Tribes of the Kalanga nation

If you understand neither Kalanga nor Sotho/Tswana language, I'm afraid you will not be able to understand this post.

I have always wondered why, if you ask a Kalanga of "Kwena" tribe what his/her totem is, he/she seldom if ever, says "Ngwena". They seem to always either say "Kwena" or "Mokwena". Indeed one such Kalanga chief said to me "To tuna Kwena, to dwa ku Molepolole!", which translates to "Our totem is Kwena, we come from Molepolole!".

I will not go into the merits or demerits of the claim "we come from Molepolole" as I am sure by now the reader understands the warped mentality of some Kalangas, post the British ceding our country to Barwa. What I am trying to point out here is the incongruity of a Kalanga calling his/her totem by a "Tswana" name! There is something very odd about a Kalanga saying his totem in Setswana language.

As it turns out there is nothing odd about it at all - because "Kwena" is not a Tswana word, but a Anunnaki/Kalanga word! We know who the Bakwena are of course. These are the people who looked after/herded the animals whose milk sustained the Anunnaki at Khami/Nkami, just outside Bulawayo. That is why today the names Ko-disa, Modisaotsile, Nlisi, Badisa are common among the Bakwena.

And so as herders, the "battle cry" of the Bakwena as it were, was the cry "Ku-ina!", meaning "To the water hole/source!", and that being a directive to their animal herds to head for water. The word "Ku-ina" is what was corrupted to become "Kwena". You see, in reality Barwa have no totem, because they are from Bulawayo and not from Mapungubwe like most other "Batswana". In Mapungubwe the Anunnaki devised totems to control workflow across a very wide diversity of early human workgroups. You can read all about that in my (Zwidenkalanga) posts on forums.gov.bw.  At Nkami there were just animal herders and milkers; not much diversity at all. Therefore the need for totems fell away. That is why the Bangwato (Milkers) ended up adopting the Baka-Tjiliga (Boo-Seleka) totem of the duiker (Phuthi) when they arrived in Botswana and were "seconded" by Nshakazhogwe to the Mathangwane people. The other milkers (Bangwa-khwizi/Bangwaketse) stuck to their "battle cry" - "Ku-ina!", alias "Kwena".

The Bakwena are not the only people who were ultimately named according to their "battle-cry". The name "Bayeyi" is another example of a cry that became a name. The true name of Bayeyi is Bakoba, with the "o" pronounced as in "go away!" and not as in "book". One can write a book on Bakoba. "Ku koba" in Kalanga means to apportion (to more than one person) individally. A Moyeyi is Nkoba in Kalanga. He stood at the door (also Nkoba in Kalanga) during feeding time and gave portions of food to those needing to be fed. A door is called "Kgoro" in Setswana, suggesting that that is where people went to be fed (go kgora).

The Mokoba/Moyeyi contolled the human "traffic" with the help of a branch of a very prickley tree. The Tswana call the tree "Mokoba". In Kalanga, the tree is called "Nkosho", meaning that it spent the day (ku shwa) next to the door/Moyeyi (Nkoba).  So the Tswana name and the Kalanga name of that tree, although different phonetically, have the same origin, and describe the same use for the named tree! Is it possible that there were Bakoba at Nkami? Absolutely! The Anunnaki might even have brought them all the way from Mapungubwe, via Great Zimbabwe to Nkami. It's like Bakhwa. In Kalanga we say "Hakuna pasina Nkhwa", meaning that there is nowhere on earth where there are no Bakhwa (Bushmen). Of course this follows from the fact that wherever the Anunnaki camped, save perhaps for the ice caps at the North and South poles, they needed to be cooled, hence Nkhwa (Bushman) had to be there!.

Now, let's end this post on a rather sad note. We all know that the Bangwato in Ngamiland now call themselves "Batawana", and that the British declared Bambukusho a subject tribe to the "Batawana". The Bambukushu are the true Batawana. The Bangwato of Chief Tawana Moremi are usurpers of the name "Batawana". The name "Batawana" is a Kalanga word, meaning "Those whom we found". We know that the Bangwato of Moremi found the Bambukusho in Ngamiland because the latter are an earlier generation of humanity than the former. The Bambukusho's responsibility as a human work group was to "beat and mix" the faeces that the Anunnaki ate for sustenance. The tool used is called "mpukusho" in Kalanga, "lehetho or lefetlho" in Setswana. The Bangwato's responsibility in contrast, was to milk cows at Nkami near Bulawayo.

Because the Anunnaki used to eat our faeces BEFORE they changed to a milk diet, we can safely conclude that the Bambukusho pre-date the Bangwato of Chief Moremi in Ngamiland, i.e. the latter found the former there - Batawana.

Chiefs' names are just a big spin! For instance, if you look at the chieftainship line of Bangwato online, you will find a Chief named Ngwato. But we know there was never such a chief, because Ngwato simply means "Nngwa-Ato", a Kalanga word meaning "a milker for Ato/Anunnaki".