Early this morning a joint ensemble of Tonga Ngoma Buntibe musicians from Zimbabwe and Zambia have paraded the Victoria Falls bridge into Zambia to board an areoplane in Livingstone tomorrow for the flight to Austria / Europe. Fifteen musicians of Simonga group from Siachilaba and fifteen musicians of Maliko from Sinazongwe have been invited by Linz2009, the Cultural Capital of Europe this year to participate at Parade from 1st to 3rd May.  The group is led by Jossam Munkuli and Peter Mungombe of Simonga, and by David Mundando and Chief Sinazongwe of Maliko. Tour manager is Sengamo Ndlovu from Tonga.Online team in Binga.

"It is such a pleasure to see the efforts by Simonga and Maliko to highlight the cultural heritage of the BaTonga people. That the event is being hosted on the Zambezi River, across the bridge, could not have been more symbolic. The bridge physically unites the two sides of the river as does this cultural project for the BaTonga people across the river." (Dominic Muntanga)

Time flies, the Parade at Linz 2009 -  the European Capital of Culture this year - is coming closer.

One of the key participants will be a joint ensemble of the Ngoma Buntibe groups Simonga from Siachilaba in Zimbabwe and Maliko from Sinazongwe in Zambia.

Have a look at the blog to see what's happening in the run-up to the
Parade, post your comments and greetings, and follow the events in Linz / Austria on site or online.

Parade-blog launch: www.linz09.at/parade-blog
http://www.linz09.at/parade-blog

A Multi-Stakeholder planning workshop for Ministry of Education, Sports, Arts and Culture (MOEASC) was held from the 3rd to the 4th of March 2009 in Bulawayo.

The workshop which was attended by NGOs and partners working with the ministry in Matabeleland North Province was organised by MOESC with the objectives of:-

i)Getting the stakeholders to know each other and their areas of operation in light of avoiding duplication of effort.

ii)Stakeholders to understand the goals and objectives of the MOEASC and in this way assist the ministry in achieving them.

iii)Share experiences and together plan the way forward for a better Matabeleland North as far as education provision was concerned.

Maliko Budima Group: Trip to Binga for Rehearsals for Linz09 from 02 – 09 January, 2009.

Maliko Budima group  from Sinazongwe / Zambia had a trip across the Lake Kariba to Binga for its final rehearsal for the journey to Austria in May 2009. The rehearsal was held at Binga High School from 2nd to 9th January.

See Images

Binga district witnessed the launch of grade one to seven ChiTonga Books titled Bwacha Lino on the 27th of November 2008. This launch was organised by the Zimbabwe Publishing House ZPH Publishers (Pvt) Ltd. It was dawn and a dream come true for the BaTonga people. It was a day of joy and jubilation. For the first time, Tonga language will be taught from grade one to seven in the Binga and Nyaminyami Schools. I would therefore like to applaud ZPH, TOLACO, BASILWIZI TRUST and Save the children for the job well done. The only challenge the poor Tonga Child is facing now, is how to access these books at no or little cost. Without easy access to ChiTonga learning materials, we can not talk of language promotion and liberation. I am of the opinion that more effort should now be directed toward easy or free access of ChiTonga learning materials for all children. The Tonga people and various stakeholders, through their different structures have to engage themselves into another struggle of making sure that the books are online and are easily accessible by every child. The struggle begins now, since it is dawn "Bwacha Lino".

The Tonga.Online project has become a reference point for Austrian (and South African) media artists again. The Austrian artists duo MACHFELD will start an artist in residency in Johannesburg / South Africa soon and explore the Binga - Hillbrow connection, the routes and linkages which exist between rural Binga area in Zimbabwe and the notorious suburb of Hillbrow / Johannesburg which is hosting various migrant communities, i.e. from Zimbabwe. Therefore MACHFELD will visit Binga and the Tonga.Online / MULONGA.net project in early 2009 to start with their action research.

Invitation to the presentation of the video documentation and exhibition:

The set up of the Sinazongwe Community Radio by Tonga.OnAir team: Marcus Diess, Sandra Hochholzer, Hannelore Leindecker, Ingo Leindecker 

 Venue: Kunstuniversity Linz, Audimax Date: Thursday 6th of December 19:00 

Images of the event 

Good news for the Tonga.Online project from Mica – the Music Information Center Austria, which has started the Fair Music Initiative recently. On Saturday 8th September the project received the newly-created Fair Music Award in the context of this years Ars Electronica Festival - together with female:pressure, Freibank Music Publishing, and Extraplatte as this years other laureates.

A milestone in the development of Sinazongwe district was marked at the end of July by the establishment of the first community radio station in the Gwembe Valley by a team of Austrian ‘open access’ radio activists, Sandra Hochholzer, Ingo Leindecker, Hannelore Leindecker and Marcus Diess, who are reporting on their website

"..the new Sinazongwe Community Radio is ready to go on air!"

More information including a detailed project documentation is promised to come up soon,

read also their blog TRAVELOGUE (in German) on

http://www.servus.at/tongaonair/index.html