MHOFU
The Eland of the People · The Original Totem · Mhofuyemukono · Vahera · Chihera
From the founding ancestor Mbiru at Gombe Hill, through the great Hera expansion that seeded Zimbabwe’s north, east and west, to the extraordinary truth that Mbuya Nehanda herself came from this totem.
Foreword — From Tete Getty
A Word Before We Begin
This handbook was written for every Mhofu and Shava person who has ever sensed that their totem carries something older and deeper than they were ever told. The instinct is correct. Of all the great mitupo of Zimbabwe, the Mhofu — the eland — is the one that oral tradition most consistently calls the original. The first. The root from which so much else grew.
I am Tete Getty, Moyo Netombo — a daughter of the Royal Lineage of Changamire Dombo I. I write this third volume because every totem deserves what the Moyo has: a thorough, loving, honest account of where it came from, what it built, and who carries it today.
What Is Mhofu?
The eland does not rush. It moves with a deliberate, unhurried dignity that signals to everything around it: I am not prey, and I am not afraid. The largest antelope in Africa — a bull eland can weigh over 900 kilograms — and yet it moves with the grace of something that has never needed to prove its power. It simply is. The ancestors who chose the eland as their totem understood this quality deeply.
The Mhofu mutupo encompasses two names used interchangeably: Mhofu (the eland in Shona) and Shava (a name referencing the fairness of the eland’s hide, or the quality of self-sufficiency). In Matabeleland, the same totem is called Mpofu in the Ndebele tradition. The animal is the same. The reverence is the same. Only the language changes.
The women of the Mhofu totem carry a specific honorific: they are called Chihera — or collectively, the VaChihera. The word itself comes from Vahera — the Hera people — and through that word reaches back to Gombe Hill, to Buhera, to Mbiru, and to the tall grass country of the ancestors. And the word Buhera itself is an English corruption of VaHera — the Mhofu people. An entire district of Zimbabwe is literally named after this totem group.
Multiple oral traditions identify the Mhofu/Shava as the oldest totem in the Shona system — the one from which other totems branched as the founding population grew too large for one identity.
The eland dominates San rock art across southern Africa, including the Matopos Hills in Zimbabwe. For the San, the eland was the most sacred animal — the one whose fat was used in healing dances.
The entire Buhera district of Manicaland Province takes its name from VaHera — the Mhofu people. A modern administrative district whose very name is a permanent monument to the eland’s children.
The spirit of Nehanda — the mhondoro whose mediums led both Chimurenga wars — only possesses women of the Mhofu totem. Not any other totem. The eland’s children are the exclusive carriers of Zimbabwe’s greatest ancestral spirit of liberation.
The eland is today near-threatened across much of its range. The Mhofu people have been its custodians for two millennia — the original conservation officers. Their prohibition on eating eland was a wildlife protection protocol encoded in spiritual law.
Mhofu is the mutupo (totem name). Shava is also used as both mutupo and chidawo in different communities. Both point to the eland and to the VaHera ancestral root.
From the Source — The Ancient Journey of the Eland People
The VaHera trace their origin to Guruuswa — the tall grass country north of the Zambezi, in the Great Lakes region of East-Central Africa. What is distinctive about the Mhofu origin story is that they arrived on the plateau already carrying the eland as their sacred identity — and that identity is so old, so consistent, and so deeply embedded in their oral tradition that it appears to predate the plateau civilisation itself.
One extraordinary note from the oral tradition deserves its own moment: it is recorded that when the Rozvi arrived in the Hera area, it was the Rozvi who taught the Hera people how to make fire. This is a remarkable thing for a people’s oral tradition to preserve — an honest acknowledgment of a technology transfer from another civilisation. They did not rewrite history to make themselves the source of all knowledge. They remembered what actually happened. That quality of honest memory is itself a part of the Mhofu heritage.
The eland totem is already established among the founding lineage. The people who will become the VaHera travel through Tanzania, across the Zambezi Valley, and toward the plateau.
The founding ancestor Mbiru — also known as Nyashanu and Munhuwepi — settles at Gombe Hill (Chikomo che Mbwera) in present-day Buhera District. He has multiple sons who become the founders of the great Mhofu dynastic branches.
Mbiru’s sons — Masarirambi, Chiwashira, Mapanzure, Munyaradzi, Marange, Seke, Hwata, Chiweshe, Gwenzi, and others — spread in all directions from Gombe Hill, establishing chiefdoms across the central and northern plateau.
The daughter of Nyashanu (Mbiru) is given to a Rozvi chief in a diplomatic alliance. A spirit medium manifests in her. Two of Nyashanu’s sons — Chiweshe and Hwata — are granted territories to rule. The Nehanda mhondoro enters the Mhofu lineage as a permanent ancestral presence.
Charwe Nyakasikana, of the Shava Mufakose Hwata dynasty, becomes possessed by the Nehanda mhondoro spirit. She organises the First Chimurenga. She is executed in 1898, declaring: Mapfupa angu achamuka.
Colonial land policies forcibly remove Mhofu families from their ancestral territories across Mashonaland East and central Zimbabwe. The Shava Mwendamberi Chivero people lose their lands around Norton. The pattern is consistent: the most fertile, most historically significant Mhofu territories are taken first.
Mbiru — The Founding Father
Before there was a Mhofu Museyamwa, before there was a Shava Mufakose, before the Hwata and Chiweshe dynasties of the north — there was one man, sitting on a hill in Buhera, looking at the land his family had walked to reach, and calling it home. His name was Mbiru. Everything that follows in this handbook grows from that man and that hill.
Mbiru is recorded under several names: Nyashanu (his praise name, meaning “the one with thorns like a bush” — a reference to his formidable character), Munhuwepi (another of his names), and simply Mbiru. He settled at Gombe Hill — known in the tradition as Chikomo che Mbwera — in what is now Buhera District, Manicaland Province. The hill became not just a homestead but a sacred site — the place where his descendants gathered for annual mitoro ceremonies, where spirit mediums consulted the ancestors, and where the genealogical memory of the entire VaHera people was maintained.
History Preserved Without Editing
The story of how the VaHera family split is preserved in remarkable detail. At some point near Wedza Mountain at Makonwe hills, four of Mbiru’s sons made a catastrophic mistake: they killed and ate an eland. Their own totem animal. This was a profound spiritual transgression. The sons were terrified of the consequences. They fled, scattered in different directions, and adopted different chidawo praise names to hide from their elders and from the spiritual reckoning that would follow.
This is why multiple Mhofu sub-branches exist with different chidawo names: not because they are unrelated, but because they deliberately changed their specific praise names when dispersing. And crucially — the VaHera preserved this story. They did not edit it. They passed it down including the part that is not flattering. That is an act of extraordinary cultural courage and intellectual honesty.
If you are Mhofu and someone tells you your totem’s origin story is about weakness or error — tell them: no. It is about truth. It is about what happens when you refuse to whitewash your history. And whose civilisation survived for centuries as a result.
The Branches of the Eland
What Mbiru and his sons created at Gombe Hill eventually became the most geographically spread totem dynasty in all of Zimbabwe. The Shava belt stretches from the eastern highlands of Manicaland, across Mashonaland East and Central, through the Midlands, to the districts around Harare and beyond into the north. No single totem covers more ground. No single founding ancestor seeded more chiefdoms.
| Chidawo | Dynasty / Chief | Primary Territory | Distinguishing History |
|---|---|---|---|
| Museyamwa | Nyashanu — the core Hera dynasty | Buhera District, Manicaland; also Chikomba | Directly descended from Mbiru’s line that remained at Gombe Hill. Museyamwa = “a pillar — one to lean on.” The foundation dynasty of all Mhofu lineages. |
| Mvuramavi / Vhuramavi | Seke Mutema dynasty | Northern Zimbabwe — Seke area, Nemangwe, Gokwe fringe | Originally Museyamwa; changed to Mvuramavi (“hailstorm”) after a miraculous military victory. Seke was Mbiru’s eldest — passed over in succession, he moved north and west, opening central-north Zimbabwe to Mhofu settlement. |
| Mufakose | Hwata dynasty | Upper Mazowe Valley, Harare suburbs | “Dying on both fronts” — adopted after internal family conflict. Hwata named for the Secretary bird walk of the founding ancestor. Charwe Nyakasikana, Mbuya Nehanda’s medium, came from this branch. Mufakose suburb in Harare bears this praise name. |
| Mutenhesenwa | Chiweshe dynasty | Chiweshe District, Mashonaland Central | “Those who fight among themselves” — adopted after the Hwata-Chiweshe succession conflict. Chiweshe was a renowned archer. Received territories from the Rozvi through the Nehanda marriage alliance. |
| Mwendamberi | Chivero dynasty | Mhondoro area, Norton, Mashonaland West | “Those who walk ahead / the forward-going people.” Settled near Norton; land seized by colonial government and community moved to reserves. All neighbouring communities acknowledge Chivero was the original owner. |
| Mukonde | Marange dynasty | Buhera south bank, Marange District | The Marange area of Manicaland takes its name from this Mhofu dynasty. Marange was one of Mbiru’s first sons. |
Nyashanu & Shava Museyamwa
At the centre of the entire Mhofu world sits the Nyashanu dynasty — the chieftainship that remained at Gombe Hill, the family that did not flee after the eland incident, the keepers of the original sacred covenant between the Mhofu people and their totem animal. They are the most senior Mhofu lineage in Zimbabwe, and their praise name tells you exactly why: Museyamwa — the pillar, the one you lean on.
The Nyashanu tradition also preserves one of the most intimate and troubling episodes in the Mhofu family story. Oral tradition records that Seke, the firstborn son of Mbiru/Nyashanu, was passed over in the succession — not because he was unworthy, but because of circumstances in his mother’s household. Rather than suppressing this, the VaHera tradition preserved it — and then preserved what Seke did next, which was extraordinary: he left, built his own empire, and became arguably the most consequential expansionist in the entire Mhofu story.
Seke Mutema & Shava Mvuramavi
If there is a single Mhofu figure whose personal story most dramatically shaped the map of Zimbabwe, it is Seke. He was Mbiru’s eldest. He should have been chief. He was not. And in the fires of that disappointment, he forged a legacy that put his name on a district of Zimbabwe and spread the Mhofu presence across the northern and central plateau.
In a battle with the Gunguvo people, a miraculous hailstorm arose during the fighting. Seke’s people continued fighting through the hail and won. The victory became their new praise name: Mvuramahwe — hailstorm, the water of stones — which over time became Mvuramavi. A weather event became an identity. A battle became a name. This is the Mhofu way: history is not forgotten. It is worn.
Seke also maintained a connection to royal blood that he made sure no one forgot. His praise invokes Ivuramai Vangu — “the soil and land belongs to my mother” — a reference to his Rozvi maternal ancestry. Seke never forgot who he was, even when what he was had been complicated and contested. He built that contested identity into his very praise name. Seke District in Harare carries his name to this day.
Hwata & Shava Mufakose
There is a suburb in Harare where hundreds of thousands of people live today. Many of them do not know that the name above the entrance — Mufakose — is the praise name of an ancient Mhofu dynasty whose founding ancestor walked out of Buhera with such famously long legs that his people named him after the Secretary bird. His name was Hwata. His legacy is a suburb. And his most famous descendant is the grandmother of a nation.
The praise name Mufakose is one of the most painfully honest in the Shona tradition. It means “dying on both fronts” — you lose either way. It was adopted after the Hwata and Chiweshe branches’ children fell into conflict with each other. If you won the battle against your brother, you had also destroyed family. If you lost, you had been defeated by your own blood. And they named themselves after it. Not after their victories — after their most painful impossible dilemma. Again, the Mhofu tradition does not flinch from truth.
Chiweshe, Chivero & the Westward Expansion
While the Hwata branch settled in the Mazowe-Harare area, two other great Mhofu dynastic streams pushed further — one north into what is now Chiweshe District, and one west toward what became the Norton-Mhondoro area. Both carry praise names that encode difficult history with complete honesty.
The Chiweshe dynasty carries the praise name Mutenhesenwa — “those who fight among themselves.” Chiweshe was a renowned warrior — the oral tradition specifically notes he was an exceptional archer. He and his people were given territories by the Rozvi Empire through the Nehanda marriage alliance — a legitimacy that was formal, documented in the oral record, and politically significant.
The Chivero dynasty with its praise name Mwendamberi — “those who walk ahead” — pushed westward into what is now the Mhondoro area around Norton in Mashonaland West. Their oral tradition states clearly: when they arrived, the territory was unoccupied. All neighbouring communities in Mhondoro acknowledge, even today, that they moved into Chivero’s original territory. The colonial government took the most fertile part and created white farms on it. The Chivero people were relocated. Their land claim is not historical fiction. It is documented reality, confirmed by the communities around them.
Nehanda — The Spirit of the Mhofu
There is a fact about the Nehanda mhondoro spirit that is not widely understood — and that, once understood, changes everything about how the Mhofu people see themselves and their place in Zimbabwe’s history. The spirit of Nehanda — the most celebrated, most politically significant ancestral spirit in all of Zimbabwean history — only possesses mediums of the Mhofu totem. Not any other totem. Only the eland’s children can carry Nehanda.
Charwe Nyakasikana — She Was Yours
Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana was born in 1840 in the Chishawasha district of central Mashonaland. She was the daughter of Chitaura, the younger son of Shayachimwe — founder of the Hwata dynasty in the upper Mazowe Valley. She was Mhofu. Shava Mufakose Hwata. An eland woman.
When the British South Africa Company colonized Mashonaland in 1890 — seizing land, imposing hut tax, forcing labor, confiscating cattle — Charwe Nyakasikana responded in the way that her spirit and her totem required: she organized resistance. Together with Sekuru Kaguvi Gumboreshumba, she coordinated the First Chimurenga of 1896–1897.
She was captured in late 1897. Tried in 1898. Found guilty. Sentenced to hang. A priest was sent to convert her before execution. Where her companion Kaguvi accepted Christian baptism at the last moment, Charwe Nyakasikana did not bend. She looked at the colonial court, at the priest, at the machinery of their power, and she refused it all.
They did. Eighty years later, freedom fighters of the Second Chimurenga invoked her name. In 2021, President Mnangagwa unveiled a ten-foot bronze statue of Mbuya Nehanda in the heart of Harare. She was Mhofu. Shava Mufakose. Hwata. Hers was the eland’s totem. And the eland’s spirit was what held her upright at the gallows.
The Mhondoro Knows Where It Belongs
The mhondoro (royal ancestral spirit) system in Shona cosmology is not arbitrary. Spirits possess mediums from their own lineage — from the bloodline that carries their ancestral memory. The Nehanda spirit is an Mhofu spirit because the original Nehanda was born into the Mhofu-connected Hera world through the diplomatic marriage with Nyashanu’s family.
This means that every woman who has ever served as a Nehanda medium has been a woman of the Mhofu totem. If a Nehanda medium is needed again, she will come from the Mhofu lineage again. The spirit knows where it belongs. It knows which blood can carry it. The eland is the vessel. The eland has always been the vessel.
For every Mhofu woman alive today: you carry the same lineage that carried Nehanda. You are Chihera. You are of the eland. And the eland’s spirit liberated a nation.
Chapter Ten
The Original DNA System
What the Eland Knew Before the LaboratoryThe Mhofu totem system contains something that modern genetics is only beginning to map: the complete migration history of a people across 2,000 years, encoded in identity rather than molecules. The Bantu migration from the Great Lakes southward to Buhera. The dispersal from Gombe Hill to the Mazowe Valley, to Norton, to Chiweshe, to Gokwe. All of it, legible — if you know how to read the chidawo.
When a geneticist studies the Y-chromosome haplogroups of Mhofu Museyamwa men from Buhera and Shava Mufakose men from Harare, they find what the oral tradition already stated: these men share a common patrilineal ancestor. The molecular record and the praise-name record say the same thing. The laboratory confirms what the elders knew.
For the Mhofu people, the question of biological paternity is particularly consequential. The Nehanda mhondoro spirit only possesses mediums of the Mhofu totem. A child who does not know their biological father cannot know whether they carry the Mhofu lineage — and therefore cannot know whether the Nehanda spirit has a claim on them. In a tradition where spiritual calling is determined by totem, paternity is not merely a social question. It is a spiritual one.
Quick Reference
Key Terms & Lineages at a Glance
| Term | Language / Origin | Meaning / Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Mhofu | Shona | Eland (Taurotragus oryx) — Africa’s largest antelope and the totem animal of the VaHera dynasties. Do not eat the eland; the hump is absolutely sacred. |
| Shava | Shona | The variant totem name; refers to the eland’s tawny colouring and the quality of self-sufficiency. |
| Mpofu | Ndebele / Kalanga | The eland totem in the Ndebele and Kalanga traditions — the same animal, the same reverence, different language. |
| Chihera / VaChihera | Shona | The honorific title for women of the Mhofu/Shava totem — used in greeting and in ceremony throughout life. She dies and enters the spirit world as Chihera. |
| VaHera | Shona | The Hera people — the collective name for the Mhofu totem dynasty. “Buhera” district is an English corruption of this word. |
| Mbiru / Nyashanu | Name | The founding ancestor of the VaHera; settled at Gombe Hill in Buhera; father of all the major Mhofu branches. |
| Gombe Hill | Shona: Chikomo che Mbwera | The ancestral heartland of the VaHera in Buhera District — the spiritual centre and genealogical reference point of all Mhofu dynasties. |
| Museyamwa | Shona | “A pillar, one to lean on” — chidawo of the Nyashanu dynasty; the most senior Mhofu branch. |
| Mvuramavi / Vhuramavi | Shona | “Hailstorm / waterstone” — chidawo of the Seke dynasty; adopted after a miraculous victory in a hailstorm battle. |
| Mufakose | Shona | “Dying on both fronts” — chidawo of the Hwata dynasty. A suburb of Harare is named after this praise. Charwe Nyakasikana / Mbuya Nehanda came from this branch. |
| Mutenhesenwa | Shona | “Those who fight among themselves” — chidawo of the Chiweshe dynasty of Mashonaland Central. |
| Mwendamberi | Shona | “Those who walk ahead / the forward-going people” — chidawo of the Chivero dynasty of the Norton-Mhondoro area. |
| Mhondoro | Shona | Royal ancestral spirit. The Nehanda mhondoro only possesses mediums of the Mhofu totem. |
| Mhofuyemukono | Shona | “The bull eland” — the praise phrase used in Mhofu detembo; the alpha male eland as a symbol of ancestral power. |
| Mapfupa angu achamuka | Shona | “My bones will rise again” — Mbuya Nehanda’s words at her execution, 1898; prophesying Zimbabwe’s independence. |
| Mitoro | Shona | Annual communal ceremony led by the chief and spirit medium to petition the ancestors for rain and protection; practiced at Gombe Hill by the VaHera. |
You Come from the Grandmother of This Nation
You may have grown up knowing you are Mhofu. Or knowing you are Shava. Or knowing that the women in your family are called Chihera, without fully understanding why. This letter is for all of you.
Here is what I want you to know first: the totem you carry is the one that oral tradition consistently calls the original. The first. When your ancestors chose the eland — the largest, most graceful, most sacred antelope in Africa — they were choosing the animal that the San had painted on rock walls for thousands of years as the bridge between the human world and the spirit world. You carry an ancient covenant. One of the oldest on this land.
If you are Shava Mufakose — know that the suburb of Harare where hundreds of thousands of modern Zimbabweans live today carries your ancestors’ praise. And know that Charwe Nyakasikana — Mbuya Nehanda, the grandmother of Zimbabwe, the woman who refused to bend at the gallows — was of your blood. Hwata. Mufakose. Shava. Mhofu. She was yours. When you say her name, you are not invoking someone else’s ancestor. You are speaking to your own grandmother.
If you are Shava Mvuramavi — you are the grandchildren of Seke, who was denied his inheritance and turned that denial into the opening of an entire region of Zimbabwe. You are the grandchildren of a hailstorm. Walk accordingly.
If you are Shava Mwendamberi, Mutenhesenwa, or any other branch — your chidawo is a compressed history lesson. It contains a migration route, a decisive event, a piece of the great Mhofu story that belongs specifically and permanently to your branch. Find out what yours means.
Maita Museyamwa, Mvuramavi, Mufakose, Mutenhesenwa, Mwendamberi.
Mhofuyemukono — the bull eland walks ahead.
Vari Gombe. Vari Buhera. Varidzi venyika.
The eland does not rush. It endures.
It was here before any kingdom was built,
and it will be here when we are all ancestors ourselves.
You are its people. Act like it.
Daughter of Changamire Dombo I
Custodian of the Zimbabwe Heritage Series · Volume III of XXIII
TeteGetty.com
Research informed by: Wikipedia (Shava Totem, Mufakose, Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana) · Zimtribes.com (Chief Chivero origins, Buhera tribes) · ThePatriot.co.zw · ChimurengaRadio.wordpress.com · Grokipedia (Shava Totem) · TotemNetwork.blogspot.com · Totems.co.zw · Blackpast.org · Smithsonian Magazine · Britannica (Charwe, Nehanda) · ZimOriginal · Shona oral tradition (VaHera, Nyashanu, Seke, Hwata, Chiweshe, Chivero) · Prof Aenias Chigwedere, Madzinza Ezimbabwe.
Vol I: MOYO · Vol II: SHUMBA · Vol III: MHOFU · IV: SOKO · V: NZOU · VI: DZIVA · VII: GUMBO · VIII: TEMBO · IX: NGARA · X: GWAI · XI: NYATI · XII: HUMBA · XIII: HUNGWE · XIV: MHARA · XV: BETA · XVI: GARWE · XVII: MBEVA · XVIII: NHETA · XIX: MVUU · XX: TSIVO · XXI: BONGA CHIHWA · XXII: MHEMBWE · XXIII: INGWE
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