(Excerpts from Spirit Talk: The Wisdom of Stone Revisited, work in progress based on newspaper articles)
Give us a thousand,
another thousand,
and a million years
and seal the wisdom of our forefathers
inside stone
Musaemura B. Zimunya, “Zimbabwe Bird”
…one begs to ask what is education? I would argue that an education system that limits, blinds, cuts off indigenous knowledge systems, tongues and perpetuates ignorance of one’s socio- historical and cultural heritage is not an education at all. Indeed, an education system that teaches that the past is dead can only create a nation of the walking dead. An education system that that teaches that our history is nothing but darkness before the coming of colonialism is a form of racial suicide. It is a form of selling away a nation’s soul, a people’s heritage, down the river over and over again…
For many years I was taught, and subsequently taught in turn, that we have no stories of our own to tell. For a very long time, I cherished and believed this lie. I was made to believe beyond any reasonable doubt that the defeat of our people in the Chindunduma or the First Chimurenga- the war of liberation of 1896-7, was more than a physical defeat, it was spiritual as well and none of our old ways survived. But while the devastating effects of that defeat echo in our lives to this very day nothing can further be from the truth. Indeed, while one looks at the Great Zimbabwe monuments and sees only ruins and echoes of a splendour long gone, the spirit of Dzimbahwe itself still lives today and is among us…
Sometimes we descend into myth not because we do not know…Like the Malian Griot Mamadou Kouyate, I delve into history so that you can know the history of our ancestors “so that the lives of the ancients might serve…as an example, for the world is old, but the future springs from the past.” There are some things which should not be known by outsiders, but are known by some who are “depositaries of oaths which the ancestors swore.”
…another observation made by the griot…: “Men of today, how small you are beside your ancestors, and small in mind too, for you have trouble in grasping the meaning of my words…To acquire my knowledge I have journeyed all around…Everywhere I was able to see and understand what my masters were teaching me, but between their hands I took an oath to teach only what is to be taught and to conceal what is to be kept concealed…”
The mind that dreamt this Dream
massively reaching into time and space
the voice that commanded
the talent that wove the architecture:
friezes of dentelle,
herring- bone,
check patterns,
chevron
and all
the many hands that put all this silence together,
the forgotten festivals at the end of the effort:
All Speak Silence now- Silence
~ Musaemura Bonus Zimunya, “Zimbabwe” ~
We are not that which is spoken about: faces that have no voices
which need to be deciphered and explained by others; we are not
images, or mirages that need definitions from outside; nor are we
objects that need to be defined by foreigners.
~Solomon Mutsvairo, “Who is Mbire?” in Introduction to Shona Culture~
Of this and this alone I am certain, although there are many things unknown, unsaid, unwritten and down right ignored, we too have ancestors, great forebears who, too, like Jacob, wrestled with God’s angels and won. To these ancient ones from ages now lost in the mists of time, the Creator was certainly revealed, and these revelations have been passed down throughout the ages from generation to generation. But as with all things, as time passes, man forgets, at best confining memory to the realm of myth and legend, at worst, to the realm of woeful neglect and oblivion…
Mambiri and his descendants’ migration, perhaps around 850 AD, was part of the larger Bantu migrations over a long period of time. It should be noted that Black people called themselves abantu which simply means human beings. Militant Islam had attacked and conquered Egypt and Kush (Sudan) around 639- 643 AD converting indigenous inhabitants who came under their ferocious swords and guns of Muslim imperialism in the process. Quite naturally, not all Africans were willing to live under religious tyranny and the new mores it imposed. So, as had always been the case in Africa since time immemorial, the disgruntled voted with their feet, trekking to new lands out of reach of their oppressors. It is interesting to note that the Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah states that:
The oral traditions took me back to traditions of migration. These traditions,
beginning with acknowledgements of places reached by people travelling
under pressures to extreme to adapt to, referred to an earlier place of departure.
Sometimes the reference was simply to the Great River or the Great Water.
.More frequently, the traditions of migration mentioned Misri, Misiri, or Luti.
Those are just other names for the area now known as Egypt, though in
ancient times it went by other, indigenous names: Ta Meri, Beloved Land, Tawi,
Two Lands, and, more often, Kemet, the Black Nation.
What is fascinating about Armah’s observation is that dovetails with Shona narratives of migration…the descendants of Mambiri … testify … that they came from the Nile Valley- “the Great River/ Water”- where under their founding father they established the Mbire kingdom east of Lake Tanganyika (another Great Water, which … features in many oral traditions) where they were led by Mambiri’s grandson Murenga… Murenga’s children, Runji, Chaminuka, Mushavatu, and Nehanda among others continued with the trek southwards after leaving a place they called Govanwa (The Place of Division) where there was further segmentation, with various groups taking up different totems, to allow for intermarriage- kucheka ukama (the severing of blood ties) and allocation of spheres of influence…