towns by obtaining a small income through petty trade (often illegal) and taking in lodgers, before going to a rural area as a last resort to keep alive. With the various forces pushing people to the towns and then back into the country, a number of factors are influential in making people clearly urban in orientation, and increasingly stabilized in the urban environment.

Income level is one: the higher a family's income, the more likely is that family to settle permanently in a city. The security of home ownership is another. And the longer a person lives in an urban centre, the less likely he is to return to a rural area. Associated with greater commitment to urban areas are a decreased reliance on kin, a weakening of the social networks derived from the rural areas, and a greater involvement in urban social institutions.

FAMILY LIFE IN THE TOWNS
The most fundamental change brought about by the urban situation on Shona social life is in their family structure. In the towns, one has to take accommodation where one can find it, which is usually away from family and kin. Also, where houses cater for families at all, they are designed for small elementary families each consisting of simply the husband, his wife and their children, and the accommodation is often very cramped even for these.

Where a family does have outsiders staying with them, these are likely to be unrelated lodgers or more distant kin who can be expected to pay for their accommodation to help the family defray the expenses of town life. As a result, the rural system of extended families living together must break down.

A man is rarely able to live with a polygamous family in a town: apart from the problem of cramped accommodation, an extra wife in the towns is not able to cultivate her own field and, instead of being the economic asset she is in the country, she becomes a further burden on strained family resources. So in the towns, the most common household unit is an elementary family.

Nevertheless, extended kinship obligations are maintained and, since accommodation is usually short in the towns, most families have one or two kinsmen staying with them, at least on a temporary basis while they seek employment and alternative housing. But such arrangements are usually temporary, and one does not find whole families living together as happens in the rural areas.

Since in a traditional rural home a man lives with his close kin and is partly dependent on them, these are able to apply considerable pressure on his behavior. The social control of kinsmen maintaining customary standards of behavior is absent in the towns, and one of the effects of this is seen in a changing system of marriage.

Marriages now are usually arranged by the couple concerned, their relatives having very little say in the choice of spouses. The bride-price payments are made by the prospective husband to his bride's father (or to his successor if the father is dead), and they concern no one but these two men. Often the two families are completely unknown to each other, and may even be from different tribes: neither family has the traditional vested interest in bride-price cattle.

Since the traditional controls of kinship and village communities are absent, the father-in-law may decide that the only way to ensure the payment of the bride-price without undue delay is by insisting that it is all paid before he gives his consent to the registration of the marriage (a necessary procedure before the husband may apply for married accommodation).

Perhaps a more fundamental reason for this practice is the protection of his daughter. Once the husband is independent with a home of his own, he is able to reject his wife and take in any woman that meets his fancy; he may be prepared to do this if he has paid only a small portion of his bride-price which he can waive, but he would be more reluctant if he has paid the full marriage consideration.

Whatever his reasons, the father-in-law is unlikely to forbid the couple living together once payments have started (in accordance with traditional practice); he simply prevents the registration of the marriage until the husband is able to pay the full consideration, which with the current practice of demanding very high bride-price may take some years. This encourages loose informal unions, already common on account of the unstable urban populations and the preponderance of men among young adults.

But when the couple are serious about their marriage, they may live in the home of either parents until the husband has been able to pay the full bride-price and find a home of his own. Thus a return to the pattern of residential extended families is beginning to appear in the poorer township circles, but on a temporary basis and in extremely cramped circumstances: one may find in a small three-roomed house the house-holder and his wife, a couple of children with their unofficial spouses, a number of younger children, and perhaps some very young grandchildren.

This arrangement is explicitly temporary and does not yet typify the family structure in the towns, in which the elementary family unit is dominant. The dominant residential pattern of elementary families living among strangers has brought about changes in lifestyle.

Young wives gain a certain independence in the management of their households, which they could never have living within their husbands' extended families; though against this, they lose the help of relatives, especially to look after young children while they do their chores.

The traditional relationships between men, women and children sometimes become less formal as a result of the family being isolated among strangers; it is now not uncommon to find in an urban area a man eating together with his wife and children, something that would never happen in a more traditional setting.

But it does not follow that members of an elementary family necessarily come closer together in an urban situation. The contrary seems usually to be the case. The reason for the dominance of the elementary family is the absence of kin rather than any strengthening of ties within the family. It is true that the isolation of the family can and often does strengthen its internal bonds, but this does not always happen.

We have seen the difficult position in which women find themselves in the towns, and it is clear that the traditional Shona relationship between husband and wife does not easily adapt itself to the urban environment. Since a woman in a public place may readily be taken for a prostitute, few husbands are prepared to take their wives out in public.

Yet there are no restraints on the men who (in accordance with traditional ways) prefer the company of other men to that of women, and who may spend much of their time with their mates in beer halls and other places of entertainment or relaxation.

Thus, although the wife is isolated from her own and her husband's kin, she does not necessarily see more of her husband than she would in a traditional rural setting. The weakness of the relationship between husband and wife in urban families becomes clear when the husband's family visit the home for any length of time.

The husband's parents, brothers and sisters regard their kinsman's home as their own, and his wife as the outsider she would be in a rural homestead. The urban wife's status as lady of the house is dependent not on any new relationship with her husband, but simply on the absence of more traditional contenders for the title.

This attitude is illustrated in an extreme form in the system of inheritance of a dead man's estate that has become common among Shona in the towns. Although any man can will his property to his wife, few in fact do so: some are ignorant of the procedures, some do not bother with them, and many do not trust women with their estates on the grounds that a widow can always marry again and squander her late husband's wealth on another family (ignoring the fact that kinsmen are equally likely to squander the savings of a late relative without taking proper care of the deceased's own children).

And even should a man will his property to his widow, he cannot, if his marriage is registered as a customary marriage, give to his wife the custody of his children after his death. In practice, on the death of the husband, his family has no control over his widow, who lives on her own some distance from them, and they suspect that she will try to remove some of her late husband's property for her own use.

At the same time, the husband's kin are not constrained by the traditional social sanctions to see that due respect is paid to the dead man's property, and that his widow and children are properly cared for. So immediately on the death of a man, his brothers are likely to come in to strip the homestead of all but the widow's personal property, leaving her with a bare home and no one to help her pay for food and rent.

Neither are the bonds between parents and children necessarily strengthened in the elementary families of the towns. The fact that there are no kin of the children's generation in the vicinity of their home does not necessarily drive the children to their parents: children are likely to associate with school mates or gangs of their own age, who are less under the control of their parents than are kin in the rural homesteads.

Parents often fail to take over the roles of absent kin like the father's sister and the grand-parents, who in traditional society have important parts to play in the education of children. The children learn town ways and receive little education in Shona customs, resulting in a substantial generation gap which is recognised by all.

One result of the weakening links between parents and children, and between children and traditional society, is that people born and brought up in town often do not know how to behave correctly when they visit relatives in the country. They have not learnt the details of traditional social patterns or the formal greetings due to different senior kin or relatives by marriage.

Besides, they are likely to have a higher standard of living than rural kin and children in the towns are more aware of wealth differentials than absent patterns of kinship: parents of such children may find it difficult to persuade them to pay due respect to rural elders which may involve sitting on the ground and soiling their smart town clothes.

Even adults often find it difficult to sit down and talk to kinsmen from a social stratum lower than their own. Many urban families try to overcome this problem by sending their children to stay with rural kin for a while.

In a survey of children at a secondary school in Highfield, all of the 103 children interviewed had been brought up in urban areas; yet 90% of the girls and 82% of the boys had spent some time staying with a grandmother in the rural areas, and the majority said that they had been taught their manners by grandmothers and fathers' sisters (vatete).

But this kind of education serves only further to hide the growing divergence between the traditional ideals of kinship to which nearly all Shona give at least notional assent, and the new patterns of relationships necessitated by urban life. Difficulties about behavior and lifestyle also arise on the other side.

Rural dwellers visiting kin in town may not find it easy to fit into town ways, and may not understand the financial constraints against extending in towns the lavish hospitality mutually expected by kin in rural areas. People who move permanently into urban areas inevitably find their numerous kinship ties weakened.

One way in which this is reflected is in a lowering of reliance on kin. In rural areas, and even among transitory labour migrants, the Shona normally rely largely on kin for help when they are in difficulty or in need. In the towns there is still a tendency to rely on kin for more traditional needs, such as help in sickness or to pay a fine or for care of one's property in one's absence.

For new needs, however, such as money for rent or school fees or to buy some specified article, townspeople tend to rely more on friends, neighbors, co-workers, welfare institutions and others who are not kin.

And this independence of kin spreads to more traditional needs as people become more committed to town ways. The weakening of ties does not usually mean that these ties are broken off completely. Many people have settled permanently in a city, have rejected the traditional way of life in favour of a more westernized culture, and are financially secure and independent of kin; even these are likely to keep in touch with more backward rural kin.

This may be partly an insurance against financial or other catastrophe, particularly if one day they require the help of kinsmen to appease family spirits. But it is also due to natural social ties, which may be modified to meet new circumstances,but which few would wish to destroy entirely.

NEW FORMS OF UNION
The definition of marriage in urban situations has become somewhat confused. In many cases, there are unions in which all customary rights and conditions have been fulfilled, yet which have not been registered in any way: such unions are socially recognized as marriages, but have little legal status.

In some cases husband and wife are living together according to custom, while the father of the wife refuses to give his formal consent, to the marriage, perhaps because he is holding out for further payments from his son-in-law.

In the past, this consent was necessary for the registration of the marriage: although now legally a girl over the age of 18 has full adult status and is no longer dependent on parental permission, it is socially difficult for her to assert her rights against her family, on whom she may become dependent in times of trouble.

In practice, the status of any union which does not have the parental consent of the women, and the rights of the two parties to it, are somewhat tenuous. There are marriages in which bride-price as been agreed and promised, but not paid: these may have full legal status, while they are less secure from the social point of view.

Yet another variety of marital types appears in mapoto unions. These comprise a new form of union in urban situations, in which a man and a woman live together although no bride-price is paid. Many Shona reject the idea that such unions are properly to be called marriages: they are referred to as mapoto (pots), suggesting simply a convenient sharing of cooking arrangements.

Indeed, sometimes the union is a short-term, temporary convenience for both parties. Nevertheless, many mapoto unions are relatively stable, lasting ten years and more, and involve a contractual arrangement which has been partially recognised by a Shona urban court.

The man takes responsibility to provide for the woman and her children; and the woman looks after the man's home and she agrees to sexual fidelity towards him. It is legitimate, therefore, to speak of mapoto unions as a type of marriage.

The reasons a man may have for entering into a mapoto union are various. One is the domestic need of a migrant worker who has left his wife and family at his rural home. A stable union with a woman in town can solve the problem, without creating complications when the migrant eventually returns home. A man may enter into a union with a salaried woman in order to alleviate financial difficulties.

A number of Christian men, whose legal wives are barren or bore no sons, have entered into secret mapoto marriages with other women until such time as the desired children can be adopted by the legal wives. In all cases, the legal wife may or may not have prior knowledge of the union: often, but not always, the husband has her sympathy and the union her approval.

In all these cases, the attraction of a mapoto marriage is its relative stability on the one hand, and, on the other, its lack of formality, making it easy to dissolve and possible to be kept clandestine. Women who enter mapoto marriages usually have little hope of a more formal marriage, either because they have been previously married and divorced or widowed, or because they already have illegitimate children to care for.

For such women in an urban area, a man can provide the security of a home and maintenance. Some women regard the equality and relative independence they maintain in a mapoto marriage as preferable to the subordinate position they are forced to accept in a formal marriage.

This is especially true of divorcees, who have been made aware that formal marriage does not guarantee security. The family of a girl who has entered a mapoto marriage is usually presented with a fait accompli. Some families may resent the union, and try to break it up or exact bride-price payments from the husband. But in practice, usually the girl is not readily marriageable before entering the union, and is less so afterwards.

The loss to the family is minimal, and often the husband is accepted as a traditional son-in-law, who presents his wife's parents with occasional gifts.

Although many Shona think of mapoto unions as similar to prostitution, and although both are relatively new to Shona society, brought about largely by urban environments, the two are very different. There are a number of factors that encourage prostitution in urban areas.

One is the desire of relatively poor women to acquire a certain economic independence from their husbands, which may result in limited clandestine prostitution. Another is the desire of girls to be free of kin and of unpleasant domestic service. Certainly a girl can, through prostitution, earn an income which allows her to live in a style far beyond the means of most women.

Prostitution is usually shunned by married women, but there is little stigma attached to the profession, and professional prostitutes are usually quite open about the way in which they make their living. A Shona girl who earns a good living through prostitution in towns may be received well by her family in the rural area, which will adopt any children she may have.

A further factor which encourages prostitution are conditions which make any kind of family life impossible. I have mentioned the living conditions of many domestic servants in this respect. Another instance are the hostels in some of the old townships, which housed single men in very cramped conditions (as many as five to a room), with communal kitchens and mess rooms.

A study of hostels in Mbare revealed that half the residents were married men, and that their average age was just under thirty. The bachelor accommodation for most of them was consequently inappropriate to their age and status. The hostel dwellers were largely rurally orientated, with little stake in urban life.

Some (13 %) commuted weekly from their rural homes, where their wives and families lived; but the majority only went home once a fortnight (30%) or once a month (53 %). In spite of attempts to provide recreational facilities for hostel dwellers, large numbers of men living in these conditions represent a significant disruption of normal family life.

VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS
One of the consequences of leaving rural areas, where social life revolves around kinship and local communities, is that people have to find companionship through other associations. Since an urban population is large and heterogeneous, physical proximity is not an adequate basis for choosing one's companions.

I have mentioned the growth of women's clubs in towns, in which women can gather for companionship and mutual help in running their urban homes; there are numerous other voluntary associations in which men, women or children with some common interest can meet and find companions.

Most common among men are the informal clubs in which members pool their wages, and take it in turn to keep the pool to buy some expensive item. Many men are also members of football clubs, where they find their weekend entertainment.

Another common financial type of club are burial societies, which for a small regular subscription provide donations and support immediately after a death in a family, and guarantee funds for a good burial, often including transport of the corpse to the rural home; burial societies also provide various other benefits, including social activities for their members, who gather from time to time for music, feasting and dancing.

And there are associations for different professions, co-operative societies, clubs for dancing and for various sports, numerous religious groups and societies, youth clubs, charitable organizations, and even occasional drinking clubs. Some of these bring together co-workers or strangers with common interests.

But some are dominated by people from a particular area: this applies particularly to many religious associations, since different denominations have defined territorial spheres of influence in the rural areas. Thus by joining a voluntary association connected with the mission church operative in his home rural area, a man in town is likely to meet others from the same area, and to keep up with news of relatives in the country.

SOCIAL CONTROL
In the towns, associates from a man's rural place of origin may serve not only as companions with interests common to his own, but also to provide some other functions of a traditional local community, particularly an element of social control. At the simplest level, they can report on his behavior to the rural community, whose goodwill he must preserve should he ever need to return to it.

Also, senior men from a particular tribal group often hold an informal court in a town to solve along traditional lines any disputes that may arise within the group. This kind of institution is especially popular among those who through preference or necessity regard their stay in town as temporary.

STRATIFICATION
Achievements in education, professions and wealth receive more recognition in the towns than does status due to noble birth or kinship relations. Thus an emerging class structure in the towns replaces the old structure based entirely on wealth.

One may meet a very wealthy entrepreneur, who continues to eat stiff porridge with his fingers as the principal ingredient of his diet, who speaks only a little broken English, who keeps a polygamous family and upholds the traditional relationships between men, women and children within the family; such a man is not likely to be wholly acceptable in the upper class of professional men, although the standards of these depend on their being significantly more wealthy than most townsmen.

The kind of work a man does, as well as his way of life and his wealth, is relevant to his social class. Professional men have normally received long formal education in western oriented institutions. They tend to live in select, upper class localities in the towns. Men in this class usually marry educated wives who are comparatively emancipated.

The family is likely to base its lifestyle, including housing, dress, eating arrangements and entertainments, on western society, and they often speak English rather than Shona when they meet. They usually look down on, and discourage approaches from, people (and even sometimes kin) whom they regard as socially below them.

This does not mean that even upper class Shona become simply European in their outlook and way of life. Much from Shona culture always remains. No respectable Shona man would, for example, regard his father's brother's son as a cousin rather than a brother. In numerous ways, any person's cultural background is bound to affect his thinking and behavior.

But much time spent in alternative environments, during formal education and at work, results in professional people being less tied to traditional culture than are most other Shona. Although there have always been differences between rich and poor in Shona society, in the modem urban situation, these are greatly increased and have developed into clear divisions.

In cities, the rich are able to separate themselves off from the rest in upper class residential areas. In these exclusive areas, the clothes they wear, the food and drink they consume, the education they arrange for their children, are all way beyond the means of the majority of Shona. The result is that from childhood onwards, different urban strata become separated from each other, creating the modern Shona society with its unlimited variations.

At the lower end of urban strata are squatter camps, in which homeless people live in makeshift shelters of polythene sheets and various scraps of wood, cardboard, iron sheeting and anything else that can be found lying about. Such settlements are liable to grow in urban areas everywhere, and under past white governments were demolished by authorities.

Against popular misconceptions everywhere, the settlements do not accommodate only destitute newcomers to cities. A survey of one squatter camp near Harare showed that four fifths of household heads had been living in Harare for six years or more (some had been living in the settlement for eighteen years before they were moved), and less than one fifth were unemployed.

Most of these, together with the majority of wives, are likely to be employed in some kind of informal trade. They are people who for various reasons (income, nationality, lack of employment, marital status, and others) have not been able to acquire more satisfactory accommodation.

The number of homeless people in the cities grew dramatically during the war years, as families fled the insecurity and violence of the rural areas, and government began to provide communal water and toilet facilities for people who would rent small plots for their rough shelters.

The way of life of townspeople is not simply determined by the economic strata in which they live. Not every wealthy or professional person makes a radical break with his or her past. In no area of change is there a strict uniformity, common to all Shona society.

A wealthy professional man may be conservative in his way of life, keep his family arrangements in accordance with traditional patterns, and religiously maintain his respect to his spirit elders to the exclusion of newer religious practices.

A poor couple in their traditional rural home, who have not the means to change much in their lives, may nevertheless place their marriage and their nuclear family above all the traditionally stronger kinship ties.

Although we find patterns of life and patterns of change common to most, we cannot with any certainty predict how any individual will react to a new situation. Any stereotype of the black man in Zimbabwe today is bound to be false, and there is no such person as the "typical Shona".

Phrases such as "knowing the African" or "the African way of life", so common among white Zimbabweans, dangerously obscure the immense diversity in contemporary African society. Indeed, among the Shona themselves, it is all too easy to assume that one knows one's people and one's culture, without being fully aware of the plurality that has developed.

A broad common language often blinds people to the diversity of local traditions: it is much more likely to obscure the diversity that is developing in the modem plural world. The Shona peoples today are not the Shona peoples of pre-colonial times, not even the peoples of thirty years ago.

The Shona are involved in a process of change from a culture without literature and with little technology and little centralization, to a culture which incorporates a growing knowledge derived from literature, and dense population centres to meet the growth of industry.

This change leads people in divergent directions, but all are caught up in it and all must adapt to it. Although some may hanker after the simplicity and surety of an idealized past, the Shona past was a response to an environment which, both physically and socially, has been surpassed and can never return.

Most of the men had jobs in Salisbury, developed a sense of ambition and worked hard to add to their material possessions. A rising standard of living became the most important consideration, and they clamoured for higher wages, better, European-style houses, and all the new status symbols.

We were behaving like any group of white settlers living in the suburbs of Salisbury or Bulawayo, whose lives were mainly governed by the size of their bank accounts, houses, farms or cars.

It hardly seemed credible that less than thirty years before, my people completely spurned European materialism. It hardly seemed possible that the tribe had once absolutely refused to work for money and had had to be coerced by white people with the sjambok.

Then, they had been condemned as an utterly backward and indolent people who would take centuries to understand the most elementary concepts of European civilisation.

Now, after only a few decades of white teaching, they were behaving in most things like their conquerors. The majority of them accepted the idea of employment, together with its unrelenting disciplinary code which demanded regular hours, obedience and responsibility to those who hired them in return for wages. (From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe)