NAKED Angels: Patience and Memory
THEY grew up like ordinary village girls in a respectable and morally-upright family, with aspirations to achieve the best in life.
Their father’s job as a school headmaster married to a devout Christian helped mould the young girls into the envy of the village.
For them, the sky was the limit.
Like other children blessed with intelligence, the girls proceeded to Advanced Level and completed courses in nursing and business administration thereafter, a feat a few girls of their time could only dream of.
But today, the twins have fallen from grace.
They are now causing sleepless nights for their parents, community and have set tongues wagging nationwide.
Now in their mid-40s, the heavily built women arepacing up and down the village, donning nothing but their undergarments before youths the same age as their own children and elders, including their 81-year-old father and mother (77).
They call themselves “angels” and at times behave like King David and King Solomon reincarnated.
Imagine full-grown women pacing up and down your home clad in only panties and you are their father, mother, sister, brother or, worse still, one of them is your mother?
It is bizarre, taboo and unthinkable, but fanatic religious female twins Patience and Memory Ncube of Zhombe communal lands have left the nation shell-shocked by walking around their home clad in panties, claiming religious purity from a cult seeking to relive the biblical Garden of Eden.
For the past three months, day in day out, the twins have been wandering around their parents’ home, semi-naked and have been working like Trojan horses, planting trees, cultivating a garden and cleaning up every corner to turn their home into their dreamland — a modern-day Garden of Eden.
The 45-year-old twins deserted their spouses, children and employment after a “calling to serve God” and are now members of a cult that split from the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in 2004, calling itself the Davidic Kingdom of Heaven.
They say they are now waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, who should find them in the “right place”.
Since the cult encourages cleanliness and hard work, the twins sleep at most three hours every night, spending the rest of the time working in their garden, fetching water and cleaning the yard, intermittently singing melodiously and dancing into their dreamland of Eden.
As they perform their various domestic chores, the twin sisters also carry bags of sand and stone and five-litre containers filled with soil to “demonstrate their strength and resilience, as it is considered mandatory by our church”.
Not surprisingly, their shoulders are now heavily scarred from carrying the heavy loads.
Patience and Memory are not ordinary village women; they are professionals who sacrificed their jobs to serve God. Born to headmaster Mr Regis Ncube and his wife Aidah, the twins attended Regina Mundi Secondary School in Gweru up to A-Level.
Patience is a State registered nurse who left Zimbabwe in the late 1990s to further her studies in the United Kingdom, but returned home in 2004 after the “calling” to serve God.
She was married to one Crispen Hama with whom she had three children who are now in primary school in Kwekwe.
Memory holds a Diploma in Business Administration and worked for Bulawayo City Council as an administrative clerk before resigning “after the calling”. She never married but has a school-going child.
The twins’ siblings — two brothers and five sisters — are currently living in the UK.
“We are strictly following heavenly scriptures and have nothing to do with earthly things. We have no surnames because in the Bible everyone was called by his or her first name. This is a serious calling to the work of God. We live like Adam and Eve did. Any man who feels lust for us because of our semi-nakedness is evil. We seek holiness. Our father and mother have accepted us as we are and we are very normal people. When Jesus comes, some of you will be found on the wrong side," said Patience.
Asked about their semi-nakedness, they quoted the Bible to stress that the world will revert to the Old Testament when Jesus eventually comes. “Our life is centred on Genesis 2 verse 25, Ezekiel 37 verse 24, Isaiah 20 verses 2-4 and Isaiah 27 verses 2 and 3. Anyone who reads that will understand our actions,’’ said Patience.
The New Jerusalem Bible explains the scriptures as follows: Genesis 2:25 — “Now, both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame before each other.”
Ezekiel: 37:24 — “. . . My servant David will reign over them, one shepherd for all; they will follow my judgments, respect my laws and praise them...”
Isaiah 20: 2-4 — “. . . at that time Yahweh spoke through Isaiah, son of Amoz and said, ‘Go, undo the sackcloth round your waist and take the sandals off your feet.’ And he did so, walked about, naked and barefoot. Yahweh then said as my servant Isaiah has been walking about naked and barefoot for the last three years as a sign and portent for Egypt and Kush, so the King of Assyria will lead the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, young and old naked and barefoot, their buttocks bared, to the shame of Egypt.”
Isaiah 27: 2-3 — “That day, sing of the splendid vineyard! I, Yahweh, am its guardian, from time to time, I water it so that no harm befalls it, I guard it night and day.”
In an interview at the family home in Ndhlalambi Village, Mr Ncube — who is also the village head — said he had been excommunicated from the SDA church because of his children’s errant behaviour.
“They are my children and the second pair of my twins. Their elder twin sisters are fine. My children are not mad, this is the work of the devil. My children are possessed by evil spirits. Psychiatric tests have shown that they are normal.
“Patience is the one who brought this idea from Britain and converted her sister who immediately quit her job with Bulawayo City Council. They still want Memory back at work, but these girls will not listen.
“Ever since they started this religion in Bulawayo, they have behaved this way. At first they were putting on shorts and sleeveless tops but one day they woke up in their undergaments only. I have tried to convince them to put on clothes, but they respond by quoting the Bible to me. They are also recruiting some of my grandchildren, but I am praying hard — day and night — for them to return to SDA," said a visibly worried Mr Ncube.
He said Patience and Memory no longer called him dad or father, insisting they recognised only God as their father.
“They now call me and their mother by our first names. They say they have no surname because heaven has no place for earthly names. There are some cult members who come to join them from Kwekwe and pray with them, but the twins do not go to Kwekwe.
“I got to know about this new religion in 2006 when they were arrested in Bulawayo and jailed.
After their release, they went missing but were later located by police in a bush, with some children they had recruited and were almost starving.
“I went to collect them and brought them back home. This is how far their religion has developed, but I have a feeling one day they will come back to SDA. In short, they are not mad.
“They cook for me and serve me food. They have developed this home. They water and work in the garden every day and every night. They clean the toilets and sleep for about three hours a night," said Mr Ncube.
Patience and Memory have since been arrested by police for indecent exposure and are expected to appear in court soon. Officer-in-charge (crime) at Zhombe Police Station Inspector Oscar Tuna said the two were being charged under Section 74 of the Criminal Law (Amendment and Codification) Act.
“These are very normal women from a well-up family but who belong to a cult that breaks the law in terms of their dress code.
“The law in question says anyone who indecently exposes himself or herself or engages in any other indecent conduct which causes offence to any person in or near a public place or in a private place within the view or any such other person, will have committed a level five offence," said Insp Tuna.
He said the twins have a history of leading their cult to disrupt work at a bank in Bulawayo in 2006 before they cast away their clothes.
Whatever the ideology, the cult brings into question the issue of religion and religiosity — the belief and the art of executing the belief.
