BRITISH QUEEN ELIZABETH ll was laid to rest after 10 days of national mourning; 10 days of castles (Windsor, Balmoral, Buckingham), parades, motorcades, hearses, vintage cars, horse carriages, skirts and bag-pipes, views, flowers and sentries fainting on vigil.
MuZimbabwe, ava makore zana nemakumi maviri nemana (124) matare enyika amire nekuti pane vasati vadzoswa munyika. Zvigaro zvavo kuMatsvitsi, Mapfungautsi, Bingaguru, Muchengawakasungebeta, ChikomochaMakate, Gwindingwi zvichakamirira.
It was an exclusive display of British culture that was also, inadvertently, a display of loot.
Indian and South African mourners recognised their looted diamonds on the deceased Queen’s crown.
The BBC and affiliate media houses called the funeral “…a history – solemn, spectacular and intense.”
They dubbed it the most watched TV event in history and predicted it to last for all time.
MuZimbabwe, kwemakore zana nemakumi maviri anemana, kuMatsvitsi, Mapfungautsi, Bingaguru, Muchengawakasungebeta, Chikomo chaMakate, Gwindingwi hakuna kupembera. Kuchine matare ehondo nekuti pane vasipo.
Not to be outdone, a UK-based Zimbabwean prophet, Uebert Angel, a descendant of those dispossessed and murdered by the Queen’s predecessors and benefactors proudly released video clips in which he prophesied the death. He had seen London bridge down and angels crying over Buckingham Palace.
Uebert Angel haana kunzwa mbira dzematare dzichirira kuMatsvitsi, Mapfungautsi, Bingaguru, Muchengawakasungebeta, Chikomo chaMakate, Gwindingwi, Ngomakurira, Gomo reZhombe, Mhandamasango, Hwedza, Manhize. Haana kunzwa nziyo dzehondo kuManzou. Haana kunzwa kuchema kuNyadzonia, Chimoio, Tembwe, Freedom Camp, Chibondo kana Butcher Farm.
Interestingly, for all the years Prophet Uebert Angel has sojourned among the British slave masters, he never saw any angels weeping over the British museums that have housed the de-humanised heads of his own ancestors for 124 years. The deceased Queen was the principal owner of the grisly legacy for 70 years. The prophet did not hear Nehanda, Kaguvi, Chinengundu and Chingaira, among multitudes of other victims, groaning to be released from the deceased Queen’s closets for decent burial in their own lands.
Speaking from the wrong side of the bloodied history of Zimbabwe, the generational victim of British inhumanity professed: “Up to this day, I love Queen Elizabeth.”
In response, nhoroondo yeZimbabwe inobvunza kuti: “Unoda Queen Elizabeth? Ko Murenga? Ko Chaminuka? Ko Nehanda?Ko Dzivaguru?Ko Karuva? Ko Mutota? Ko Mukwati? Ko Kaguvi? Ko Charwe? Ko Svosve? Ko Chinengundu? Ko Nyandoro? Ko Chingaira? Ko Mashonganyika?”
Queen Elizabeth ll was the head of the Church of England (Anglican), a protestant splinter of the Pope-headed Catholic Church that championed slavery of black people.
Uebert Angel is the head of Spirit Embassy, a Pentecostal Ministry in the U K.
Murenga, kana kuti Pfumojena, kana kuti Sororenzou, kana kuti Mlimo ndiyezve Mwari mudzimu mukuru weZimbabwe. Matare ese muZimbabwe anotangira nekuperera pana Murenga.
Related news from Australia is that calls for the deceased Queen Elizabeth II to be canonized for ‘her heroic virtue’ are increasing by the day.
In that respect, it is worth noting that the call to canonize Queen Elizabeth ll originated from the Roman Catholic Church from which the Church of England was born in an act of protest.
The Church of England is called a Protestant Church because of that protest.
It is reported that Roman Catholic peer, Charles Moore, has written a leading article in Spectator Australia, suggesting that the late Queen would be the perfect person to be turned into a saint if the UK were a Catholic country.
It is, of course, an outrage that the suggestion should originate from Australia, the land where the Queen’s British convicts decimated the native Aborigine population to near-extinction.
On the surface of it, one would not expect Catholics to canonize protestants. One would actually expect protestants to protest calls for canonization of a Protestant Queen by Catholics.
And on a more ominous note, the reported increase in the calls for the spiritual decoration of Queen Elizabeth ll means that the idea is actually getting more sympathetic attention than the older and more substantial calls for reparations that indict the deceased Queen’s 70-year reign as the primary, institutional and generational beneficiary of the heinous crime of slavery of black humanity.
On the same note as well, the reader is urged to not forget that the black holocaust that empowered British royalty was championed by the Catholic Church. What that means is that the ‘protestant’ difference between the Catholic Church and Queen Elizabeth ll’s Church of England comes across as only a superficial or cosmetic difference. Their culpability runs equally deep.
Catholics believed and taught that salvation was earned through good works; that the grace of God was given through seven sacraments comprising baptism, confirmation, marriage, ordination, anointing of the sick, penance and the Holy Communion celebrated during Mass, the central act of Catholic worship in which the priest offers to God bread and wine substitutes of the body and blood of Christ for atonement for the sins of humanity. Through Mass, the living could also help souls in purgatory whose term could be lessened through prayers for the dead, prayers made possible by the communion with the saints.
On the other hand, Protestantism, a doctrine initiated by a German monk, Martin Luther, challenged most of the Catholic practices as superstition and idolatry and charged the Catholics with using fear of purgatory (without any biblical basis) to extort money from worshippers through prayer and mass ritual. Protestantism was of the view that God’s salvation was simply a gift received through faith and not good works or righteousness.
Catholics called the Protestant view ‘a licence to sin’, notwithstanding that their own style of worship is a routine between sin and Mass; a routine that is, essentially, ‘a licence to sin’ as well.
The First Chimurenga in Zimbabwe confirmed the case in point.
While the war in Matabeleland lasted only a brief five months, in Mashonaland it got protracted to almost two years for a reason which Albert Grey (who was Colonial Administrator of Rhodesia) put down to a contest between belief systems.
The Shona position was that: Mudzimu usiri wako haurarirwe panze. Mudzimu usiri wako unouraya.
In January 1897, Albert Grey grudgingly commended stubborn Shona resistance from a view which UK-based Prophet Uebert Angel has totally missed.
He said: “This you will say is an honourable motive … it shows their (Shona) conduct is controlled by their religion which is more than can be said of many of us whites. We are at present engaged in the most difficult of operations, the bursting up of their faith. …” (Revolt in Southern Rhodesia).
It was a faith that would turn Shona resistance to colonial occupation into 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. (Palmer, 1977: p. 55)
It only ended with the capture of Charwe, the spirit medium of Nehanda, the daughter of Murenga, the Godfather of Zimbabwe. ‘Ended’ is actually not the word. The war was ‘adjourned’ by the medium’s legendary vow: “Mapfupa angu achamuka.”
Charwe, Gumboreshumba (Kaguvi’s medium), Mashonganyika and others were tried and sentenced to death on Wednesday, March 2 1898. The case was between them and Elizabeth’s predecessor, Queen Victoria, the head of the Church of England.
The eight Sundays between Charwe’s condemnation to death and the day of her murder on Wednesday, April 27 1898 confirmed ‘licence to sin Catholicism’.
Eight Sundays translated to eight Mass ceremonies that could have inspired self-search and repentance among those determined to execute the British monarch’s determination to murder those it had already dispossessed.
Catholic Father Richartz had until that day to convert Charwe and other prisoners of war from the faith that motivated them to fight to the Christian faith that persuaded them to accept defeat and be slaves.
It is important to note that the intervening period included the Easter Festival beginning with Good Friday on April 8 1896 and ending with Easter Monday on April 11 1896. Easter commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is supposed to mark the redemption of man from eternal damnation. Easter is supposed to be a celebration of new life after Jesus dies for all sinners on the cross.
Conversely, in Zimbabwe, Easter 1896 is the time meaningful life was lost for indigenous people.
True to what Albert Grey had identified as a contest of belief systems, Charwe (the medium of Nehanda, the daughter of Murenga, mudzimu mukuru weZimbabwe) did not believe the Jesus story and refused to accept him as her personal saviour. She was handed over to the executioner and killed.
The others, notably Gumboreshumba (Kaguvi’s medium), took a chance and accepted Jesus as their personal saviour. Seeing what had happened to Charwe (Nehanda’s medium), it was not their expectation that acceptance of Jesus as their personal saviour could be misconstrued as an acceptance of death.
Catholic Father Richartz baptised them in the saviour’s name but, instead of saving them, handed them over to the men commissioned by the head of the Church of England to kill them.
They were beheaded and their heads given to the head of the Church of England as trophies of conquest. In time, the legacy would pass onto Queen Elizabeth II and be considered her ‘birthright’ for 70 years.
The Shona fears dzekuti mudzimu usiri wako unouraya had been justified.
The murders took place on Wednesday, April 27 1898 and on Sunday, May 01 1898, three days down the line, the same Catholic Father Richartz who had baptised the prisoners of war and handed them over for execution conducted Mass at Chishawasha.
And among those receiving ‘the body and blood of Jesus’ would have been Dziripi, Gumboreshumba’s daughter, whom he had used to convince the father to accept Jesus as his personal saviour not knowing that he would not be saved. Relevant research is still to establish exactly what happened to Dziripi after history had irrefutably vindicated Shona fears kuti: Mudzimu usiri wako haurarirwi panze … Mudzimu usiri wako unouraya.
It would be encouraging if it turns out she ran away from Chishawasha; to know that she did not have visions of ‘ white angels’ celebrating the death of her father.
It would be encouraging if it turns out that she lived long enough to know that the battle marking the beginning of the Second Chimurenga at Chinhoyi on Thursday, April 28 1966 was exactly 68 years after Nehanda’s vow: “Mapfupa angu achamuka” on Wednesday, April 27 1898.
To be continued …