Mbuya Nehanda, or Nehanda Nyakasikana, was a 19th century spirit medium, or svikio of the Zeruru group of the Zimbabwean Mashona people. Nehanda was reputed to be the mhondoro, or ‘Lion Spirit’ of one of the daughters of a paramount leader of the pre-colonial dynasty of Mwane Mutapa. She achieved prominence as one of the principal leaders of the Mashona Rebellion that in 1896 erupted among the occupied peoples of Mashonaland, then Rhodesia, but currently the state of Zimbabwe. In tandem with a male counterpart by the name Gumboreshumba, or ‘Lion’s Foot’, and otherwise known as Kaguvi, she help to motivate and coordinate attacks against isolated white settlements in the hinterland of occupied Mashonaland.

The Mashona Rebellion is an event that became known in the liberation lexicon as the First Chimurenga (struggle, or war), as distinct from the Second Chimurenga which was the iconic guerrilla war of the 1970s that succeeded in toppling white rule, and the so called Third Chimurenga which was dispossession of white landowners in Zimbabwe that occurred throughout the first decade of the 21st century.