By Farai Muroiwa Marapira 

As the Great Zimbabwe empire declined in the early 1400’s a new, even larger and more powerful state arose; the Munhumutapa empire. Emerging under Nyatsimba Mutota, the empire would become one of the largest in sub Saharan Africa extending almost to the shores of the Indian Ocean at its peak until its decline in the 19th century. The empire is highlighted as having ushered in a time of peace, unity, international trade, and sustainable development.

Religion was defined by the worship of the, “izwi raMwari/Musikavanhu”, who guided the people through their kings (Munhumutapa), traditional chiefs and spirit mediums. Succession of kingship and chieftaincy was guided by the collateral succession tradition. Under its tenets, the sons of the originator of chieftaincy created houses and the chieftaincy would rotate in these houses. These houses in themselves would create a further collateral system which determined which sub-branch would inherit on behalf of the greater original house.

There were twelve original houses of chieftaincy in the Munhumutapa Kingdom and these were defined by totem. These chiefs were selected by spirit mediums. The original chieftaincies were the; Moyo, Zhou, Shoko, Shava, Shumba, Nyathi, Mbizi, Mhara,Ngara, Mheta, Gumbo and Shiri. Each totem pool had a specific role in assisting the Munhumutapa in ruling the empire. Examples are the vaera Shoko inherited rainmaking knowledge, other totems worked as intelligence, which intelligence, included, spiritual visitations, whereby the ancestors would visit them in dreams and show them future events for instance informing the Munhumutapa that, “ kuchauya vanhu vasina mabvi”(there shall come men with no knees, which was an attempt to explain trousers; an unknown dressing method in the empire).

With the increase of the original chiefs’ descendants the number of chiefs has risen from the initial twelve to become more than two hundred at present. The main cause was that in the quest and greed for power some of the totems split e.g the Moyo Ndizvo and Moyo Chirandu. Furthermore, the colonialist government tempered with the succession matrix of chiefdoms to suit their agenda and resultantly anti colonial chiefs were removed in favour of compliant ones. Some chiefs were totally abolished. The colonial government, furthermore, arbitrarily took land from the chiefs and converted it into commercial farms.

However, with the advent of the Mnangagwa presidency, these historical anomalies are being set to rights. Chiefs whose chieftaincies had been removed by Smith are being reinstated so that the nation reverts to its original unblemished chieftaincy’s as at the time of Munhumutapa. Reinstated chiefs include; Chief Bere of Masvingo, Chief Mudzimu of Hurungwe, and Chief Maromo of Chivhu. In addition, certain houses had their succession matrix upended by the colonialist government as it refused to instate the rightful heir and enforced the succession of the wrong house to suit their narrow ends. In our next article we shall look at the methods of succession amongst chieftaincy’s in Zimbabwe and, furthermore, we shall discuss cases of incorrect succession procedure.