THE African experience belies the flaunted meaning of ‘Saint’.
‘Saint’ invokes expectations of mercy, justice and love.
In Zimbabwe, the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England led by the British monarch were beneficiaries to more than 132 000 hectares of land (acquired through genocide) on which they built institutions of subversion.
The institutions were named after their saints. The ZANLA liberation war song: ‘Maruza imi vapambepfumi’ enumerated some of the saints:
“Kuna Saint Peter
Kuna Saint Luke
Kuna Saint John
Kuna Saint Mark”
The ‘Saints’ were supposed to invoke expectations of mercy, justice and love.
Our history was not short of its own figures who inspired mercy, justice and love. The ZANLA liberation war song: ‘Maruza imi vapambepfumi’ listed them too and questioned why they were not saints:
“Saint Chaminuka irikupi?
Saint Kaguvi irikupi?
Saint Nehanda irikupi?
Saint Takawira irikupi?
Saint Chitepo irikupi?”
But these were only rhetorical questions. Each carried a story of sorrow.
Saint Nehanda irikupi?
The medium of Nehanda (Charwe) had refused the primary requirement of sainthood. She would not have Jesus as her ‘personal saviour’.
Roman Catholic priest Father Richartz handed her over to the men of the Church of England commissioned by British Queen Victoria (Elizabeth II’s predecessor) to hang her.
Saint Kaguvi irikupi?
The medium of Kaguvi (Gumboreshumba) listened to Charwe’s struggles as she was manhandled by British brutes up the scaffold. He heard her body fall and he knew when it was over for Nehanda’s medium.
Seeing what had happened to the medium of Nehanda, the medium of Kaguvi thought he now understood what accepting Jesus as a personal saviour meant.
His own daughter Dziripi, a convert living with Roman Catholic priests at Chishawasha had been brought in to help convince the father to accept Jesus as a personal saviour.
Dziripi must have also thought she understood what accepting Jesus as a personal saviour meant. The medium of Kaguvi accepted Jesus as a personal saviour.
He was baptised.
Notwithstanding his being the victim of thieves from the Catholic Church and the Church of England headed by the British monarch, Gumboreshumba’s ‘Christian name’ became Dismas, the ‘good thief’ who repented on the cross when he was crucified together with Jesus.
Roman Catholic priest Father Richartz handed, the now baptised medium of Kaguvi, over to the men of the Church of England commissioned by British Queen Victoria to hang him.
He did not resist hanging.
He now knew!
He had concretised a working principle for future generations of Zimbabwean freedom fighters.
The working principle was a warning: “Chakachenjedza ndechakatanga.”
It does not matter what you do for the British, they are always out to get you.
The decapitated bodies of the mediums of Nehanda and Kaguvi and Shona chiefs who championed resistance to colonial occupation of Zimbabwe were buried in places which the Catholic Church and the Church of England headed by the British monarch have kept a secret for over 124 years.
The skulls of the mediums of Nehanda and Kaguvi and Shona chiefs who championed resistance to colonial occupation of Zimbabwe have been displayed as trophies of conquest in British museums for over 124 years.
The late Queen Elizabeth II held them as personal effects for the 70 years that constituted her reign.
The Roman Catholic Church has held over 6 500 Sunday Masses/prayer/confession services since performing the ‘murder and secret burial rites’ on the mediums of Nehanda and Kaguvi and Shona chiefs who championed resistance to colonial occupation of Zimbabwe.
Generational victims of this Christian crime against black humanity have confessed imaginary sins and their deepest secrets to generational beneficiaries of the crime who have themselves not admitted culpability to the institutional crime nor revealed the secret burial sites of their victims.
Saint Takawira irikupi?
In 1916, 18 years after the confirmation that neither acceptance nor rejection of Jesus as a personal saviour could save Africans from British tyranny, Tapfumanei Takawira (Shumba yeChirimuhanzu) would be born into the unsafe environment of colonial occupation.
He would be christened ‘Leopold’, incidentally, the name of the Belgian king who commissioned European missionaries to give Africans Christianity in exchange for their wealth; give Africans a sense of eternal guilt to imagined sin in order to undermine their confidence to resist colonial abuse.
Takawira would train for Roman Catholic priesthood at Kutama before the lessons in the murders of the mediums of Nehanda (who rejected Jesus) and Kaguvi (who accepted Jesus) hit him. He abandoned the training and advised compatriots to seek first not the kingdom of heaven but the earth.
He would be among the hardliners who would split from ZAPU to form ZANU on the ‘slogan of confrontation’.
The ZANLA liberation war song: ‘Maruza imi vapambepfumi’ ended with a celebration of the confrontation:
“Teereraiwoka munzwe
ZANU chiwororo yorwaka hondo yeChimurenga
Hondo yeChindunduma
Hondo maiona here vapambepfumi
Maruza maruza here vapambepfumi”
Liberation ‘war song’ means a song sung by armed combatants and it should never be forgotten that in this case, the adversary was Queen Elizabeth II the subject of calls for canonisation.
Takawira would be the Vice-President of ZANU and be jailed for it.
And, in prison, the only privileges available to them, without censure, would be the access to Western education through correspondence and the prison chaplain.
The reader’s attention is drawn to how
the privileges of Western education and Christianity represented by the chaplain actually complemented the prison walls.
Education translates to a mindset or worldview. Education is made possible by language that carries culture and a predisposition to interpret life from references prescribed by the culture.
Cultural prescriptions and references are walls in the same manner Christianity is a sentry set to watch over African colonial subjects to allow the colonial master to indulge in other evils without fear of rebellion.
All he has to do is come back on Sunday
and listen to confessions on what they have been up to.
Takawira’s health deteriorated from 1966. The prison doctor insisted he was well and he was never sent to hospital until he died on June 15 1970, four years down the line.
The day, June 15 1970, had coincidentally, also been Herbert Pfumaindini Chitepo’s 47th birthday anniversary.
Saint Chitepo irikupi?
Outside the prison walls, the combatants received their war education from communist China and Russia and from Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique sponsored for the purpose by the same.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa led the first contingent of ZANLA recruits to China.
However, unlike, Western education permitted the nationalist leadership in prison, the principles of guerilla warfare largely espoused by Mao Tse Tung translated the struggle into a people’s war premised on the subject people’s culture.
In ZANU, it spawned the Dare reChimurenga that rallied the collaboration of the ancestral spirits as well as the spirits of the chiefs who had championed the First Chimurenga.
The chairman of Dare reChimurenga was Chitepo. He was orphaned and raised by Anglican priests at St. Augustine’s, Penhalonga.
He left the priests to lead the armed struggle for liberation from the colonial set-up the Head of the Church of England had championed.
He was killed by a car bomb planted by Chuck Hind recruited from the Special Air Services (SAS) unit of the British military whose supreme commander was the late Queen Elizabeth II now the subject of calls for sainthood.
That was on March 18 1975.
During the same armed liberation struggle, Rhodesians referred to the members of the all-white Rhodesia Light Infantry (RLI), as the ‘Saints’.
To the mafia unit, all black targets were game as per Rhodes’ 1896 instruction to kill everything black even under conditions of surrender.
The influence of the Western education and religion allowed the nationalist leadership in prison showed itself in how it predisposed the choice of a Roman Catholic Priest, Bishop Patrick Chakaipa, to bless the independence championed by the very same ancestral spirits whose mediums another Roman Catholic Priest, Father Richartz, had delivered to the gallows on April 27 1898.
Bishop Chakaipa did not acknowledge the wrongs of the Catholic Church in order to initiate national healing.
The Prince of Wales, now King Charles III whom Queen Elizabeth II sent to bring down the British Union Jack, came without the skulls of our heroes. He did not acknowledge the historical crime against black humanity for national healing to start.
The then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe called for national reconciliation even when we were the wronged.
He did so without demanding an acknowledgement, apology and compensation for the crimes committed against ancestors whose heads the candidate for sainthood was holding in her inventory.
The longer historical context now shows how the reconciliation initiative was seen as a sign of weakness and taken advantage of by British settlers.
In the foregoing context, a whole ghetto in Chitungwiza was christened ‘Saint Mary’s’.
The ghetto is known for political violence largely sponsored by those who saw former President Mugabe’s reconciliation initiative as a sign of weakness to be exploited.
No Zimbabwean heroes were ever celebrated for leading the liberation struggle against Queen Elizabeth II.
The proposed candidate for sainthood, made former President Mugabe a knight but not for championing the armed liberation struggle against her tyranny.
She knighted him for ‘expected’ exceptional service to the British Empire. He was ‘expected’ to ignore the objectives of liberation struggle. He was de-knighted for not playing ball.
A review of the longer historical context shows that the lesson we keep missing as a wronged people is the one that says: “Mudzimu usiri wako unouraya.”
Even as we struggle to get the Europeans to lift illegal sanctions against us we keep missing the lesson in the fact that: Nehanda’s medium refused to accept Jesus as her personal saviour and was killed.
Kaguvi’s medium accepted Jesus as his personal saviour and was killed.
Former President Mugabe accepted the willing buyer willing seller land acquisition arrangement even after winning the armed mandate to take the land by force and he was sanctioned.
He proceeded to take it by force and was sanctioned even more.
So, what is the lesson in the call for sainthood for a woman who savaged Africa for 70 years?