XPost: soc.rights.human, soc.culture.african, soc.history   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   A mural depicting Ndebele leader King Lobengula hugging Shona   
   spiritual medium Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana by Bulawayo-based visual   
   artist, Leeroy Spinx Brittain, has reignited a chasm between the   
   Ndebele and the Shona in Zimbabwe.   
   Farai Shawn Matiashe   
      
   OkayAfrica,8 April 2022   
      
   Visual artist Leeroy Spinx Brittain, popularly known as Bow (black or   
   white), placed his latest work on the wall of a public toilet in   
   Zimbabwe’s second largest city, Bulawayo. The life-sized poster   
   showed King Lobengula intimately holding Mbuya Nehanda with his left   
   hand, while the right hand, which usually holds his spear, was holding   
   a heart balloon. “When I did this mural, I was trying to spark a   
   dialogue between people. I have realized that you cannot progress   
   without talking,” Bow tells OkayAfrica. “A lot of politicians have   
   tried it diplomatically but it always ends badly, as people feel   
   offended.” More than dialogue, the piece sparked a furor from those   
   who saw it. To understand the uproar it caused is to understand the   
   long-held animosity between the tribes depicted in Bow’s piece.   
      
   Lobengula, who was born in 1845 and presumed dead in 1894, was the   
   second King of the Ndebele people, historically called the Matabele in   
   English. He led revolts by the Ndebele in 1893 against the white   
   colonialists. Nehanda, a powerful and respected ancestral spirit, also   
   led revolts, in 1896 – in what became known as the First Chimurenga,   
   or War of Independence, against the British South Africa Company's   
   colonization of Zimbabwe led by Cecil John Rhodes in 1889. Nehanda   
   died in 1898 by hanging, after she was charged for murdering a white   
   person. The mural titled ‘Unconditional Love’ had an inscription Love   
   is greater than Shona and Ndebele, Africans unite written on it. A few   
   days later, the painting had been erased by the City of Bulawayo   
   authorities. Bow did not have permission from them to paste up the   
   poster art. But the words were left behind, and, overnight, someone   
   added their own inscription, saying: Gukurahundi - We will never   
   forget, dripping in red paint, a symbol of blood of the slain.   
      
   The mural titled ‘Unconditional Love’ had an inscription Love is   
   greater than Shona and Ndebele, Africans unite written on it. A few   
   days later, the painting had been erased by the City of Bulawayo   
   authorities. Bow did not have permission from them to paste up the   
   poster art. But the words were left behind, and, overnight, someone   
   added their own inscription, saying: Gukurahundi - We will never   
   forget, dripping in red paint, a symbol of blood of the slain. A Shona   
   word meaning the early rain which washes away the chaff before the   
   spring rains, Gukurahundi is the term used to refer to the 1980s   
   genocide in Matabeleland and Midlands Provinces, which resulted in the   
   death of more than 20,000 Ndebele and Shona people. The majority were   
   Ndebele. The atrocities were committed by the North Korean-trained   
   Fifth Brigade, an elite force of the Zimbabwe Defense Forces. This was   
   after the ruling party, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic   
   Front (Zanu-PF), then led by Robert Mugabe of the Shona, accused their   
   revolutionary counterpart, the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU),   
   then led by Joshua Nkomo of the Ndebele, for plotting a war after   
   independence from the British white colonialists in 1980. The mural   
   sparked debates both online and offline, with some Ndebele feeling   
   that Lobengula, their King, was being disrespected. In the years   
   following the massacre, people have not been speaking freely about   
   Gukurahundi. Usually, discussions on ethnicity in Zimbabwe are not   
   welcome, as they are seen by many as fueling tribalism. However,upon   
   Nkomo’s death in 1999, Mugabe described Gukurahundi as a "moment of   
   madness". The government has apologised for the atrocities committed   
   during Gukurahundi but critics say it has not shown a commitment to   
   fully accounting for the victims and survivors. Over the past decades,   
   state security has been cracking down on people who speak about   
   Gukurahundi. Several plaques which have been erected in Matabelelend   
   Provinces in honour of the Gukurahundi genocide victims have been   
   vandalized by uspected state security agents. In the 1960s and 1970s,   
   Nehanda became an inspiration in the liberation struggle against the   
   white colonialists. President Emmerson Mnangagwa erected a statue of   
   Nehanda, which was designed by a Zimbabwean sculptor David Guy Mutasa,   
   last year, to honor the Shona spirit medium. The Ndelebele took this   
   as a slight – the Shona tribe is allowed to honor their heroes but the   
   Ndebele cannot honor their families and relatives who were murdered   
   during the Gukurahundi genocide. Today, the mural adds to the already   
   existing tensions. Mqondisi Moyo, a president of the Mthwakazi   
   Republic party, says it undermines the moral values of King Lobengula.   
   “The mural depicting an affectionate relationship between King   
   Lobhengula and Mbuya Nehanda is an insult to the late great king of   
   Ndebele Kingdom and his family,” he tells OkayAfrica. “The reason why   
   there have been bitter debates centering on the mural is the   
   persisting ethnic tensions in Zimbabwe, specifically between the   
   Ndebele and Shona. Mthwakazi (Ndebele) people perceive the mural as a   
   ploy by the Shona to cover up for their atrocities against the Ndebele   
   by portraying a scenario of good relations which have never existed,”   
   he says. Moyo says the Shona people should genuinely address   
   Gukurahundi atrocities which they committed against the Ndebele. “The   
   mural, therefore, is merely a mockery of Mthwakazi (Ndebele) people.   
   We will continue pressing for justice,” he says. Mbuso Fuzwayo,   
   secretary of a Bulawayo-based advocacy group Ibhetshu Likazulu   
   tells OkayAfrica that a king cannot be equated a spirit medium.” He   
   says it’s an incorrect narrative that the Shona killed the Ndebele   
   during Gukurahundi as it was the government who was responsible for   
   the massacres. “By not acknowledging Gukurahundi, the government has   
   made people look at it in a blanket manner – to put everyone who   
   speaks Shona as the perpetrator. That is not true. The perpetrator is   
   the government,” says Fuzwayo. He believes, nonetheless, after the   
   Gukurahundi genocide, the Shona people had more socio-economic and   
   political opportunities than the Ndebele. In the meantime, Bow vows to   
   do more poster art and murals that call for unity between the Shona   
   and the Ndebele in Bulawayo: “I have got some stuff that I am going to   
   draw on this theme of uniting the Ndebele and the Shona. I want   
   something big that can be on the walls of a big story building.”   
      
      
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