Charwe Nyakasikana is a Zezuru spirit medium who was born in 1840, in the Chishawasha District of Central Mashonaland. She was a Hera and the daughter of Chitaura, the younger son of Shayachimwe, a late eighteenth-century founder of the Hwata Mufakose dynasty in the Upper Mazowe Valley.
Nehanda’s name is prefixed with the social honorific of Mbuya which is a reference to a medium that channels a female Shona Mhondoro.
In the mid-19th century, there were various sub-chiefs living in the Mazowe hills amongst whom was Chidamba, in whose village Charwe Nyakasikana lived. She was married, with two daughters and a son.
Origins of the Mbuya Nehanda Spirit
Legend has it that Nyamhika first channelled the spirit of Nehanda in 1430, almost 500 years before Charwe Nyakasikana in 1884. Nyamhika was the daughter of Nyatsimba Mutota, the first leader of the Munhumutapa state based at the escarpment north of Chipuriro/Sipolilo (Guruve).
The Mutapa also had a son – Matope, Nyamhika’s half-brother who became the second Munhumutapa. To increase Matope’s power, his father instructed him to have an incestuous relationship with his half-sister, Nyamhika.
The incestuous ritual worked to increase Matope’s power and influence. In allegiance, he bequeathed a portion of his territory to Nehanda Nyamhika, now a powerful and well-known Svikiro (Medium) who is reported to have lived on through other mediums for over 400 years before spiritually embedding into the body of Charwe Nyakasikana.
That’s why Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana became regarded amongst the
Zezuru people of the Shona ethnic group as the female incarnation of the oracle spirit Nyamhika Nehanda.
Early White Colonial Contact
The late 18th century saw a general influx of whites into Zimbabwe and to areas where Mbuya Nehanda and her people were settled. At first, fellow Africans were encouraged to be cordial to the foreigners who she assured were harmless traders. Villagers were also advised to slaughter a black cow to welcome the visitors as a customary gesture of hospitality.
However, relations soon became frosty after Europeans became offensive to their hosts, stealing their livestock, and crops and forcing them to work in their fields under deplorable conditions. Natives also paid tax on their properties under duress amongst other intrusions.
Mbuya Nehanda started preaching that according to Mwari the cause of all the trouble that had come upon the land was the white man. Whites had brought the locusts and the rinderpest and Mwari decreed that they be
driven from the country. Worse, the owners of the cattle that had died, were not allowed to eat the meat of the carcasses but to burn and bury them.
The natives had nothing to fear. Mbuya Nehanda told them Mwari would turn the white man’s bullets into water. As the conduit through which
ancestors spoke to the living her potent words gave agency and ensured
survival for her tribe.
Yet others, credit another medium – Sekuru Kaguvi as the inspiration behind the fiery declarations made by Mbuya Nehanda to convince the people to start an uprising.
Kaguvi, who some Historians believe to be a bastardization of Kakubi
Ncube by Europeans was actually Gumboreshumba (lion’s foot), a spirit and medium (at the time working with Charwe and Mukwati) and believed to be the spiritual husband of Nehanda.
In reality, Gumboreshumba had three wives, one was Chief Mashonganyika’s daughter and the other two were from Headman Gondo’s village. He is also believed to have been on the run, fleeing retribution from men in his village whose wives he had defiled.
Spiritual Politicians
Mbuya Nehanda together with Kaguvi in western Mashonaland and
Mukwati in Matebeleland was regarded as the spiritual leaders of the revolt. The white settlers decided to eliminate the spirit mediums whom they considered an existential threat to their interests given their perceived influence.
For her role in the resistance, a warrant of arrest was issued against Nehanda but she successfully evaded arrest for over a year. Eventually, she gave herself up at the end of 1897 alongside her associates to avoid further bloodshed against her people.
They were quickly brought to trial in 1898 where she stood accused of
killing a BSAC Native Commissioner whilst Sekuru Kaguvi was arraigned for
killing a police officer.
Sham Trial And Death
Falsely accused and charged with murdering Henry Hawkins Pollard, the
Native Commissioner of her District who had apparently died in battle, Mbuya Nehanda’s trial was a hastily contrived sham that barely lasted a month. Although it was not her hand that delivered the fatal blow, she was accused of instructing one of the villagers to cut Pollard’s head off.
Her judgement was swift and fatal. She was sentenced to death by hanging. But, her hanging turned into a spectacle as she made the last display of her spiritual prowess when the first two attempts to hang her failed.
Her death came swiftly on the third attempt. Thanks to one overzealous
African prisoner present at her hanging who suggested the hangman remove a tobacco pouch lodged under her belt. But, not before she uttered her last dying words now echoing through generations,
‘’Mapfupa angu achamuka’’
‘My bones will rise again’ was her spine-chilling reminder to the colonial settlers of what was to come. A promise of retribution against her death to
reclaim the land of the dispossessed Africans. Retribution came through subsequent wars and insurrections against racist overlords that were
defeated over 80 years later.
There were numerous and strenuous attempts by a Catholic Priest to convert her to Christianity but she remained defiant to the end, but Kaguvi gave in and was converted before being executed.
And so, Mbuya Nehanda was executed on the 27th of April in 1898 alongside Sekuru Kaguvi, Gutsa, Hwata and Zindoga. Since then, countless myths around her death have arisen, which point out that she did not die from hanging.
Following Charwe Nayakasikana’s execution, the British South African
Police took her head, and those of other rebels, as war trophies. Speculation abounds on the whereabouts of her head and that of her co-accused with many claims that their heads are held at the Natural History Museum in London.
Where Was She Buried?
There are reports indicating that the British South Africa Company (BSAC) created Pioneer Cemetery on January 2 1893, which lies west of
Mupedzanhamo Flea Market, near Mbare hostels and Rufaro stadium.
The cemetery was divided according to race, religion and military background. Watermeyer, the Judge who sentenced Mbuya Nehanda to death is also buried there as is her supposed gaoler, one Patrick Hayden.
A native section for Africans is located in a big area on the same grounds but with unmarked graves. This is where Mbuya Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi of the First Chimurenga are believed to be buried.
Legacy
Mbuya Nehanda’s name lives on in folklore because she remained steadfast in her loyalty to her people. The peak of her defiance was in refusing to convert to Christianity on the eve of her death unlike her co-accused male counterparts. Narrating what he saw on the day, one of the colonial Clerks writes
‘ Mbuya Nehanda called for her people and wanted to go back to her own country Mazoe and die there. When I saw nothing could be done with her, the time of execution having arrived, I left Nehanda and went to Kaguvi who received me in good dispositions. While I was conversing with him, Nehanda was taken to the scaffold. Her cries and resistance, when she was taken up the ladder, the screaming and the yelling disturbed my conversation with Kaguvi very much, till the noisy opening of the trapdoor upon which she stood, followed by the heavy thud of her body as it fell, made an end of the interruption’
Stories of Mbuya Nehanda’s heroism and influence grew from the 1960s to 70s when African politicians invoked her name to mobilize ordinary people to join the liberation war. Zimbabwe’s first published black novelist and composer Solomon Mutswairo published Feso a Shona novel in which one of the characters dedicates a clan poem to Mbuya Nehanda asking for her intervention.
The novel which was published in 1956 was immediately banned by the white supremacist Rhodesian government as it was considered subversive. A dumbed down English version of the novel was later published in 1974.
Other novelists explored more or less the same themes revolving around the pivotal role played by Mbuya Nehanda and a people’s need to rewrite their history. Most notable novels in this genre are Chenjerai Hove’s Bones (1988) Shimmer Chinodya with his novel Harvest of Thorns (1989), Charles
Samupindi’s Death Throes: The Trial of Ambuya Nehanda (1990) and Yvonne Vera in Nehanda (1998) and also make reference to the medium as an inspiration in the 1966 to 1979 liberation war.
In the 70s, the Harare Mambos band penned Mbuya Nehanda, a song that celebrates her example of colonial defiance imploring Africans to take up arms against white supremacy. Through the song, Mbuya Nehanda’s voice transcends generations like an omniscient narrator in the lives of ordinary people, a prophetic mouthpiece predicting a socio-economic nirvana for those who sacrifice their lives for their country.
Today, many institutions are dedicated to celebrating her memory. The Mbuya Nehanda maternity section in Zimbabwe’s largest referral hospital, Parirenyatwa and the location of the University of Zimbabwe’s College of Health Sciences. She has streets across the country named after her and on the 25th of May in 2021, a ten-foot-tall statue of the spirit medium was erected on the busiest part of the capital Harare’s central business district.
Propaganda and Post-Colonial Amnesia
Yet the puzzle is still incomplete. Mbuya Nehanda’s life story hints more at gaps in our history and the many accounts of valour that still haven’t been told since they threaten certain vested individual political interests.
The myth of a golden post-colonial nirvana has been misappropriated. In the process, certain narratives framing Charwe Nyakasikana as a national grandmother have become privileged as if every Zimbabwean shares a common history and ancestry.
However, Mbuya Nehanda ran her race. Today, her story is an instructive
lesson that should remain top of mind. The room for improvement can never be filled because Zimbabwe is a nation in flux and constantly being
reimagined to meet each generation’s needs in its time.
It is a common cause that Mbuya Nehanda’s memory is a space of contestation that each generation uses for their own personal agenda. Despite this, one common theme endures – the need for self-determination and lifelong fidelity to our traditional cultural values.
