WHEN whites came into Zimbabwe — first, the Portuguese in the 16th Century, then the British in the close of the 19th Century — they found a peaceful, cultured, prosperous and god-fearing people.
They were wholly black, had sophisticated trade and governance systems.
They had complex constructions like the Great Zimbabwe which were built in approximately 1000 CE, during the peak of the Moorish period.
It had a minaret (conical tower) which required the knowledge of advanced geometry and architecture to construct.
The bricks and brick laying styles resemble the modern style of building which was introduced to Europe by the black Arabians called Moors.
The Zimbabwean monument has stairs and the whole construction is well levelled, showing that a form of tool resembling a spirit level was used.
The bricks, made of carved granite rocks, join perfectly without the use of any mortar.
Before the Great Zimbabwe, a similar site was constructed at Machema-Mapungubwe in the northern part of South Africa. Within the stone walls of Machema are inscriptions that resemble Shemitic scripts like Sabaic.
Weaving Jennies and beads, identical to those in Zimbabwe and also Yemen, can still be found.
Besides weaving, evidence has shown similarities in styles of mining, smelting, sculpting, cultivating, irrigation and other activities taking place in-between southern Africa and southern Arabia.
These accounts bring reminiscence of the Queen of Sheba (Arabia), who ruled from Ethiopia, but her hegemony included southern Africa (Ophir), from where Sabaean traders acquired pure gold.
There was also a massive trade region between Zimbabwe and the Mazambuko Ocean.
Places like Sofala received large supplies of cattle, gold, cloth, beads and other goods that people from all over the region traded in.
There was a barter trade system and money, in the form of gold coins, was also used.
The people were organised into kingdoms and tribes with totems.
Families were large, with mothers birthing multiple children and at times men having multiple wives.
This was done orderly, with each wife owning her own house in the homestead only after all formalities such as paying the bridal price (roora/lobola) were observed.
All these are clear signs of a thriving civilisation which was birthed out of indigenous culture and tradition.
It proves that if the whites had not come to disrupt this order, Zimbabweans would have done well regardless.
In fact, the eco-friendly and god-fearing nature of the indigenous Zimbabwean lifestyle that predated colonisation would have been more sustainable to humans and the environment than that of the West.
Pollution was minimal in the past and activities such as mining were not as damaging to the
earth.
Yet many blacks and whites believe Africans are now better off because they have been civilised by colonisation.
The word ‘civilised’ is to do with the overall behaviour of a people.
In Zimbabwe, having hunhu/ubuntu or humaneness was the indicator that one was civilised.
If technology and language sophistication are also to be considered a criterion for one to be called civilised, Zimbabweans were not lacking in these respects at all.
But to the coloniser and enslaver, to be civilised is to abandon one’s way of life and adopt that of the Westerners.
Whites demonised African hair which was kept in the form of locks of varying length before the coming of the comb. However, Africans would shave if they pleased because they were already making razor sharp tools with hard stones and iron.
Polygamy and wives birthing multiple children was also discouraged, particularly by missionaries in order to decrease and control the population of blacks.
Even in the generation of our fathers, we find that women had eight-to-12 children.
Nowadays, women are encouraged to have two-to-four children. This is called ‘family planning’ and is considered a way of avoiding poverty.
Ironically, the Bible never restricted polygamy and it was lawfully practiced by many biblical figures such as Abraham, Jacob, David and Solomon.
The Bible also says be fruitful and multiply.
Given that the missionaries were against the multiplication of blacks, they were therefore playing a devilish role which contradicts African culture and the word of God.
Traditional and spiritual leaders were also demonised. Zimbabweans had families which grew into kingdoms.
Kingship often came by way of divine abilities like kusvikirwa which is translated by whites as being possessed by a spirit.
This was the foundation of the kingship of people like Pasipamire who became Chaminuka.
Powerful ancestors communicated with the living, particularly kings and priests and were known as mhondoro.
These played an angelic role in African society.
There were different types of masvikiro, one being an occasional receiver of a spirit or spirits and called homwe.
The other was an ordained body made to host a spirit and called gombwe.
There was also the n’anga who played the role of healing humans, animals and other ailments affecting the environment. This was often a seer who knew a great deal of things that could help the community.
All these would be wrongly associated with witches or ‘varoyi’ by the colonisers.
They knew they were not evil, but had to get rid of them and their powers in order to leave the blacks devoid of their protection and susceptible to conversion.
The church played a central role in the vilifying of traditional-spiritual leaders.
They also taught that tribal organisation and ancestral remembrance in form of festivals like mapira was forbidden.
This is contradictory because the Bible is a compilation of records to do with tribes and their ancestors, commanding them to observe ancestral festivals like Passover.
The people who were either a mambo, homwe, gombwe or n’anga became targets of elimination if they chose not to convert to the whiteman’s religion. On the other hand, sellouts who did otherwise were pampered with gifts, protection and praises from the whites.
The Mwenye/Remba people of Mberengwa have a Shemitic culture and Hebrew tribal names like ‘Sadiki’ (Saddiq) and ‘Seremani’ (Solomon).
Genetics has confirmed that their paternal ancestry stretches back to Arabia and Israel.
If the whiteman’s religion was truly based on the Bible, they would have been endorsed by the Remba who were already in line with the Bible’s laws on diet, circumcision, offerings and so on.
To the contrary, when Goncalo da Silveira tried to convert the Mutapa to Catholicism at Great Zimbabwe, it was the vaMwenye who protested and said God would withhold the rains in anger.
They then plotted the death of Goncalo and Zimbabwe survived the threat of conversion and colonisation by the Portuguese.
When missionaries from Sweden entered Mberengwa and introduced the Lutheran Church, it was again the Mwenye people who showed resistance.
This led the Remba to be called witches and the missionaries set divisions between their converts and the Mwenye.
They banned the Remba people from going to missionary schools until as late as 1959.
In the school curriculums, Remba culture was initially classified as African traditional religion despite the Shemitic nature of their culture.
This shows how similar Hebrew and African culture are to each other.
Yet nowadays, whites are claiming that Remba ancestors used to be whites and coercing their descendants to follow so called modern Jewry (Talmudic Judaism).
This is pulling blacks away from their identity and culture as was done in days of old.
If successful, the Remba people who used to have their own power structures would now be subordinate to white Rabbis.
This was the same technique that was used to upset our traditional governance systems and strip away the authority of traditional-spiritual leaders.
History is merely repeating itself.
Before one abandons his or her own culture for another’s, one should ask oneself why a foreigner would even want to impose this change on him or her.
The goal is mental enslavement and neo-colonisation.