LEST YOU DID NOT KNOW
Central Mashonaland, the region we today call the Zezuru area, was “colonized” partly by British Methodists and partly by Roman Catholics centred at Chishawasha. The Catholics established a printing press at Chishawasha and through their literature, proved to be much more powerful than the Methodists.
They propagated the doctrine of Zezuru supremacy, “Zezuru tribe” and Zezuru language. The Chishawasha Shona readers then covering the whole primary school range from Sub-standard A to Standard 6 are a familiar sight to all those who attended school even in the 1950s. Through their propaganda, they created a district and a language called Zezuru. By the late 1940s, the so called educated Africans in this district preached nothing but the gospel of the Zezuru supremacy, Zezuru language and Zezuru tribe.
That is your own opinion but as far I understand, the church divided the people rather than uniting them. The Dutch, Catholics, Methodists, Anglicans etc all came in search of converting indigenous people to their religions. The early people were not segmented or fragmented but united by their African traditional Religion and culture and customs.
@HistoryFactou I think the dominion of foreign churches in Zimbabwe during this period showed a huge post-colonial vacancy in cultural identity & unity among Zimbabweans. Churches occupied this vacancy with religious customs when people desperately needed unifying social structures to lean on.
DID YOU KNOW
In early colonial history, the American Methodists took control of Manicaland, produced literature at Old Umtali Mission and propagated the doctrine that the Manyika people were distinct from all the other Shona people, that they were a tribe on their own, that they originally ruled all the other Shona “tribes”. They even went to the extent of calling the Africans in all Manicaland “the Karanga people” and only dropped the name after discovering that the Dutch Reformed Church, that colonized Masvingo Province, had also decided to call their own subjects, the Karanga tribe.
By the late 1940s, the Makoni clan which had never known itself as Manyika but as Vaungwe, had grown to accept that it was part of the “Manyika tribe”. The Jindwi clan of of Zimunya which too had never known itself to be Manyika, was preaching the gospel of Manyikahood, the Bocha clan of Marange had started to do the same and so did every other clan in the territory of the American Methodists.
The lion through instincts knows that this is just a baby and shouldn't eat it. That's the reason it's trying to push it so that if it escapes it gives itself a reason to eat it.