SHE is the antithesis of the British imperialists. 

Unto death, she stood her ground that the British armed robbers were wrong to seize her land. 

They told her to get baptised so that God would forgive her for waging war against the whiteman, for being an insurrectionist.

In response, she told them quite categorically: “It is not I who needs God’s forgiveness, but you who needs His forgiveness for robbing me of my land.” 

Thus, she underlined that it is not the victim of armed robbery who needed to make amends but the armed robber.

They would kill her in a few hours but she was not cowed. Instead, she told her murderers that this was not the end of the war, for her bones would rise.

A chief medium of Mwari, she was true to her calling, to defend the truth with her everything, unto death.

That is a maxim no debate about curriculum in this country should miss. The land belongs to a particular people; it is not a no man’s land which just happens to be on planet earth, which anyone from anywhere is free to contest and the winner, by whatever means, is free to take it as his own.

This land has a certain people designated for it.

This is the truth Nehanda was raised with and our children in this land of Chaminuka must know  and never deviate from.

That is the fundamental truth which evoked young Zimbabweans of all ages to leave the comfort of home and promise of school as well as jobs to join the liberation struggle.

The purpose and justification for the war of liberation was clarified to each newly recruited combatant; there could be no confusion, everything had to be perfectly clear. 

The war was about a noble cause.

The eternal truth is that the land called Zimbabwe exclusively belongs to Zimbabweans,  to each and every one of us.

And those who claim this land for themselves, who would divest us of this great heritage from Musikavanhu must, and will be, fought by every means possible, including force of arms. 

It is our calling to defend our ownership of this great land, what each freedom fighter and what each Zimbabwean who loves his country fought for.

Mbuya Nehanda held fast to this truth though she knew that they would kill her for this, but she also knew that her deadliest weapon was her steadfast adherence to the truth that they were imperialists who had no rights, could never have rights to this land of her forefathers. 

She thus courageously told them of their crime against her people to their face hours before they would murder her. 

She paid the ultimate price for being who she was — an heir of Zimbabwe.

Sixty-five years later, her descendants took the mantle from her taking the decision to confront the whiteman militarily, for the same reason she had been murdered, that this land is no-one else’s.

We celebrate Mbuya Nehanda, in this moment in which they  murdered her 101 years ago on April 28 1898. We are living through this sober moment as we commemorate this tragic but deeply heroic moment.

After murdering her and Kaguvi on April 28 1898, the British took their heads to their Natural History Museum in London, forcing the two to share the same space with fossils of strange creatures from Britain’s ancient past.

The whiteman believed this would neutralise the spiritual powers of the two and their deaths would be the death of everything the two stood for. 

But they were prophets and Mbuya Nehanda had foretold what would happen.

It still came to pass though she had long joined her ancestors in the beyond.

A Longman Day-By-Day English Reader which we reviewed in the early 1980s as the Primary Education Development Unit was building a new school curriculum for independent Zimbabwe revealed a rabid desperation to vilify and condemn Mbuya Nehanda.

In that book, the children read a story which said that Nehanda was a notorious witch whose greatest achievement was supervising the murder of a certain whiteman named  Henry Pollard.

The story was meant to arouse derision in young Zimbabweans; they were meant to grow to hate and despise this great warrior heroine.

The reason is obvious.

What makes it normal that it is the whiteman’s second nature, his prerogative to own and run factories, mines and other huge concerns while, on the other hand, it is the natural calling for Africans to be exploited labourers of the whiteman who must scrounge for a living until their dying days?

What makes it seem normal that an insurrectionist instrument of the British, calls itself a legitimate part of multiparty democracy in our land? 

What makes it seem normal that the plunderers and looters should live like lords while the owners of untold riches, us Africans, whose continent is the richest on planet earth, live as beggars?

Vepfumojena vokora sehochi 

Isu tichiondoroka sembwa ine gwembe

All this seems normal because we have forgotten who we are, neither have we taught our chilren who they are —that we are the sole heirs of Zimbabwe, that Zimbabwe is our country.

Because we have forgotten this, and we have not taught  our children this eternal truth, these anomalies assume credibility That poverty is normal in such a richly endowed nation

– That a life of luxury is normal for the looters and plunderers and a life of permanent deprivation is just for the indigenes

– That the life of exploited labourers is the norm for the owners of the land, and minerals, and the foreign usurpers successfully claim and institute ownership of these vast resources

– That it is normal for some born in this land to masquerade as champions of multi-party democracy when in fact they are purveyors of the most criminal injustice of being Trojan horses for the British armed robbers whom we threw out at the heaviest cost to ourselves

Unless we all return to source and, like Mbuya Nehanda, recall and honour who we are, and, like she, commit to protect Zimbabwe unto death, we are condemning ourselves to permanent subjugation and deprivation.

When we refuse to own to who we are, we give credence to the claim by the armed robbers as Achebe (2009) aptly puts it: “If there are valuable things like gold or diamonds you are carting away from his territory, you prove that he (the African) does not own them in the real sense of the word —that he and they just happened to be lying around the same place when you arrived.”

This is why we honour and celebrate Mbuya Nehanda; she debunked this false claim by the whiteman.