Respect of visitors among Shona people- By Black Technorat.

Before we became “civilized,” we had no concept in which fellow human beings were designated aliens. A newly arrived person whose home was very far was considered mubvakure but not an alien. Since we all used mitupo to identify ourselves, and in every area there were people with various totems, the wayfarer was likely to encounter someone with whom he or she shared the same totem.

To share the same totem meant and still means you have the same blood flowing in your veins. For this reason, people with the same totem are considered consanguine brothers and sisters. We have consanguine relatives, hama dzeropa, and uterine, hama dzakabva mumimba imwechete. According to our social institutions, these two are indistinguishable from each other.
In traditional rituals that require making petitions to the ancestors, a funeral being a prime example, the person presiding over the ritual must have the same totem as the deceased person. Kuchera rukarwa is one such critical ritual. Only a person with the same totem as the deceased person can perform the initial step of preparing the burial place. If a uterine relative is not available then a consanguine relative can perform the kutema rukarwa rite.
When my Soko/Bveni mother passed away, her relatives carried out the ritual because they were from a nearby village. Had they been far, anyone from the Soko totem would have carried out kutema rukarwa. It would not have mattered whether the person was a Phiri from Malawi, a Mfene from Eastern Cape (South Africa) or a Ncube from Matobo.
That is the reason we never considered anyone an alien or groups to be so unique they had to be considered complete outsiders. We even made sure that the complete outsiders were quickly integrated and finally assimilated into their new communities. Firstly, we were encouraged to establish serious friendship, husahwira. As a trusted friend, sahwira played and still plays a critical role in some of our rituals. So husahwira enabled us to embrace the strangers.
Finally, we were and still are forbidden from marrying within the same totem group. This was a deliberate and very thoughtful custom of making sure that different totem groups were related through marriage as well. It meant that “strangers” or “uniquely new groups” had a high likelihood of forging not only good neighbourliness but blood-cemented bondages with the rest of the community.
That is the genius bequeathed us by our “primitive” forebearers but now that we are “civilized,” we run around chucking spears at each other because we belong to different “tribes,” that being the dog collars clapped around our necks by the newly arrived but “civilized” wayfarers we now love to follow and imitate.


That is my Zimbabwe/African Factoid of the Day (FOTD), I’m Bvumavaranda Black Technocrat Muera Moyo.