FOUNDER of Mhondoro Dreams Productions and organiser of Nyamatsatse Festival, Klara Ana Rosa, visualises a world in which equality is rooted from a Godly understanding of creation that men and women are inseparable and are equal.
Among many of the roles of women is to keep the family healthy, educated and good natured for a brighter future.
As a traditional practitioner, Rosa claims she has further expanded her knowledge and capabilities for connecting souls to their spiritual homes.
During the last edition of Nyamatsatse festival in the capital, a day was dedicated to raise awareness to the cause or importance of understanding spiritualism.
NewsDay Weekender caught up with Rosa and below are excerpts from the conversation.
Who is Klara Ana Rosa?
Klara Ana Rosa is a multi-talented artist, musician, writer, actor, storyteller and director. I am also a ceremonialist, the founder of Mhondoro Dreams Productions, a company and school for the sacred arts. We do a lot of things, and primarily we are committed to decolonisation of the spirit.
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The Nyamatsatse Festival’s first edition was produced by Mhondoro Dreams Productions, and it is a seven-day festival for enlightenment, decolonisation of the spirit, all of the arts, ideas, mythical and magical realities.
The festival is a celebration of the stars and we are all stars. Reconnection to the stars and every year we have a mythological theme.
Last year our founding myth was the story of the human spirit being broken into pieces, the pieces being scattered all over the world, and us now coming together to bring together the pieces of the human spirit.
We had seven days of performances, workshops, presentations, and a bira that finished off the whole process where we brewed beer for the occasion.
The festival also celebrates all forms of spirituality and recognises that human knowledge is a spiritual experience. It also celebrates Zimbabwe as a spiritual epicentre in the globe.
In the future, as the festival grows, we hope to get more and more people from outside of the country who will come here to experience the magic of Zimbabwe in the context of a magical festival.
Nyamatsatse fest’s role on women empowerment
Connecting to the spirit of the woman, the female principle, the goddess is one of the most urgent things that we need to do as humanity today. Every problem that we face in some way is a result of our disconnection from the spirit of the woman.
This is true for both women and men, as both men and women are born of women and all of us have both male and female inside of us.
Poverty, authoritarianism, our lack of respect for the earth and therefore crises of water, food shortages and pollution go back to our disconnection from the woman, meaning the one who gives life.
At some point, as humanity, we decided to respect that which destroys life, war, violence and weapons more than that which gives life, birth, beauty, creativity and art in all of its forms.
This year’s Nyamatsatse festival will be based on a myth that addresses all of this, and returns us to the voice of the woman, the voice of creation.
The foreign connection
Most of our international audiences have been in Poland and that is where my personal largest audience is, and if I may be proud, I have done a lot in the past years to connect Poland and Zimbabwe.
NZARA, a Polish-Zimbabwean full-length movie, is one of our success stories. Slavic culture (Polish people are Slavs) has a deep appreciation for beauty, spirituality and culture, and so many things that seem cumbersome to explain in English, are readily understood in Poland.
I believe in African culture, yes, I am a Pan-Africanist and Slavic culture (and a pan-Slavicist) have a lot in common. A lot of hearts for each other, we are all people who focus on humanity and the heart first.
I hope that as the Nyamatsatse festival grows, this connection will grow as well. As for other international attention as Nyamatsatse expands, I hope we gain a larger international audience, including from the West, like the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Western Europe, among other countries.
Our experience last year taught us that we have mostly a regional draw, and Nyamatsatse became a movement for people within the region to find themselves again. Our South African delegation was powerful.
Success and challenges
The fact that we managed to pull it all together, that it happened I am so grateful. We planted a seed. We are very grateful to all our supporters and the people who made it happen both in and outside of Zimbabwe.
The challenges were huge, and they still are, but we pray that the seed that we planted grows into a big and beautiful tree.
I was very moved by how Nyamatsatse festival was received as a first of its kind cooking together all kinds of mediums in order to create a feeling above all.
That is what people came away with — a feeling of hope, a feeling of lightness, a feeling of coming back to ourselves.
A feeling of love and celebration. Ultimately, the stars and the people were all happy, and I am very grateful for all of that.
Last word
Spirit of the woman has been tragically removed from the original story of Christianity as well. Few people know that not only was Mary Magdalene Jesus’s partner, but she was in many ways, possibly the leader of his mission.
Jesus aimed to return the Goddess to her rightful place in Judaism, originally, Yahweh had a wife, Asherah, who was equally respected in the temple — even in the temple of Solomon.
The fact that Christianity is presented as somehow anti-traditional culture, or that the true story of the feminine in Christianity has been deliberately erased, builds “Faux-Christian” societies that are based on lies.
