ABSTRACT
Muchetera not only made a major contribution to Shona cultural nationalism and to the centrality of Chaminuka: in 1978 two publications linked him and his circle direcdy with the resistance struggle. The guerillas campaigned in the name of the spirits and of Chaminuka in particular. There was a real sense in which Cripps gave the myth of Pasipamire Chaminuka to the men who came to lead the first articulate indigenous political associations and made it possible for these rather self-consciously 'progressive' and Christian men to turn a spirit medium into a hero. Eventually there was a quarrel between the Rozvi and the Chaminuka spirit; 'the mhondoro was angry. Chaminuka possessed 'unimpaired sanction to preserve the structural continuity of the Rozwi state; and when subsequendy periods of interregnum occurred, it was to the Chaminuka spirit that application was made for confirmation of successors to the subject tribal chieftancies'.
