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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
The Mutapa state occupied a triangle of land between the Zambezi river in the north, the Hunyani river and Umvukwe range on the southwest, and the Mazoe and Ruenya rivers on the southeast. It thus consisted of a small segment of the southern Zambezian plateau and an arc of the Zambezi valley lowlands. The state dated back to at least the fifteenth century, and some branches of its ruling dynasty continue to control fragments of the state under the governments of Rhodesia and Mozambique. These descendants of the Mutapa dynasty, like their fellow-members of the Korekore dialect cluster of the Shona-speaking peoples, retain traditions of their past that are passed on from generation to generation by an informal learning process. These traditions are almost all devoted to the ruling dynasties rather than to the mass of the people and are especially concerned with lines of descent and land rights. They range from myths to relatively accurate factual accounts, with a wide variety of traditions between these two extremes. It was at one time thought that the mediums of mhondoro ancestral spirits were equivalent to the professional tradition-keepers of states such as Rwanda, but this theory has not been adequately proven.
The Mutapa state is of especial interest because it is the only one of four known major Shona states—Zimbabwe, Torwa, Mutapa, and Changamire—to escape being uprooted entirely by new settlements of people, and the only one that was close to Portuguese centers (in which information was recorded). It has thus been possible to compare traditions and documents in a way that cannot be done for the other states. Because of the reluctance or inability of many researchers to work in Rhodesia and Mozambique in the last fifteen years, the history of the Mutapa state has been heavily dependent upon the work of D.P. Abraham, at least as far as traditions are concerned. Abraham collected traditions from ca. 1950 to 1971; but so far the only works of his that are readily available are eight papers, of which the most important were produced in the period 1959-1963. These have formed the basis of most of the secondary writing on the Shona states; the inter-relationship between them and a developing archaeology has been discussed in an earlier article, and only a few points of this discussion need be brought in here.
1. By “state” is meant the area that was continuously under the close control of the nzou/samanvanga Mutapa dynasty, as opposed to areas that were occasionally tributary to it. See D.N. Beach, An Outline of Shona History (forthcoming), chap. 3.
2. Depending upon their fame, spirit mediums acquire followings from across traditional dynastic boundaries. This means that they are able to absorb traditions from different groups and are liable to merge them. See note 14 below and text referred to.
3. Abraham, D.P., “The Principality of Maungwe,” NADA 28 (1951): 56–83 Google Scholar; “The Monomotapa Dynasty,” NADA 36 (1959): 59–84 Google Scholar; “The Early Political History of the Kingdom of Mwene Mutapa (850-1589),” in Historians in Tropical Africa: Proceedings of the Leverhulme Inter-Collegiate History Conference, September 1960, ed. Stokes, E. (Salisbury, 1962), pp. 61–91 Google Scholar; “Maramuca: An Exercise in the Combined Use of Portuguese Records and Traditions,” JAH 2 (1961): 211–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Ethno-History of the Empire of Mutapa: Problems and Methods,” in The Historian in Tropical Africa: Studies Presented and Discussed at the Fourth International African Seminar at the University of Dakar, Senegal 1961, ed. Vansina, J., Mauny, R., and Thomas, L.V. (London, 1964), pp. 104–21Google Scholar; “The Political Role of Chaminuka and the Mhondoro Cult in Shona History” and “Tasks in the Field of Early History,” papers delivered to the History of Central African Peoples Conference, Lusaka, 1963, of which the former was published as “The Roles of ‘Chaminuka’ and the Mhondoro-cults in Shona Political History,” in The Zambesian Past, ed. Stokes, E. and Brown, R. (Manchester, 1966), pp. 28–46 Google Scholar; “Porcelain from Hill Ruin, Khami,” South African Archaeological Bulletin 17 (1962): 32–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a discussion of the relationship of these papers to the literature of the 1960s, see Beach, D.N., “The Historiography of the People of Zimbabwe in the 1960s,” Rhodesian History 4 (1973): 21–30 Google Scholar; and Alpers, E.A., “Dynasties of the Mutapa-Rozwi Complex,” JAH 11 (1970): 203–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4. Beach, “Historiography.”
5. Ibid.
6. Abraham, , “Ethno-History,” p. 106 Google Scholar; “Chaminuka,” pp. 32-33.
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10. E. Morris, NC Marandellas to CNC Salisbury, 1 January 1904, National Archives of Rhodesia N 3/33/8; University of Rhodesia History Department Texts 105, 108 Wza. Svosve's people call the area around Mount Wedza “Mbire” after their old home in the north, which they appear to have left no earlier than the first half of the eighteenth century. There is no evidence that there was any major political unit or state around Wedza apart from some outlying Hera settlements. The new Mbire swiftly became famous, partly because it was the center of the Njanja hoe trade, partly because offshoots of the soko Mbire people travelled far to the south and east. There is no evidence for a Rozvi state at Wedza, whether called Mbire or not; the Rozvi lived north of the main watershed, between the Mazoe and Nyadiri rivers. The soko/vudzijena Mbire of NeMbire do have a tradition of having come from the more famous southern Wedza, but this appears to be a recent fiction overlying older origins among the formerly soko/vudzijena people of Chingowo.
11. Beach, D.N., “Ndebele Raiders and Shona Power,” JAH 15 (1974): 642–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also chaps. 2 and 3 in An Outline of Shona History.
12. The Changamire dynasty was first recorded as a subordinate of the Mutapa state in 1506, when it was described as being in revolt. It was defeated in 1547. By the late seventeenth century, it was based in the land between the Mazoe and Nyadiri, from which area it began its conquest of the Torwa dynasty in the southwest. See chap. 5 in An Outline of Shona History.
13. Posselt, F.W.T., Fact and Fiction (Bulawayo, 1935), pp. 141–43Google Scholar; URHD Texts 106-107 Rse. These texts are held at the University of Rhodesia history department, and both the bilingual transcripts and the original tapes can be examined there.
14. Gelfand, , Shona Ritual, p. 30.Google Scholar It should be noted that Abraham's fourteenth-century date for ChikuraWadyembeu's arrival at the site of Zimbabwe corresponded to what the archaeologists then thought was a break in the development of the Zimbabwe culture. This break is not now seen to exist, but it is possible that it influenced Abraham's reading of his evidence. Beach, , “Historiography,” pp. 24, 26.Google Scholar
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18. Abraham's main field research for the 1959 article was in July and August 1958 ( Abraham, , “Monomotapa,” p. 59).Google Scholar For his second visit to the Mutota mhondoro's medium, see “Early Political History,” p. 84 n6.
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34. MIA DR Sipolilo; Report on spirit mediums, 1965.
35. MIA Per 5/Kasekete, Memorandum, n.d., of meeting held 12 December 1967, evidence of “Mutota.”
36. Ibid., Kasekete genealogy filed ca. 12 December 1967.
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44. I am indebted to Dr. A. Livneh for this suggestion.
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