Sites of Cultural significance In the BaTonga Culture; The case of Manjolo Communal lands, Binga.

ABSTRACT

“The BaTonga are found in the north western part of Zimbabwe, a place known of high temperatures, dry and arid. For the few recent years the area has been climatologically transformed into receiving a less desirable amount of rainfall. The construction of the prevalent synthetic lake displaced and dispersed the BaTonga, with some settling in Zambia and Malawi. In Zimbabwe they have their scatterings elongating from Victoria Falls, Lupane, Hwange, Binga, Nyaminyami and Gokwe. The BaTonga is an ethnic group that, up to this day still clings on to its own cultural beliefs, life chic, customs and survival, whereas, some of these cultural aspects have been heavily disrupted during the Kariba dam construction. The construction spelt cultural decimation for the BaTonga people who inhabited the Zambezi Valley. Their fiscal activity implicated gardening, fishing, cropping, keeping cattle, and using wild plants and animals. Promotion and safeguarding of a cultural identity of a displaced community is often prompted by chronic effects of development induced displacement over the years.”However, the fact that the BaTonga people were displaced was not a means to an end; they still had their traditions in their hearts. They managed to create shrines and have sacred mountains in their new locations. As such the identification and documentation of these heritage places would mean a better preservation for posterity. It would be different from the heritage sites that were drowned in the Zambezi and are known by a handful people who cannot even point the exact location of the heritage sites. Thus identification and documentation of cultural property plays a pivotal role in terms of protection of heritage.