Chronicle Editor
Pathisa Nyathi
THE year-long latitude that we were offered to write on the liberation struggle stories is fast getting to a close. It has been a year when, for the first time, the independence celebrations were going to be held outside Harare.
More importantly, they were going to be held in Bulawayo. Then the Covid-19 would not allow it. Be that as it may, we seized the rare opportunity to pen as many stories from the struggle days for Zimbabwe’s political independence. To some of us it became patently clear there was no way writers could exhaust the possible range of stories and themes available to write on.
Without doubt, I for one took advantage of the offer and surveyed new areas that I had not hitherto explored. Even as I churned out stories for both Sunday News and Chronicle I could not exhaust the vast field of the liberation struggle stories and experiences.
Even if I were to go on writing for the next five to 10 years I would still be far away from scratching the mere surface. But, it was great fun exploring new avenues, new themes and new thrusts.
As the year approaches the end, I began reading broadly around the fields of paranormal, telepathy, precognition, psychometric, clairvoyance and spiritual divination, among others. There were two reasons I travelled that cognitively treacherous route.
A few months back I received a manuscript on seashell divination for possible publication. Its writer, one Michael Chikomo from Harare, wrote well on the subject and we, as Amagugu Publishers, look forward to publishing the book before the end of this year.
It is one book that will certainly push back the horizons of knowledge relating to African Thought, a faculty that always mentally tickles my mind. African spirituality is one field that requires a lot of empathetic writing by the faithful and unapologetic Afrocentrists. It is my fervent hope that more books in the mould of the one on seashell divination will be penned so that African Thought may better be appreciated when advanced by practitioners and theorists.
The second reason for delving into the field or even beyond the occult was in preparation for the unravelling of the secrets resident within the Stonehenge and its associated cultural and natural geological features that, in combination constitute Britain’s most iconic heritage site which was declared a world heritage site.
Presently the Neolithic monument is mired in a bitter wrangle following a government decision to construct a road through the area, with a section of the A3030 Highway being some underground tunnel estimated to cost 1,700 billion pounds.
Ecologists, archaeologists, activists and what are termed “heathens” (a probable reference to the Druids) are campaigning against the proposed highway. As a result, the monument is currently closed to visitors, or trespassers as they call them.
My initial enquiry into the monument revealed the presence of the African Mind within the monument. As a result, my interest is not solely on the Stonehenge per se, but I am taking advantage of the monument to focus more cogently on African Thought. I will use the Stonehenge to recollect thoughts and incisively deal with the African Mind which I believe was exported to various places from the very cradle of humankind — Africa.
I became convinced that the ancients shared a common cosmology and thus built environments in consonant to their worldview.
Further, the latest research findings by archaeologists were availed to me in a book that I read with tenacity over and over again. Through the research findings, I should be in a vantage point to isolate features that occur and subject an African Mind to them with a view to interpreting the site. Ancient ideas fossilised within the Stonehenge belong to a distant past, 5 000 years ago, and the current English generation is equally distant from the ideas which no longer make sense to them.
African Thought is still a lot closer to the monument and is better placed to unravel the hidden meanings. I see it on the horizon that one day the ancient civilisations and their monuments will refer to African ideas to crack open the African secret ideas embodied within their monuments.
For now, as we draw the curtain on the history of the liberation struggle, we focus on the spiritualism and its application during Zimbabwe’s war of liberation. Above we made reference to precognition as one of the paranormal phenomena. Africa posits that spiritualism has the ability, power and capacity to see the past, the present and the future. Events that lie beyond the present are seen by those endowed with spiritual gifts.
This is a field and faculty that may not make sense to those with a strong leaning towards science, or rather Western science.
For the freedom fighters it was important to possess the power to see and counter the military strategies and tactics that the enemy forces and agents were up to. Requisite revelations were achieved through various means. The one way though was spiritual mediumship. Some guerrillas were spiritually endowed and were observed to don paraphernalia reminiscent of one spiritually endowed such as coloured cloth material, snuff, beads and leather skins.
In the main, such mediums, armed like any other guerrillas, were in addition to that also spiritually armed to see the future. Many lives were saved through such spiritual interventions.
As I point out in one of the six biographies that I penned this year, such spiritual interventions were known to and executed by those guerrillas operating on the front rather than in the rear. The biography of Stanford Sithole (Dumisani Tembo/Dakamela) brings out the role of spiritualism during the operations of guerrillas during the war.
In the biography, he mentions one guerrilla by the name of Mthunzi who, like him, operated in the Gokwe area.
There were other channels besides guerrilla spiritual mediumship.
The guerrillas operated within African communities who are the custodians of operational ancestral spirits. As has often been said, guerrillas and the peasants maintained a fish in water relationship. That relationship translated to many forms and manifestations ranging from provision of intelligence, food, clothes and shelter. Certainly, one such was intelligence through spiritual methods.
There were spiritual mediums within the communities who saw the future, in particular with regards to impending doom and danger and relayed their revelations to guerrillas.
In the same biography of Stanford there is reference to treatment of wounds sustained through contacts with the enemy forces. It was not always the case that Western medicines brought in from outside of Zimbabwe were used in treatment/healing. Sometimes stocks ran out. It was then that the local traditional healers came in handy and took care of wounded guerrillas.
In addition to the two identified sources of spiritual mediumship there were spiritual shrines that were approached for the same purposes. Stanford Sithole in his biography that I penned for him gives some account of their visits to Nevana/Nebana Shrine in Gokwe. Other similar shrines were frequented by guerrillas to solicit support in various ways such as metaphysical protection and spiritual blessings.
Joshua Nkomo, in his autobiography, Joshua Nkomo: The Story on My Life, records his visit to the Dula Shrine in Wenlock (Enqameni) in the company of William Tjivako and Grey Mabhalane Bango. They were seeking spiritual support for the political struggle that they were embarking upon. Africa did rely on spiritualism for the various purposes.
It was something they believed in and a part of their spiritual heritage which permeated several if not all facets of their lives.
Online Reporter