indaba

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When the rest of the world goes to meetings and conventions, South Africa proclaims its African heritage by holding indabas.

English-speaking South Africans learned the word from Zulu chiefs, who would call their people together to discuss important issues at meetings called indabas. In the nineteenth century, when the word was first used in English, it always referred to the African tribes. An 1894 article, for example, reports that "a message was therefore conveyed ... to the King, inviting Umtassa to come to an indaba at Umtali."

Not surprisingly, in the latter part of the twentieth century Nelson Mandela's African National Congress party used the word for its meetings. "More than three thousand delegates are expected at the African National Congress's fiftieth national conference to be held here next week," reported the Klerksdorp Record in December 1997. "This four-day ANC Indaba ... will be officially opened by the provincial chairperson of the ANC." But today's pro-African South Africa has indabas for everyone. In recent years there have been a Dance Indaba, a Tourism Trade Indaba, an International Design Indaba, a Structural Chemistry Indaba, a Small-Molecules Indaba, and a Welding Indaba. The 10th Biennial Congress of the Hypertension Society of Southern Africa in 1996, with the goal of improving health care for all South Africans, was billed as the "Hypertension Indaba."

Also contributing to the spirit of the new South Africa are Cape Indaba Wines. Their maker explains that "a portion of the profits generated from the sale of the Cape Indaba Wines will be donated to the underprivileged for the purposes of education. This contribution, coupled with the ethnically styled label emphasizes our commitment to the upliftment and furtherance of our new nation."

Zulu is spoken by about nine million people in South Africa, nearly a quarter of the population. It is a Bantu language of the Niger-Congo language family. Other English words from zulu include buchu (1731), a medicinal shrub; mamba (1862), a poisonous snake; impala (1875), the famous antelope; and nagana (1895), a disease of cattle also called tsetse disease.