Of Elusive Shona Words: Kudada

Is your use of Shona vocabulary myopic?
Then take the following free advice!

I have grown to hate that word: Kudada. I used to understand it way back when it used to mean what it’s supposed to mean: arrogant, pompous, proud, contemptuous, bigheaded...etc. But somehow, the uses of the word seem to have glided to mean some other things too: things like forgetful, rich, misunderstood, shy…etc.

Shona (my mother tongue. Also my father’s tongue) is a beautifully diverse language. Nothing is quite as beautiful as hearing someone skillfully bring rich words together to form a well expressed statement. Leonard Zhakata used to do that. Most people these days don’t. They have lost the art of the language; they just compromise it.

I won’t delve into the details of how the language has been compromised (that would need a website the size of Wikipedia and a pride of professionals manning it). I’ll just focus on one word: Kudada (also known as kuvhaira in other parts of the country).


I grew up with the word: thanks to my being myopic (literally). Before I started wearing glasses, the whole word was one huge colorful blur. People didn’t have faces: I’d try to distinguish them through voices, posture and the clothes they wore. Sometimes through smell.

Now imagine one blur coming over to you and saying something like: ‘We met 5 years ago at Mai Nga’s wedding and we talked for like 10 whole minutes, remember me?’ Of course I don’t, you were a blur then, you are still a blur now. The disappointed stranger shakes his head: ‘Inga waa Kudada.’

This experience also frequently happens to those with a short memory. It is a crime not to remember some one who remembers you. All those people with a good memory take it for granted so much that they assume everybody has a photographic mind. Forget someone, and you are immediately branded as some one ariKudada. Simple.

And suppose you are shy, you know, a particularly bashful person. Most people dread having to stand up on a stage and address a crowd. Now, for this type of shy person, his or her whole life is a stage. The simple social etiquette of, say, entering a room full of relatives and greeting each and every person with the correct titles (such as tete, sekuru, mainini) is a torturous experience. People don’t know such introverts exist, so if you are one and you stumble in, or try to avoid, such a situation, they simply dismiss you with 'ariKudada'.

Another scenario: suppose you get lucky and become rich. Now, there is nothing wrong with having money in itself: but rest assured, that also means you are going to come across this word in reference to you quite a lot.

For instance, when you are driving around in your brand new wheels, you are supposed to spot each and every person you have ever known on the road, and depending on the situation, do at least one of the following: hoot and wave; stop the car for a chat; kusiya mari yedrink or; offer the person a ride. Failure to do so: uriKudada.

I used to have this friend of mine who was not too familiar with the Shona culture. He came across a friend of a friend, a lady. Now, they had never seen each other before, just a casual chat on the phone, so he didn’t give her the warm greeting she must have expected. She carelessly commented: Indava Kudada? As soon as she turned a corner, he totally flipped. He thought he statement was the Shona equivalent of someone saying to your face: ‘You are freaking arrogant!’ Poor guy, especially considering the extreme lengths he would go to exercise great humility.

My free advice: fix any mental myopia you might have and stop throwing this word, and other equivalents, all over the place. You’re only traumatizing individuals who might already be battling to fit in into this crazy world. Instead, reserve it for the arrogant, pompous, proud, contemptuous and bigheaded bastards who truly deserve it!

The Death of Shona As We (Should) Know It

This serves to mourn the death of Shona in Zimbabwe. The everyday language being spoken these days does not deserve to be called Shona. It doesn’t really make any sense anymore.


Ok. Before you all go all crazy and start shouting about unpatriotism and ignorance and hate speech, let me make a few points clear before I proceed. First point: I love Shona, otherwise I wouldn’t use it to talk. In fact, this very post proves I am a Shona lover, as you shall see. Second point: I believe that all languages have their peculiarities and none is superior to another (off the record though, German sucks, French rocks, nothing personal). Third point: the only language I really know is Shona, so by default, it’s the only language I am qualified to comment on.


And I say it doesn’t really make any sense anymore. Case in point:

Archie walks up to Tatenda and asks, “Uri kutambira nhamba ani?”

Tatenda looks back with a blank stare for a split second before smiling back and answering, “Ndiri kuDefense.”

Archie nodded, seemingly in understanding, and comments, “MaOne.”

If you are the type that is always up to date with the latest trends in the world of conversations, you might have no trouble understanding the interchange above. I, on the other hand, am one of the conservative types and when I heard it, I found it kind of puzzling; especially considering none of the participants above ever walked a soccer pitch in their lives.


Shona is getting chaotic by the day. Slang used to form only a small fraction of the whole language, but it now seems to rule. Proper words have all been morphed up into abbreviated and twisted substitutes that lack the beauty of the original form and sound. Contrast the nice sounding baba (father) with the modern blunt form mdhara. You got to admit, the original sounds beautiful and the modern is ugly.  The other relations have not been spared this brutality, such that we have a whole ugly line up: blaz, sistren, ninez, gulez, kulez…


The beautiful vocabulary of expressive words has probably suffered the most. For instance, just one word bears the mammoth task of summarizing just any emotion, or concluding any sentence under the Zimbabwean sun. It doesn’t matter if someone has asked you how you are feeling, how the party you attended was like, or how business is these days. You simply answer: MaOne. Given the economic circumstances in the country, some might add, or substitute with the gloomier zvakadhakwa.


Just a few examples, but I hope they have proven my point.


 I blame the kombi guys for this trend. See, these are the people that seize the latest and juiciest phrases and start throwing them all around until they find their way into ordinary respectable conversation. A huge portion of the Zimbabwean population commutes using the kombis so the language easily spreads around. It wouldn’t be surprising to hear, a couple of years from now, a preacher in church sternly advising the congregation: “Hama neshamwari munaKristo, nekudhakwa kwaita upenyu musasatambire defense kunaMwari.”


I got to ask Tatenda, much later on, what the whole conversation with Archie was supposed to mean. The answer I got? “I have no idea, I just played along.”


Well, at least it proves I’m not the only one lagging behind.