By Tendai Guvamombe
Harare, Zimbabwe. (News of The South)- “My bones shall rise again”, says the iconic spirit medium of the mighty land before she atrociously suffered the burning wounds poised from ties of a hanging rope under an Indigenous tree along the Tongogara/Mazoe street of Harare.
The utterances of the iconic Mbuya Nehanda had been preceded by a severe beating characterised by gross inhuman torturers and brutality at the hands of merciless white settler regime.
Initially ugly scenes of her torture can be traced to oldest rank for blacks, market square where she endured real pains of being dragged on roughed tar mark surfaces tied to heavy chains pulled by two fattened horses across the Central Business District of Rhodesia now Harare.
In the midst of all the most tormenting aspect is to ever think of how her soft cloth covering her body kept tearing into a mere rug as her body kept rubbing against the roughed tarmac streets of Harare until all her body was laid bare.
Nevertheless she would not consent to give in to the white settler demands who set her uncovered body hung under a tree events which orchestrated into a great lamentation of black people as she died fighting for a noble cause.
Culturally taking ones head to another country with an apparent origin is deemed a taboo, but in the instant of Mbuya Nehanda the white settlers had the courage to rip off her head together with the other seven chiefs notably chief Hwata, Mashonganyika, Chingaira among others only to be decorated as museum artifacts at the Natural History Museum.
Decades of years have gone by since the illegal transportation of the royal heads to United Kingdom yet the now liberalized Zimbabwe on celebrates its national independence on annual basis.
Despite the Axe detainees, Mujibasi and Chimbidos consenting to the attainment of national independent in 1980 it should however be noted that real independence shall be spoken when the heads of royalties descend from United Kingdom down to Zimbabwe.
If the Chimurenga was fought in a hideous manner and won then nothing should stop the government in executing the talk to convene a diplomatic agenda at the negotiation tables with the former colonizers.
Cultural beliefs and values are hardly fading away therefore a further delay in the repatriation of the heads would affect socio-economic stability of the nation .
Mbuya Nehanda is a legend whose ghost spearheaded the attainment of Independence in 1980 therefore here independence should also be guaranteed through repatriation of her skull back to the motherland as this would bring end to the present upheavals and untold sufferings striking the people.
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