Vadoma
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Zimbabwe | |
 Zimbabwe
|
16,000? |
| Languages | |
| Dema, Korekore Shona, Kunda | |
| Religion | |
| Seventh-Day Adventist, African Traditional Religion | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Shona, other Bantu peoples, Khoisan(?) | |
The Doma or vaDoma (singular muDoma), also known as Dema, are a tribe living in the Kanyemba region in the north of Zimbabwe, especially in the Urungwe and Sipolilo districts around the basins of Mwazamutanda River, a tributary of the Zambezi River Valley. They are the only traditional hunter-gatherers indigenous to Zimbabwe and famous for the inherited ectrodactyly existing among some vaDoma families.
The vaDoma speak the Dema language, closely related to the dominant Shona language of Zimbabwe and highly comprehensible to Korekore and Tande Shona dialects. Living alongside Shona and Kunda people in Kanyemba, they also speak Korekore Shona and Kunda.
According to vaDoma mythology, their ancestors emerged from a baobab tree. Upon descending from it, they walked upright to hunt and gather the fruits of the land. The name vaDoma is also used in the Zambezi region for a semi-mythical people characterized as magical, capricious, hard to find, and living among the trees. This may refer to Khoisan hunter-gatherers who preceded the migration of the Bantu Shona into the Zambezi Valley, and the vaDoma are possibly related to this earlier population. Rumors also persist among nearby peoples that the vaDoma are capable of disappearing in the forest and performing magic.
Historically, the vaDoma chiefly dwelt in the mountains, living a largely nomadic lifestyle of hunting, fishing, trapping, honey hunting, and gathering wild fruits and roots. Prior to the European colonization of Africa, the vaDoma also resisted incorporation into the Korekore Shona kingdom of Mutapa, which resulted in little access to fertile land.Land reform after Zimbabwe's independence did not change this, despite pressure from the Mugabe government, and the vaDoma's continuing dispossession has made them Zimbabwe's only non-agricultural society, leading to stereotypes as "Stone Age cave-dwellers".
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Wikipedia