Tonga Orature as Historical Record: An Afrocentric Exegesis of the Dialectics Between African Human Factor Agency and the European Enslavement of Place

Abstract

The article critically examines the history of the Tonga people’s experiences of civilization and displacement from their life-affirming geographical location as enunciated through their oral forms, particularly, songs and other forms of reminiscence. The experiences of the Tonga people of Zimbabwe are largely overlooked in scholarship because they are considered one of the so-called minority groups, meriting little or no attention at all. Informed by an Afrocentric approach, in which it is “valid to posit Africa as a geographical and cultural starting base in the study of peoples [of Africa and] of African descent,” the article brings out an understanding of African orature as a redoubtable expression of the African classical past and the subsequent subversion and decimation of African human factor agency as a result of the European enslavement of place. In this regard, the authors contend that Africologists would do well to study African people’s orature, as it often reflects their story from their own perspective.