For all that she is famous for, whether mythical or real…Nehanda has been given a raw deal in the future she predicted. A statue was erected smack in the middle of the intersection of Samora Machel Avenue and Julius Nyerere Way in Zimbabwe’s captivating capital city Harare.
More than a century ago, the body carrying the spirit of Nehanda,
being Charwe, was killed by colonial settlers as she had proven to be stubborn, unyielding and determined to defy everything that they stood for. She and others like Sekuru Kaguvi led what became known as the First Chimurenga, the war of resistance.
So stubborn she was that in her final hour, facing the hangman’s noose, she still refused to convert to the Settlers’ Christianity, instead of declaring that her bones will rise.
And rise her bones did because sometime in the early 70s the Zimbabwean Nationalists decided to engage in a war to fight for independence – the Second Chimurenga.
So it goes: Nehanda’s death becomes the beginning of her legend.
Urban legend or … proper legend?
It doesn’t matter how one looks at it – the thin line between the body housing the spirit of the Nehanda and the Nehanda herself, all became rolled on one and one meant the other while the other meant the one. Simple! Maybe not quite … but that’s always been the case with Nehanda in Zimbabwe –
never simple, always splitting opinions in a ‘Christian Nation’ that oftentimes finds itself a torn between indigenous religion that Charwe’s Nehanda so perfectly embodies the Settlers’ one which Charwe opposed and died fighting against.
Involuntarily, upon her death, Nehanda assumed the role of the great matriarch of the nation of Zimbabwe to be born a few light years ahead. As she had predicted, the war erupts in the bush and the ‘comrades’ supposedly shoot the last settler soldier standing and declare victory, if you like … or, they sit down with the enemy and work out a cease-fire agreement somewhere in the middle of the imperial West. Pick the narrative of your choice – kinda all led to the same thing: Independence on 18 April in 1980.
The euphoria that grips the country is insurmountable. It’s so thick in the air one could touch it – palpable. The newly independent state sets off into the honeymoon sunset and the merrymaking sees no end. Quite humanly, Nehanda and her contributions to all this is forgotten.
Well not quite – like the matriarch we have today – she is given a backyard junk-type-of-street in downtown Harare to continue the legacy of her risen bones. Anti-climax according to me. She deserved the road to the airport… leading her nation to other worlds beyond imagination. But … or maybe the fact that Mbuya Nehanda Street is now by and truly a calling for a community of genius entrepreneurs teeming from its tail to head or head to tail serves as a consolation. A mother raising her children to look after themselves in future. All good perhaps, except maybe the children prefer that the future be now! Walking, sprinting before they even crawl: kids can be impatient or even downright ridiculous – just like ‘my bones will rise’ – except the bones did rise and the almighty unconquerable ‘men with no knees’ were sent packing by a rag-tag army of fed up guerrillas led ably by her spirit. So yeah, that willy-wise dealer on Mbuya Nehanda Street has every reason to be optimistic and demand a prosperous future now: they are indeed working under the motherly watch of this superwoman who can transcend times and expectations. She will deliver one day, whether they know to or not: believe it or not.
Token appreciation perhaps in typical fashion as always shown to matriarchs in this patriarchal world we live in: because Mbuya Nehanda street starts in the middle of Harare and ends somewhere in another middle part of Harare … meaning it starts nowhere and leads nowhere.
This is in sharp contrast to the fact that Roads like Samora Machel lead to Bulawayo or Mutare depending on which direction you’re facing on it.
Wait, the maternity wing of the biggest hospitals in the country,
Parirenyatwa, is named after her. This is brilliant and in line with one of the expectations of matriarchs – extending the family. From the maternity wards, she breathes life into the nation and true to form the population rises sharply from single figure millions in the 1980s to double-figured millions in the 1990s. However, no one seems to notice the way things are going, soon in 2000 the prestige of giving birth at Mbuya Nehanda Maternity Clinic at Pari will be completely gone. In its place will be the danger and horror of a neglected system posing danger to expecting mothers with some even dying whilst giving birth.
Nehanda must be crying in her grave. What’s next she’s probably asking? What’s next I ask? She started a war, inspired another which she led in spirit and then got a dead-end road named after her as well as a neglected hospital maternity ward … what next for this matriarch? It’s a fair question.
