An indaba (; ) is an important conference held by the izinDuna (principal men) of the Zulu and

Xhosa Xhosa may refer to: * Xhosa people, a nation, and ethnic group, who live in south-central and southeasterly region of South Africa * Xhosa language, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, principally spoken by the Xhosa people See als ...

peoples of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. (Such meetings are also practised by the

Swazi Swazi may refer to: * Swazi people, a people of southeastern Africa * Swazi language * Eswatini Eswatini, formally the Kingdom of Eswatini, also known by its former official names Swaziland and the Kingdom of Swaziland, is a landlocked count ...

, who refer to them using the close cognate '.) Indabas may include only the izinDuna of a particular community, or they may be held with representatives of other communities. The term "Indaba" comes from the Zulu and

languages. It means "business" or "matter".

Usage

The term is used by various organisations around the world for their meetups or conferences; for instance, the

Wiki Indaba Wiki Indaba is the regional conference for African Wikimedians both within the continent and in the diaspora. Topics of presentation and dialogue include Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, other wikis, open-source software, free knowledge, fr ...

South African Tourism South African Tourism (frequently shortened to SA Tourism) is the official national marketing agency of the South African government, with the goal of promoting tourism in South Africa both locally and globally. Background of organization SA ...

's Africa’s Travel Indaba and

Canonical The adjective canonical is applied in many contexts to mean 'according to the canon' the standard, rule or primary source that is accepted as authoritative for the body of knowledge or literature in that context. In mathematics, ''canonical exampl ...

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

Indaba.

References

{{reflist Zulu culture Xhosa culture Culture of Eswatini Languages of South Africa Zulu words and phrases South African English Meetings