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3. Written Records
-They cover most of period after people were able to read and write. These can be primary
or secondary sources.
Primary sources consist of information in raw state and this information is close to the event
which it describes. These include eyewitness accounts, diaries, newspapers and archival
records.
Secondary sources are based on someone’s interpretation of a document or opinion
contained in a book.
Different forms of sources are found from Arab, Swahili, Portuguese and missionary reports.
Written records have also been described as documents from literate visitors and in the case
of Zimbabwe, they include Portuguese missionaries, settlers, British hunters and explorers,
etc. these are stored in libraries and archives.
Merits
- They provide dates and according to Torsh, primary sources provide a ready and coherent
source. - They have a long life span and can be stored in libraries and archives.
- They have useful information on events following the colonisation of the country and
precolonial times.
- They provide historians with reliable dates as opposed to oral traditions - Events have
chronology and give details, e.g., the Portuguese who visited the Mutapa state and other early
societies in Zimbabwe.
- They fill the gap left by archaeologists and thus they complement archaeological findings,
thus a historian can come up with a better picture of early history of used properly.
Demerits
- They are deeply flawed by racism and ignorance by authors who often show a very low
understanding of the people among whom they lived and operated, e.g., reference to African
societies as primitive. Some pre-colonial and colonial authors considered African as a dark
continent with pagan beliefs. African leaders are referred to in writings by whites as
bloodthirsty dictators, for instance, Tshaka, while European leaders of the same calibre are
seen as heroes, e.g., Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great.
- There is also misconception of African traditional leaders, e.g., healers who were seen by
whites as wizards or witches while those in Europe, doing the same business of healing
people, were seen as doctors.
- Some written documents were written out of context. Those who wrote about African
societies chose to find a certain situation. Anthropologists wrote huge volumes which were
based on crude assumptions about Africa. They collected information and interpreted it
according to the politics of the time which had to justify European supremacy over Africans.
They used Europe as a standard measure of development and anything not European in style
was regarded as backward to them. To them African history meant nothing and there was
nothing unusual in seeing it that way. Malinowski, one of the leading anthropologists had this
to say about Africans, “I see the lives of the natives as utterly devoid of interest or
importance, something as remote to me as the life of a dog.”
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Usefulness of Oral tradition in the resconstruction of Zimbabwean History
-The earliest written sources referring to the Zimbabwe plateau [the area between Zambezi
and Limpopo] came from Arab visitors [traders]. The Portuguese who came later to trade
with the Shona and those who visited the Mozambican coast recorded at second hand the
circumstances of the interior. The Portuguese gathered information from earliest Swahili /
Arab traders who had initially ventured or others who had encountered the communities of
the Zimbabwe plateau personally, for instance, the most important sailing manual of Ibn
Madjid written sometime between 1475 and 1489.
*However, this source is vague [not clear], repetitive and confusing. It does not specifically
mention Great Zimbabwe or Mutapa state but perhaps the land of Butua further west and
Eastern regions of the plateau.
-Reference to Great Zimbabwe is found in Portuguese sources of the second half of the 16th
C but these are clearly second hand accounts that were narrated to them by Swahili / Arab
traders who roamed the Zimbabwean plateau. An example is the description of Great
Zimbabwe by Joao de Barros.
-When the Portuguese arrived on the Zimbabwean plateau in the early 16th C, they described
some of the royal capitals they saw in the Mutapa state, for example, the account of Diego de
Aloacova. It is from these accounts that one learnt that state capitals were called
Dzimbadzamabwe [Houses of Stones].
-Following the journeys of Antonio Fernandes into the Mutapa state in the early 16th C,
Portuguese sources carry vivid accounts of the royal courts as well as the gold trade
dominated by the Swahili.
*However, the sources are limited in that they still rely heavily on information supplied
elsewhere or by Arab [Muslim] traders. This suggests that the Portuguese recordings are not
reliable with regards to Zimbabwe’s prehistory. Besides that, Portuguese were not established
in the interior until the 1630s and 1640s. This is why the written sources are largely silent
between 1520 and 1570. They only made sporadic reference to events in the Mutapa state.
-With the murder of Goncalo da Silveira in 1561 there was reference to the Mutapa state,
leading to the campaigns of 1570-75.
-From the late 15th C onwards Portuguese accounts have been a major source of Mutapa
history furnishing names of Mutapa rulers, details about trade with the Swahili-Arabs and the
Portuguese themselves. Names such as Mavura Mhande, Nyanhewe Matope, Gatsi Rusere
and Nyahuma are well known from the Portuguese accounts. Portuguese accounts also supply
information on the Mutapa’s political organisation consisting of officials such as the Captain
of the gates, stewards, chamberlain and the chief priests.
-Portuguese records are also useful in recovering the political, social and economic history of
the Rozvi.
-The 19thCentury accounts by missionaries, hunters and traders have also been very important
in shedding light on the Ndebele and Shona on the eve of colonial rule. They shed light on
Ndebele raiding activities on the Shona possibly with exaggerations as to their impact.
-The letters of missionaries such as Charles Helm, Robert Moffat and J S Moffat give
accurate dates concerning the establishment of mission stations as well as their activities and
futile attempts to Christianise the Ndebele. It is known with certainty that Inyati and Hope
Fountain missions were founded in 1859 and 1870 respectively. It is also known that
missionaries engaged in various tasks like treating diseases, like Mzilikazi’s gout, mending
wagons, writing books in vernacular languages [Ndebele and Shona] and so on. It is also
known from them how the likes of J S Moffat and Charles Helm abused Lobengula’s trust by
secretly advocating the destruction of the Ndebele kingdom and misled him into signing the
Moffat treaty and the Rudd concession in 1888. These two treaties paved way for the
colonisation of Zimbabwe which commenced officially on 12 September 1890.