Shava Totem information

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Shava Totem" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Shava is an animal totem variant of the Mhofu/Mpofu, which is the name of the eland deer-like animal in Southern Africa. Shava is often associated with fair skin, resembling the colors of the Eland, or becoming self-sufficient, such as by hunting or fishing.

Shava is associated with the Vahera tribe, descendants of Mbiru, who lived at Gombe Hill in present-day Buhera, East of Zimbabwe. The Vahera are Shona, a collective name for many tribes who lived in present-day Zimbabwe before Mzilikazi settled there with his Ndebele people. The Ndebele use the name Mpofu in Matabeleland. The Vahera people claim that they came from Guruuswa,^[1] an area North of the Zambezi River, in Uganda and Sudan. Another claim is that they entered Zimbabwe via Mozambique, where some of their daughters bred with foreign traders along the coast, resulting in light brown skin tone. That light brown is called shava in Shona.

Buhera means "Hera people".