THIS week we shall attempt to give an overview of the multiple dimensions of African spirituality.
In Zimbabwe the white invaders sponsored by Cecil John Rhodes realised very soon after their arrival that the strength of Africans lay in their spirituality.
The resistance to white occupation was spiritually inspired.
In Zimbabwe it was the Great Ancestral Spirit of Murenga Sororenzou who ordered the people to fight the white invaders.
The Curator of the shrine at Njelele in the Matombo (Matopo) Hills was the first to be murdered for receiving and passing the message from the spirit of Murenga to the African population.
Both Shona and Ndebele people responded immediately to the spiritual call to arms.
The white colonialists became acutely aware that the Africans derived their strength from their spirituality.
The invaders fearful that the Africans would defeat them under spiritual inspiration went on to murder all the spirit mediums that they could lay hands on.
They killed Sekuru Gumbo Reshumba, the medium of the great ancestral spirit Kaguvi and Mbuya Charwe, the spirit medium of the great ancestral spirit Nehanda.
This deliberate targeting of the spirit mediums of the people in the 1890s was tacit recognition by the white invaders, of the power of African Ancestral Spirits; the power behind the Chimurenga uprising by the Africans.
Both the First and Second Chimurenga were inspired and led by our Great Ancestral Spirits, drawing divine mystic powers and inspiration from Musikavanhu.
Our capacity to withstand the sanctions and to defend our revolution going forward will also depend on the support we derive from our ancestral spirits.
This also explains why the Western Christian Church has relentlessly fought to destroy African spirituality, demonising it and defaming its mediums.
It has never been about saving souls.
There is no evidence to support the salvation theory, which falsely claims that white missionaries and their backers were so concerned that Africans would burn in hell such that they preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to save them!
White colonialists with tacit support from their ‘men of god’ murdered millions of Africans over the colonial and subsequent years.
Which god supported those mass murders of innocent Africans?
The same ‘god’ that was preached every Sunday and mid-week?
We express our grave doubts!
The Africans were induced by hook and crook and even by pain of death to abandon their own spiritual base to embrace a foreign religion.
That religion called Christianity launched a spirited sustained assault on African culture and spirituality, not to prepare Africans for ascent to heaven, but to weaken them for unbridled economic exploitation.
The Christian religion demonised African religion and culture and consistently conducted defamation sermons against African spirituality, claiming, falsely, that all African spirits are demonic.
Given that all Africans are the creation of God and therefore are cast in his image, demonising them is tantamount to demonising God or at least implying that he created a race of demons!
We Africans reject that racist religion which robs us of our genuine spiritual independence which we must reclaim.
Our Constitution recognises our cultural and religious independence.
This is the time for the African spiritual revival.
Our traditional institutions need to be capacitated while indigenous churches must also play their part in aligning our African religious practices to our unhu/ubuntu.
For the benefit of those who may have not been following our series of articles, in this episode we summarise some of the main elements of African spirituality in an effort to show that African existence is anchored by spirituality which derives directly from Musikavanhu, God.
This should serve to dispel the malicious lie that Africans are lost souls that missionaries, prophets, pastors and priests masquerading as ‘men/women of god’ must get credit for bringing to the Lord!
So our first assertion is that Africans are linked directly to the Creator.
The link is physical, through living parents/grandparents and thereafter through the line of ancestral spirits whose chain goes all the way back unbroken to the Musikavanhu, God.
There is no basis for substituting the spiritual link of Africans to the Creator with another artificial one through a white Jesus.
Africans have always worshipped Musikavanhu in their own traditional ways with all religious practices imbued with spirituality.
The spirits possess the living and guide the various religious ceremonies and rituals.
Spilling of blood is taboo as is the colour red in all African religious courts presided by our ancestral spirits.
African religious morals are underpinned by our spirituality.
Most of the Biblical teachings on morality are based on African laws.
King James hated this connection to Africa.
He hired 42 scholars who revised the Bible to sanitise it of all references to Africa.
And so ‘vadzimu’ are invoked at every turn to remind people to behave and conduct their business properly.
Good fortunes are endowed and bestowed by our ‘vadzimu’ spirits, who also are our guardians against all evil and misfortune.
We pray to Musikavanhu through our ‘vadzimu’ the ancestral spirits, our parents, our grandparents who know us and who are best placed to pass our requests all the way up to Musikavanhu through the chain of ancestral spirits.
The Catholics pray through the saints.
We do not worship the ancestral spirits as frivolously claimed by Western Christian missionaries; they intercede on our behalf!
We carry out various religious ceremonies to link the spirits of the dead with their living relatives to ensure that they continue to communicate harmoniously.
We have previously also discussed the involvement of our spirits (mashavi) in all facets of our lives.
‘Mashavi’ bring fortunes to those they possess, protect against various calamities and basically guide us throughout our lives.
We have discussed the role of ‘mashavi’ in African medicine.
Diagnosis of disease, prescription of medicines and various aspects of patient care are under the direct guidance of our spirits who possess and give instructions to ensure best practices.
We have made reference to the vast encyclopaedia of African medical knowledge that is available and can only be down-loaded through the spiritual dimension.
Spirit mediums either possessed, through visions or dreams are able to access information on a wide range of medical conditions and their management.
Western medicine has often resorted to bio-piracy where Africans are induced to part with medical secrets which unscrupulous Westerners then patent and market as their own intellectual property.
African knowledge systems are almost exclusively spirit-based.
Spirit possession affords access to information on a wide range of procedures for various ceremonies, medical practices, identification, genealogies, territorial boundaries and even crime scene details.
Detailed information on events that occurred centuries ago can be availed through the African spiritual dimension.
And so we have taken time to review the major different dimensions of African spirituality to get an overview of its centrality in our existence as people.
We conclude that we are spiritual people, always have been and always will be so.
We did not discover our spirituality through the coming of white missionaries.
We call on all Africans to join the crusade to reclaim our spiritual independence.