Lost in Translation

We’re midway through Africa month and this has made me think a lot about what it means to be an African in 2016. 

Of course I could never define my Africanism without reflecting on my identity as an African from Swaziland. One of the things on my mind is our language siSwati; how it has evolved and with what consequence. Have we lost ourselves in translation?

Maybe it’s the nostalgia on being home a few weeks ago where I attended a traditional Swazi wedding and listened to recordings of the radio show of yesteryears called Khala Mdumbadumbane that got me thinking about this thing that separates us from most Africans called siSwati.

Spoken Word

To be honest, I never really took an interest in this popular show when I was younger – I only paid attention, in fact only some attention, on the days that it drew controversy and the protest of women’s empowerment groups who denounced it for its sexist approach to addressing some issues. 

This was mostly because by then, I was a pre-mid 20s rookie journalist at Swazi TV and was only starting to familiarize myself (with thoroughly understanding), salient national issues.

I realized three weeks ago when I listened to the many clips as I sat bonding with my brother that the legendary Jim “Mbhokane” Gama died with a vast wealth of knowledge of Swaziland customs, traditions and culture. 

Importantly, I realized his gift of simplicity in understanding and interpreting how the world works in relation to us as a Swazi people. A good teacher. 

As with many a great teacher, not everyone agrees or likes what they say but I think we can all agree that when it came to his articulation of the meaning of some siSwati words, he was the greatest teacher of the language.

Mbhokane was the solo host of the radio show Nasi ke siSwati which I never wanted to miss because I found it quite easy to listen to even from a very young age. 

Probably because it was a short ,sweet and straight forward show; three siSwati words that he explained like an Oxford Dictionary would explain never-heard-of English words, complete with examples of how to use the words in a sentence. 

This was one useful show to me as a high school learner who loved siSwati as a second language subject and later as a news anchor at Swazi TV.

This is the show that makes me miss Mbhokane when I hear Swazis and other Africans speak of “ngiyobhadala emalobolo” (I’m going to PAY lobolo). 

Hearing such makes me want to wake Mbhokane from the dead and beg him to tell us that we have never ‘paid’ emalobolo as Africans, we OFFER/GIVE emalobolo because the primary purpose of emalobolo is to build relations between the families of those getting married as marriage in the African context is seen as more than a union between two individuals.

Mind Your Language 

I was quite excited when as current affairs anchor at SABC Africa a few years ago, I interviewed a guy who had created Lobola Online; an interactive website which gave guidance and advice to especially people marrying across cultures on how the culture they were marrying into worked when it came to emalobolo. 

I thought of it to be a useful platform in this time of vast migration to different parts of the world where we connect with people from cultures different from ours.

Fast forward to 2015 and we were talking about a Lobola Calculator. This is an app that supposedly calculates in monetary value, the worth of a woman in bride PRICE. Mind this language.

And then other people speak of “Wam’tsenga lomntfwana” or “paid damages” when referring to the African cultural practice of a man acknowledging his responsibility of making a woman pregnant outside of marriage. 

I wish we could mind our language here too because kuhlawula (paying a fine) is made to the family of the woman and not made FOR the child to be bought out of their mother’s family.

It may not sound like a big deal how this is worded but I’m worried that such phrases as “wamtsenga lomntfwana” has left many women in positions where they are not raising their children simply because a man accepted responsibility for what is considered an offense in our culture. 

Maybe the problem is also in trying to always interpret everything into English because I really do not see how we moved from kuhlawula to paying damages, instead of paying a fine to the woman’s family.

It is this same unsolicited eagerness to translate to English that has left us referring to our own things as ‘I’ll have the traditional wedding maybe a year after I have the proper wedding”. 

Hello! That ‘proper’ or ‘white wedding’, is somebody’s tradition too. 

Religious practices, whether Christian, Islamic, Buddhist etc are traditional too so we should consider what we are saying when we say “I’m wearing traditional attire at the wedding” just because we wore African prints or Swazi garb.

What of the spiritual and herbal healers that are a part of our history and present day-to-day health cycle – have you thought carefully about why we refer to them as ‘traditional healers’ when we do not refer to healers from the west as such but just Doctors instead? I know; we have learned and continue to bastardize our own because we undermine simple things like our own languages.