Who Are we?

21st century Zimbabwe is suffering from poor integration of indigenous languages in industries, curriculums etc. Before gaining independence, colonial language policies made English the official language. Even when schools taught some indigenous languages they did so in English. Even today, several schools require students to only speak in English at school. Expanding one’s knowledge in indigenous languages is largely unavailable beyond Shona and Ndebele. The Zimbabwean government came up with an amended constitution  (N0.20) in 2013, which, among other provisions, uplifted “minority  languages”. Among  the 16 constitutionally recognized languages of Zimbabwe are Chewa, Nambya,  Ndau, Tonga, Venda and Xangani. Many of these languages are spoken by borderline communities except Chewa which is found across the country  concentrated at mines, farms and old locations of urban centers in Zimbabwe. In  the past, people from these communities were forced to learn either Ndebele  or Shona as their primary language. Children were taught languages and cultures that did not  belong to them and their identity became structures without foundations. This not only happened with languages, but also with traditional dance, music, literature and more. Despite all this, many communities were resilient and managed to preserve their cultures to this day.

The goal of Project Imbizo was to research and collect data in order to eventually create a large-scale open access digital archive of Zimbabwean traditional arts, literature and oral histories, and more, thus preserving intangible culture for future generations. The main focus for this initial research was traditional dances with hopes of expanding to other aspects of culture as more funding is secured. We believe in breaking down the barriers to accessing the knowledge of our ancestors.