My name is Tete Getty. I am Moyo Netombo — a daughter of the Royal Lineage of Changamire Dombo I. This twentieth volume of the Zimbabwe Heritage Series carries the weight of a particular editorial responsibility. The Tsivo/Gushungo is a body-part totem — one of only a handful in the series alongside Gumbo (leg), Moyo (heart), and Bepe (lung). But it is the most complex of the body-part totems because the publicly stated totem (fists/Chibhakera) and the taboo encoded in the detembo are not the same thing. The community is explicit about this. Multiple Gushungo lineage members confirm it directly in the public record. The Heritage Series documents both layers with equal care: the publicly stated Tsivo (fists), and the detembo’s proverb-encoded references to the actual taboo — stated in the same coded language the ancestors chose, without violation of the protective principle the community has maintained across generations.

Volume XX carries another distinction: it is the volume in which the series arrives at its most famous modern bearer. Robert Gabriel Mugabe (1924–2019), Zimbabwe’s first post-independence Prime Minister and President for 37 years, was Tsivo Gushungo from Zvimba. His chidawo was Gushungo. His lineage traces directly to the founding of the Zvimba chieftaincy. And the moment he was asked on live ZBC television what his totem was — and deflected with a joke — sent a misunderstanding rippling through Zimbabwean culture that the Heritage Series now corrects with the dignity the truth deserves.

The Zimtribes documentation adds context: “So when Mugabe assumed political power he took the fists [Tsivo] his former totem, as a symbol of the political slogan where he was praising his ancestors who he believed were behind his power drives.” The closed fist — Chibhakera, Tsivo — became Mugabe’s political symbol. The hand raised and clenched. The fist in the air. But the fist was never simply a political pose: it was the mutupo itself, the original identity of the Zvimba people, the hand closed around what it holds and refusing to open.

Mugabe’s brother Chirenda confirmed this story to the Zimbabwe Independent in 2019: “Mugabe’s ancestor and his family intended to travel further, but they ended up settling in the area by default after the patriarch developed swollen feet and declared he was unable to proceed further. ‘He was thus nicknamed Zvimba, owing to the swollen feet problem which brought the migration to a premature end.’” The Zimtribes community adds a detail: when crossing the Zambezi river, the spirit medium found that Bushmen had previously crossed and performed rituals to block other groups from crossing. The founding journey was interrupted by more than just swollen legs — it was also a spiritual landscape that required negotiation.

The detembo line Varidzi vamazhanje — “owners of the wild loquat” — is the fruit story compressed into one phrase. The mazhanje (Uapaca kirkiana) is a small, orange-yellow to reddish spherical fruit found throughout Zimbabwe’s savanna. Sweet, slightly astringent, eaten fresh or dried. The fruit that a tired king found in a new land and loved enough to stop his journey for. The Zvimba people are called owners of the mazhanje because their existence in this specific place, this specific red-clay Mashonaland West landscape, began with a king who loved a fruit enough to rest his swollen legs beside it and call the land his own.

The Zimtribes Zvimba dynasty also preserves the link to the wider Shona historical context: the founding ancestor Neuteve was the son of Nyatsimba Mutota — the founder of the Mutapa state. The Zvimba dynasty is therefore connected to the deepest roots of Shona royal history. The detembo line “Tatenda varidzi venyika” — thank you, owners of the land — carries this weight: these are not newcomers to Zimbabwe’s ancestral landscape. They are from the lineage that established the Mutapa empire.

The Zimtribes version preserves the additional explicit line: VANEMUTUPO URIMUMAKUMBO — “those whose totem is between the legs.” This is the community’s own most direct self-description of the totem’s location. The Heritage Series cites it as documented; the community member who preserved it in the Zimtribes thread did not explain it further — it is self-explanatory to those who need to understand, and coded to those who do not.

What is documented in the public record, in the community’s own words:

From Totems.co.zw (community comment, Tapererwa Noel Paskwavaviri, September 2022): “I am of the Gushungo totem and I know a lot of Zimbabweans misunderstand our totem which they erroneously relate to Garwe — vanoti tinoera Garwe which is wrong. The truth is that isu ana Gushungo tinoera [the female genitalia].” The commenter used asterisks in the original to preserve some discretion while confirming the fact.

From Zimtribes (community comment): “My grandmother was VaMangwenya vaiyera Tsivo Gushungo. When we were young we used to ask her what tsiwo was but she wouldn’t explain. She only explained to me when I was a mother because their mutupo ‘Usavi hwevamwe varume’ was not easy to tell in Shona. It is the female genitalia. No wonder they say kusimuka hunobviravhu.”

The detembo line “Vanemutupo urimumakumbo” — “those whose totem is between the legs” — is in the community’s own detembo, in the community’s own preserved version. The Heritage Series did not discover this. The Zvimba people put it in their own detembo. They chose the language. They chose to encode it as proverb. They also chose, in these specific online instances, to be explicit with adults who were asking in good faith about their own heritage.

Robert Gabriel Mugabe (1924–2019), Zimbabwe’s first post-independence Prime Minister and President, was Tsivo Gushungo from Zvimba. His proper honorific address was Gushungo — the chidawo of his lineage. At some point — documented by the community in the public record — he appeared on a live ZBC television programme. A presenter asked him what his totem was. Specifically: what the Gushungo people revere.

The question put Mugabe in an impossible position. It was a live, national, family programme. To answer truthfully would require stating — in the context of the detembo and the community’s own confirmed understanding — words that were entirely inappropriate for the context. He could not say it as is. He deflected. He said “Garwe” — crocodile. He may have laughed as he said it. And Zimbabwe took that deflection as fact.

The Totems.co.zw community commenter, Tapererwa Noel Paskwavaviri, documents this precisely: “This belief, however, has its origins in one live ZBC programme when the late President R.G. Mugabe was asked by a presenter kuti Gushungo inoera chii. Since it was a national family programme which was being beamed live he could not state it as is and he jokingly and laughing said Garwe. The truth is that isu ana Gushungo tinoera [the female genitalia].” The Zimtribes thread states the same: “Gushungo is [the actual taboo] and its not Garwe.”

Note also: Mugabe’s actual totem and chidawo were Tsivo and Gushungo respectively — these are confirmed by his family, the Zvimba community records, and multiple sources. His brother Chirenda confirmed to the Zimbabwe Independent that Mugabe was “a true Gushungo” and a direct descendant of the Zvimba founding chieftaincy. The Garwe/Shumba Chirumhanzu claim sometimes made in political contexts does not reflect Mugabe’s actual lineage — that was his Tsivo Gushungo identity from Zvimba.

The Zimtribes Zvimba dynasty record documents the founding more specifically: “Neuteve had three sons: Nemahunga, Negondo and Pokoteke. To the eldest, Nemahunga, was allocated a tract of land where Msengezi purchase area is today. Negondo married a sister of Gwenzi (a member of the Chiwero community near Chegutu/Hartley), but was unable to father any children, so he invited his young brother, Pokoteke, who helped him to father Chambare and Pokoteke. These two were regarded as Negondo’s sons. Neuteve’s successor in the Zvimba chieftainship was Negondo, who was followed by Pokoteke.”

The detembo line Muchero waNegondo — “the fruit of Negondo” — is now fully understood: it refers both to the Negondo tree (Celtis africana) whose fruit the Zvimba people know intimately, AND to the ancestor Negondo himself, the son of Neuteve who became the second Zvimba chief. The Gushungo people are the fruit — the children, the descendants, the produce — of the Negondo lineage. The tree and the ancestor share a name because the ancestors were named after the landscape they inhabited, and the landscape they inhabited became part of their identity.

The record also notes: “Chief Serima shares the same totem (Tsiwo/Ngonya)” — the Serima chieftaincy in Gutu uses Ngonya as their form of the Tsivo identity, confirming that the Zvimba dynasty’s reach extended beyond its immediate geographic heartland. The detembo’s final line, Zvaitwa vaNgonya — “well done, vaNgonya” — honours this shared ancestral identity across different chieftaincy territories.

The Zimtribes record on the Gushungo detembo contains one of the most important statements in the Heritage Series: “The narrative poem about Gushungo totem was continuously attacked by enemies who edited the poem. Bringing and twisting the words and giving wrong interpretations of the poem. Regardless of that the Zvimba people were not moved by that and kept their poem secret until to date. In most cases these poems were composed with deep proverbs (zvirahwe) as a way of trying to disguise their enemies as it was believed it was easy to attack one through or using their totem.”

This statement illuminates something crucial about the entire totem detembo tradition: the detembo was not simply celebratory. It was also defensive. The deep proverbs (zvirahwe) in which the detembo is composed were not only poetic — they were protective. An enemy who knew your totem could use it against you. Mocking a totem, twisting its meaning, inserting corrupted lines into the poem — these were understood as forms of attack. The Zvimba community faced this attack and chose the only truly effective response: silence. The full original detembo was held back from public record. What circulates online — including in this handbook — is the fragment that the community has chosen to share, not the complete original.

This is a heritage fact of the first order. Not every piece of ancestral knowledge is meant for every audience. The Zvimba community has maintained their detembo as living oral tradition, passed privately through lineages, protected from the editing that enemies perpetrated, and shared on terms the community itself controls. The Heritage Series is not the repository of the Zvimba people’s complete detembo. They are. The Heritage Series is a signal to every young Gushungo person: the full poem is with your elders. Ask them. Not as a cultural tourist asking for entertainment, but as a descendant asking for inheritance.

The GoldMidi mutupo list describes the qualities of the Tsivo identity: “self-centeredness, courage, determination, fearlessness, skill, and dexterity.” This is worth unpacking. The fist is the hand that has chosen one direction. The open hand can receive, give, scatter, wave, point in many directions simultaneously. The fist has made a decision. Its fingers have closed around something — a purpose, a position, a cause — and refused to open. Self-centeredness in this context is not vanity; it is the quality of knowing what you are and what you stand for and not being easily redirected. Courage is what the fist represents when it is raised in threat or in assertion. Determination is what the closed fist embodies physically — a grip that will not release. Fearlessness is the quality of the fist that does not unclench when the world pushes back. Skill is what dexterous fists carry — the groundnut-planters who move with the speed of kudyara nzungu. And dexterity is the fist that also knows how to open precisely when precision requires it.

The Zvimba founding story adds a different dimension. The founding king’s legs swelled. He could not continue. A lesser person might have pushed through — damaged legs, punishing pace, the drive to reach Tanganyika overriding the body’s clear message. Instead, he stopped. He looked at the mazhanje. He said: my legs have swollen. And he claimed the land. The Tsivo philosophy includes not just the fist raised in determination but also the wisdom to recognise when the body has made a decision the mind needs to accept. The swollen legs were the king’s body clenching around a different kind of fist: the grip of a place that wanted to keep him.

And Gushungo — the chidawo born from grief. A king who could not hold his own face still when his son died. Who struck a tree with his own head because grief needed somewhere to go. Who made a sound — gu gu gu gu — that his people heard and named. The Gushungo people carry the philosophy that grief expressed is not weakness. The king did not hide his grief behind stone composure. He let it out against a tree, with his own head, in the sound his shungu required. And his people named him for it. They made the grief his identity. The fist is not only determination and courage. It is also the sound a father makes against a tree when love has nowhere left to go.

The Zvimba chieftaincy covers a large territory northwest of Harare, and the Gushungo identity exists across multiple chieftaincies — Zvimba itself, Chirau, and Serima (which uses Ngonya as its form of the Tsivo identity). The Gushungo communities in Chinhoyi, Makonde, and beyond each carry their specific sub-lineage of the identity. A Gushungo person in Bulawayo whose family came from Buhera in the 1890s (as documented in the AllAfrica article about a different Gushungo lineage) carries a different specific history than a Gushungo person whose roots go directly to Chief Zvimba’s founding line.