Praise song to the ancestors

Robert Moffat, the great missionary came to Africa to preach against this very type of worship.
He worked tirelessly in Cape Town and at Kurumani in Bechuanaland for many years.
At the age of 60, Moffat came to this country and opened up the first mission at Inyati near Bulawayo on December 26, 1859, exactly 152 years ago. Where did Robert Moffat go wrong with some of us? In my defence, I hereby present my faith journey and how I happen to sit at these cross roads of Christianity and a traditional religious Shona culture.
Growing up in the village in the 1970’s, my parents took me and my siblings to the Anglican Church on Christmas day.
After church, my mother came home to prepare the final stage of the seven day beer brew and the killing of an ox for the Boxing Day ceremony to honour the ancestors.
This ritual has not changed. On Boxing Day, a couple of days ago, a cow was killed in this village. I did not see it being killed because they still use an axe to kill an ox.
It is such a primitive way to do it.
We should have a gun to execute a smooth less painful operation.
Our pity for the ox did not last long because the celebration started soon afterwards with plenty of roast and cooked meat, including tripe, maguru. The men ate the cooked blood and all the other ox male organs alone because there is something in these things that increase male strength.
We do not have a refrigerator so the rest of the meat is still hanging in my mother’s kitchen hut above the fire away from flies.
It is being smoked beautifully to make nice dried meat, chimukuyu. I believe the ancestors were happy with the Boxing Day ceremony and the split ox blood.
There was a time when I was a seriously born again Christian and I would not be seen anywhere near these ancestor libation and animal killing ceremonies.
I moved around with my pocket King James Version Bible. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to stop me from aspiring to enter the Kingdom of God.
I even converted some people who have remained strong Christians up to this day.
My faith in God began to slide when I moved to England. Someone, maybe a missionary, should have rescued me. Where were all the English missionaries when I got to their country?
Nobody did and I kept on going backwards in faith. Without friends or family, I replaced the church congregation with various freedom rights groups.
I marched on every cause that had to do with women’s rights, socialism, communism, racism, class, animal rights, Green peace and every other cause advocating for rights.
I stopped praying regularly. By the time I returned to the village earlier this year, I had moved a long way from meaningful Christian worship. I no longer belonged to any church.
I sought advice from my mother on what church I should now attend.
After all, my mother’s history and knowledge of Christian churches was very diverse.
She always adopted the denomination that offered her education.
When she was in Sub A and Sub B in the 1940’s, she belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church.
In Standard Three she belonged to the Church of Christ the King at Daramombe Mission. Upon marrying my father, she became a Methodist at Kwenda Mission.
By the time she had me, her sixth child, she was the chairwoman of the Anglican Church at St Columbus School near the Save river in Hwedza.
As head of the Anglican Mothers Union, Chita, my mother wore her Anglican church uniform – blue skirt, long sleeved white blouse, starched blue collar, belt with three buttons at the front, white starched hat and black Mariposa shoes.
She carried her Shona Bible in her handbag.
There she was – my mother the Christian, the teacher’s wife and one of only two women who could read and write in the village.
She helped the Anglican priest, Father Mutemarari to set the table for mass and she always began the hymn book songs.
My mother would stand in front of the congregation and recite the Nicene Creed in Shona without looking into the Bible: “Ndinodavira kuna Mwari mumwe, Musiki wedenga nepasi… We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father. .”
We did not know all the words so we mumbled along with her until the final sentences whereby we shouted: “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end!”
Yet, despite such a good Christian image, my mother brewed beer to sell regularly to believers and non believers alike.
My mother would tell us to look out for Father Mutemarari riding his bike past our house on his once a month mass visits.
What if he smelt the beer and calls her a heathen? My mother instructed us to cover the beer pots with a blanket when the priest entered our courtyard.
She closed the kitchen hut door and welcomed the priest. They sat under the tree and my demure Christian mother talked about the procedures for tomorrow’s mass.
This was her way of raising school fees for us. Among the beer she sold, my mother always reserved a small calabash that she poured on the ground to honour the ancestral spirits.
There were so many drunken people in our courtyard every school holiday.
Such beer making was unchristian and totally unacceptable in the Anglican Church. But for my mother, there never seemed to be a conflict.
She believed in the education that could only come through Christian missionaries.
She had school fees to pay for 10 children and no priest would stop her from selling beer.
During the liberation war, my mother deserted the Anglican Church and became a Catholic.
One late night pungwe, the fighters told the gathering of villagers that Anglicans were no different from the British colonialists. “The Anglicans told us to close our eyes to pray and while our eyes were closed they stole our land,” the fighters said. “Catholics are better, because they support our freedom.” On that night everyone in the village became a Catholic. After the war, some of the village women went back to the Anglican Church while the majority remained Catholics.
My mother’s cultural worldview has remained spiritual and deeply rooted in the ancestors.
The ancestors remain close to the living.
She maintains the rituals deeply ingrained in the Shona culture and believes in the reality of God the Creator, Mwari Musiki.
Like many people in Zimbabwe, the Shona religion has a firm monotheistic faith rooted in the belief in one supreme creator, Mwari.
I want to believe in what my mother and her mother before her believed in.
My great grandmother, VaZviyo, never heard of Jesus or the Christmas. She died giving birth to her second set of twins. In Christian terms, Mbuya VaZviyo is probably languishing in hell right now. Whereas when I visualise her as my ancestor, my grandmother, I see the woman whose beauty was likened to the colour of rapoko, zviyo.
For as long as I remember, my mother always calls upon the memory of her ancestors and her mother first before she prays to Jesus and the blessing of the Holy Spirit. To become a Christian does not mean we have to be removed from traditional culture.
Our culture is neither primitive nor uncivilised. It is simply a traditional religion which helps us make sense of God, Mwari, and the meaning of life.
Everyone in Tsungai Simukai Burial Society of which I am president belongs to a church.
Before our monthly meetings, we pray together despite our various denominations. There seems to be no conflict.
The same church goers will be at the beer drinking and dancing ancestor rituals ceremonies. They have not separated themselves from Shona culture and God.
The spread of Christianity to our village behind the Hwedza Mountain would make Robert Moffat very happy.
The spread of the Gospel to the “darkest” parts of Africa was his dream. In The Matabele Journals of Robert Moffat, 1829 – 1860, Moffat says this to David Livingstone, his son in law: “In the vast plain to the north I have sometimes seen, in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary has ever been.”
Christians in Africa are growing in numbers more than anywhere else in the world. In the past ten years, we have many denominations in the village – Anglican, United Methodist, Methodist Whisiri (Wesley) Anglican, Salvation Army, Zionist, AFM, Vabati VeZviratidzo – the miracle workers, Mughodhi, Prophet Johane Marange, Prophet Mwazha, Manhango, Roman Catholic, Dutch Reformed, Seventh Day Adventist, Johane Masowe, Muponesi, Salvation Army and many and other African Apostolic indigenous churches.
The name of Jesus is known in most villages while in the cities more people identify with Assemblies of God Africa – ZAOGA, Glad Tidings, End Time Message, Christ Embassy, AFM and many other American type Pentecostal churches. Pictures of African visionary prophets on bill boards are everywhere. I must choose a church and belong to a group that worships and fellowships together.
We live at the crossroads of spiritual conflict between the two pillars of Shona traditional culture and Christianity. Some of us are still practicing both – speaking to God through dead ancestors rather than going straight to God.
Moffat and many other modern day Christians would not accept this spiritual contradiction so common in Zimbabwe’s traditional culture. I still want to be a good Christian. At the same time, I have this desire to ululate and sing praise songs to the ancestors.

l Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic. She holds a PhD in International Relations and is a consultant and director of the Simukai Development Project.