The Sunday News
A WOMAN is a giver of life, she bears the burden of procreation and carries the baby from the time it is an embryo — smaller than an atom until it is big enough to see the world.
She goes through excruciating pain of labour and eventually givs birth and when she delivers they say “amhlophe” in Ndebele and “apona” in Shona literally meaning she has survived, for birth is tough and a threat to the mother’s life.
But when that which stayed in the womb for nine months and threatened the life of the mother at birth has the guts and courage of taking away life from its life giver then it’s sad, it becomes an abomination, and can spell bad omen.
A fortnight ago, Ashley Kudakwashe Sibanda (19) of Southdowns in Gweru did the unthinkable and sunk a kitchen knife into his mother Babra’s chest, close to the breasts that he sucked seven times killing her and locking the body in the house before going on a beer binge with his girlfriend and friend.
The boy committed matricide which is defined as the act of killing one’s mother. The reason for the murder is that she had refused to give him her car keys so that he could go merry making with his friends.
He then stole his mother’s car, refuelled it at a garage in the city before driving off to Harare without paying for the fuel worth US$63.
Lady luck was defiant to him after the monstrous crime of cold bloodedly killing his mother in Gweru as he knocked down a pedestrian in Norton killing him instantly before fleeing again only to be arrested in Mbare, in the capital.
Reports, however, say the young offender was a result of a secret and adulterous affair, by mother Babra and a neighbour, which is said to have sent her then husband William Sibanda into depression, alcoholism and eventually death.
The teenager’s biological father after being alerted that Sibanda, a former soccer star knew of the affair and child fled to Ireland where he was killed in a road traffic accident two years after his arrival. In the Shona culture and some other African cultures the act of killing any person is taboo. The culture upholds the sacrosanctity of human life, more so the killing of one’s mother.
Culture expert Mr Pathisa Nyathi said killing one’s mother was unheard of as the mother was a giver of life and was considered a sacred person.
“You can kill your father, not that it is right but when you turn on your mother, the person who gave you life it has serious consequences. A woman or anything female is that which bears fruit and is sacred. So killing a mother is more serious than anything else,” he said.
He said in the Shona society when you kill your mother you would have brought curses upon yourself, an act he said was referred as kutanda botso.
He said kutanda botso happens when someone wrongs their mother either by way of assault, insult or murder.
“This is very severe and is the height of all madness when one gets to kill their mother it means they cannot do anything worse than this. It is the most unforgivable of all evil acts that a child can ever do,” said Nyathi.
Nyathi said Ashley was most likely never to lead a “normal” life after the blood curdling crime he committed on someone who gave him life. He said a cleansing ceremony was usually done to someone who commits such a crime.
“If convicted and he serves his sentence and is released from prison his clan members will have to perform a ritual of restoration to remedy the situation. It serves as a means to ensure that the man leads a normal life. There is a serious damage to the spiritual and emotional attachment that should be there between the mother and son, relations have been ruptured and need to be restored,” he said.
He said the spirit of the dead mother was likely to haunt the young man until rituals to cleanse him were done, if the clan members wanted to do them anyway.
Nyathi explained that a man like Ashley usually becomes an outcast as the crime he committed was a grave one and cannot be justified or pardoned no matter what.
The deputy president of the Chiefs Council Chief Mtshane Khumalo also said the Midlands lad might have felt betrayed by his mother who might have been giving him unconditional love that she denied him on that fateful day.
“This boy may have been getting a lot of undivided attention and love from his mother who would give in to all his demands but on that fateful day she refused to surrender her car keys which she may have been availing to him willy-nilly and he was infuriated and decided to kill her,” said Chief Mtshane.
He suggested that when Ashley was denied the privilege he had always enjoyed he had an outburst as he may have felt he was denied his right and took his mother’s life. On the issue of the mother’s alleged infidelity he said it was subject to various controversies.
“The mother after realising she had erred was supposed to come out in the open and tell her husband of her infidelity and it was going to be his choice to accept or not, but hiding the issue from him caused problems till this man found it and eventually died,” he said.
Chief Mtshane said all things being equal the child was to be kept at his father’s house while visiting the mother occasionally not to be kept within the home where her husband eventually found out.
He said a decision was to be made by Sibanda to either accept the child or let him go to his father rather that it being a closely guarded secret.
He also said now that a crime had been committed cleansing needed to be done so that the spirit of the mother does not avenge, as killing a mother was tantamount to uzimu/ngozi.
The chief also felt that if the child was wronged by his mother somehow he was supposed to approach relatives and try to solve their differences rather than taking away her life in such a cruel manner. According to Shona culture assaulting one’s mother is considered such a serious crime that it can only be atoned for by the perpetrator being publicly humiliated and held accountable.
As a result of unexplained misfortunes the perpetrator will eventually be forced to put on sacks, go round the villages publicly proclaiming his misdeeds being jeered by children and begging for millet that will be used to brew beer for the atonement ceremony. Refusal to the act of kutanda botso often ends in untold suffering.
Micheal Gelfant in his article “Unhu — The Personality of the Shona’’ notes that a very important sanction is that which forbids any child to hurt a parent physically. This is believed to result in most serious consequences, for when the aggrieved person dies, his angered spirit, known as ngozi, will return even many years later to smite the guilty person or his kin.
“To prevent this, the person who has committed such an act must perform the ritual ceremony called kutanda botso. Shona parents are greatly respected and loved and it is extremely rare for any parent to be ill-treated by a child.
Indeed the older the parent, the nearer he is to passing on, the greater the respect and the fear of upsetting him,” he writes.
Social commentator and Pan-Africanist Professor Sheunesu Mpepereki weighed in saying Ashley had brought bad luck upon himself.
“In Shona we call it kupara ngozi, the spirit of the mother will haunt him and this is where we see people failing to find jobs, marriages and general peace in their lives as they will have tempered with the life of the mother which is sacred,” he said.
Uzimu/ngozi he said was evidenced by things not going well for the perpetrator of the crime. He said the spirit of his mother had to be appeased.
He said if someone kills an innocent person, the victim’s spirit might come back to avenge on the wrongful death. There is no effective way to stop the avenging spirit except to pay restitution for the crime.
“In Shona there is a saying that ‘kugona ngozi kuiripa’ which means the best way to deal with the avenging spirit is to appease it, giving in to its demands. The spirit of the dead person may possess a member of the offender’s family and pronounce its demands for settling the crime,” he said.
He further stressed the importance of the mother figure in a person’s life.
“A mother carries a child in her stomach for nine months during which period they share a lot and are connected by a umbilical cord. What the mother eats the baby also eats, they share antibodies, you name it. There is an intimate biological linkage that is unbreakable yet a father just donates sperm only. This is why culture holds the mother more important than the father,” he said.
He said when this intimate bond between a mother and a child is disturbed it is not a laughing matter but restoration needs to be done so that the child finds peace. Mothers are an important force and perhaps that is why there is always talk of a mother tongue, mother earth, mother nature, and why Africa is called the motherland.
