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Tonga.Online

Tonga Voice on the Internet: Tonga.Online

Tonga.Online: Background
Peter Kuthan / AZFA, and Keith Goddard / Kunzwana Trust

The Tonga.Online Project began as an idea following the invitation to participate in the exhibition 'Tracing the Rainbow. Life in Southern Africa“ from April until November 2001 in the Schlossmuseum in Linz, Austria. The aim was to provide a platform for communication with the Tonga people of the Zambezi Valley and, more specifically, the people of Siachilaba village in Zimbabwe´s remote Binga area. This was realised through the design and launch of a project room equipped with computers and the website www.mulonga.net

The artists involved in this project visited Zimbabwe in 1997 as part of an Austrian team of artists, composers and film makers collaborating with the Cultural group Simonga from Siachilaba, during the Nyaminyami Festival. This celebration of Tonga culture and reflections from European and Southern African composers culminated with 30 members of Simonga climbing the Totes Gebirge mountain range in Austria during the „Festival der Regionen“ 1997, a project initiated by and in collaboration with Stadtwerkstatt Linz. The focus was on the beauty and resilience of Tonga culture and did much to dispel disparaging myths surrounding these marginalised people. Their extraordinary Ngoma Buntibe music is performed at special, sometimes spiritual occasions on antelope horns, drums and rattles in the midst of the whole community moving and dancing in undisclosed patterns of communication.

The Tonga.Online Project is a more concentrated version of what happened in 1997. For any marginalised, stigmatised or prejudiced minority, platforms on which to be visible and be able to speak out are of vital importance. The internet is the most powerful platform so far invented to express this right. The crucial question is how such new opportunities and patterns of communication via the Internet relate to the needs, traditions and “collective intelligence” of the Tonga people: what is the impact on them and on their future cultural heritage?

There was concern during the planning stages that the exhibition achieves more than just a temporary window that outsiders could peer through for a while and examine “exotic” people. It was clear that there had to be something more permanent and of lasting value for the Tonga themselves. The challenge for the project was to provide the Tonga community with the relevant tools and the capacity to make full use of modern Information Technology. There is an excellent example: Dominic Muntanga, a young Tonga student in the USA, joint the project group shortly after its inception via browsing the web and has been online collaborating since then.

In January 2001, when a first stakeholder workshop was held in Binga, the headmaster of Binga Highschool had revealed that plans for installing an Internet centre at the school were already at an advanced stage. The School Development Association was contributing a lot but was requiring computers, trained staff and back-up support. The collaboration with the Tonga.Online project was therefore much welcomed as in line with locally identified needs and not being imposed by outsiders.

In March 2001 at least temporary access to computers and the Internet was provided for the Tonga by the “Big Blue Van“, a mobile Internet centre on a truck in collaboration with World Links for Development programme. And in October 2001 the first permanent Internet Centre in this remote area was established at Binga High School with assistance from Austrian side and officially launched in February 2002.



2 comment(s)
I do not understand this project at all. (TURE SJOLANDER / 2002/5/19 9:46:22 PM)
Re: Tonga Voice on the Internet: Tonga.Online (Buckminster Tonga / 2002/5/18 2:35:42 AM)