The Interrupted Story of Africa: What Was Stolen, Dismissed and Repackaged

The Lie We Live

We live inside a lie so deep that it shapes our everyday choices. A lie that tells us Africa had nothing of value before colonisation. A lie that tells us our grandparents were “primitive.” A lie that forces us to admire the West while despising anything African.

Our ways were mocked — yet the same West now profits from them.

Zimbabweans grew up being told zunde ramambo was “backward subsistence.” Yet today, community food banks in Europe and America are praised as innovative social welfare models.

Our elders spoke with the ancestors, calling on Mwari or uMlimu through mediums like Nehanda or Kaguvi. Colonisers called it witchcraft. Today, the West spends fortunes on “wellness retreats,” meditation apps, and yoga practices.

Our mothers gave birth guided by nyamukuta (midwives in ChiShona) or abelaphi (traditional birth attendants in isiNdebele), women whose wisdom was inherited across generations. Colonisers criminalised them. Today, “doula services” are marketed as premium childbirth support in Europe and North America.

The theft of Africa was never just land, cattle, and gold. It was also our worldview, our science, and our sense of self. And the cruelest wound is this: many of us now despise what was once ours, while buying it back at a high price when rebranded in English.

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The Systems We Had

Long before Cecil Rhodes planted his flag at Mazowe, before the Union Jack flew over Great Zimbabwe’s ruins, our people had order, innovation, and systems that sustained life.

Political Systems:
The Mutapa empire had a taxation system, foreign trade embassies, and military organisation. Chiefs (madzishe) and councils of elders (dare) governed through consensus, not autocracy. Disputes were heard under the tree, guided by proverbs like “Mutemo wenzvimbo unoonekwa nemuti wayo” (the law of the land is reflected by its tree).

Agriculture & Food Security:
The zunde ramambo system meant that every chief kept a communal field where grain was stored to feed widows, orphans, and the vulnerable during drought. Nhimbe/ilima meant families gathered to help one household plant or harvest, sharing beer, song, and food afterwards. Compare that to today’s individualistic hustle where famine means hunger, not solidarity.

Health & Healing:
Herbalists like n’anga and izangoma treated ailments with plants like mufandichimuka (resurrection bush) for fevers, or umkhanyakude (aloe) for skin and digestive health. Births were guided by nyamukuta and abelaphi, who knew herbs like chifumuro to ease labour. Illness was understood as imbalance — physical, spiritual, social — restored by ritual and medicine.

Education & Knowledge Transmission:
Initiation schools — jando (male initiation in the east) and inkwala/umguyo (rite of passage among Ndebele and Kalanga) — prepared young men and women for adulthood. Skills like iron-smelting (in places like Mberengwa and Wedza), weaving, and pottery were taught through apprenticeship. Storytelling by mbuya or khulu around the fire preserved history and values.

Trade & Global Links:
From Mutapa gold mines in Mazowe to Sofala’s coast, Zimbabwe was plugged into Indian Ocean trade. Swahili-Arab traders carried our gold to Asia, while Portuguese documents speak of a “sophisticated trading empire.” Great Zimbabwe was not just a ruin — it was an architectural wonder, a statement of power.

This was not “tribalism.” It was civilisation. And it was deliberately interrupted.

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Colonial Erasure

When colonisers arrived, they knew they could not govern a people confident in their own systems. So they attacked memory.

Christian missionaries demonised Mwari worship at Njelele shrine in Matobo and Dzivaguru in Dande. Spirit mediums like Nehanda and Kaguvi were executed or silenced.

Colonial schools punished children for speaking ChiShona or isiNdebele. Pupils were forced to take English names — Tendai became Tendy; Nomalanga became Norma. To speak one’s mother tongue was to be branded “backward.”

The colonial state outlawed traditional healers under Witchcraft Suppression Acts, while secretly documenting their remedies. Herbal knowledge of plants like moringa or baobab was dismissed, until European laboratories rediscovered their “nutritional potential.”

This erasure was violent. It tore Zimbabweans from their roots, and many never returned.

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The Theft & Repackaging

The contradictions are painful.

• Food & Crops: Sorghum and millet — once dismissed as “inferior to maize” — are now marketed as gluten-free superfoods abroad. Baobab pulp, once a rural snack, is now sold as an antioxidant powder in London health stores.
• Spirituality: Where Nehanda’s spirit mediumship was called witchcraft, Westerners now sell “ancestral connection workshops” and “energy healing.”
• Healing Plants: Hoodia, native to Southern Africa and used to curb hunger on long hunts, was patented by a pharmaceutical company for weight loss. Rooibos tea became a South African export empire — but its indigenous Khoisan users were erased until they sued for recognition.
• Fashion: Zimbabwean women with mabhanzi (shaved hair patterns) or natural afros were ridiculed. Today, dreadlocks and African braids are worn proudly by Hollywood celebrities — yet African professionals are still told such hair is “unprofessional.”

The theft is not hidden. It is in plain sight. But it is rebranded in English, sold back with profit, while we remain ashamed of our originals.

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The Cost of the Lie

The greatest cost of colonisation is not lost gold or stolen land. It is psychological.

Today, many Zimbabweans equate progress with abandoning “the rural ways.” Our cities mock the kumusha (village) as backward. Children laugh at traditional ceremonies, yet bow in awe at European cathedrals. Parents proudly boast when a child speaks perfect English, but dismiss wisdom spoken in ChiKaranga or isiKalanga.

We cheer Western leaders and sneer at African ones. Even legitimate critiques of Zimbabwean governance are poisoned by this colonial hangover — we measure leadership against Europe, not against our own values.

This is the cost of the lie: a people exiled from themselves, trained to look outward for validation.

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What If?

What if the Rozvi empire had evolved into a constitutional monarchy rooted in ubuntu? What if zunde ramambo had scaled into a regional food security model? What if our herbalists had institutionalised medicine through universities instead of being hunted down?

Would Zimbabwe be importing wheat from Ukraine? Would we beg for IMF loans? Or would Harare and Bulawayo be centres of global thought, medicine, and innovation?

This is the wound of interruption. But it is also the challenge of restoration.

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Reclaiming the Stolen Future

We cannot change history, but we can reclaim the threads.

• Cultural Restoration: Teach clan praise poetry (madetembedzo / izibongo), revive ceremonies, reassert sacred sites like Dzimbahwe and Njelele.
• Intellectual Sovereignty: Write textbooks on Mutapa, Rozvi, Chimurenga — and teach them in schools alongside global knowledge.
• Economic Independence: Build industries from indigenous foods like mapfura, masawu, nyimo; herbal teas from chifumuro and mufandichimuka.
• Spiritual Revival: Recognise Mwari outside colonial distortions. Honour Nehanda, Kaguvi, Chaminuka, not as myths but as anchors of identity.
• Healing: Open dialogue about traumas like Gukurahundi and Murambatsvina, guided by indigenous concepts of reconciliation.

Reclaiming is not nostalgia. It is an act of future-making.

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Call to Anger, Call to Action

The West profits from what it stole. We keep paying to consume our own genius. This should make you angry. But anger must turn to action.

So I leave you with a question:

If the West can profit from what they mocked, why can’t we reclaim it as power? Why should we keep buying back our own soul?

This is not just memory. It is survival. It is dignity. It is the only path forward.

This is the first chapter of Reclaim Zimbabwe. A manifesto. A fire. An opening dialogue.

The story was interrupted — but it is not finished.