By Portia Muzorava
Culture can be referred to the totality of the pattern of behaviour of a particular group of people. It includes everything that makes them distinct from any other group of people for instance, their greeting habits, dressing, social norms and taboos, food, songs and dance patterns, rites of passages from birth, through marriage to death, traditional occupations, religious as well as philosophical beliefs
Idiong (1994: 46) states that “there are some misconceptions that are widely held about ‘culture’ as a word. Such misconceptions can and often lead some persons to have a negative perception of ‘culture’ and all that it stands for.” This misconception may have arisen from a partial understanding of the meaning of culture. Our culture in particular, is like a two-sided coin. It has soul-lifting, glamorous and positive dimensions even though it is not completely immune from some negative outcomes. It is the sum total of shared attitudinal inclinations and capabilities, art, beliefs, moral codes and practices that characterize us as Zimbabweans. It can be conceived as a continuous, cumulative reservoir containing both material and non-material elements that are socially transmitted from one generation to another. It is the same as the Zimbabwean heritage.
Coming straight from Masvingo to Bulawayo I was surprised to find out that its not only the language that is different but rather a lot of things. In terms of greeting habits, young boys in Masvingo greet each other saing ‘madii’, where as in Bulawayo the say ‘eta bro’, in Harare or any other city the young boys there have different greeting habits.
Coming to social norms and taboos, if you move from one place to another, sometimes you may feel like it’s a new world where as maybe the difference is just a little one. The Ndebele always make fun of the Shonas for eating mice, which the Ndebeles call rats, it’s not one sided, the Shonas make fun of the Ndebeles for eating ‘amacimbi’.People from most parts of the country make fun of people from Masvingo for eating ‘harurwa’. Dance patterns that are usually followed in Harare are ‘maclarks’ a dance that goes along the popular genre in that city, Zimdancehall. InBulawayo, the dance parts are usually those ones that are done in South Africa ‘goli’, the dance patterns also go along the music genres that are poplar in South Africa. This shows that culture can differ from one ethnical group to the other not to talk of a country, just as people speak a different language and so is their culture but this is usually based on misconceptions that people hold.
NUST JOURNAL-ZW 