How Mbuya Nehanda became privileged as the icon of our collective ethnic spiritual identity.

Mbuya Nehanda (Front)

 Charwe Nayakasikana, the Zezuru spirit medium of Mazowe popularly known as Mbuya Nehanda is arguably one of the most debated personalities of her era. Her profile is the subject of various interpretations, constantly redacted to suit contemporary ideological needs. This article explores the process that led to the ascent of Charwe Nyakasikana in the national imagination as a way to appreciate why some historical figures are privileged over others.

In elite theory, the ruling class of a particular society sets the political agenda. In Marxist terms, they dominate the economy, and by extension also determine the cultural norms and practices of that society. Post colonialism, the ruling elite embarked on a drive to unilaterally reclaim and rethink the history and agency of Zimbabwe as it transitioned from imperial subordination to nation building.

Social engineering tactics deployed via myth making and jingoistic narratives to ideologically connect Zimbabwean masses with their past, influenced their collective identity and general outlook on life. In this milieu, Mbuya Nehanda became a ubiquitous figure whose name is often invoked through selective narratives serving sectarian interests. The conflation of political power with a collective spiritual identity thus privileged Mbuya Nehanda as a de facto spiritual deity to enforce mass national consciousness.

Her deployment as a spiritual mascot is an effective decoy in a sense, since it provides release and spiritual succour for the bewildered masses in uncertain times. The spirit medium not only serves as their universal maternal figurehead, but her feminine vitality is useful in harnessing mass energy and monopolizing attention. When you control what people believe and focus on in times of crisis, you can control them. In that sense, those who control the spirit medium’s story also control the people’s spiritual way of life.

This is why the spirit medium’s story remains topical — a site of persistent historical contestation; subject to endless debate and reinterpretation across the sociocultural divide. Some of the conversations about our national identity and spirituality as Africans help keep an important part of our values and heritage top of mind. The problem, however, is that some of these conversations tend to degenerate into one dimensional hagiographies.

This is why some may find credence in one school of thought that credits Mbuya Nehanda’s posthumous ascendancy into the national imagination to politically powerful kith and kin. In their opinion, this intervention marginalizes the stories of other spiritual mediums without Mbuya Nehanda’s pedigree and proximity to political power.

To study Mbuya Nehanda’s story is to understand Zimbabwe’s constantly evolving power dynamics and ethnic relations. Antony Gramsci’s subaltern approach helps make sense of Zimbabwean society through examining conditions of subordination of people of different social class, caste and gender. Through this lense, we can interrogate the cultural hegemony that seeks to exclude and displace other social groups from the socio-economic institutions of society, to deny their agency and silence their voices. From that angle, we are able to see an alternate image of a country from the viewpoint of its unrepresented masses.

Zimbabweans have historically never been homogeneous. Instead, heterogeneous clans and ethnicities tend to coalesce with personalities that offer them proximity to power and access to material means of survival. In their communities, these clans and ethnic groups follow their own cultural practices which are aligned to a unique spiritual tradition overseen by their own spiritual guardians in places like Njelele/ Matonjeni in Matopo, Domboshava, Mazarire in Masvingo and Muendamberi in Chegutu amongst many more.

 

To a large extent, Mbuya Nehanda is a useful conduit to deploy manufactured consent on a large scale. After all, who can question a matriarch? It’s the tradition in African communities to follow the counsel of our grandmothers. Moreso, because of their wisdom and maternal instincts which protect us from the worst. Mbuya Nehanda fits this criteria as a useful medium to rally the masses towards one predetermined but imagined national identity.

Once a trend like this gains ground, it becomes self-perpetuating, with its architects watching from the shadows. The masses eagerly embrace it before it takes a life of its own to permeate the social value structures of society. Mbuya Nehanda’s memory has been a useful ideological tool in the elite’s ensemble of tools for mass cultural mobilization. Far from her role as a tutelary spirit of the local Mazowe community in her lifetime, she has now assumed mythical national status.

In the present, Mbuya Nehanda’s memory is promoted as a concurrent project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of ‘Zimbabweans’ long subordinated under various forms of imperialism. Yet, as Africans battle with neo-colonialism in the 21st century, her influence becomes marginal. The world has changed; it’s no longer enough to just acknowledge the past as a mere chronicle of events. It must be reimagined in a way that empowers citizens to navigate the present and leverage for the future.

Although, Mbuya Nehanda has been recognized through many symbolic mediums, the female voice in post independent Zimbabwe remains largely a cheerleading tool for patriarchy. To emerge from this overwhelming post-modern political toxicity and sense of hopelessness, we need to interrogate the policies that keeps us all in perpetual bondage as a people.

We need to write back into Zimbabwean contemporary memory all the influential protagonists in the precolonial struggles of our country without casting other personalities as a marginal figures within a national narrative on account of their lack of socio-political capital. It’s one way towards inclusivity that can inspire the young to embrace their heritage.

Our youths are restless and often have scarce appreciation of spiritual matters. Their outlook on life is different from that of their forefathers. They struggle in embracing a narrative which glorifies the departed and are more western oriented in their values which promote individual advancement over community cohesion. To the youths, ‘Mythology makes the past a parable, smooth and enigmatic, best understood by those who ask no questions’. Yet, if we don’t ask questions we stop learning, we learn more from questioning things.

There is also a need to deploy modern mediums of expression targeting the next generation of citizens to symbolically hand over the cultural heritage of Mbuya Nehanda and her contemporaries to keep their memory alive as an enduring legacy to dramatize the many ways that our ancestors continue to impact our lives and to secure their spirit a permanent seat in the hearts and minds of future generations.

In Marimba Ani’s words, ‘Your culture is your immune system’. If you never study your own history, your future will always depend on those that benefit from your ignorance. Those who control the present control the past and those who control memory of the past control the future. It is almost as if anyone who failed to transition into the post-colonial political liberators hall of fame of 1980, was edited out of history.

Yet, without the relentless rhetoric and fearless beating of the drums of war by contemporary chiefs and spiritual mediums in other regions, it’s doubtful that Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle would have gathered as much momentum. When we interrogate long held beliefs and revisionist interpretations of our history, we stake a claim as stakeholders of the nation building narrative.

After all, those who control the past control the present. The past is not one dimensional and cannot be seen within the locus of a select few, each one of us has a unique experience which requires nuanced interpretation to coexist with the memories of others. Our role as inheritors of memory is to accurately curate stories of our past in a way that empowers and unites us to be a better people.