History of Ibutho

Methodological issues
Foreign visitors regularly comment on the spectacular capacity of the Ibutho to relay stories from their history and legends. Many of them - especially the old people - are immense resevoirs of knowledge.

Unlike the peoples of surrounding nations, the Ibutho have a custom of handing down history orally rather than writing it down in books. This generates complicated issues for Terra's establishment historians. How far can oral history be trusted? In the past, there has been a tendency on the part of historians to dismiss the oral history of Ibutho out-of-hand and rely instead on written testimony. But this too is problematic, since the written testimony is usually biased, being the perspective of non-Ibutho outsiders who were often prejudiced towards and ignorant about the people they were writing about.

Fortunately, over recent centuries, historians have begun to take Ibutho oral history more seriously, using it in conjunction with written sources and recognising the invaluable perspectives it offers. There has also been a trend towards encouraging the Ibutho to write down their oral history, although Ibutho traditionalists resent this, regard it as umuthi omnyama or black magic which undermines the conventional Ibutho way of doing things and upsetting the spirits of the ancestors. Some Chiefs have banned foreign historians from visiting for this reason, although the chief at the time of writing, Mlungisi Shabangu, takes a more progressive view and permits the transcription of oral tradition into writing provided an appropriate religious ritual is followed that involves placating the ancestor spirits, sacrificing a goat and making an offering of 50 Beads to the Ministry of Finance.

Origins
According to mainstream Ibutho tradition, the Ibutho are native to Artania and once had the entire continent to themselves. This was the time of iphaladisi - paradise - before the abelungo, or whites, arrived on the back of giant flying seagulls and proceeded to drive the Ibutho off most of the land. Ibutho believe it was only because of the intervention of Unkulunkulo - the god who created all - that they held on to the five Izifundazwe (provinces) that make up present-day Ibutho - Emabhishi, Kwelakubo, Izimayini, Amahlathi and Ugwadule.

Historians outside Ibutho generally believe the ancestors of the Ibutho came from a mixture of tribes from Dovani and Squibble. This theory, which is fiercely contested by most Ibutho, is based on ancient written accounts found in neighbouring countries. Intriguingly, one of Ibutho's tribes, the Ukubuyela believe their ancestors were forcibly brought from Squibble to Ibutho as slaves by other Ibutho tribes.

A saga of resistance
The story of the Ibutho is a remarkable saga of resistance to outside attempts to mould and change them. For as long as the historical record goes back, the nations and cultures surround them have regarded them as backward and doomed to extinction. Yet year after year, century after century, the Ibutho keep up their act and uphold their traditions. As the saying, goes, njalo okafanayo - always the same.

At different times the neighbouring powers - Luthori, Dundorf, Rutania and Kundrati - have all sought to control and subjugate the Ibutho, either directly or indirectly. The pattern of events has always been predictably cyclical,. Foreign overlords usually begin with trying to make the country more profitable through a programme of economic modernisation, including using mechanised mining techniques in mineral-rich Izimayini and swapping subsistence crops like maize for lucrative cash crops like tea, coffee, cocoa and tobacco.

This the Ibutho, being so attached to their traditional, simple economic system based on national self-sufficiency, invariable resist as fanatically as they can. The occupier then increasingly loses faith in the colonial project, eventually being driven out - usually by a mixture of Ibutho insurgency and canny alliance formed between Ibutho Chiefs and other surrounding powers. For all their presumed lack of guile and cultural separateness from other Artanians, the Ibutho are proven masters of the art of shrewdly playing on Artanian nation off against the other in order to preserve their own independence.