MAKING HISTORY Spirit Mediums and the Guerilla War In the Dande area of Zimbabwe David Mark Lan Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. at The London School of Economics and Political Science, Faculty of Economics. September 1983 LIBRARY H s iiiy a IMAGING SERVICES NORTH Boston Spa, Wetherby West Yorkshire, LS23 7BQ www.bl.uk The maps on pages 83,151 & 269 have not been digitised at the request of the university 1 CONTENTS PAGE ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIALS b ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5 ABSTRACT 7 INTRODUCTION GUERILLA WARFARE AND THE STUDY OF CONTINUITY 9 Guerilla Warfare Guerillas and Social Anthropology 13 Guerillas and Spirit Mediums 1^ Methodology 19 Summary 23 PART ONE THE OPERATIONAL ZONE 27 CHAPTER I SPIRIT MEDIUMS AND RESISTANCE! PAST AND PRESENT 28 The 19th Century 31 Nehanda and the tradition of resistance 3^ CHAPTER II THE PEOPLE AND THE LAND« MODES OF INCORPORATION 39 The Plateau and the Valley ^0 Wo iking the land ^1 Political organization ^9 Modes of incorporation 5^ Descent - the lineage 56 Substance - the clan 62 Territoriality and duration 66 Kinship organization 67 Marriage 67 Mother's hrother/Sister's son 69 Men and women 69 PART TWO THE LIONS OF RAIN 73 CHAPTER III SPIRITS AND THEIR MEDIUMS 7^ Possession I: Seed and rain 75 Possession II» Quring Provinces and realms SÎ Powers and skills 87 Non-royal Ancestors: The childless, the murdered ' 9^ and the witch What Mhondoro know 103 Ancestors and Witches 106 Ancestors and People 108 PAGE CHAPTER IV THE PROFESSION OF THE MHONDORO MEDIUM 112 Becoming a mhondoro medium 112 Possession IIIi The testing 116 The medium in the world 122 a) The medium's assistant 122 b) The medium and the chief 128 c) The system as a whole 133 d) The past and the present 138 CHAPTER V THE VALLEY OF AFFINES 140 The Lions of Rain 143 I Mythology 145 The failed journey of Mutota 150 The crime of Nehanda and Nebedza 159 Mothers and wives 165 II Ritual 169 Black and white 169 Red 174 Men, women and the moon 179 III How the mhondoro bring the rain 181 Owners and conquerors 187 CHAPTER VI THE COUNTRY OF KIN 196 The ideal social order 197 The spirit province 198 The descendants of the mhondoro 203 A spirit province in action 206 The pangolin 209 PART THREE FROM CHIEFS TO GUERILLAS 214 CHAPTER VII THE POLITICS OF TRADITION Ij THE MAKING OF MUTOTA 215 The chiefs and the state 217 Mutota vs Chiwawa I 220 Territory and history 225 From Chiwawa to Mutota 231 The making of the m o d e m Mutota 234 The power of possession 239 The genesis cf a genealogy 242 CHAPTER VIII THE POLITICS OF TRADITION II s THE INDEPENDENCE OF 248 CHIWAWA'S SHRINE From chiefs to mediums 249 Mutota vs Chiwawa II 254 Chiwawa's shrine 262 The politics of tradition 263 3 PAGE PART FOUR THE SONS OF THE SOIL 26? CHAPTER IX THE LEGITIMACY OF RESISTANCE 268 The ancestors in the struggle 271 Spirit mediums and resistance 273 Hunters, warriors and guerillas 277 Witches as traitors 286 The new vazukuru 290 CHAPTER X TO ZIMBABWE AND BEYOND 291 The victory of the autochthons 292 Beyond autochthony 296 The Party 298 The Village Committees and the ancestors 305 The two Zimbabwes 309 CONCLUSION MAKING HISTORY 315 APPENDIX Speaking with spirits: the mhondoro and chiefs 322 of Dande NOTES 326 BIBLIOGRAPHY 350 4 ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIALS PAGE MAPS 1 DANDE IN RELATION TO CENTRAL AFRICA 29 2 THE CHIEFS AND MAJOR MHONDORO OF DANDE - C.1980 51 3 THE MHONDORO OF SOUTHERN DANDE - C.19Ô0 83 4 THE MAIN TRIBUTARIES OF THE ZAMBEZI RIVER IN NORTHERN ZIMBABWE 151 5 GUERILLA INFILTRATION INTO DANDE 269 FIGURES 1 THE JOURNEY FROM GURUUSWA TO DANDE 1 ^ 2 THE JOURNEY FROM GURUUSWA TO DANDE 2 186 3 THE JOURNEY FROM GURUUSWA TO DANDE 3 193 GENEALOGIES 1 TIES OF KINSHIP BETWEEN THE MAIN MHONDORO OF DANDE 86 2 THE ANCESTORS OF THE KGREKORE AND TAVARA IN DANDE 150 3 THE DESCENDANTS OF MUTOTA 222 4 THE MUTÀPA DYNASTY AFTER ABRAHAM, 1959-60 222 5 RULER LISTS OF THE MUTAPA STATE: PRE-MUKOMBWE 244 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In Dande: Senator F. Moyo, District Chairman Cde. E.M.Chafesuka and Branch Chairman Cde. D. Mudzonga welcomed me and gave me their support, assistance and advice, without which my work would have Been impossible. My greatest debt is to Village Chairman Penias Katsvete who accepted me into his family and looked after me with great concern and affection. Without him, his wives and his children, I would have learned far less than I did about what it means to be a member of Dande society. Of the many others who gave of their time and knowledge, I am especially grateful to Mutswairo Fumhe, William Madzivah, Kaitano Goredema, Daveson Kwainona, Isaac Maudzenga and my research assistant Lazarus Basiyao who helped me to learn ChiKorekore and accompanied me on many gruelling journeys through the Valley. In Harare« Professor G. Chavanduka and Dr. M.F.C. Bourdillon of the University of Zimbabwe granted me affiliate status in the Department of Sociology. I am grateful for their interest and encouragement. Dr. D.N. Beach and Mr. A. Hodza, also of the University of Zimbabwe, both allowed me access to their unpublished materials and the benefit of their contrasting views on mediums, tradition and history. I am grateful also to Dr. S.I. Mudenge of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for sharing with me a little of his knowledge of the Portuguese documentation of Dande in the 18th and 19th centuries. Cde. Mayor Urimbo M.P. and Air Vice-Marshall Cde. Josiah Tungamirai discussed many aspects of the organization of the resistance with me. Cde. Mayor Urimbo supplied me with letters of accreditation from ZANU (PF) which greatly facilitated the first months of my research. Mr. J. White, Mr. C.J.K. Latham and Mr. R. Faulkner all spared time to give me insights into the organization of the Security Forces during the years of the war. To Mrs. V. Kamba and Mr. D. Munjere of the National Archives, Harare I owe an especial debt for incorporating parts of my research into their Oral History programme and supplying me with excellent transcripts of the many tape recordings I have deposited in their collection. Phyllis Johnson and David Martin of the Zimbabwe Publishing House provided me with a room in which to live and work while in Harare, as well as arranging a number of meetings and interviews. Thanks also to Margarita Vismara, Laurence and Sue Bartlett and Andy Moyse. In London: Without the advice and encouragement of my supervisors, Dr. Maurice Bloch and Professor Jean La Fontaine, the last four years would have been far less invigorating and productive than they have been. Professor T.O. Banger, of the University of Manchester, gave me extremely useful advice before the start of my field work. Dr. Hazel Carter, of the School of Oriental and African Studies, has assisted me on a number of points of trans­ lation especially from the ChiKunda and ChiDema dialects. My field work and research were funded by the Social Science Research Council and the Central Research Fund of the University of London. The Radcliffe-Brown Memorial Fund awarded me a sum towards the preparation of this thesis. I am grateful to all three of these organizations. The maps were drawn by Hannah Walden. The thesis was typed with exemplary speed and precision by Mrs. Hilda Jarrett. My thanks to them both. Michael Stewart, Dr. Byron Foster, Judith Cornell and, especially, Nicholas Wright, have all listened to this thesis being thought out either in London, in Harare or in Dande. Many of their suggestions and criticisms have been silently incorporated. I am grateful to them all. ABSTRACT This thesis deals primarily -with two groups of people in the Dande region of the Zambezi Valleyi the Korekore and the Tande, a sub-group of the Tavara. The ruling royal lineages of these people claim descent from ancestors, known as mhondoro, who are believed to control the fertility of 'spirit provinces' the ritual territories into which the chieftaincies are divided. The authenticity of the mediums of these ancestral spirits depends on support received indirectly from the chiefs through their headmen. As the testing procedures for a medium require the recitation of the history of the royal lineage down to the present incumbent, and as one function of the medium is the selection of the successors to a chieftaincy, the authorities of chief and medium are interdependant. As a consequence, the history of the territory is thought of as the history of the royal lineage and ownership of the territory appears to be inevitably within its control. During the colonial period (1890 to 1979)» the chiefs were incorporated into the white-dominated state as low level administrators. Powerless to prevent the large-scale loss of land and forced resettlement, as well as taxation and forced labour, they were believed by the people of Dande to have betrayed their followers and to have been rejected by the ancestors. With the rise of the nationalist movements, reaching a climax with the entry of the guerillas into Dande, the insurgents were incorporated into the ritual and symbolic frameworks tfhich had previously been occupied by the chiefs. This incorporation was effected through the agency of the spirit mediums thus allowing the perpetuation of the traditional symbolism of political authority. As the ideology of the guerillas promoted the ownership of the land and control of the political process by all categories of people irrespective of ancestry, the symbolism of the royal lineage was expanded to refer to all the people of Dande, and that of the spirit province to refer to the emergent state of Zimbabwe which was believed to have been taken under the protection of the ancestors.