ZIMBABWEANS are generally agreed we are currently going through difficult economic troubles.
It may not be as bad as 2008, but the tunnel is equally dark.
What angers many people is the idea of this abject poverty surrounded by so much riches.
Zimbabwe is endowed with many natural resources that if prudently used would mitigate any drought or sanctions-induced suffering.
Could it be we are in the middle of some spiritual punishment?
We generally tend to be deaf and blind when it comes to spiritual counsel.
Chaminuka is a most revered spirit in Shona traditions, but hardly mentioned in modern Shona history.
The last known medium of Chaminuka was Pasipamire of the Rwizi clan.
He mesmerised people at his Dungwiza in Seke.
His spiritual prowess was well known even as far afield as Matabeleland, but today Chaminuka receives more mention as an intelligence concept during the struggle for independence and in post-independent Zimbabwe than as a pre-colonial concept.
Chaminuka is famously remembered for having prophesied the coming of Europeans and Lobengula’s eventual defeat by the European army; kuchauya vasina mabvi vachakunda pfumo remadzviti, the spirit is said to have proclaimed.
Lobengula did not take heed.
In fact his reign as king was characterised by large settlements of whites close to his residence.
At his first Bulawayo kraal, Jesuits established a mission station in 1879.
Within his residence was heavy presence of European traders.
When he moved to his second Bulawayo Kraal, Umvutcha Kraal came to resemble a white settlement of vasina mabvi, hunters, concession seekers, traders and missionaries.
The seemingly harmless European settlers at Umvutcha Kraal lulled Lobengula into a false sense of security.
Less than a decade later, the Pioneer Column arrived after the British South Africa Company (BSAC) had annexed Mashonaland as a British colony.
This act eventually led to the Anglo-Ndebele war in 1893 during which Lobengula’s force was defeated despite their gallantry at Pupu.
When the king fled Bulawayo, the BSAC sent a force led by Major Allan Wilson to capture him.
Mtshana Khumalo and Gampu Sithole’s forces engaged the Wilson Patrol at Pupu, killing the entire 39 patrol troopers.
The Chaminuka prophecy had come to pass.
Vasina mabvi, wearers of long trousers, as a racial concept, had had permanent resident status in this country for a thousand years prior to the chilling prophesy given to Lobengula.
The land’s guardian spirits had clearly objected to the senseless killings that characterised parts of the country in the second half of the 19th Century.
Today the shrine is in colonially created wilderness at Boronia farm as a forgotten historical relic.
The same spiritual world that had foreseen Lobengula’s defeat became a rallying point for the war to rid the country of the vasina mabvi curse.
Naively we thought the Chimurenga would last a couple of years.
Even when Nehanda and other leaders were captured and Nehanda issued the prophesy, mapfupa angu achamuka, many thought the war would not last long.
In the end, it took over eight decades of hard fighting to rid the country of the vasina mabvi curse.
The adage: Forewarned is fore-armed does not seem to apply in our case.
Nearly four decades after conclusion of a long drawn-out spiritual war we pay scant attention to spiritual matters.
Dungwiza raChaminuka, Shava ndinzwe, Pupu are sorry sights.
Our guardian spirits are forgotten.
We even have the temerity to play with national spiritual symbols.
A few years ago there was a sad story about a chisionekwi that occurred in Chiweshe.
The spiritually symbolic Zimbabwe bird, hungwe, is said to have landed in Chief Chiweshe’s area, apparently on the head of some elder.
On the instructions of local traditional leadership the hungwe was tethered and kept in captivity.
The act riled many spiritually conscious Zimbabweans.
In the end, a delegation of chiefs and spirit mediums visited Chiweshe to correct matters.
One of the delegates, Sekuru Dhewa Kondo, reminded the delegation that hungwe was a sacred bird that cannot be eaten, killed or captured.
In Chiweshe, Sekuru Kondo had lamented, the hungwe had been captured and caged.
Not long after, Chief Chiweshe, in whose area this abomination had taken place, was fatally stung by bees.
Clearly we are in the midst of spiritual punishment.
For how else can one explain our wallowing in poverty in the midst of huge mineral resources including the world’s largest alluvial diamond deposits?