Language and identity politics in the American Board Mission church in Zimbabwe

Abstract

ABSTRACT The convergence of Americans and Africans (Ndau and Zulu) at the Mt Selinda mission created a new order that was marked by significant ethical and metaphysical contradictions. Navigating through such a sticky reality with potentially pliable political, linguistic, cultural and social cleavages, American board missionaries adopted strategic interventions that enfeebled the predominant Ndau identity in Chipinge. Using archival data from the mission, government and personal archives, this article argues that missionaries engaged in manipulative language politics that, in addition to pitting African identities against each other, bended, twisted and subverted the revered traditions and normative sociocultural belief systems that had sustained the foundational values of the Ndau identity for centuries. Contrary to Eurocentric literature that extols missionaries’ role in developing African languages and societies, we provide evidence that missionaries instituted linguistic and cultural reorientation initiatives to foist western policies and ideologies upon the church and the school. The upshot of this was the delegitimisation of traditional Ndau identities within the vicinity of the mission as well as the birth of new linguistic, educational and sociocultural identities subservient and apologetic to the cause, principles and values espoused by missionaries in Ndau speaking societies.