By Jonathan Mbiriyamveka
Gwenyambira Stella Chiweshe once foretold that Zimbabweans would go through pain and suffering in her speech delivered way back in 2009 on her YouTube Channel before Covid-19 pandemic.
The Speech which appears on her album titled Ndondopetera released in 2016 is a song with a difference because it is essentially a speech told as she played mbira in the background.
The visuals resonate well with the speech while the mbira makes you to stop and listen.
But oddly enough not many people had watched the video until Ambuya Chiweshe reposted the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrxXw9UYE80
The Germany-based Zimbabwean Ambuya Chiweshe opens the nine minute and 23 seconds speech with her salutation to the ancestors.
“Pamusoroi machembere pamusori harawa neni mese mazezuru imwere dzondopinda mukuraya nerurimi rwavari kushandisa, mungazoti zvimwe inii muhera ndapanduka rurimi bodo,
“I am playing my mbira today to speak to you through its music about the materiality and the spirituality.
“The materiality of not only the Shona people has in the 20th century become a force that breaks away from the spirituality that has been the corner stone for society.
“The last 100 years has been a rise in materiality to such an extent it has caused the individual to be more incoherent and ambitious for personal gain and immediate gratification casting aside the spirituality that has been handed down by parents to children.
She continued: “I have seen that this disintegration has been the downfall of communal spirituality what can be the link between the two forces I ask myself.
“How can a society hold itself together? What traditional can move across and be accepted in the new, I ask myself.
“What can be healing influence to keep the spirit in harmony with itself. I have seen people lost without their traditions, mental and physical diseases a disharmony I see in society around me.
“People drinking perhaps too much. People watching television, perhaps too much. Diseases running through obliterating mind and soul this I don’t exempt myself from. I have seen these things in my brothers and sisters all their families sweat up in this typhoon change.”
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