Spirit mediums once played a vital role in Shona society. Royal ancestors (mhondoro) living in animals such as lions would travel and possess individuals, just as other ancestors also possessed the living. Mhondoro spirits, however, were inextricably connected with chiefship and, so, with power, authority, and political legitimacy. And chiefs, because of their connections to the spiritual world, were responsible for bringing the rains upon which agriculture and life itself depended. 

The Europeans who intruded into the world in the second half of the nineteenth century scarcely understood African culture and society. Their pretensions to control came crashing down in the massive revolt led by mediums like Nehanda and Kagubi. Seven decades later, they would be remembered in the revolutionary war that ended colonialism and white supremacy in Southern Rhodesia.