“A character worth writing about”: Sikhawulaphi Khumalo’s education and Christian experiences at Empandeni Mission, Southwestern Zimbabwe, 1900–1940s

The experiences of the first girls to attend mission schools such as Empandeni Girls Mission School, located in southwestern Zimbabwe, have been ignored by mainstream history. Little is known about how they perceived the new religion to which they were introduced or about how they interacted with the nuns and priests. The main reason for their marginalization today is that they were ignored by those who composed historians’ main sources, the mission records. It is difficult as well to recapture their voices, for one can no longer interview them. The access to life and thought in a girls’ mission school offered by the case of Sikhawulaphi Khumalo (mid-1890s–1966), therefore, is exceptional. The daughter of Makhwelambila, a half-brother of the Ndebele king Lobengula, Sikhawulaphi’s situation was unique. Because of her relationship with the late king Lobengula, she was brought up as a little girl by the Notre Dame nuns, living with them in the nuns’ convent at Empandeni Mission. The nuns and priests at Empandeni loved her, and she featured frequently in the pages of the nuns’ diaries and in the Empandeni Annals, as well as in the priests’ reports. A Jesuit priest, Father John O’Neill, commented that she was “a character worth writing about.” Sikhawulaphi is indeed worthy of being written about for many reasons.