Let’s get this straight: the Mutapa Empire was not in Masvingo and ED has no claim to the throne

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

As Zimbabwe charts its path forward, we are treated to a bizarre display of historical revisionism. 

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A viral thread on X, allegedly written by an individual calling himself a “Prince of the Mutapa Kingdom,” makes an audacious proposal. 

It suggests that as President Emmerson Mnangagwa approaches retirement, he should be crowned the supreme Emperor of a restored Mutapa Empire. 

The author frames this pitch as a return to our spiritual roots. 

However, when we strip away the grandiose rhetoric, we are left with a bankrupt argument that weaponizes traditional history to massage the president’s ego. 

Almost everything about this proposal is historically inaccurate and entirely irrelevant to the reality of pre-colonial statehood.

The core of this viral proposal relies on a fundamental ignorance of Zimbabwe’s pre-colonial past. 

The author eagerly conflates the Mutapa Empire with the Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe to claim that the President, as a son of Masvingo Province, carries a hereditary royal bloodline to the Mutapa throne because Masvingo is the ancestral cradle. 

This is historical nonsense of the highest order. 

The Mutapa Empire and Great Zimbabwe were distinct geopolitical entities existing in entirely different eras and geographic regions. 

Mutapa was established in the northern plateau and the Zambezi Valley by Nyatsimba Mutota, a prince who migrated away from Great Zimbabwe in search of salt. 

The heart of the Mutapa state was never in Masvingo. 

It was located hundreds of kilometers to the north, in areas like modern-day Mount Darwin and the Zambezi escarpment – stretching into Mozambique.

Claiming a hereditary right to the Mutapa crown by pointing to a Masvingo birthright is completely inaccurate.

Furthermore, President Mnangagwa has absolutely no genealogical claim to the Mutapa lineage. 

Authentic traditional leadership in Shona culture, known as ushe, is governed by strict, locally recognized kinship lineages and collateral succession. 

It is not based on retroactive military promises discovered on social media centuries after the fact. 

The claim that an ancestral military promise to a “Shumba” general makes the President a rightful heir to the Mutapa throne is a total fabrication. 

A military title in a state’s standing army does not translate into a hereditary claim to a sacred dynastic throne. 

President Mnangagwa does not belong to the royal Mutapa dynasty, and no amount of creative genealogy can place him in that lineage. 

​The writer acknowledges that the president hails from Masvingo, yet history clearly places the Mutapa Empire hundreds of kilometers away to the north. 

This geographic contradiction alone completely dismantles any claim he could possibly have to that throne.

President Mnangagwa is a politician in a modern republic, not an imperial heir waiting in the wings.

We must also dismantle the absurd notion of declaring the entire modern territory of Zimbabwe as a new Mutapa Empire. 

If the writer of this post genuinely wants to revert to the pre-colonial order, he cannot cherry-pick history. 

He cannot ignore the historical fact that by the time European colonialism arrived, the Mutapa Empire was long dead. 

It had already been decisively defeated and supplanted by the Rozvi State under the leadership of Changamire Dombo. 

Following the Rozvi era, the Ndebele state led by King Mzilikazi arrived and ultimately defeated the Rozvi. 

Therefore, portraying Mutapa as the sole, natural pre-colonial authority over the entire country is a lie.

If the proponents of this imperial retirement plan want to resurrect pre-colonial states, they cannot simply pretend the Mutapa Empire ruled unchallenged over the entire plateau until the late nineteenth century. 

To truly bring back the pre-colonial order, one would logically have to resuscitate both the Rozvi and Ndebele empires as well. 

The Mutapa state did not rule over the entire modern territory of Zimbabwe. 

It was the Rozvi state that unified much of the plateau, only to be succeeded by the Ndebele state in the west and southwest. 

Forcing a singular, resurrected Mutapa identity onto a modern nation-state completely erases the historical realities of the Rozvi and Ndebele states. 

It is a highly selective reading of history designed purely to fit a modern political agenda.

Ultimately, this social media campaign is not a serious cultural movement but a highly creative public relations trial balloon. 

It tries to solve a modern, secular political problem regarding succession, immunity, and the transition of power by dressing it up in the sacred robes of tradition. 

By attempting to bypass the constitutional limits of our modern republic under the guise of “returning to our sacred roots,” the proponents of this imperial plan show a profound disrespect for our actual history. 

Our pre-colonial history is rich, complex, and dynamic, and it should not be treated as a political playground where dynasties are invented to flatter a sitting president. 

Let us keep our history accurate and our politics grounded in the real world. 

The Mutapa Empire was not in Masvingo, and President Mnangagwa has no claim to its throne.

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