By Vitalis Ruvando

CURRENT discoveries of generational wealth anchored in cave heritages can be revisited when deconstructing or advancing cultural tourism advocacy.

Global West or East investor dominance and seduced cake-sharing of cave assets present facets that encourage a relook at the allegory of the cave.

Dominance of transnational pharmaceutical company synthetic products over our rich, yet unfledged, herbal heritage needs a corresponding reconsideration in the context of the allegory of the cave.

“Indigenous curative domains subscribe to the notion that the best herbal drugs come from caves which house njuzu (mermaids),” noted the late psychosomatic sage alumni Sekuru Ndongwe of Chipinge.

The satirical shame than pride assumed by defectors when identified with rural pathos depicts the ambivalence of the prodigal actor in the allegory of the cave.

Seen from the didactical sense of the allegory of the cave, the pride we get from Western schooling, compared to the resistance we adopt against indigenous education, is an antithesis.

 This presents a Pandora’s box that the God incarnate (Lk 5: 36-39) gave problem-solving scenarios.

“No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. 

If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. 

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. 

If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. 

But the new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. 

And no one, after drinking old wine, desires the new, for he says, ‘the old is good’.”  

Suspected economic control over our generational wealth, by the Global West or East presents gluttonous frontiers lacking the patriot’s ‘looking glass self’.

For futurists, our future generations will not be kind about zero-sum games or poverty-propelled generosity to the East or West that is defined as investment.

Knowledge society, proverbial wisdom in our case, edicts that poverty should not betray our generational wealth: Nhamo inhamo zvayo mai havarovodzwi.

“The generational wealth left by our forefathers, archived in caves, is one reserve bank that can be sufficient to fend off sanctions or re-ignite our economy,” said svikiro and war veteran Sekuru Chimombe of Gutu

“Considering the prize of our cave heritage, one wonders if whoever is superintending our tourism sector is not sleeping on duty.

“Is Zimbabwe maintaining colonial tourist attractions without the want to develop Second Republican tourism centres in or around neglected cave heritages?” 

Think big about local cave heritages. 

Zimbabwe has glamorous caves awaiting the Guinness World Book of Records.

Journalists have an opportunity to scout for first-rate attention-grabbing broadcasting sites within cave heritages. 

Chinhoyi and Chimanimani (Sikavatonga) caves have had their progressive share derived from colonial aesthetics despite their flimsy glamour. 

When will indigenes initiate their own tourism centres based on indigenous aesthetics, axiology and cave heritages?

The glamour in caves and lengthy tunnels around Pandagoma (Nyanga), Makoni, Bikita, Zaka, Gutu, Dzimbahwe, Umguza, Binga, Dande, Mazowe, Matopo and Mhondoro are too amazing for the tourism sector to discount.

To Aschwanden (2000), it can be said, cave heritages are the ‘images of life’, not ‘images of death’.

Aschwanden (1989) suggests that the first human beings were created in a cave and tunnels.

Many are the interpretations of cave myths, though links between traditional economics and cave heritages is hotly disputed — yet promising. 

Arguably, placing cave heritages at the centre of human creation speaks volumes about the impact the same can exert on our Second Republic. 

Civic voices from mhondoro, masvikiro chiefs and machiremba speak highly about the economic and touristic prospects of cave heritages.

About civic voices, history has it that the Second Republic can promote associate, classical or civic republicanism and civic humanism on heritage issues. 

Elsewhere, Plato in Greece, Jose Maria Gil Robles of Spain, Nietzshe of Germany, Confucius of China, Voltaire of France and St Augustine of Hippo made an impact.

Perhaps, Second Republican rural community sages are covertly muted when they are supposed to be encouraged to speak out.

Tenets of applied social engineering, whenever employed, evince that cave heritages have potential to transform the tourism industry.

Cave heritages have untapped myths, knowledge about our creation, identity and national ethos that is transforming rural community ethos.

Whereas modern analysts on generational wealth proffer that the same diminishes during the second generation of its inception, this is untrue of cave heritages.

Whereas modern notions of generational wealth are informed by individualism, indigenous notions of the same are dictated by communalism and spiritualism.

Indeed, our cave heritage is protected by mysteries that are hard, if not impossible, to negotiate.

Svikiro Nyakupenya of Mutambara chiefdom said: “If you try to play around with cave heritages left in Ruguhune Hill and others, you will just disappear.” 

Prof Daneel (1970) noted that attempts to steal some cave heritages by foreigners or indigenes have earned the culprits deaths or mental disabilities.

The dark environment and threat to life posed by the cave environment make caves a non-negotiable area for unauthorised exploitation.  

ILiffe (2018) mystified cave heritage navigation thus: 

“While the peaks of the tallest mountains can be viewed from an airplane or the depths of the sea mapped with sonar, caves can only be explored firsthand.”

Cultural custodians across Zimbabwe have encouraged this author to denominate issues that are relevant to the development of cave heritages.

Despite lack of licences, community sages’ contributions on cave heritages need to be treated as intellectual properties when immortalising applications of devolution and community rights in the National Development Strategy 1.

Chief Munyikwa noted: “There is need to develop tourism in and around cave heritages as a clear show of departing without divorcing colonially founded tourist attractions or township tourism.”

Edward Jani, a villager in Mushayavanhu, noted: “Allow rural communities to map, unlock and add value to their cave heritage investments as a precursor to encouraging them to grow their own generational wealth”

Svikiro Sekuru Kandisai said: “Develop medical tourism in and around cave environments this time without global West or East investors in order to maintain the sacredness of our cave environments”

Machingura thought otherwise: “Rural communities are poorly resourced. Their development aspirations rest on leadership decision or indecision. However, there is need for leaders to assist rural citizens to inculcate tourism values in children by promoting their desire to renew cave heritages. Why not allow us to rediscover cave heritages and register some of them in the Guinness World Book of Records”

Chief Mawere welcomed this idea by insisting that: “Cave heritages provide a renewed investment frontier that requires training, skilling, re-skilling of would-be workers in the cave heritage venture. 

Obviously, a number of rural unemployed will get jobs or create jobs for others”

For the sake of our Second Republic, there is need to encourage the development of new cities and tourist centres that were not designed or planned by colonialists.

In a nutshell, local cave heritages are phenomenal though unexplored. 

Cave heritages have a lot of promise in the growth of our Second Republic. 

One way of celebrating being Zimbabwean can be expressed through local cave heritages. 

In known or unknown ways, cave heritages have been defining hunhu/ubuntu (identity)) ethos, national ethos and pan-African ethos.