The name Mbuya Nehanda is often cloaked in myth and misconception. To some it is synonymous with a heroic and fearless warrior woman who gave her life for her people’s freedom. As D.N. Beach (1998) notes “the figure of ‘Mbuya Nehanda’ has become the best-known popular symbol of resistance to colonial rule in modern Zimbabwe.” To others it is a name associated with a woman whose exploits have been exaggerated and over-inflated for the purposes of political and cultural expediency. Beyond all this lionising and vilifying, not enough attention is paid to her significant spirituality and its feminine nature, or its connection to similar historical archetypes beyond Zimbabwe. This is my area of interest in this article.
My approach is based on the perspective expressed by Ruramisai
Charumbira (2015) that “Nehanda’s power (and that of her mediums) came from older African historical epistemology that understood the world as feminine, governed by forces of fertility in nature. Indeed, life itself was wrapped around the (goddesses or) female spirits that kept the cycles of life in balance.” This is the same worldview referred to by Merlin Stone (1976) wherein “people revered their supreme creator as female” in ancient times. She terms this female creator “Great Goddess” or “Divine Ancestress”.
When it comes to Mbuya Nehanda, a distinction needs to be made
between the spirit and its medium or host. There is a widespread but
incorrect belief that Mbuya Nehanda is the woman who was hanged by the British colonial administration in April 1898. The woman who was hanged was Charwe Nyakasikana, medium of the Nehanda spirit – a powerful ancestral spirit of the Shona people that chooses women as its mediums. Charwe carried the title of Mbuya Nehanda, but she was not the first or only Nehanda. She “was not the originator of the name or the title Nehanda”, as Ruramisai Charumbira
articulates. The identity of the original Nehanda is contested, with two
differing narratives about her origins.
The first one states that the original Nehanda was the daughter of Murenga Sororenzou, an important early founding father of the Shona. She was also sister to Chaminuka, another revered ancestor of the Shona people. She lived in East Africa around Tanganyika (present-day Tanzania) more than a thousand years ago, before the Shona group migrated to southern Africa. The second narrative maintains that the original Nehanda was a 15th-century Mutapa princess and daughter of Nyatsimba Mutota called Nyamhita. She was
famous for committing ritual incest with her brother Matope Nyanhehwe for him to secure the kingship after their father died. Nyamhita’s spirit was said to have returned after her death and taken possession of successive female spirit mediums. It is important to note that Vimbai Gukwe Chivaura (2009) and Aeneas Chigwedere (2006) assert that Nyamhita was the first spirit
medium of Nehanda, but not the original Nehanda herself. I favour this view because there is a stronger oral tradition supporting Murenga’s daughter
being the original Nehanda.
All female spirit mediums of Nehanda automatically acquire the title Mbuya (or Ambuya) Nehanda. Mbuya means grandmother in ChiShona, a respectful term given to female spirit mediums. This explains why Charwe Nyakasikana is known as Mbuya Nehanda, this is her title as one of the mediums of Nehanda in history.
The Nehanda spirit is a mhondoro, a spirit of a founding ancestor of a nation or old dynasty. A mhondoro is therefore a royal ancestral spirit. It is common for both the founder-king and his sister to be viewed as founding ancestors, in this case Chaminuka and his sister Nehanda. According to David Lan (1985) “this brother and sister pair are characterised as the original founders of the Shona nation.” Mhoze Chikowero (2015) describes Nehanda as a “national, founding matriarchal spirit whose history goes back thousands of years in Zimbabwean sociopolitical communities.”
This positions Nehanda as a great matriarch, a founding mother of the nation in both a literal and spiritual sense.
Here we find similarities with the Ancient Egyptian goddess Isis (or Aset), who was known as the mother goddess or divine mother and “had strong links with Egyptian kingship”, (Tyldesley 2021). There is also a brother-sister connection, since Isis was wife to her brother, the god Osiris. Interestingly Aeneas Chigwedere argues that the early ancestors of the Shona were originally from Nubia in the Nile Valley, the same region as Ancient Egypt. (Here I am not implying that Nehanda is a goddess, she is certainly an ancestral spirit. I am attempting to locate her within an ancient African sacred feminine tradition).
Mhondoro spirits are also known as royal lion spirits. This is because
mhondoro spirits inhabit the bodies of sacred lions that roam the bushes and forests before taking possession of human mediums. Therefore, Nehanda can also be viewed as a lioness spirit. Here we find a link with another Ancient Egyptian goddess Sekhmet, a goddess of war who was depicted as a lioness. Sekhmet is famed for being a fierce warrior, and this aligns with Nehanda Charwe’s image as a defiant heroine and resistance figure of the First
Chimurenga war.
The mhondoro spirits (and their mediums) occupy an elevated and prominent position in the pantheon of Shona spirits. They are higher and stronger than family ancestral spirits and regular clan spirits. They are believed to enjoy a closer relationship with Mwari, the Shona High God. According to Ruramisai Charumbira, “Mhondoro were prestigious spirits, and their mediums, whether female or male, were treated like royalty.” Yvonne Vera (1993) describes a mhondoro as “one of the strongest spirits of the land.” Jairos M. Gombe (1998) affirms that mhondoro are greater than all other ancestral spirits.
The medium of a mhondoro spirit is called a gombwe, which means senior medium. A gombwe is of higher rank than a regular svikiro. As articulated by Ruramisai Charumbira, “Being a gombwe was therefore different from the ‘common’ mediumship (svikiro) of familial and local clan spirits.”
Nehanda Charwe was a gombwe by virtue of being the medium of a prestigious
mhondoro spirit and national ancestor. According to Mhoze Chikowero the Nehanda spirit “commands the multiple bloodlines of Zimbabwe.” As a gombwe Nehanda Charwe can therefore be viewed as a high priestess, endowed with significant spiritual authority and power to lead and guide her people. This explains her enduring legacy and legendary status to this day. This also rewrites the colonial narrative of Nehanda Charwe as an evil witch and sorceress, and positions her once again in her rightful and righteous place.
Nehanda Charwe’s famed role as a spiritual resistance leader of the First
Chimurenga war is not a singular or isolated occurrence. It is part of a wider tradition of spiritually gifted female revolutionaries who waged anti-colonial struggles in Africa and the African diaspora. An example that strongly parallels Nehanda Charwe’s story is the extraordinary life of Queen Muhumuza, who operated in Rwanda and Uganda from the 19th to the 20th century. Queen Muhumuza was one of the wives of the reigning Rwandan king of the time. When her husband died, a fierce succession battle ensued, and she fled the Rwandan court with her son. She soon became possessed by the spirit of a legendary queen from centuries before called Nyabingi.
The Nyabingi movement was already well-established as an anti-authority resistance movement in the region. Muhumuza gained widespread popularity as the Nyabingi spirit medium and led her followers in attacks against the British and German colonial forces and their African royal collaborators. Her uprising quickly gained momentum and led to much upheaval in the region. She was eventually captured by the British in 1913 and remained in detention until her death in 1945. This warrior queen’s fighting spirit and radical anti-imperialism was fuelled by her spiritual authority as the medium of Nyabingi. This parallels Charwe Nyakasikana’s fierce anti-colonial rebellion and commanding role in the First Chimurenga war, which was likewise rooted in her Nehanda mediumship.
Another similar example is of Nanny (or Granny Nanny), the 18th century female leader of the Maroons, a community of escaped slaves in Jamaica. Nanny played a leading role in the First Maroon War against the British during the first half of the 18th century. According to the Jamaica Information Service, Nanny “was known by both the Maroons and the British settlers as an outstanding military leader”.
Much of her influence and exceptional abilities were attributed to her spiritual powers as an obeah woman. Obeah is a spiritual folk system with African roots, practiced in various Caribbean nations.
These two above examples show that Nehanda Charwe’s famed heroism during the First Chimurenga war belongs to a lineage of anti-imperialist heroines in Africa and its diaspora, whose power and influence stemmed from their spiritual leadership. Nehanda Charwe is therefore exemplary of a wider pattern of sacred female figures as leading agents of resistance and revolt, in liberation movements across the African world.
Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana was executed by hanging on April 27 1898. Her last words on that fateful day would go on to echo across time and achieve a mythology of their own. As Nehanda Charwe faced the noose she defiantly prophesied that her bones would rise again. Her bones did indeed rise when her courage and example inspired freedom fighters to take up arms against the racist Ian Smith regime in the Second Chimurenga war (1966-1979). Her prophecy was also fulfilled when a new Nehanda medium arose in the 1970s at the height of the Second Chimurenga. She was an elderly woman named Mazviona Kawanzaruwa. “She knew very much about war and the regulation of war,” Cde Mayor Urimbo, a ZANU guerrilla, recounted to David Lan. She is also described as having led the people in the liberation war by Chidyamauyu, a spirit medium active during the war.
The prophecy of Nehanda’s bones rising is not only a metaphor for events related to the Second Chimurenga. It also represents the creative force of a great matriarch who continually rebirths herself through her descendants in times of need. It is a foremother’s fierce maternal instinct regenerated for the liberation of successive generations of her offspring. It is the undying spirit of motherhood at its most emancipatory. There is nothing greater than a mother’s love, so goes the old adage. The bones of Nehanda will continue rising and reviving until all her children are completely free. This is the prophetic promise that still reverberates to this day.
References
Beach, D.N., 1998. An Innocent Woman, Unjustly Accused? Charwe, Medium of the Nehanda Mhondoro Spirit, and the 1896–97 Central Shona Rising in Zimbabwe. History in Africa, vol. 25, pp.27-54.
Charumbira, R., 2015. Imagining a Nation: History and Memory in Making Zimbabwe. University of Virginia Press. Charlottesville.
Chigwedere, A., 2006. The Moyo Chirandu Dynasty: Dynastic Histories No. 1. Mutapa Publishing House. Marondera.
Chikowero, M., 2015. African Music, Power, And Being In Colonial Zimbabwe. Indiana University Press. Bloomington, Indiana.
Chivaura, V.G., 2009. “Chaminuka”, in Asante, M.K., Mazama, A. (eds.) Encyclopedia of African Religion Volume 1. SAGE Publications, pp. 157-158. Thousand Oaks, California.
Gombe, J.M., 1998. Tsika DzaVaShona. College Press Publishers. Harare.
Jamaica Information Service. “Nanny of the Maroons”. Jamaica Information Service. https://jis.gov.jm/information/heroes/nanny-of-the-maroons/ [Accessed 14 July 2021].
Lan, D., 1985. Guns & Rain: Guerrillas & Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe. James Currey and University of California Press. Oxford, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Stone, M., 1976. When God Was A Woman. Dial Press. New York.
Tyldesley, J., 2021. “Isis”. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Isis-Egyptian-goddess [Accessed 14 July 2021].
Vera, Y., 1993. Nehanda. Baobab Books. Harare.
