IN this episode we continue to explore the various dimensions of our spiritual existence and to argue that the political independence that we claim to have today is hollow and incomplete until we gain spiritual independence.
We as Africans must define our own spiritual highway to heaven as it were.
Our strength lies in our spiritual dimension.
The spirit endures beyond the grave.
We argue that people who do not share our culture cannot possibly show us the way to heaven, to our Mwari/uMlimo.
We argue that the foreign gospels brought to us from abroad are just that: foreign and irrelevant.
They cannot provide a spiritual connection with our God, the Creator.
In a recent publication titled Africa Awakening Volume I, which we shall take liberty to review in future episodes, the author Colonel Morgan Mzilikazi argues that we must first solve our identity crisis as Africans.
He makes a point that we are a ‘Great Nation’ who must stand tall.
He calls on Africa to take leadership in restoring African dignity.
The author makes reference to ‘Prophet Cindy Jacobs’ prophecy about Zimbabwe.
The prophecy partly reads as follows:
‘Zimbabweans are peace-makers, reconcilers and mediators among nations.
‘They are hardworking, trustworthy, resourceful and innovative. ‘They provide skilled manpower to the region. Zimbabwe was created out of mystery.’
In many ways as Zimbabwe we have already started on that path: fighting our way to political independence in the Second Chimurenga; preaching reconciliation which our enemies spurned, re-possessing our stolen land in the Third Chimurenga and now determined to take our economy into our hands with the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-ASSET) as the first leg of the long haul.
No African country ever dared to take back lands stolen by European colonisers.
Zimbabwe did it; we have taken the lead.
We must consolidate our independence and sovereignty by reclaiming our spiritual independence.
It already exists in most of us as we recognise the central role of our ancestral spirits and masvikiro.
But perpetual intimidation by foreign religious church organisations prevents many Zimbabweans from embracing this spiritual independence.
They are afraid of ‘Fata’ and ‘Baba’ na ‘Mai Mfundisi’.
My friend heard one European safari hunter quipping to his colleagues while waiting for a Johannesburg flight in Frankfurt, that Zimbabwe has the best hunting trophies.
Then this one: ‘you know what, Zimbabwe is the only country which has economically empowered its citizens very significantly!’
Again there is Zimbabwe in the lead.
The withering ‘fire’ of economic sanctions by America and Europe failed to break the will of Zimbabweans.
Even as the economy ‘screamed’ (US Secretary’s words), Zimbabweans soldiered on, surprising the world by overwhelmingly voting its illustrious leader President Robert Mugabe back into power in July 2013.
Zimbabwe continues to refuse to live in anyone’s shadow.
Not in Europe’s shadow.
Looking east, yes.
The Chinese and Russians are all-weather friends.
For 34 years after we freed ourselves using arms that they supplied, they did not come to ask for payment.
When our nemesis, the West reared their ugly head and devoured our children with sanctions, we called on our friends from the east again! And they have come to work with us to build our economy!
As Africans, do we know who we are?
We are human, yes.
Europeans believed we are sub-human, hence their condescending attitude towards Africans.
Colonial atrocities and the diabolic slave trade bear testimony to the tribulations visited on Africa by the Western Christian countries.
While colonial bondage and slavery represented physical imprisonment of the African, Western Christianity was the coup de grace, it effected spiritual bondage!
And because the African subjects kept wriggling out and reverting to their own spiritual world, the Christian religious establishment prescribed a daily regime of sedation in the form of gospel readings, preaching, catechism classes and prayer meetings.
The African ‘convert’ to Christianity was not to be given any breathing space.
Much of the ‘gospel’ was slanted to denigrate all things African.
If the African could be indoctrinated to hate himself, his culture and his religion and his God then he would have no spiritual independence.
Then he could be controlled and exploited.
He could be more readily dispossessed of his God-given natural resources, land, animals ,plants, everything.
As Comrade Herbert Chitepo said, the black man became the white man’s chattel (mudziyo/impahla).
A chattel has literally no according to white colonisers.
But we are black and we are proud Africans.
As President Mugabe once reminded our erstwhile colonisers, the British, we are Africans, we have no desire to be white or to be British.
And he correctly added that we have no desire to live in Europe’s cold miserable environment.
We are not lost, not physically, not spiritually, either!
We must reclaim our place up there in the Sun.
When Europeans came pretending to be innocent ‘explorers’, it was Africans who showed them the way around Africa.
The ‘dark continent’ was in fact full of light!
The 10 Commandments given to Moses by God are African rules of life.
The moral tenets that govern African lives are the same as in the Bible.
Who is going round claiming credit for bringing Africans out of darkness?
In Mberengwa where I grew up there was a church which taught the African converts to sing like this:
‘Tinotenda Mwari Bambo,
Vakatumira mufundisi,
Kunyika yeMberengwa,
Yakanga iri rima,
Asi nhasi yasvinura!’
This roughly translated says: we are grateful to God the Father, who sent the said missionary to the land of Mberengwa which was in darkness, now there is light!
We sang this as children at mission schools as part of the conditioning to make us accept that we are inferior and that the whiteman brought us out of darkness!
And many other similar songs that said there was nothing good in our land Africa were taught to the people.
All this was part of the colonising tricks of the Western missionaries.
That is why Mzilikazi, in his book Africa Wakening, Genesis Of African Power, Zimbabwe In The Lead reminds Africans that Africa has held important roles during ancient, contemporary and modern times in the fields of Science and Technology, construction of mega-structures like the pyramids and Great Zimbabwe Monument, the renowned ancient Timbuktu University in present day Mali.
Africa’s abundant God-given diamonds, gold and other strategic mineral resources saved the world from collapsing during the Biblical era and the two world wars.
And so as Africans we must continue to fight for our spiritual independence which is critical in the struggle to consolidate our political, economic and social independence.