The city of Chitungwiza is built on land that was granted in the mid-1800s by Chief Zengeza to his son-in-law, Pasipamire, the legendary mystic and spirit medium Sekuru Chaminuka. Chaminuka is said to have predicted the invasion of the Zimbabwean plateau by Europeans, and a war of resistance led by another spirit medium, Ambuya Nehanda. The land was called Dungwiza. Despite being regarded widely for political and religious reasons as a national centre, it is only in late 2009 that the descendants of Pasipamire have made an attempt to revive the shrine, prompting the Department of Museums and Historical Monuments to also take a keener interest.
The oldest part of modern Chitungwiza is the township of St Mary’s, which grew around a Church of England mission near the River Manyame. Chitungwiza’s second stage of growth was when it was designated as a residential area for the Black workers who worked in nearby Salisbury, as Harare was called then, under the colonial government’s policy of racial segregation. This was similar to the establishment of Soweto as a sort of urban Bantustan to serve Johannesburg in apartheid South Africa. Even after Independence, Chitungwiza retained its status as a “dormitory” town for Harare, seeing an expansion in residential areas but little infrastructure development.
The 90’s saw a renewed growth, with the establishment of the Chitungwiza Town Centre shopping mall. Suddenly, Chitungwiza seemed a great place tolive in. Zimbabwe’s hosting of the 1996 All-Africa Games saw the city’s sports facilities upgraded and the construction of an Aquatic Complex, which features a swimming pool and an auditorium.
Today, Chitungwiza is a city of over 1 million people. Urban poverty is more salient here than in other major urban centres in Zimbabwe, but so too is an unrivalled informal business sector and a vibrant arts industry. With many of Chitungwiza’s youth returning from abroad to settle in their hometown, bringing with them finance and other inputs, the city is poised for greater prosperity.
Another important feature of Chitungwiza is its religious diversity. From the pre-colonial ancestralist movement centred on the spirit of Chaminuka (an ancestor of the Zimbabwean people who may not have even lived in what is now Zimbabwe) as a mediator between God and Mankind to modern faiths such as Raelian and Sai Baba, Chitungwiza is an enviable model of tolerance. No wonder Rastafarian communities have established themselves here.
Many schools readily admit dread locked children, despite the Ministry of Education’s own policy, which Musodza denounces as racist as any that the white supremacist settler regime of the past could have formulated.
There are no statistics, but Rastafarians are a very visible presence on the streets of Chitungwiza. Many are engaged in cross-border trading, taking arts & crafts to South Africa and Namibia to sell to tourists, while some run small businesses or market-stalls. In addition to the international movements such as the Twelve Tribes of Israel and the Nyahbinghi Order, there are indigenous Rastafarian groups. The religious aspect of the Rastafarian culture-inspired by the belief in the divinity of the Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia- is taken very seriously, with services conducted regularly.
As is regrettably the case all over the world, Chitungwiza’s Rastafarians have had their fair share of police harassment. Some of it stems from the association of certain sects within the movement with the use of marihuana as a sacrament, but much of it arises from the fact that the Rastafari Faith is considered a serious challenge to the post-colonial socio-economic and religious status quo. However, once it was established that the Rastafari Faith is in fact a religious movement, many police officers have become reluctant to engage in what would be tantamount to religious persecution, an act that is abhorrent to Zimbabwean culture.
Given that Rastafarians are still barred from serving in the uniformed forces by a racist regime, and a long and continuing history of harassment by police, critics have questioned the idea of Rastafarian private detectives in Zimbabwe. The feeling that has been aired is that in glorifying the work of law-enforcement, the author is glossing over the ignoble treatment of Rastafarians by that same law-enforcement agency and similar situations around the world. However, Musodza strongly believes that Rastafarians have an obligation that was clearly spelled out in the Ori’t (“The books of Moses” “Torah”) to preserve law and order even in a community where they are marginalized and should shun any criminal activity of any sort including the trafficking of marihuana and bootleg media.
