By Farayi Mungoshi

TEN years into my Christian walk, I found myself entangled in a web of identity confusion.
After having come to the understanding that it was not only the slaves taken to America and the West that had new names imposed on them in a scheme to start erasing memories of their African heritage, but also those that were under colonial rule in Africa were given new ‘Christian’ names upon baptising into the Christian faith.
Soon we found ourselves accepting Western ideologies and dumping our own African ideologies saying that this is what God wants.
We were told our ancestors were evil, and I also found myself chanting against my own ancestors in church, but somehow accepting Jacob, Isaac and Abraham.
It did not bother me then because I truly believed that apart from giving birth to me, my ancestors had actually wronged me and I was now suffering because of them.
I did not even bother to question where this information came from as I simply accepted, and concurred with those that say the ‘dark’ continent was plagued with unlearned and uncivilised natives.
But all this changed when I read Dr Stan Mudenge’s, A Political History of Munhumutapa (1400 – 1902).
He writes that according to one Goes, a 16th century writer, the Shona do not make or worship idols, but believe in one God, the Creator of all things, whom they adore and to whom they pray.
Later in the 17th century, Manuel Faria e Sousa claimed that the Shona have no religion nor idols, but acknowledge one only God.
They believe their Kings go to heaven, and call them Muzimos (mudzimu) and call upon them in time of need, as we on the saints.
Or just like how the children of Israel would call upon the God of Abraham when in need.
So how is it then that my ancestors were being called evil when they also operated in the same manner as those in the Bible?
The God they prayed to was just as invisible as the God depicted in the Bible.
I also realised that there was really not much difference between, unhu hwedu and what God in the Bible taught the Israelites, the 10 commandments, the way we are taught to honour our parents, (kukudza vabereki), and love one another etc.
All this is fast disappearing now due to the consumption of other ideologies which we were made to believe were ‘more Godly’ when all the while we had God.
In my quest to fully understand who I am, I had to understand why somebody would want me to hate my ancestors and make me believe that they are all in hell.
I discovered that this was a mechanism created by someone else to detach me from my roots.
Somebody actually sat down and devised this idea to colonise people without actually putting shackles and chains on them, but through simply feeding them with knowledge that denounces their origin.
And so they fed us with religion, and despite the fact that Jesus himself was not religious, his name was used as a tool and weapon to enslave the minds of the ignorant.
Today most people find themselves doing what the church tells them to do and not necessarily what Jesus told them to do.
We have snake-handling pastors, grass-eating pastors and all sorts.
All the while we are drifting further and further from what has sustained us all this time and kept us healthy.
The moment you are made to despise yourself, where you come from, you immediately begin to start losing the ethics and values that have held the families of this nation together for so many centuries.
Eventually when your history is destroyed and lost they start moulding you into whatever they want.
You start enjoying their GMOs, than the healthy sadza rezviyo.
You take up injections to prevent diseases you are not even suffering from.
Our women would rather curtsy for their pastors than for their husbands or in-laws.
We now have questionable human rights that allow children to take their parents to court and allow men to marry men.
Am I saying Christianity brought all this about?
Certainly not, I am a Christian myself, but I have long since stopped believing in a blue-eyed, blonde-haired Jesus.
Jesus was not white, is it relevant you may ask.
I say yes it is.
If it was not, then they wouldn’t have gone into all the trouble of painting something irrelevant.
Samson, Solomon, were also black, and there are more black folk in the Bible, but if you ask a child today they will tell you that all Bible characters varungu.
A recent movie, Moses the Director completely ignored one of the most vital sub stories to the Moses story, which is the fact that Moses had a black wife.
How then is it possible for a people to believe in themselves when they are busy believing lies that they are inferior?