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trap, it had an owner. The rules were very clear. If you stole a hunter’s buck from a trap, your stomach just started swelling up because hunters had certain medicines or spells to stop people from stealing their catch.
Until you confess your crime, the abdomen would continue to grow and grow until you could not breathe. But if you quickly confessed, the hunter would come and remove the bad spell from you, anokuroyonora, and you got better. Then you confessed the sin of stealing in front of everyone. You paid back with a goat or something equivalent to the buck.  But if you did not confess the crime of stealing from your neighbour, you would surely die.
That is what happened to Muranganwa many years ago. I never saw Muranganwa but we all knew that the grave hidden behind the thick thorny bushes near the big granite rocks belonged to him.
He stole the buck caught in another hunter’s trap and failed to confess in time. Muranganwa died. Whenever we passed by that bush, my grandmother Mbuya VaMandirowesa pointed to the grave and said, the man lying over there had the hands of a baboon, ruoko rwegudo, meaning Muranganwa could steal like a baboon. 
Baboons did not work. They survived by raiding people’s fields.
Mbuya used to say, there were some people who were just born thieves. They stole without shame. In life, muhupenyu, there were people like that. They knew that stealing something you have not worked for is not done. Hazviitwe.
But such people often just stole regardless of what everyone else in the village said. In the case of Muranganwa his suffering happened soon after consuming the buck that he had stolen.
We used to shiver and fear that we, too, might be possessed with the spirit of stealing whenever we passed by Muranganwa’s grave. In those days there were not as many graves in the villages as they are now.
It was just the bad side of human nature to be possessed by the spirit of stealing, shavi rekuba. There was the spirit possession to do with hunting, shavi rekuvhima, witchcraft, shavi rekuroya; and in women there was the sprit to bed many men, shavi rehupombwe, which was often inherited from your aunt. Mbuya said we were lucky to have escaped all the mashavi, including the one to like men too much.  Because once you are possessed with a shavi spirit, you cannot escape from it.
Another village man called Machongwe, meaning The Rooster, was possessed by the spirit of stealing and people simply accepted that he carried this bad side of human nature. Raive gororo chairo. He was also a good hunter.
Early in the morning you saw him with his troop of dogs going up the Save River valley past Dengedza and all the way to the Mbire and Hwedza mountains, trapping bucks and elands. Machongwe simply refused to eat sadza without meat.
Occasionally, he went as far as Buhera and came back with an ox. Because Buhera was far, nobody could track him down. For weeks, our chickens were safe, because Machongwe’s desire for meat was satisfied.
Machongwe could sneak quietly into the village courtyard, walk to the chicken house and grab a rooster, wring its neck and out he went. The next morning, you could see his footprints in the village courtyard. We all knew it was Machongwe’s footprint because he had big cracked feet, maziman’a.
Sabhuku was told and Machongwe was brought to the village court. He admitted guilt and reminded the court about his shavi to steal. Machongwe said when the desire for meat, havi yake, arrived, he would still target another village and steal a chicken. That was just the way Machongwe was.
During one year of hunger, Machongwe could not hunt anything or walk all the way to Dorova or across to Makarara to steal. He was so desperate for meat that he caught and roasted mupurwa, the big lizard-like creature that liked to deprive calves of milk when we used to herd cattle. Another time, they said he ate a feral cat, nhiriri.
His desire for meat was the driving force behind his stealing habit. They said this stealing habit was not his fault. An ancestor renowned for stealing possessed him. Once in a while this great thief ancestor wanted to be remembered during a ceremony to honour his great technique to steal.
In the old days, the thief ancestor could travel very far, enter into someone’s kraal, spray his medicinal spell on the cows and at least two of them followed him all the way back to his village.
Upon seeing the cattle, his wife, grandmother and others ululated and celebrated his Great Ancestor’s shavi to steal.
Machongwe has since died. Fearing to inherit the stealing shavi, Machongwe’s first son quickly became a serious follower of the Apostolic Faith. He prayed that his sons may not receive the same talent to steal. But God did not hear his prayer because Machongwe’s grandson Addmore inherited it. As a young boy, he was known for stealing other children’s pfimbi, the wild fruit hidden under the soil to hasten its ripeness. After pfimbi, he graduated to stealing mice from small hunters trap. The mice hunters did not use poisonous spell.
During the rainy season, Addmore stole a goat that belonged to Mbuya Chiseko, a childless widow with nothing other than a few goats and chickens.  At every church meeting, political gatherings, funerals, burial society and village ceremony gatherings, people talked about the theft of Mbuya Chiseko’s goat by Addmore.
They said it was a theft lacking human respect, kuba kusina hunhu. Sabhuku called him to court and the elders ordered him to pay a whole female goat and two chickens to Mbuya Chiseko. After being humiliated too often over his bad shavi, Addmore ran away to Harare and we were all relieved. 
These days, you might spot Addmore at Mbare Musika, standing somewhere near the buses that go to Mutare, Mt Darwin or even Bulawayo. He preys upon the pockets of unsuspecting travellers. You never see him around the buses that come to the village. The other day I was at Mbare buying free-range live chickens and I saw Addmore talking to some of my cousins who sell chickens there. I jokingly told him not to steal from me.
All jokes are true. Addmore laughed and said, “Ah, Tete, I am not a fool. Handina kupusa. The elders said witches should practise their witchcraft far away, so that someone back home can bury them when they die. Muroyi royera kure uwane vanokuviga.”
Mbuya used to say that when a woman is pregnant, she can never know if the baby who comes out is either going to be a witch or a thief. What she meant was that there are some things in human nature we cannot control.
A woman can carry a baby the full nine months, go through all the hard labour of child birth, breast feed this human being and care for him until he is old enough to look after himself.
Then one day, before he reaches adulthood, she discovers that she gave birth to a thief. Because the spirit in this man child is possessed by the spirit of thieving, shavi rekuba.
The same sprit used to possess this girl I went to school with called Lister. She was the daughter of a businessman and she lacked nothing at all.
But she would still sneak out of the classroom at break time on the pretext of going to the toilet. She returned to the dormitories to break into someone else’s trunk to steal a piece of soap, yet her own trunk had several bars. It was an illness. Chirwere.
This stealing habit happens to people even across races and cultures. Even celebrities have been known to steal things they do not need. In the village, such a habit was acknowledged.
There was a ceremony to cleanse the person possessed with the desire to steal. A black goat was bestowed with the shavi then chased away from the village, kutandira. Once that was done, the spirit of stealing never came back to the person again.
Back in the village, we all knew who the thieves were. But people did not steal that often from each other, apart from the odd chicken. Mbuya VaMandirowesa never had a lock for anything. For the kitchen hut, she used a string to keep the door closed.
For the granary, it was the same, she had a sisal rope. Down by the river all the gardens only had gate poles to stop cows and goats from coming in. But we are beginning to lock the doors in the village too, because we are stealing from each other more often. Tavekungobirana with no respect.
How then shall we bring back basic ethics or honouring one’s sweat, ziya revamwe?
As we move and settle more and more in the city, we seem to be losing the sense of accountability to others. Money that should never be stolen is disappearing. Even church people steal. Money for funeral expenses disappears. Bride price money, mombe dzeroora, money to feed orphans, mari yenherera. Hakuna zvinoera. Nothing is sacred anymore.
The desire to steal what is not yours is everywhere.  But on the rare occasion where rules and codes of behaviour still exist, we do not steal for fear of what the ancestors might do.
With so many people struggling to make ends meet, the shavi to steal seems to be lurking along the dark street lights, along the high fences near the electric gates, in the office when everyone is in a meeting and a handbag is left alone with loads of US dollars.
The baboon’s long arm, ruoko rwegudo that my grandmother used to talk about, stretches far into the coffers of everything. Poverty no longer respects culture.
No beer ceremony or black goat will chase it away.  It is just there. Only a return to the cultural positive side of human nature, hunhu, can keep the stealing habit away.

Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic. She holds a PhD in International Relations and is a consultant and director of The Simukai Development Project.