By Mashingaidze Gomo

IN Shona culture, the months of August, September and October constitute memorial season. 
Ndipo panorohwa makuva in acts that bring back the spirits of those who have passed on the previous year and beyond. They are brought back to congress with the living.
In time, the outstanding ones (rainmakers, leaders, hunters, fighters, artists) find mediums vobuda semidzimu nevashavi.
In essence, the institution yemidzimu keeps the past alive, and is an alternative to literary history; a spiritual read-only-ancestral-memory; an interface with our origins; a powerpoint allowing random access that is specific to need.
On the other hand, vashavi translate to an ‘essential services institution’ outsourced for mastery that sustains the family.
Ushavi is artisanal, artistic or spiritual excellence adaptive to context. Ushavi is an intrinsic quality not tied down to a physical or time context. This means that ancestral excellence in hunting may emerge as polished business acumen in the modern age. This explains why our Christian colonisers have demonised and encouraged colonial victims to reject empowerment yevashavi.
The memorial season is also an overhaul and service maintenance season. The majority of rituals are performed in that season before the sanction yemwedzi weMbudzi spanning the last quarter of October and the third quarter of November.
Mwedzi weMbudzi is a season yematare, a ‘stand-down’ season where midzimu retire to review the ending year and plan for the coming year.
In other words, midzimu nevashavi are a fundamental principle of life that translates to a spiritual reflex standing at ‘definitive’ variance with the Christian doctrine of ‘resting in peace’ until Judgment Day.

It must be acknowledged that reflex is a stubborn instinct. It is a default setting that does not necessarily need to be accepted in order to kick in.
For that reason, the season of memory has also been a season of conflict; a chronic site of struggle between the Christian looters who have wanted their victims to ‘rest in peace’ until judgment by their own god and the spirits of the victims being brought back for active reparation service.
Christianity and the institution yemidzimu nevashavi are exclusives and the conflict has extended into a paradigm identifiable in many spheres of indigenous life.
Imperial Christianity outrightly and uncompromisingly condemns the institution yemidzimu nevashavi as demonic and that, of course, would be the logical and, therefore, expected consequence of any conflict. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether one side is right or wrong. Christianity, with all its statutes on slavery and the discriminatory treatment of women and non-Jews, has only its word as proof that midzimu nevashavi are demonic and it is itself clean. Many things are right for the exclusive reason that the Bible says so.
The foregoing conflict has manifested on the political scene ever since the run-up to the occupation of Zimbabwe by Christian British settlers.
The Rudd Concession, which paved the way to occupation, was signed on October 13 1888, in the season of memory, makuva achirohwa muZimbabwe and one would want to believe kuti it would have been the main agenda kumatare emwedzi weMbudzi of that year.
The next year, in October 1889, makuva achirohwa muZimbabwe and the dead being brought back to congress with the living, the British monarch granted the Royal Charter authorising the colonial occupation of Zimbabwe.
The next year, on September 12 1890, makuva achirohwa muZimbabwe, the British occupation force reached the appointed destination in Mashonaland
On September 13 1890, the occupation force held a military parade and raised the Union Jack. The parade square was subsequently called Cecil Square. Cecil was one of Lord Salisbury’s names. Lord Salisbury was British premier at the time of the occupation. The garrison settlement was called Fort Salisbury and rapidly grew into a town and a city.
The next year, 1891, makuva akarohwa and the dead were brought back to congress with the living.
The next year, 1892, makuva akarohwa and the dead were brought back to congress with the living.
And the next year, in September 1893, makuva achirohwa and the dead being brought back to congress with the living, the invasion of Matabeleland, to complete the Christian occupation of Zimbabwe, kicked off.
To be continued . . .