Mr. Maponga, royalty cannot simply be dished out like GD6s!

Self-proclaimed Pan-Africanist Joshua Maponga recently floated a bizarre proposal: Zimbabwe should transition into a monarchical state.

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Even worse, he suggested crowning President Emmerson Mnangagwa as king under the romanticized banner of a reincarnated Munhumutapa.

It was tempting to dismiss the notion as mere sycophantic theater.

Yet, in a country where political praise-singing frequently masquerades as cultural revivalism, such reckless distortions of history cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged.

If Maponga and his co-thinkers genuinely wish to talk about restoring an ancient empire, then they must be forced to reckon with the actual historical, totemic, and genealogical realities of African statecraft.

You do not simply wake up, perform political acrobatics, and award a presidential politician an imperial crown that belonged to sacred ancestral dynasties.

If Zimbabwe were ever to reestablish either the Mutapa Empire or the Great Zimbabwe Kingdom, the rules of entitlement are rigid, well-documented, and strictly hereditary.

The Crown of Mutapa was founded around the 1430s by Nyatsimba Mutota, who migrated northwards from Great Zimbabwe into the Dande and Zambezi basins.

The royal houses (dzimba) that inherited this imperial throne carried specific ancestral totems—historically Nzou Samanyanga or Moyo—and established a sophisticated system of collateral succession (bavapa).

Succession was never an autocratic free-for-all; it rotated among senior sub-houses descended from Mutota, including the Chimbangu and Kandeya chieftaincies of the Mt Darwin and Dande regions, the Chirupata lines, and the Mukombwe royal house that consolidated the empire in the late 17th century.

Crucially, no ruler could claim the title of Mwenemutapa without formal spiritual sanction from the paramount mhondoro (royal spirit mediums) of the land, such as Mutota, Nyamhita Nehanda, and Karuva.

Similarly, if one looks at the throne of Great Zimbabwe, entitlement flows through an entirely different yet equally sacred royal lineage.

As Great Zimbabwe’s political center shifted, its authority was carried forward by the Torwa Kingdom and subsequently consolidated by the Changamire Dynasty of the Rozvi Empire.

The true royal crown of this era belongs exclusively to the Moyo Ndizvo lineage—descendants of Changamire Dombo and Tohwechipi.

Today, the rightful living heirs to this imperial legacy are embodied in recognized traditional chieftaincies such as Chief Jiri of Bikita, alongside the Rozvi lines of Chief Dyumbekuena and Chief Nhema.

The sacred ground itself remains under the historical custodianship of senior Karanga houses like Chief Mugabe and Chief Charumbira.

When measured against these authentic historical lineages, President Emmerson Mnangagwa does not fit into any imperial equation.

His lineage traces back through the Shumba Murambwi totem, rooted in the Chivi and Mberengwa regions.

While his family history carries its own localized traditional heritage, it holds zero genealogical or totemic claim to the royal thrones of either the Mutapa Empire or the Changamire Rozvi state.

Fabricating a mythical “reincarnated Munhumutapa” label to coat modern political authority in ancestral legitimacy is not only historical fraud, but an insult to the traditional institutions Maponga claims to champion.

Political power acquired through republican elections or constitutional office cannot be retroactively converted into bloodline monarchy.

Furthermore, traditional African statecraft understood the dangerous temptation of weaponizing sacred spiritual symbols for temporal power.

The mhondoro spirit mediums were not rubber stamps for political ambition; they were the ultimate custodians of constitutional restraint within traditional society.

By stripping the title of Munhumutapa from its sacred hereditary context and attempting to drape it around a sitting president, proponents of this monarchical pivot commit a double offense: they profane indigenous spirituality while attempting to bypass democratic accountability.

In ancient times, a ruler who attempted to manufacture a royal bloodline out of thin air would have been swiftly cast out by the spirit mediums and the council of elders alike.

In fact, if Maponga and his choir of praise-singers are so eager to comb through ancestral totems to find a legitimate king, they might want to watch what they wish for.

Being of the Nzou Samanyanga totem—the very mutupo of the founding Mutapa kings—I suppose I should start measuring myself for a crown.

By the unyielding rules of actual historical succession—the very rules Maponga so conveniently ignored—my bloodline puts me far ahead in the royal queue than President Emmerson Mnangagwa could ever hope to manufacture.

But unlike Maponga, I prefer to leave ancient empires in the history books where they belong.

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