Preservation of Indigenous Knowledge through Indigenous Languages in Zimbabwe

The Language Situation In Zimbabwe

The chapter is conceptually and theoretically anchored to the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 20) Act, 2013, which recognizes and guarantees the official status to sixteen national languages. This is in line with the recommendations of the Select Committee of Parliament on the New Constitution (COPAC) which was appointed in 2009 to coordinate the constitution-making process. The process was one of the deliverables of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) that was signed in September 2008 by the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) led by Robert Mugabe, and the two formations of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), namely, the MDC-T led by Morgan Tsvangirai, and the MDC-N led by Welshman Ncube (KuvakaZim, n.d.). The GPA was brokered by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and it ended the election dispute of 2007 between Tsvangirai and Mugabe, leading to the formation of an inclusive government that came into place in February 2009 (Dzinesa, 2012).