Background - A Short Safari Adventure Among Africa's Thorny Bushveld Wildlife - page 7

Samora Machel Statue in his Hometown in Gaza
Now that the battle with white supremacist governments is over, the power struggles have
become those between tribes or individuals within the African black elite. Thus, the Shona and
Ndebele have fought each other in Zimbabwe with President Mugabe exerting near dictatorial
power with the only balance somewhat led by a government of unity. In South Africa, after
President Mandela's voluntary stepping down, President Mbeki was ousted by President Zuma
after four years. This turnover of power creates a situation where there are frequent changes in
allegiances and an unsettled environment. Furthermore, depending on their allegiances, ANC
(African National Congress) leaders are either figuratively or literally assassinated according
to newspaper reports. The frequent changes make it difficult to plan long term for businesses,
institutions, and for example, land conservation measures. These are some of the “thorny”
issues in Africa's history.
The post-colonial black liberation struggles in Africa and the adopted political models in
many countries follow a pattern of governance that existed before the colonial race for Africa.
If you were to ask a black African on the streets of Southern Africa about his people's past,
you may get, with pride, a response that starts with the commonly used phrase “Tina aBantu,”
meaning “We the people.” The term “Bantu” was therefore adopted by early linguists for the
largest language group in Africa; the stem language for some 650 languages, out of the world's
some 7,000 languages. The term however took on a derogatory connotation under the
Apartheid (separate) Afrikaner White Supremacist regime since it was used for the laws and
policies of keeping blacks separated from whites, including the so-called Bantustan
Homelands. According to Stanford linguist Joseph Greenberg, the Bantu stem language is
believed to have arisen just south of the Sahara in the central Benue Valley and spread east and
west based on the similarity of words, before spreading south (although the archaeological
record does not entirely confirm this).
In Southern Africa, the dominant Bantu languages are Nguni and include Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi,
Ndebele, Shangaan, and Ngoni. The Bantu groups across Africa were pastoralists that