Association pushes for enactment of Ancestors Day
AN organisation which says its purpose is to preserve African tradition has petitioned Parliament for the enactment of an Ancestors Day holiday as a celebration and restoration of the supremacy of the local culture.
Hweva Association has also submitted to the Ministry of Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation, lobbying the Government to recognise and declare Ancestors Day as a public holiday on the national calendar.
The proposed month for the holiday is August.
In a statement Hweva Association representative Diana Samkange Mangwenya said they were working to advance the movement for traditional culture and spirituality recovery and renewal.
“We have several strategic pillars we are focusing on as an association, and one of them is advocating for the setting aside of Ancestors Day on our national calendar,” she said.
“The day will serve to venerate and remember our forebearers whose importance, and whose ‘traditions and culture’ is emphatically acknowledged in the Preamble to the Constitution of Zimbabwe.”
Samkange said Zimbabwe experienced a number of attempts designed to repair cultural and spiritual damage caused by colonialism, however, to date it has not evolved a coherent spiritual recovery and revival mechanism.
She said the major complaint attributed to the ancestors was that they had been neglected by their progeny, with the country failing to provide recognition of them as the owners and custodians of the land.
“As an association, we are convinced that Zimbabweans need a reawakening of traditional spiritual consciousness,” said Samkange. “We need to reconstruct our past, reinterpret our present and to launch out to recover our lost spiritual values and virtues.
“Our Constitution concisely provides a compass for the promotion and preservation of cultural values and practices. Section 16 part ( 1) of the Constitution provides that: “The State and all institutions and agencies of government at every level must promote and preserve cultural values and practices which enhance the dignity, well- being and equality of Zimbabweans.”
Samkange said their request was not unprecedented, as other jurisdictions including the People’s Republic of Benin, officially recognises traditional religion in their Constitution, granting it a national public holiday.
“Africans are first and foremost members of traditional religion before any other religion ( we are born into it, not converted into it),” she said.
“Long before Christianity and Islam became religions that intertwined with the State, indigenous people worshipped God through veneration of ancestors specific to their Kingdoms or Chiefdoms, making religion a department of their governance system.”
Samkange said in pre- colonial Africa’s real public authority actually lay with ritual experts who mediated between the visible and invisible worlds, explaining why the institution of traditional leadership was specifically recognized in sections of the Constitution, and had a whole Act of Parliament attributed to it.