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Claude Maredza Correspondent
This place is very close to Great Zimbabwe monuments, perhaps just 60 kilometres from Great Zimbabwe as the crow flies showing that these Moyo Chirandu “Dumas” felt they were close enough to the national capital so there was no need to move any further.

There is a Duma office at Nyika Growth Point even today as we speak giving ample evidence, credence and sustainability to this narrative.

So clearly we now know how we ended up with the VaRozvi, Dhewa and VaDuma in the Moyo Chirandu group inclusive of the origins of the description Moyondizvo/Mondizvo.

As clearly described, these were mere descriptions that were a result of given circumstances and they do not in any way make the Rozvi’s or Dumas or Dhewas any different from each other as clearly they are the same Moyo Chirandus described variously by the different circumstances they found themselves in as they moved along with the epoch of living even if clearly they are one and the same people from one and the same original source.

Perhaps there are two branches of the Moyo Chirandus which need to be mentioned individually and whose origins need clarity.

These are Moyo Sinyoro and Tumbare.

The point to note is that even if these two branches of Moyos became assimilated into Moyo Chirandu, so to speak, they were still assimilated on the basis of the original Moyo Chirandu. Therefore, their assimilation into Moyo Chirandu still remains anchored on the original Moyo Chirandu, making Moyo Chirandu the only origin of any Moyo out there and also making Moyo Chirandu one totem whatever and how many ever variations people might come up with and also inclusive of the assimilated branches like Tumbare and Moyo Sinyoro.

In the case of Moyo Sinyoro, what happened was that some Portuguese traders came inland from the Mozambican coast in search of gold and travelled as far inland as the place we now call Njanja in Buhera.

One of these Portuguese traders fell sick and he was left behind, bedridden and being taken care of at a Moyo Chirandu chief’s premises in the Njanja area.

This Portuguese man was called Muroro.

It’s not clear whether Muroro was an original Portuguese from Portugal who bore the African name Muroro (a thing which happened a lot because the Africans would give these foreigners various African nicknames based on and describing certain traits or characteristics they might have noticed in a particular foreigner) or he was an African who had been assimilated into the Portuguese culture.

The background to this assimilation is that the Portuguese men were very fond of and hopelessly carnally attracted to black African women to the point of obsession.

But because of racism, they couldn’t get the African women freely without getting the flak from their kith and kin for loving the “backward” African women.

So to sanitise their getting of African women and making their relationships with African women legitimate, they designed a system called assimilation or assimilado.

In this system, selected Africans, both men and women would be groomed to become Portuguese in everything except colour and DNA which were impossible to change.

Once these Africans had mustered all Portuguese mannerisms, such Africans would be described as Africans who had assimilated everything Portuguese that they were now considered to be Portuguese.

In the case of black African women, the policy of assimilation therefore qualified them to be Portuguese enough to become girlfriends or wives of the actual Portuguese men.

Thus the policy of assimilation that way made it possible for the Portuguese men to get the black African women they so desired without any reprisals of being accused of loving kaffirs as these kaffirs were no longer kaffirs as the policy of assimilation had baptised them into being Portuguese!

This is really crazy because this is all a result of racism. They just could not be human enough to understand that love and attraction of an amorous nature has nothing to do with anybody’s skin colour. And in their crazy heads they thought they would have really created a Portuguese person in this assimilated African to the extent of them psychologically feeling that this assimilated African was now Portuguese enough to be a wife of an actual Portuguese man.

That’s pathetically psychotic but that’s just the way racists are.

An example of the policy of assimilation at work in recent times is of that famous Mozambican footballer Eusebio. He had become Portuguese by assimilation to the extent that he even relocated to Portugal and that’s where he lived for the rest of his life until he died a few back.

So Muroro could have been an original Portuguese man or an assimilated black African Portuguese one.

Whichever way, he was clearly divorced from our Zimbabwean way of life thus he was considered a rank outsider who was not at all au fait with the Zimbabwean way of living, making him decidedly Portuguese.

The rest of his Portuguese entourage moved on in search of gold and left Muroro by this Moyo Chirandu chief’s premises thinking that Muroro would die.

But Muroro didn’t die. Instead he recovered. But by the time he recovered, one of the daughters of the Moyo Chirandu chief was pregnant.

So another headache arose regarding what mutupo (totem) this child would be given seeing as this Muroro was Portuguese and the whole mutupo thing probably didn’t mean much to him.

The elders decided that this child was the mother’s child. As such he would be given the mother’s totem, Moyo.

But they also decided not to call this child Moyo Chirandu.

They had heard the Portuguese addressing each other using the term “sinore” or “senhor”, which is the equivalent of sir or mister in Portuguese.

In their mis-pronounciation of this Portuguese term, sinore, the Africans pronounced it as “Sinyoro”.

So the elders decided that this child’s mutupo would be Moyo Sinyoro and not Moyo Chirandu.

This decision was also based on the elders’ reasoning that if they made this child a Moyo Chirandu, he would one day rise and claim rulership of the Moyo Chirandus which he clearly didn’t deserve.

So to solve that possibility in the future, they differentiated his Moyoness by putting the Sinyoro bit instead of the Chirandu bit at the end of Moyo thereby putting paid to any possible future claims of the Moyo Chirandu chieftainship and royalty by this Moyo Sinyoro child.

This is how and why we have the Moyo Sinyoros’ today who never ever refer to themselves as Moyo Chirandu as already explained.

But the point to note well is that even this very Moyo Sinyoro mutupo given to this first Moyo Sinyoro child originated from his mother who was a Moyo Chirandu again reinforcing the original argument we made which is that even the assimilated Moyos such as Moyo Sinyoro still find their origins in Moyo Chirandu.

We can therefore safely say the Moyo Sinyoros are nephews and nieces of the Moyo Chirandus who got the totem Moyo Sinyoro through the events that have been narrated above.

Claude Maredza is a member of the Moyo Chirandu (Duma) Dynasty, specifically of Norumedzo Village (KuHarurwa), Bikita, Masvingo, Zimbabwe and is in fact a Crown Prince of the Norumedzo Moyo Chirandu (Duma) Kingdom Royalty. He has doctoral level formal education and everything else below that besides other professional qualifications. He is also a well-known published author and film writer/producer/director/actor. His contact details are: Email; [email protected]; phone: +263 772 382 099.