THIS week we shall continue our discussion on the mashavi spirits that permeate our lives as Africans including the ‘njuzu’ and ‘bveni’ spirits, custodians of some of the most powerful herbal medicines available in Africa.
Our aim is to show that these ‘mashavi’ spirits are an integral part of the African existence and confer on those possessed some of the best human attributes of our people.
In our last discussion, we indicated that different ‘mashavi’ spirits imbue us with different positive attributes that are evident in our characters and daily endeavours.
We pointed out that Western Christianity has been at the forefront of rubbishing African spirituality, claiming that all aspects relating to the spirits of our departed fathers and forefathers are evil.
Any thinking African would ask how our loving parents and relatives would, upon death, suddenly turn into monster devils!
And yet the Christian missionaries and the pastors have been selling us this naked lie from their pulpits for over a century without anyone telling them to stop lying!
They continue even today.
We have pointed out that the crusade to convert Africans to Christianity had nothing to do with winning souls for God or saving them from hell fire! The gospel was the opium of the Africans!
It lulled them to sleep while the white man stole their God-given inheritance.
Christian missionary work was part of the diabolical strategy to colonise and plunder the African continent.
It was never about preparing people to go to heaven!
What heaven?
If the real heaven ever existed, the whites would have flocked there and filled it up long before Africa even suspected of its existence.
And given their negative love of black people, they would have made sure no black ‘devil’ made it past Saint Peter’s gate!
King Leopold of Belgium and all the European looting brigands who gathered at the Berlin Conference (1884-5) knew very well that the Africans’ strength and resilience lay in their spiritual independence!
The Christian religion is the straw that many Zimbabwean Africans clutch at even today, hoping for salvation in a raging storm of sanctions-induced poverty, disease and social disruption.
Apart from the reality of donating money to the pastors, what tangible benefits outside the stage-managed miracles accrue to the congregants?
The painful reality is that Western Christianity has cornered African people into ‘looting fields’ where pastors and prophets nakedly siphon people’s hard-earned cash in what has become the religious equivalent of the ‘wapusawapusa’ game.
Forgetting that the land was stolen while they prayed to the white God, those in the formal churches continue to pray.
Those in open-air churches also pray.
‘Pray without ceasing’ the pastor urges.
Instead of sitting down and working out solutions to problems besetting families, many Africans are spending hours praying for miracles to transform their lives!
But God said: “You will sweat to eat!” (uchadya cheziya).
Can the economy be turned around by praying for miracles?
No, people must work hard to create wealth; no sweat no gain!
So that is why we are taking time to explain the nature and content of our African spirituality, to reverse the negative perceptions created by Western Christian preachers literally spreading heresy (falsehoods) about African spirituality, religion and culture.
We are trying to educate Africans about their true religious and cultural world.
Now we turn to more examples of African ‘mashavi’ spirits in action.
We shall consider the ‘dona’, ‘bveni’ and the ‘njuzu’.
Let us look at the group of ‘mashavi’ called ‘madona’, (sing. = ‘dona’).
This ‘shavi’ is usually the spirit of a woman who during their life lived a European lifestyle, with the trappings of good living, good food, fancy clothing, jewellery, a penchant for smartness and hygiene and love for other luxuries such as European drinks like wine and spirits.
Many of the ‘dona’ spirits are of housemaids and child-minders or even black mistresses of white Portuguese traders.
The ‘dona’ (from Spanish ‘Donna’ = Madame) is a wondering spirit which seems to target and possess one who has the capacity to provide its preferred lifestyle.
Sometimes it possesses and speaks through the person, usually a woman, but in many cases the ‘dona’ spirit manifests its presence through the unique behaviour described above.
Because the ‘dona’ spirit is unrelated to the person it possesses, it can be chased away without any harm to the possessed.
Certain rituals and medicines are administered to discourage the spirit from possessing the person.
Many people however seem to accept the ‘dona’ spirit.
While some ‘dona’ spirits will attempt to divine past or foretell future events, most people will not consult them for such services as they lack the requisite powers.
The ‘bveni’ or baboon ‘shavi’ spirit possesses mostly men.
The possessed person behaves like a baboon; is able to climb up trees and to eat food normally eaten by baboons.
The person will vomit such food when the spirit leaves him.
The ‘bveni’ spirit is well known among Africans for expertise in herbal medicines that can cure many serious ailments.
In fact, baboons are generally considered to be custodians of many African medicines, ‘vanachirongo’.
In the wild, baboons dig up and eat many plant species, many of which have medicinal properties.
Persons possessed by the ‘bveni’ spirit are widely consulted as medicine men.
Another very important and widely known ‘shavi’ spirit is that called ‘njuzu’ or ‘nzuzu’ the water spirit.
In English folklore they call this half-human half-fish animal a mermaid.
The ‘njuzu’ spirit is that of people who lived close to the water.
People of the Hungwe totem used to be buried in deep pools in African rivers. In some cases the body was cremated and the ashes scattered in the water. It is these water-dwelling ancestral spirits of the Hungwe people who come to possess their relatives as ‘njuzu’ spirits.
In some cases however, there may be ‘njuzu’ spirits who may be from other totem groups.
The ‘njuzu’ spirit is known to ‘capture’ persons who may be near a water body and take them to the spirit world which is entered through the water.
This however is not a common phenomenon.
When a person has been taken by a ‘njuzu’ spirit, the relatives are not supposed to cry.
Certain rituals will be done at the pool where the person has disappeared.
The person may re-appear within a relatively short period or they can be gone for a long time.
When they return, they will be possessed by a ‘njuzu’ spirit and will be great herbalists.
It is said ‘njuzu’ have some of the most potent herbal medicines found in Africa.
The majority of persons possessed by the ‘njuzu’ spirits are not those who at some point have been captured by the water spirit.
They are people possessed by their ‘vadzimu’ spirits who come as either the ‘njuzu’ itself or the ‘mudzimu’ invites its ‘njuzu’ ‘mashavi’ to follow when it possesses a particular individual.
In the next episode we shall look at other categories of ‘mashavi’ spirits, and distinguish between bad and good spirits.