SIAVONGA
The History of
THE HISTORY OF SIAVONGA
Introduction
"Siavonga" is said to be a corruption of the Ndebele word "Siyabonga" meaning "thank you". The town developed when the colonial federation of Northern and Southern Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi) finished construction of the Kariba Dam Wall across the Zambezi River in 1958.
People of the Tonga tribe who stayed along side the river were instructed to relocate to higher ground but many resisted the relocation. However they were forced to abandon their homesteads by the rising water levels of the forming lake to the place we now call Siavonga.
The town and the Dam Wall that spurred it's formation, is a sad reminder of all that the Tonga tribe lost beneath the waters of Lake Kariba. The sacrifice of the approximately 57,000 people who lost their homes beside the Zambezi River in 1958 enabled the entire construction of both Zambia and Zimbabwe's infrastructure to date, although no significant reparations have been made to the Tonga people who lost their livlihoods, many of whom still struggle with hunger and poverty.
The Early Tonga People
Information gathered from "The Kariba Case Study"(2006)- Thayer Scudder
Prior to David Livingstone's work in the area around 1855/7 the Tonga were at the constant mercy of slaving parties and wild animals. Between then and the mid 1950's they lived in relative peace with very little outside influence - their contact with the "outside world" was limited to prospectors, hunters, surveyors and the local District Commissioners.
At the time of the construction of the Kariba Dam Wall, the population estimate for the Gwembe Valley was approximately 85,000, 90% of which were thought to be Tonga.
The Tonga practiced subsistance farming on the fertile, alluvial soils alongside the river. Contending with pests such as crickets, locusts, elephant and hippos was an everyday battle and keeping livestock was an issue due to the rampant tsetse fly problem in the area. Malaria and human sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis), although prevalent, was no detterent to the population density of the people by the river who, although having to deal with frequent droughts, floods and infestations managed to survive and thrive.
The Tonga's belief system at the time of resettlement was a form of ancestor worship "whereby the welfare of an individual or an extended kin group was dependent on the goodwill and protection of recently deceased kin. They were the primary instrument of social control. When misfortunes occurred those involved sought the services of diviners to learn the cause."(Scudder, 7, 2006)
One such ancestral spirit (Mudzimu) has, within the past few decades, garnered more attention than others...NyamiNyami, believed by the Tonga people to be the God of the Zambezi River, is one of the most prominent figures in known Tongan traditional story-telling.
who fed them from his own meat in times of hunger.
"When the valley people heard they were to be moved from their tribal lands and that the great Zambezi River would be blocked, they believed it would anger the river god so much that he would cause the water to boil and destroy the white man’s bridge with floods.
In 1957, a year into the building of the dam, the river rose to flood level, pumping through the gorge with immense power, destroying some equipment and the access roads. The odds against another flood occurring the following year were about a thousand to one – but flood it did – three metres higher than the previous year. This time destroying the access bridge, the coffer dam and parts of the main wall.
Nyaminyami had made good his threat. He had recaptured the gorge. His waters passed over the wreckage of his enemies at more than sixteen million litres a second, a flood which, it had been calculated, would only happen once in ten thousand years. Although man eventually won the battle when the dam was finally opened in 1960, there was a whole new respect for the power of the river god.
Operation Noah
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