IN earlier discussions we brought up the issue of ‘mudzimu’ as the spirit of a deceased person.
We pointed out that the spirits of our forefathers and their forefathers before them are all ‘vadzimu’ and act as the spiritual chain link all the way back to Musikavanhu, God the Creator.
The ‘vadzimu’ look after their families and act as the conduit for prayers from the people to Musikavanhu, and blessings and messages from the Creator back to the people.
We rejected the Western Christian notion that our ancestral spirits are demonic and evil.
We showed that divine and mystic powers deriving from Musikavanhu come through our ancestral spirits, ‘vadzimu’ and are manifested through the activities of our ‘masvikiro’ and ‘mhondoro’ spirit mediums.
We showed how our Great Ancestral Spirits Murenga, Chaminuka, Nehanda, Kaguvi and others inspired and led our liberation wars until final victory.
We have shown that Western Christian missionaries were deployed as the vanguard of the colonising forces and that they continue to work to colonise people spiritually by disconnecting them from their spiritual roots and Mwari Musikavanhu, our Creator.
We have continued to explore other dimensions of our spirituality and have touched on what many describe as ‘avenging spirits’, ‘ngozi/ingozi’.
In this episode we will further explore this spiritual phenomenon and show that ‘ngozi’ is the spirit of a wronged person seeking justice.
This must be viewed against the wrong general public notion that ngozi is an evil spirit that seeks to destroy life and property.
However, ‘ngozi’ spirits are not ‘shavi’ spirits.
We shall first outline the nature of ‘ngozi’ spirits.
Today many church-going people and others who have become alienated from their African roots want to dismiss ‘ngozi’ as ‘mweya yetsvina’, which translates roughly to ‘evil spirits’.
But what is ‘ngozi’?
‘Ngozi is the spirit of a dead person who has been wronged at the time they were alive by relatives or by strangers.
The ‘ngozi’ spirit troubles those persons who belong to the family of the offender.
The ngozi spirit can come out and possess a member of the family of the offender like a normal ‘mudzimu’.
Only after it has wreaked havoc will the family realise that it is a ngozi spirit, not a normal mudzimu.
But how does it all start?
How does the ngozi spirit arise?
In his book Mhuri ye Zimbabwe, (published in 2013) T.N. Munhumutema describes the different types of ‘ngozi’ spirits.
Since the subject of ‘ngozi’ is much-feared, but little understood, we shall take time to outline some of the issues associated with the ‘ngozi’ spirit phenomenon among African communities.
‘Ngozi’ spirits only arise from great wrongs or crimes committed against an individual or a family.
Such crimes often involve murder or theft of very valuable property such as cattle.
It is said that the ancestral spirits of the wronged person advise him/her to go personally and demand redress from the wrong-doer or his immediate or extended family.
‘Ngozi’ spirits are a major cornerstone of the spiritual dimension of the African justice system.
It may be useful here to outline the different types of ngozi.
The writer T.N. Munhumutema lists seven types of ngozi.
Below we summarise the main ones.
One type of Ngozi arises from a married woman.
If she dies from bewitching by in-laws, gets her utensils confiscated by the husband or his relatives; has no bride price (lobola) paid for her despite raising a family or in the worst case scenario, she is murdered, she will come back as a ‘ngozi’ spirit to seek redress from the family of her husband.
In some cases if the wife dies, but her utensils and personal belongings are not returned to her maiden family members, she can become a ‘ngozi’.
A ngozi spirit can also arise if the woman is falsely accused of being a witch by the husband or his family members.
This type of ngozi can destroy the whole family and can be particularly vicious if the woman did not bear any children with the husband.
Parents can become ‘ngozi’ to their children if they are ill-treated during their lives.
The ‘mother’ ngozi can be particularly problematic.
Another scenario is where the husband extorts property from the wife e.g. cattle or goats to pay his debts or even roora for another wife.
If the wife dies before she receives back her property, she can return even after many years to demand her property as ‘ngozi’.
Another type of ngozi arises from son-in-laws, ‘vakwasha’.
A young man can work (kutema ugariri) and be promised a wife, but dies before receiving the bride.
In some instances, a man pays out cattle as the bride price, but fails to secure the bride.
The son-in-law can be murdered while resident with the in-laws.
In all these cases, his spirit will return as a ngozi to demand restitution.
Some ‘ngozi’ spirits arise from accident situations e.g. when a motorists kills a pedestrian crossing the road.
The dead person can become a ‘ngozi’ spirit.
This type of Ngozi is solved by the wrong-doer engaging the relatives of the deceased, negotiating to pay any compensation, assisting in the burial or otherwise giving some token as an expression of remorse.
The relatives will then formally tell the spirit of the dead person that due compensation or an apology has been rendered.
The spirit will cease to cause any problems.
Some ‘ngozi’ spirits arise when an individual is murdered e.g. during robbery or just to forcibly take property or money.
Such a ‘ngozi’ can wipe out whole families if not appeased.
Another category of ‘ngozi’ comes from servants who may come when young or are picked up as abandoned children in times of great starvation or war, and live and die in a family.
These people will come back as ‘ngozi’ spirits when they die demanding to be paid or otherwise compensated for their services while still alive.
The last category for this episode are the ngozi spirits of those who died for this country Zimbabwe.
Among these we count the Great Ancestral Spirits of our patriarchs Murenga, Chaminuka, Kaguvi and Nehanda.
We count all those who perished in the forests and rivers and mountains in and outside Zimbabwe at Nyadzonia, Tembwe, Freedom Camp, Chimoio and other places.
There are ceremonies that need to be conducted to appease all these spirits.
In the next episode we shall look at how the ‘ngozi’ spirits are appeased when we say ‘kugona ngozi kuiripa.’