IN the last episode of our discussion on African spirituality, we showed that even the dead, who in life have been wronged, come back as spirits to demand restitution.
These restitution- seeking spirits are called ngozi.
The ngozi spirits seek justice.
In today’s discussion we shall show how the white invaders committed ngozi which eventually destroyed their 100-year-old rule over Zimbabwe.
When the whites came to Africa, they discovered that Africans had strong cultural and religious institutions centred on multi-dimensional spirituality. Africans had very high respect for and adherence to their religious traditions and cultural practices.
The African God was also a God of miracles.
Spirit mediums performed miracles using divine powers from Musikavanhu/uMlimu.
Ordinary people could kneel and pray through their ancestral spirits and be granted food or a good hunt.
African religious rituals are essentially elaborate sophisticated prayers to Musikavanhu.
Due to the strength and resilience of African cultural institutions, for decades white missionaries could not convert any Africans to their foreign religion which they called Christianity.
Today literally millions have abandoned African cultural values and religious practices.
They are flocking to traditional Western churches.
Even more are attending new pentecostal and apostolic religious bodies where ‘miracles’ and ‘prosperity gospel’ messages hold sway.
How did Western churches disconnect the African away from his spiritual roots?
How did Western religion turn the Africans against their ancestral spirits and their Musikavanhu/uMlimu?
When the white invaders systematically murdered the spiritual leaders of our people they sought to physically remove the link between the people and the Creator, Musikavanhu/uMlimu.
The white imperialists used the age-old strategy of ‘defamation’ of all things African to generate and consolidate an inferiority complex among the black populations.
Failing to tell the truth about African achievements is also a form of defamation.
It is meant to show Africans in bad light as non-achievers.
This is despite great technological advances like the telephone, the computer and the cellphone all invented by African scientists.
Some white historians falsely insist that Africans have no history.
This again is part of the white defamation campaign against black people.
We shall cite examples to show that white colonialists employ many strategies to defame African institutions.
They use defamation as the main tool for keeping Africans colonised mentally and physically.
The worst defamers of African spirituality are of course the Christian churches. The armies of missionaries, priests and pastors, evangelists and now prophets all spend hours each week defaming African spirituality and its attendant religious and cultural rituals.
This defamation onslaught on African minds has resulted in many completely rejecting their African roots.
Young African people today reject African names, food and medicines preferring Western over-refined foods with poor nutritional value.
A few years back, Zimbabwean parliamentarians refused to give African names to schools preferring to hang on to colonial ones.
Defamation of African practices has been so devastating that most African are totally ashamed of their African roots.
The Christian preachers have said bad things about Africa and Africans.
Africans are made to feel ashamed of themselves and their culture.
The literature taught to black children has no black heroes, but highlights the ‘achievements’ of white invaders who are depicted as ‘discoverers, inventers and great hunters’.
A popular defamatory lie about Africa is that it is a ‘dark continent’.
While it is true that Africa is inhabited by dark-skinned people, the ‘dark continent label has negative connotation.
It is undisputed fact that civilisation started among black people who inhabited Egypt.
The pharaohs who built the great pyramids were black people.
All the mummies of rich kings of Egypt are of black Africans.
And we repeat: Africans were highly civilised long before the white man emerged from the cold caves of Europe.
So it is defamatory to say that Africans are uncivilised.
Lacking correct information many Africans accept the lie that they are backward.
They then lose confidence and self-esteem and look down upon themselves.
The Africans become victims of a deliberate defamation campaign of misinformation, distortion and outright falsehoods.
The most sophisticated civilisations from ancient times were by developed Africans: Egypt, Great Zimbabwe, Ghana and Songhai Empires and the great Timbuktu University in present day Mali, West Africa.
Europeans write biased history texts that defame Africans and their institutions and avoid talking about Africa’s achievements in history.
Defamation of Africans is also achieved through demonisation of their leaders, religious and cultural practices and spirituality.
But let us return to the spiritual dimension.
Our ancestral spirits (mashavi, masvikiro, mhondoro, vadzimu) were declared to be evil and demonic.
African medicine was classified as’inferior’ and potentially injurious to health. Religious rituals were said to be ‘satanic’.
African foods and beverages were considered to be ‘primitive and of little or no nutritious value.
African languages were described as ‘vernacular’ which means a language of slaves, primitive and of the lowest state, not formal or written.
In a previous episode, we saw how as part of the defamation campaign, they called all our medical experts, the n’angas, ‘witches’.
Calling our African doctors’ witches’ is defamatory.
They called Mbuya Charwe, the Spirit Medium of Nehanda, a witch, which implied that she was possessed by an evil spirit!
Nehanda was undeterred and declared that her bones would rise up again!
We say that the whites committed the crime of defamation by calling Nehanda a witch!
‘Varungu vakapara Ngozi nokutuka Nehanda kuti muroyi’.
It is the spirit of Nehanda that ‘possessed’ the comrades and masses of Zimbabwe, inspiring them to rise like a typical ngozi spirit to fight valiantly until they liberated their land!
They represent the ngozi spirits that sought restitution from the whiteman for stealing our land and minerals.
It is the spirits of Nehanda, Kaguvi, Mukwati, Lobengula and all the great leaders and people murdered in cold blood for their land whose spirits individually and collectively spur us Zimbabweans to continue to fight to defend our hard-won independence and sovereignty.
They defiled the Holy Shrine at Njelele in the Matombo Hills.
This is the shrine at which our Great Ancestral Spirit, Murenga Sororenzou had ordered the people to rise and fight the invaders.
Western Christian churches are the main agents of defamation of African people and institutions.
They remain the main obstacle preventing Africans from achieving total spiritual, social and economic independence.
In the next episode, we shall look at the appeasement of ‘ngozi’ spirits in African culture.