IN the United Kingdom, it was Queen Elizabeth I, head of the Church of England, who was both Reformed and Catholic, who started the English trade in African slaves. In 1564, a special ship commissioned for this purpose was christened ‘Jesus’ and it was captained by Admiral John Hawkins. In light of the role Christianity would play in the colonisation of Africa the christening carried tragic symbolism.
The United Kingdom would become the biggest slave-trading nation on the planet. The growth of Liverpool from a small fishing village to host the largest slave trading port on the planet would be iconic of that position. Today, Liverpool is the fifth largest city in the United Kingdom and the legacy of human atrocity has since been laundered in football fanfare and betting houses.
On the back of slavery, the British would build the largest empire in human history and celebrate it as one upon which the sun never set. And this was notwithstanding that it was an empire founded on slavery, colonisation and genocide.
It is estimated that up to 60 million Africans perished in the holocaust.
Of course, there were other genocides committed by the same British in that empire upon which the sun never set; in Australia, New Zealand, North America, the West Indies and Asia but this article is specific to the African one because the author is African and the African holocaust was the worst of them all.
British missionaries numbered many among those who scouted Zimbabwe for colonisation precisely at the time the machines of the Industrial Revolution were replacing the African slave in Western economies.
It is pertinent for African scholarship to note that while the abolition of the trade in African slaves was being touted as a damascene or Pauline act of contrition by the Christians who had championed the holocaust, none of the outcomes of that abolition were consistent with contrition. Colonial dispossession, oppression and genocide are outcomes that contest the very essence of repentance. The irrefutable truth was that the very same vehicle the British monarch had christened ‘Jesus’ to carry African slaves was the very same one re-invented to colonise and harvest the lives of those who had survived slavery.
In Zimbabwe, the most notable of the captains of the slave ship originally christened ‘Jesus’ and now re-invented to domesticate survivors of slavery for colonial exploitation was the Scottish missionary, Robert Moffat.
It is Robert Moffat who cleared the landing pad for those who scouted Zimbabwe for British colonial settlement. It is him who brought the supposed ‘good news’ of riches after death. The other charlatans were his own son, Reverend John Moffat, his son-in-law, David Livingstone, Reverend Helm, Bishop Knight Bruce, Father Richartz, Father Biehler among many more.
The missionary, Robert Moffat, secured (from Mzilikazi) just one hectare of land on which to start his mission station at Inyati in 1859. That was 298 years after the first missionary, Portuguese Father Goncalo da Silveira had been slain and thrown into the crocodile-infested Msengezi River on 6 March 1561.
By 1896, i.e. only six years after occupation, the missionaries who had facilitated the colonial land swindle had been allocated a total of 132 000 hectares of the stolen land. It is preposterous to imagine that this was only 37 years after the British missionary, Robert Moffat, had received just one hectare of land from Mzilikazi.
Half of the 132 000 hectares (i.e. 66 000 hectares) of the stolen land allocated to missionaries went to the Catholic Church founded upon St Peter, the rock Jesus had ordained for the purpose.
The bloodiest resistance to colonial occupation in Africa took place in Zimbabwe. The historian, Palmer (1977: p. 55) called it “the most violent, sustained, and highly organised instance of resistance to colonial rule anywhere in Africa. (It was) a genuine people’s war, in which individuals fought because they chose to, not because they were ordered by their leaders. The European casualties were much higher than in any comparable revolt . . .”
The Church, particularly Roman Catholic, was the occupation force’s intelligence service during the war. What is even more bizarre about it were the solutions proffered by Catholic bishops at Chishawasha to quell the resistance. The suggestions were all genocidal.
A perfect instance of this was the February 15 1897 Catholic Church intelligence report to the BSA Police in which Father Biehler representing the Catholic clergy at Chishawasha suggested:
“Our mode of fighting is not the proper one for Mashonas . . . It seems to me that the only way of doing anything at all with these natives is to starve them, destroy their lands and kill all that can be killed.” (Ranger, 1967: p.295)
The ‘good shepherds’ proceeded to suggest the massacre of all Shona people above the age of 14.
And it was not like the occupation forces needed encouragement. The instruction from the homosexual benefactor, Cecil Rhodes himself, was also one for genocide:
“Rhodes’s biographers describe the blood lust that seized him as he moved in with the column from Salisbury, how he would return to the scene of action to count the African corpses, how he told a police officer to spare no one even if he threw down his arms and implored mercy. ‘You should kill all you can.’ A.W. (later Sir Alexander) Jarvis, serving with the Gwelo Volunteers, wished ‘to wipe them all out, as far as one can — everything black’. Even such a responsible figure as Sir Frederick Carrington, who became commander of the forces in Rhodesia, advocated at a public dinner the extermination or deportation of the entire Ndebele ‘race.’ (Blake, 1977: p. 125)
The First Chimurenga ended with a trial that caricatured what had happened on the Good Friday of AD 31 in Jerusalem.
And, what exactly had happened on Wednesday April 27 1898?
Wednesday April 27 1898 is pregnant with critical meanings which African scholarship has missed because it has been conditioned to look at African history as a chain of events and not matare. Whereas, nhoroondo murongwa wematare and there is no precise English semantic equivalent for that.
Let it be enough to say that African scholarship in English lacks the historical and cultural legitimacy to cause or carry a paradigm shift that makes the legacy of liberation struggle both dominant and common-sensical for a patriotically reliable popular understanding of our history.
The Mashonaland chapter of the First Chimurenga yakatanga nedare ikaperazve nedare. And, once again, direct translation of this into English is deliberately circumvented in order to preserve
the fullness of the ideological weight.
The Mashonaland chapter of the First Chimurenga erupted with the trial and execution of Native Commissioner Pollard mudare raNehanda kuManzou (Mazowe). Mhasvi, a member of the BSAC Native Police, had rebelled, captured his boss and handed him over for trial on charges of murder and persecution of the African owners of the land. The crimes were very real as was the authority vested in Charwe, the medium of the spirit of Nehanda. In real life, Nehanda had been the daughter of Murenga, with Chaminuka, Runji and Mushawatu as her siblings. None of these entered Zimbabwe in their physical forms. It is their children who came into Zimbabwe. And they were led nemudzimu wasekuru, who was Murenga.
Murenga, whose sovereign title Nembire was derived from his own grandfather’s name, Mambiri, died during their sojourn in Tanzania. And he was also known by ‘at least’ four other names which were Sororenzou, Pfumojena, as well as Mwari. And, each name carries dare raro.
At the translation of the Bible from English to Shona, one of Murenga’s names, ‘Mwari’ would be appropriated as an equivalent of the God of Israel. This was, of course, not an aberration but common Christian practice. Christmas and Easter are examples of originally pagan holidays appropriated to advance Christian interests. Jesus was not born on December 25. Ancient Europe celebrated Odin, the Norse god of wisdom, magic and poetry on that day and Christians adopted it for its convenience. And, Easter was adopted from the Anglo-Saxon celebration of Eastra, the god of spring.
Most Christians are in self-denial of this ‘matter of fact’. And they will deny it even while flying in Pegasus aircraft named after the Greek god of flight, going to India to be healed by Indian doctors practising Hindu medicine. They will deny it even while driving to church in top of the range SUVs named after ‘Mazda’, the Japanese god of fire.
The outbreak of the First Chimurenga nedare raNehanda in Mashonaland was on June 15 1896 and it was a date that would be atavistically attached to the liberation struggle.
On the 27th anniversary of that outbreak, Herbert Pfumaindini Chitepo would be born on June 15 1923 and he was a Soko, the same as Murenga. As both Chairman of ZANU and Chairman of Dare Rechimurenga, Chitepo was destined to set off the Second Chimurenga on Thursday April 28 1966 as a perfect sequel to the First Chimurenga that had been ‘adjourned’ with the executions of the mediums of Nehanda and Kaguvi on Wednesday April 27 1898. And on the 74th anniversary of the outbreak of the First Chimurenga, Leopold Takawira, the first vice president of ZANU, would die in prison on June 15 1970.
This week Zimbabweans will be commemorating the 127th anniversary of the death of the mediums of Nehanda and Kaguvi on Wednesday April 27 1898; and the 59th anniversary of the Chinhoyi Battle on Thursday April 27 1966.
The commemorations fit in a most interesting way, the definition of ‘kufa nekumuka’ which Christians celebrate over Easter. ‘Kufa nekumuka’ is high-sounding Roman Catholic lingo that adds some kind of divinity to a death
And whilst at it, it feels pertinent to mention that the calendars of 1966 and 1898 are identical. The coincidence compels one to take notice of the atavistic connection between the two years separated by 68 years of waiting.
In essence, the time setting of the two historic events in such immediate series make them a naturally-ordained HEROES DAY and FORCES DAY.
The Chinhoyi Battle on Thursday April 28 1966 was ZANLA’s immediate response to Smith’s 11 November 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence which he called “a blow struck for the preservation of justice, civiliSation and Christianity”.
And, the cardinal sin for African scholarship is to not see that no blow is struck as a gesture of peace. All blows are offensive.
The cardinal sin for African scholarship is to not see that Smith had not been the first to strike Africans for the preservation of a ‘justice, civiliSation and Christianity’ that excluded them.
That seemed to have been the pattern since Moses’ Passover in Egypt when an angel of the god of Israel killed all Egyptian first-born children; since Simon of Cyrene was forced to carry Jesus’ cross in AD 31, Jerusalem; since Pope Nicholas V’s Papal Bulls in Rome sanctioned the slavery of black people; since British Queen Elizabeth I christened her slave-trading ship ‘Jesus’; and since the freeing of African slaves without compensation,
The bold proposition here is that African scholarship has missed everything by treating the history of Zimbabwe as a clinical chain of events and not matare anezvirevo.
And, one of the most critical events of matare is what exactly happened on Wednesday April 27 1898 when the medium of Nehanda was persuaded to accept the Christian faith and be baptised in the name of Jesus. She was persuaded to accept Jesus of Israel as her personal saviour. She was persuaded to denounce her own identity and be born again with the stature of the segregated syrophoenician woman glad to feed from crumbs that fell from the table that had originally been her own. She was persuaded to forget her history and be born again. She was promised a reward in heaven after everything she had possessed on earth had been taken because the arrivals believed it was God’s promise to them. In essence, they believed they had been promised the land and wealth of Africa and they were in turn promising their victims the kingdom of heaven after working them to death in colonial exploitation.
Charwe, the medium of Nehanda, refused to be baptised and accept Jesus, the son of the god of Israel as her personal savior and she was hanged and decapitated and the head taken (by the Christians) to the United Kingdom as a trophy of conquest.
But before execution, she vowed kuti “mapfupa angu achamuka”, which are commemorating this week.
The majority of Zimbabwean Christians declare kuti the vow is a myth because white settler history has no record of it. And then they proceed to think kuti it is a blessing to believe the story of Jonah, who spent three days and three nights in the belly of a fish (Jonah 1:17) because Jesus said: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)
And the case of the medium of Kaguvi is equally intriguing. When the medium of Kaguvi saw the medium of Nehanda being dragged up the scaffold. He heard her cries as she resisted the hangman. He heard the thud of her body as she fell from the scaffold. And he was frightened by the silence that followed.
And he thought that the medium of Nehanda had been killed because she had refused Jesus of Israel as her personal saviour.
And it made sense to him kuti no one persuades a condemned man to accept a personal saviour with the intention of killing them.
And, for that reason, Kaguvi welcomed Catholic Father Richartz’ ‘good news’ of a Son of God who had died on the cross so that he could, himself, have life. And he accepted Jesus as his personal saviour. And the Catholic thief baptised the condemned man Dismas, the ‘good thief’ who was promised heaven by Jesus on the cross. And the Catholic thief, Father Richartz, did not tell the medium of Kaguvi about a fellow African, Simon of Cyrene, who had carried the same saviour’s cross and received no thanks. The Catholic thief, Father Richartz, only persuaded the medium of Kaguvi to die well. And he handed him over to the hangman, Patrick Hayden. And he was hanged!
That is what happened on Wednesday April 27 1898.
The medium of Nehanda refused Jesus as her personal saviour and she was hanged.
The medium of Kaguvi accepted Jesus as his personal saviour and he was also hanged.
A blow had been struck for western civilisation and Christianity.
And, African scholarship has not recognised kuti no blow is struck as a gesture of peace and tolerance
Not even a blow for Western civilisation and Christianity
All blows are acts of offensive
All are acts of violence
And what was the meaning of it all?
And, the meaning of it all was that a blueprint had been made on Wednesday April 27 in the blood of ancestors to guide posterity in future dealings with Western civilisation and Christianity.
And, the blueprint showed what happened to black people who refused Christianity and it also showed what happened to black people who accepted Christianity.
And, the unambiguous messages in the blueprint were: Mudzimu weshiri uri mudendere. Mudzimu usiri wako haurarirwi panze. Mudzimu usiri wako unouraya.
And, it is a blueprint that assigns African scholarship to question kuti, if a ship could be christened Jesus and sail Africans to slavery and give the merchants all-time empowerment should the victim’s definition of blasphemy come from the merchant?
And, above all, should they continue to sail in that ship even when they know kuti they can use their hard-won self-determination to imagine their own ships to sail them from Liverpool back to Africa because mudzimu weshiri uri mudendere.
It is a blueprint that assigns African scholarship to create its own god in the African image and fashioned to serve exclusive African interests.
It is a blueprint that assigns African scholarship to celebrate ropa regamba first . . .
It is a blueprint that indicts innocence as a sin.