A FEW weeks back several articles appeared in The Patriot focusing on the Njelele shrine located in the Matombo (not Matopos) Hills in Matabeleland South.
I have deliberately referred to the location of the shrine as the Matombo Hills, the correct name.
The Anglicisation of our local names was part of the colonising process which we must now reject in preference for local ones whose meaning and significance our children can appreciate.
We shall pursue the names debate later.
The religious significance of the Njelele and other shrines among the Shona and other language groups has been discussed at length.
There has been some element of conflict with different groups claiming ‘ownership’ of the shrine.
If indeed, the Njelele shrine is part of the religious traditions of the Shona, similar if not identical shrines should be located along their path of migration.
If the Shona originated in East-Central Africa, there must be aspects of their culture and way of life that can be traced back to where they came from.
I was visited by some comrades who wanted to seek my opinion on the debate surrounding the Njelele shrine and its national importance.
I then decided to discuss the issue of religious shrines with my wife who grew up in one of the central African countries in the Great Lakes region.
She recalled that there is a Njerere (not Njelele) shrine in Rwanda, the country she grew up in.
She remembered some details that her parents and grandmother had passed on to her as she grew up.
The immediate question that came to my mind was whether the two shrines, one in Rwanda and the other in Zimbabwe are related.
The names are virtually identical.
I understand that in both Rwanda and Zimbabwe ‘njerere’ is a kind of eagle.
I assume the Ndebele and Kalanga would replace the ‘r’ in ‘njerere’ (Shona) with the letter ‘l’.
When we grew up in Mberengwa, the place was always called ‘kuMatojeni’.
I shall first explore the question as to whether the Shona-speaking people of Zimbabwe indeed have links with east-central Africa.
I have chosen to explore the historical links by way of language similarities.
I still remember an article that appeared in The Herald newspaper in 1972, the year the Olympic Games were staged in Munich, West Germany.
The report described how the organisers of those games had run a competition asking for a drawing that depicted the spirit of the games.
One of the winning entries had no address, but had a caption written in a language that experts traced to be from central Africa’ either from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) or western Tanzania.
Further inquiries eventually located the artist in a village in western Tanzania. Apparently, the Shona language has many similarities with languages spoken in or around the Great Lakes region.
Those who have visited Rwanda say that many of the place names in that country are similar or identical to Shona names.
Although the language spoken by Rwandese today, Kirwanda, is not identical to Shona, much of the vocabulary is similar I am told.
I have asked someone who grew up in Rwanda to give some typical names from that country.
She recalls the elderly lady in the village she grew up in who was called ‘A Unhukare’, which literally translates into ‘one who used to be of good character long a go’.
‘Rudo’ is a common girl’s name in Rwanda as is the case in Zimbabwe.
One road in the western Rwandan town of Goma goes by the name ‘Kudza Vanhu’ which is also Shona for ‘respect people’.
A cow in Rwanda can go by the name ‘Pfumayavashe’ which is also Shona for ‘the chief’s wealth’.
Retail store names in Rwanda include ‘Pfumaishungu’ and ‘Ndangariro’ which are also Shona words for ‘You need determination to be rich’ and ‘Memories’ respectively.
On a visit to Uganda a few years back, a Zimbabwean colleague and I went to eat at a restaurant in Entebbe one evening.
I had been telling my colleague that historians say the Shona people are said to have originated from the Great Lakes region.
We decided to test if there were language similarities with people in Uganda.
We randomly approached one of the waiters at the restaurant and asked her a few questions.
First we asked where she came from, and the reply was Western Uganda, bordering on Rwanda in the south and the Democratic Republic of Congo on the west.
The first question we asked was ‘what do you call a girl in your language’?
She answered straight back ‘musikana’.
We looked at each other.
The next question was ‘what do you call a boy’?
‘Mukomana’ came her quick reply.
Then I thought of what I considered a ‘difficult’ one, one to remove all doubt. ‘What is the word for your body?’ I asked, sure that this time we would not get a Shona word again.
Oh, ‘my body is called ‘muviri’ in my language” she replied.
This time we really looked each other!
Were we talking to a Shona-speaking girl?
She further told us that a woman is ‘mukadzi’ and cattle are ‘ngombe’ in her mother language.
We rested our case.
Somewhere in western Uganda are a people who speak a Shona-like language, we concluded.
One could assume that they also call that predatory eagle found in many parts of Africa, a ‘njerere’.
I recalled these language episodes as I pondered on the existence of a ‘Njerere’ shrine in eastern Rwanda.
My chance encounters with Shona-sounding language suggested to me that the Shona-speaking people must have links with the places where another ‘Njerere’ shrine exists, thousands of kilometres away from the Matombo Hills, close to the eastern border between Rwanda and Tanzania.
To start with the Njerere shrine in Rwanda is associated with a type of eagle called ‘njerere’, the same word in Shona also refers to a type of eagle.
The ‘njerere’ eagles are said to frequent the hill, nesting in the tall trees surrounding the shrine which is next to a rocky outcrop (ruware/idwala).
The ‘njerere’ birds are said to make their characteristic cries which locals can translate to portend different events.
There is a spring of clear cool water on the hillside.
The place is sacred and associated with many religious taboos, so it is not frequented by the public.
I also learnt that apart from the ‘Njerere’ shrine there are two others.
The three different shrines are each dedicated to different issues climate and regional peace.
I will share details of these and compare with the Njelele shrine in Zimbabwe in subsequent articles.
The existence of at least two Njerere shrines in two distant countries whose peoples have historical linguistic ties points to their religious significance.
The Shona trace their roots to Guruuswa somewhere up north, some say in Tanganyika.
The shrines are places of worship where the people approach and seek the intervention of Mwari (God).
The Shona and other African peoples recognise one supreme God, Musikavanhu/uMdali, the Creator.
We have shown that the Njelele shrine at Matombo Hills has counterparts in at least one other country through which the forefathers of the Shona people passed as they migrated south.
In the next article we shall compare and contrast the Njerere shrines in Zimbabwe with those shrines found elsewhere in East Central Africa in terms of their religious functions.
We shall later also re-visit the importance of the religious shrines in the African struggle for emancipation from European domination.