Tag: faith

The Story of Zuva and Mwedzi

In the spirit of romance, love and union, I decided to revisit an old folktale I came across some year back about how the world came to be. For a good while, I believed that this was the Shona, world creation story. I’d later find that there were different versions of it, all written with the bold claim of being the single story of how the Shona lore described the creation of the world, each with the same characters, Musikavanhu/Nyadenga (God), Zuva (the Sun), Mwedzi (the moon), Hweva (Morning star) and Morongo (Evening star). 

This story I’ve shared is a blend of all the versions I’ve encountered, enjoy ❤ …

This story goes…

Many years ago, before the great hammer hit the ground and before the world came to be, there was Nyadenga, who sat in constant contemplation. A moment came when he decided to move, in this moment he felt a great joy followed by an intense desire to share this experience. So he created to Zuva, full and fiery with a portion of Nyadenga’s greatest sense of passion and joy. 

After a time, it became clear that Zuva could not relate to Nyadenga, he had a loneliness about him which saddened Nyadenga. On a certain day, Nyadenga shed a tear at the sight of a lonesome Zuva, who’d been yearning for something he’d never known before. Nyadenga kept this tear and breathed life into it. Giving birth to Mwedzi, a companion for Zuva.

The two shared a beautiful romance, and Nyadenga delighted in it. He gave them the ability to realize this love through creation. Together they were amazing creators, Zuva would create beautiful plants and vegetation and show them to Mwedzi, and Mwedzi would create insects, birds and many gentle animals to show to Zuva. The more they created and shared in the beauty of their creations, the more their love grew. Nyadenga had been gifting them with inspiration when they created and stoking their love when they were apart, it gave him a sense of whimsy to do this for them in secret, and the amusement he felt when they’d each come and talk about the other in their private times with Nyadenga, filled him with more gratification than he’d ever anticipated.

Gradually, they grew more and more distant from Nyadenga, relishing only in their union. No longer speaking to their creator, leaning into a vanity over the works they had done.

Nyadenga grew furious at this, after all, the entire reason he created them, was to share the joy of life with them.

He watched as their vanity transformed their love into arrogance, believing they had done it all on their own. He leaned further back when they no longer sought to create as a mark of affection and their once heartfelt devotion to each other turned into competition. 

Their new commitment to outshine each other increasingly became fuelled with spite. Each one determined to prove that their creations were more beautiful, more important, more useful than the other. 

In a moment of rage, Zuva, knowing that Mwedzi’s animals fed on his plants, began to lace some with poison, and sure enough, the animals began to die off. A grief stricken Mwedzi, not knowing how to deal with this deception grew angry at her creations, she had often bragged that her animals were stronger because they could move freely as they pleased and that she could easily command them to stomp on Zuva’s motionless plants if she wished. She never imagined that he would poison them, or that they could succumb to the attack of a motionless creature. Soon after she created more violent animals to hunt down and kill the ones that had embarrassed her. 

This war that grew between Zuva and Mwedzi was felt by their creations. The plants vowed never to speak, fearing their father would set them ablaze. The herbivorous creatures grew more anxious, and uncertain, not knowing why they were punished with such violent siblings. And the carnivorous animals turned on each other, those who revelled in their roles as predators making a sport of attacking those who had sunken into shame and guilt for their violent nature.

Nyadenga could no longer bear the chaos. He called Zuva and Mwedzi and showed them the pain they had been causing. But they were too caught up in their strife to truly care about the harm they were causing to their creations, only choosing to blame each other.

So one day, Nyadenga took from Mwedzi’s smaller carnivores, the snake, which at the time only hunted for mice, and he filled it with poison from one of Zuva’s plants and set it loose. As Zuva paced and inspected his garden, he grabbed this snake with careless rage, mistaking it for a fallen branch and it’s hiss for an expression of disrespect, he had believed the plants honoured him with their silence. 

He felt the poison shoot up and without much time he was with Nyadenga.

Mwedzi would meet a similar fate, when she grabbed the snake to return it closer to the mice after seeing it wonder near Zuva’s garden.

The two pleaded with Nyadenga, begging to be sent back, Nyadenga wouldn’t have it, but he allowed each of them a single ask for their eternal lives in Nyadenga’s house. Mwedzi begged for them to be able to watch over their creations. Nyadenga granted this with the condition that they never do this together, that they were to spend eternity watching over their world apart, and were to never directly interact with their creations as they did before. 

After hearing that their union would not continue in eternity. A teary eyed Zuva begged for a chance to work on one last creation with Mwedzi, as a monument to their love. She accepted this, it hurt her too that their relationship would end, even though it had become so bitter. Together, with the help of Nyadenga they spent time creating mankind and womankind, pouring bits of themselves and their shared love and knowledge into them, and placed them on earth to help keep harmony amongst all creatures.

Soon after they were done, they shared a final kiss and a teary farewell then Nyadenga kept his word and separated them. Calling Zuva’s watch time day time and  Mwedzi’s watch time night time.

They drew nearer to Nyadenga, in their separation and the love that they had shared for each other resurfaced. So Nyadenga, not wanting them to suffer the lonesomeness that had once caused a heartbreaking isolation in Zuva, allowed them to send messengers; Hweva and Morongo, between each other, while keeping the vow that they never meet again.

The End

Lessons from the TB Joshua Documentary

The Zenze podcast is up and we’ve been focusing on the fundamental freedoms mainly the freedom to religion found at Article 1 (1)(c) of the Namibian Constitution and Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Every right and freedom is limited and its for good cause. Article 22 of the Constitution of Namibia points out that every limitation has to be general and not aimed at a specific individual and that each limitation must be clear, if it is based on another existing law, that law must be pointed out, there should be no blurred lines. The writers of the Constitution, having just come out of apartheid knew that every right came with power, it is just easier for some people to exercise some rights and freedoms than others, because of social factors like race, class, gender, and, when it comes to religion, divine titles and leadership positions.

The news about TB Joshua passing away in 2021 had many evangelicals heartbroken. The man had established himself as an icon. Recently, in a BBC documentary a few women, some of his closest disciples spoke out about who this man was in reality. This documentary showed that TB Joshua was the leader of possibly one of the biggest cults in the 21st century. There are a few lessons we can get from watching the documentary to help us identify when the fundamental freedom to religion is being violated with some reference to the Constitution;

  • There is abuse going on and reporting it will cause harm

A few brave women spoke out about the sexual and physical abuse carried out by this man, and it goes without saying that this could not have been an easy task for them.  They also spoke about how their faith was used to normalize this abuse. One woman, Jessica a Namibian woman, told a story of when she questioned a possible victim about this behavior and she was reported and beaten for it. Standing up for themselves was an act with horrid consequences. Safe to say, if you are part of a religious group where there is physical, sexual, financial, emotional or spiritual abuse. RUN. One helpful way, apart from a leader crossing boundaries, is to look at the consequences that will come if people report issues that they feel are violations.

  • A system that seeks to breakdown while calling it ‘empowerment’ : Dignity and Slavery

The documentaries had many counts of people who were made to feel special for a time just to be broken down. The narrative, to the disciples was that of a humbling process, but the leaders knew what they were doing. That if they kept building up and breaking down people, eventually people would start associating the leaders with the role of ‘God’ the source of power. It was intentional but was framed as a natural part of the process. There is a difference between respecting leadership in an institution and having the right to dignity attacked to preserve the power of leadership in an institution. Aricle 8(2)(b) makes the right to dignity inclusive of torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment.

Slavery and forced labour are prohibited by Article 9, and from the documentary, we learn that excessive servitude, to TB Joshua, to the point where people felt like zombies was framed as honouring God. In the documentary they spoke of how this came about by overworking the synagogue disciples into a state of perpetual exhaustion, such that they couldn’t really think for themselves. Meanwhile the narrative that having the approval of the leader (TB Joshua) meant having this extra level of honour in the eyes of God, then making them crave his attention, which he would give and take away on a whim. Having them chase a carrot on a stick for his own ego boost. One woman, spoke of how she was beaten on multiple times, he forced himself on her, and yet held her in a high position, amongst others giving her ‘need to know’ tasks like the recruitment of westerners. He took advantage of their desire to get closer to God.

  • Targeting the Vulnerable : Liberty and Privacy

Speaking on a calculated “humbling” process. The westerners, particularly white westerners were unwittingly walking into a trap. He took advantage of the fact that they were foreigners, made them afraid of the rest of Nigeria ensuring that safety could only come if they saw things the way he did. One of the closer disciples spoke of a very well thought out practice of recruiting members, playing on their desire to be part of a group that shared an interest as them, then dehumanizing them for their loyalty. For several years on end. Article 7 of the Constitution protects the right to liberty, no one should unlawfully be kept from moving freely.

His focus on westerners and foreigners was calculated. It was the young, bright eyed, hopeful and innocent ones that he would target with the goal of molding them into his little puppets. Targeting young people is not the main problem the problem is the intention behind it, investigating them to learn exactly how to manipulate them. They were robbed of their individualism for what they were made to believe was a greater cause. They had no privacy, cameras were all over, including in showers and being fully dressed in the dorms was not welcomed. The right to privacy is protected by Article 13, the only exception being that there is reasonable suspicion that there is criminal activity, which may be highly unlikely with young people joining a church youth group. It’s a little more difficult to see this one off the bat but if there’s an option to be a disciple in anything with the option to leave and to be yourself getting thinner as you get more into it, there’s a problem, if you have to be investigated, have your privacy unlawfully deprived to keep your place there, there’s a problem.

  • Loyalty to the movement

Above all else. Loyalty to the version of Christianity pedaled by TB Joshua and inadvertently loyalty to him, is what was meant to stand before everything. The fundamental freedom is violated when the ability to think for yourself is robbed from you. There is something wrong with an organization when you can’t criticize it.

  • What happens when you leave?

One way to test this is this is to look at what happens to those who leave? In the documentary, they mentioned that who ever said they wanted to leave was humiliated, disgraced, to paint them as an unholy entity against the church. If leaving comes with tribulation, it probably means they’re after your free -will and the point of having the freedom of religion is to actively practice free will in a way that is fulfilling and does not cause harm to others.

Conclusion

All in all the TB Joshua documentary is an eye opener and a reminder  that even those we look up to can violate our rights and freedoms. Click this link to watch the first episode of the documentary.