Zimbabwe unveiled statue of slain iconic Nehanda On Africa day

Raymond Nyamuranga

…. Nehanda an icon of resistance against British imperialism refused to be “born again” or repent and for that sole reason she sealed her fate

Exactly 123 years and 32 days after the demise of Nehanda at the hands of colonialists whom she resisted their invasion into her homeland, her statue was unveiled by the current government of Zimbabwe in the capital city of HARARE.

On April 27 1898, the architects of the First Chimurenga War, Mbuya Chahwe, the medium of the Nehanda spirit, and Sekuru Gumboreshumba, the medium of the Kaguvi spirit also known as Murenga, were hanged by the settler regime for daring to challenge colonial dispossession. It is from the Kaguvi spirit, that was alternatively known as Murenga, meaning “war spirit”, that the name Chimurenga was derived.

Mbuya Nehanda along with Zindoga, Hwata and Gutsa wrongly stood accused of murdering a brutal white native commissioner, one Henry Hawkins Pollard of the British South Africa Company who lived near Mazowe and terrorised people in that district.

She was unjustly arrested and tried alongside her compatriots. The major reason why the white settler regime wanted her dead and buried was the strong conviction that she held some mystical powers, she was a fortune teller, widely believed by the mashona people as having predicted the afore coming of the white colonialists calling the,” wasina mabvi” loosely translated meaning kneeless people because they wore trousers against a back ground of the native blacks who relied on animal hides (skin) as clothing.

Before her execution by hanging, she profoundly predicted that her bones will rise again loosely translated into the looming civil disobedience that culminated in a bloody civil war the first chimurenga and then the 2nd chimurenga which started around 1963 which lasted for 15 years and gave birth to a new Zimbabwe in 1980.

Nehanda remained a “vital” cog in the Mashona people’s history and ancestry, Nehanda was seen as a prolific accurate fortune teller, a divine messenger who interceded between man and God popularly known as a Svikiro .

For a lay man in Christianity terms, she could be equated to a Prophet…. Not the modern-day charlatans masquerading as carrying a divine mandate yet are obnoxious whore mongers and academic drop outs or failures who are scamming the desperate and gullible.

Nehanda is believed to carry the divine powers that foretold the outcome of wars, before every rain season biras or ceremonies where held in sacred shrines to call for rains and rain would come. With powers to cure diseases and so on that was the claim to fame of Charwe Nyakasikana .

Somehow the white settler having known where lies the divine powers of the shona they brought a Bible and verses. They demonized the African traditional religion and called it satanic and demon worshipping.

Missionaries invaded the nation they brought their norms and culture. Destroying sacred shrines and introduced a new modern modus operandi and looting the resources of the blackman with reckless abandon. On the other hand they brought civilization veiled under religion

Baptizing the local people on the other hand a gun, trotting and invading land and committing other atrocities …. Nehanda refused to be “born again” or repent and for that sole reason she sealed her fate -the hang man

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