By Pastor Richard Tembo.
United Kingdom. (News of The South) – The widely publicised conference to celebrate the life of chimurenga heroine Mbuya Nehanda through Great Zimbabwe International Festival, was successfully held on June 30, 2018 in Leicester, United Kingdom of Great Britain.
To me personally the conference was somewhat preamble to spiritual peace and reconciliation between religion and culture in our country. I say this because there is indeed a history of antagonism between religion and culture arising from lack of realisation of the architect of hate and division who is the devil. The architect in that, he creates some confusion so as to keep people busy arguing over trivial matters.
The theme of the conference was: Celebrating and appreciating the life of Mbuya Nehanda through Great Zimbabwe. Embellishing the theme was the message: “come and hear the link between religious and cultural reasons why our four fathers’ remains should be returned home”.
In conformity with the spirit and purpose of the conference, I chose to stick to the cultural and or religious life of Mbuya Nehanda as I saw it and as part of the terms of reference for participating in the discussion. But because of time however, I just picked a few points from the drafted script.
I introduced myself as Pastor Tembo and was born in Mazowe in Zimbabwe, the area which happened to be the home area of Mbuya Nehanda. Giving example of the holiness of some areas in that part of the country where she lived, I narrated an incident of an encounter I had, seeing a huge ball of fire on a bush many years back when I was young about the age of 12. It was an eye brow raising narrative, to some it may have sounded like a historical story from an ancient novel or just a biblical narrative. But rather a true and real miraculous reality that to those who have experienced God’s miracles will be like sharing the same dinner table.
It was one evening around 6pm and the sun was just over the horizon, when I noticed a burning bush but the fire was a huge ball with rainbow colours. Panicking at seeing such a strange phenomenon I ran home thinking it was a ghost only to be told by my grandfather that it was not a ghost because as it is commonly believed, ghosts are associated with grave yards, there were no graves in the area where I had seen the burning bush. It was about 40 years later that it was confirmed in a dream that what I had seen then was not a ghost but that an Angel had a message for me. And I was told to go back to that place and will see that the bush will be still green while the rest of the forest is dry. The bush is on a farm hill about 35 miles from Harare along the old Mazowe road not far from the sacred mountains of Mazowe range and where the sacred caves are found. I went to see for myself what I had been told and found that God’s wonders do really exist. I found it exactly the way I had been told, and as I write now that wonderful place does definitely exist in our country Zimbabwe.
I chose to mention it at this occasion and in the presence of the Minister of Tourism Hon Prisca Mupfumira to confirm that there should be no doubt that Mbuya Nehanda was not an ordinary person. And also that the government should know that there are such sacred places that might need recognition. There is quite a lot about Mazowe area that needs quite a lot of space to write about.
In my opening address I mentioned that my contribution to the debate was going to be short because of limited time due to late start.
I made reference to the Bible quoting several verses which correlated to the theme of the day. The first verse was from the book of Genesis chapter 1:26 where God said let us make man in our own image and I said that the moment that he breathed his spirit into us we became human. Therefore, the body and the spirit make human and the two cannot be separated and that was the beginning of religion and culture. The reason for choosing this verse was to point out that as human beings we all came from the same God regardless of race, colour, sex or creed. In this respect I was looking at the issue of Mbuya Nehanda Nyakasikana having been wrongly implicated in the killing of one of the cruel settlers a Mr. Henry Hawkins Pollard in 1896 and before being hanged on 27 April 1898.
Whatever justification may have been there in the whole case, what was lacking was the knowledge that she Nyakasina, as well as those involved in her killing, came from the same creator. Consequently, we could not have become human without his spirit and that it is the spirit that makes us God’s unique patent and as such, no man under the sun has the right to destroy God’s patent.
The second verse was from the book of Romans chapter 10:9; where it says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from death, you will be saved. I said that Mbuya Nehanda believed in God (Mwari) and she referred to God in everything she said and that at one time she told her people not to worry about the settlers because God will turn their bullets into water. Reading from a research copy as evidence of what Mbuya Nehanda said and also how she was viewed by her people the message read: “As far as the people were concerned Nehanda and Kaguvi were the voices of God”. I did this solely to emphasize that Mbuya Nehanda was religious because she confessed with her own mouth that there was God (Mwari) and she did not seem to speak via anyone else but that she spoke to God directly, who in turn led her in everything that she did and also gave her the unique powers that she had.
The other verses were from Exodus 20:3 and 4, where God said “You shall not have any other gods before me” and you shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters below”. This shows that God is jealous of us because he loves us. And to show how serious God is about worshiping other gods, he does not want people to worship even the sun, the moon and the stars that he himself created. God does not want us to worship anything other than him. However, it is important to note here that God does not bother about us being in possession of any traditional or ancestral treasure like calabash or something, but he is against us worshiping that calabash like a god. He also said that we must love our neighbour as we love ourselves. And I said our neighbour is not one we should expect to be across the road to become our neighbour, but anyone who is next to us, be it in the bus, train, flight, class room or of course as we set in the conference room, should love one another.
The word behind this message was that Mbuya Nehanda did not seem to worship any other Gods except (Mwari musika vanhu) God the creator of heaven and earth. She spoke directly to God and not via anybody. It is for that reason God was pleased with her and gave her the unique powers that left the settlers confused, hence, decided to kill her. By Loving thy neighbour, I meant that the settlers did not have that love God taught in his word, despite the fact that they the settlers where the ones that brought the bible through the Missionaries who preached the word of God. Because if they had the love that the bible teaches they could not have harassed and tortured the innocent people let alone killing Mbuya Nehanda. There was no love because they turned against the defenceless ordinary people who showed them love by welcoming them. There was no love because they apparently despised them because of colour. But by the same token it is incumbent upon us today to learn to love one another as Zimbabweans and as one family.
The other verses were Genesis 20:25 and Exodus 13:19; Joseph telling Moses that God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you. And that Mbuya Nehanda left a prophetic message that my bones will surely arise (mapfupa angu achapfuka). Consequently, it is befitting that repatriation of Mbuya Nehanda’s bones will be correctly in line with this biblical message, and this is another example of where religion and culture merge. At funerals be it of Church goers or even traditional healers or those perceived to be more notorious of evil deeds, a church service will have to be held for the deceased before burial, why is that, Is this religious or cultural?. So antagonism between religion and culture is the brain child of Lucifer. Funny enough, it does not happen only between religious and cultural or traditional people, but also between Christians or churches themselves. Blaming of churches by churches is quite common as much as it is to blame or name calling of religion or culture by either party. All this as I have just said, is the work of the enemy of God-the devil. There is nothing bad about culture as a system, but what is against God is idolism, in other words, worshiping of whatever artefact believed to be powerful enough to work in place of God. In actual fact there should never be any substitution for God in anything we do if we want to gain his favour. Enough of this is completed in the books of Exodus 20:3 and 4, Leviticus 26:1. God said in Leviticus 26:1, “Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone for your land to bow down before it. I am the Lord your God”. It is as simple and straight forward as that.
In this respect no one can deny that we all came from the same God who created heaven and earth, and supremacy remains his and no one else. As undeniable as it is, who else on earth should be worshiped if I may ask? Nowadays we hear politicians in our country talking God even at political rallies people are talking God. Even His Excellence President E.D.Munangagwa in his first address to the nation he said “the voice of the people is the voice of God” that means (vanokoshesa Mwari) God is important to him. Not only him, but even the opposition leader Honourable Advocate Chamisa said at one of the gathering that ‘’we have tried everything on our own and have failed, it is therefore time to let God take the lead”. In November 2017 in his address to the nation when the government changed hands, the minister of foreign affairs Honourable S.B Moyo concluded by saying “let us pray for our country’’. So to me echoing of such sentiments by our politicians is not by mere accident or coincidence, but rather a fulfilment of the prophetic message by Muya Nehanda that her bones will surely arise because she depended on God.
I know we all have our ancestors and for sure God made it that in flesh we originate from them and we all have our clan and genealogy. The reality is that every ancestor has their descendents by nature, and an ancestor has to be someone from whom the descendents came. There is no way someone who has not been an ancestor of a descendent can be a real ancestor of that descendent, never.
There is one important thing I should like to highlight here. It is about what I personally call spiritual impersonation, spiritual interception and the spirit of vengeance. These three linger so much in our life more often than we realize. I will explain their individual effect in our daily life as natives of a nation that believes in both religion and culture or tradition.
1.(a) Spiritual impersonation happens when for example, someone lived with a family who by blood is not related to them but happens to die in the hands of that family, and his or her relatives cannot be traced and for that reason is buried in that village as a stranger. This is common in cases of refugees or displacement because of war or natural disasters like drought, in countries bordering one another. So when that stranger dies in a foreign village or community, his spirit remains there as a stranger until time comes when some traditional rituals to appease the spirit of the actual family member take place. Then there is a possibility that the spirit of the stranger who was buried in a village of a family where he does not originate, will come up or arise first resulting in people accepting the spirit which is not of their relative or ancestor for that matter. There comes a spirit medium that people believe to be possessed by the spirit of one of their clan while it is the spirit of that stranger. Then the serious consequence is that that false spirit will live with that family only to cause havoc and destabilization. (b) If a family member murders someone and nothing is done to appease or pay a restitution fee as may be required, there is a possibility that the authentic family ritual to appease the spirit of their relative or ancestor, can be interfered with by way of spiritual impersonation so to speak.
In other words, the spirit of a stranger who was murdered comes to act as the real spirit of the family ancestor, and in such circumstances the consequences are perilous. Spiritual impersonation also happens when people go to some spirit appeasement ceremonies where different spirit mediums come together, and when the ceremony gathers momentum, some unauthentic or fake spirit as it were, comes down and overwhelms the spirit medium making it difficult for the people around to tell if the spirit is genuinely the family line spirit or not. It is at this moment that the spirit of vengeance (mweya we ngozi, kana mweya wemutorwa) over rides to start controlling the family resulting in a variety of mishaps. Vanhu vanofa kana kukanganiswa nemweya yengozi inenge yakagashirwa nokusaziva.
(2) Spiritual interception: This began in the biblical Garden of Eden when God created Adam and gave him all the instructions about the tree of life and death. The devil listened and intercepted the message and then went behind Adam to speak to Eve and said: “You will not certainly die For God knows that when you eat fruit from that tree your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing what is good and evil. The serpent said to the woman (Genesis 3:4-5).
The same spiritual interception happens if a family gets intruded by a foreign spirit or the spirit of a stranger, which then gives distorted guidance to the family that accepted this false spirit which disguised as the spirit of an ancestor, when in actual fact is not. So mweya kana uchisvika unoyedzwa kuti mweya waani, ndewe mudzinza redu here. Nokuti munogona kunosvikirwa nemweya we ngozi mukapera. The bible says the same in the book of 1 John 4:1; it says dear brothers, do not believe every spirit.
(3) Spirit of vengeance (mweya we ngozi) is a powerful and vengeful spirit, usually this happens when a relative or parent in the family commits murder and the spirit of the dead person comes back to fight or revenge. Some families fight one another over a certain spirit believing that once they become spirit medium, they will become celebrities or something. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that and it is very dangerous especially if the spirit was not tested to find out if it is a genuine ancestral spirit from the family’s blood line. Hakuna munhu anofanirwa kusvikirwa nomudzimu usiri wedzinza rake. Uchiti unodei? kuzochengeta mhuri isiri yake here? Hakuna zvakadaro. Kana muine dare renyu mukaona anenge asvikirwa, bvunzai kuti wabvakupi uye ndiwe ani, mwana waani. Mweya unofanirwa kuziva kwawabva nedzinza racho (geneaology) if not then be aware of the false spirit or the devil incarnate.
The conference was attended and blessed by the Honourable minister of Tourism comrade Prisca Mapfumira. That conference to celebrate and appreciate the life of Mbuya Nehanda was the first of its kind and her presence was greatly honoured. I pray that God make her live longer to see the day of repatriating the ‘arising bones’ of Mbuya Nehanda in future. She is a wonderful minister and a great mother, very humble and God fearing minister. Zimbabwe needs such God fearing people in government to anchor the nation into the Promised Land and I shall always pray for her success. Also present was the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority CEO Dr. Karikoga Kaseke and may God bless them both.
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