Spirit and Matter: The Materiality of Mozambican Prophet Healing

Abstract

As sufferers and healers, the prophets (aneneri) of central Mozambique engage in complex relationships with the Christianised spirits who possess them. In these relationships, and the transformative processes and activities involved, particular material items play a central role. The objects that figure in Mozambican prophet healing, including clothing, bibles, mirrors, certain foods, church and hospital buildings and flags, materialise powerful social forces of the past and present; in the hands of prophet healers and their patients, they provide a means to direct these forces toward the resolution of suffering at the level of the body and the community. As they are made, held, worn, inhabited and utilised, these items in turn construct the subjectivities of those who wield them. This article addresses the material culture of the prophets as potent objects engaged by powerful subjects towards the work of bodily and social transformation.

Notes

^*Funding for the research upon which this article is based was provided by the Social Science Research Council and IIE/Fulbright and would not have been possible without the diligence and generosity of my research assistant Pedro Rogrigues. I would like to thank the organisers of and participants in the ‘Hybrids and Partnerships’ conference at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford, where an earlier version of the paper was presented in September 2005. I would also like to thank Lyn Schumaker and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable insights.

¹ D. Miller, ‘Materiality: An Introduction’, in D. Miller (ed.), Materiality (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2006), p. 38.

² M. Newitt, A History of Mozambique (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 512.

³ J.P. Borges Coelho, ‘Tete, 1900–1926: O Estabelecimento de uma Reserva de Mão-de-Obra’, Arquivo, 10 (October 1991), pp. 103–132.

⁴ O. Juergensen, ‘Peasants on the Periphery: A Geohistory of Rural Change in Mozambique, c 1960–1992’ (Ph.D. Thesis, Queen's University, 1996), pp. 63–121.

⁵ O. Juergensen, ‘Repatriation as Peacebuilding and Reconstruction: The Case of Northern Mozambique, 1992–1995’, New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper No. 31, UNHCR, International Development Research Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa (2000), pp. 19–20.

⁶ H. Englund, From War to Peace on the Mozambique-Malawi Borderland (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2002), p. 76.

⁷ Juergensen, ‘Peasants on the Periphery’, pp. 270, 275, based on UNHCR data.

⁸ Ibid., p. 3; C. Barnett, ‘Mozambican Refugees in Malawi: Livelihoods and their Impact on the Natural Resource Base’ (unpublished paper, ITAD Ltd., 2003).

⁹ Englund, From War to Peace on the Mozambique-Malawi Borderland, p. 76.

¹⁰ Juergensen, ‘Peasants on the Periphery’, pp. 275, based on UNHCR data.

¹¹ Juergensen, ‘Repatriation as Peacebuilding and Reconstruction’, p. 18; Englund, From War to Peace on the Mozambique-Malawi Borderland, p. 49.

¹² ACNUR (UNHCR) and PNUD (UNDP), ‘Perfis de Desenvolvimento Distrital, Distrito de Angónia, Província de Tete’, (1996), p. 4; INE (Instituto Nacional de Estatística), II Recenseamento Geral da População e Habitação 1997: Resultados Definitivos. Província de Tete (1999).

¹⁴ Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique, Maputo, Letter from Governador do Districto Militar de Tete (Bettencourt) to Secretária Geral do Governo da Província de Moçambique, 5 March 1908.

¹³ E. Carvalho, A Igreja Africana no Centro da Sua História (Luanda, Núcleo-Centro de Publicações Cristãs, 1995), pp. 95–106.

¹⁵ Quoted in Newitt, A History of Mozambique, p. 479.

¹⁶ Biblioteca da Residência dos Padres Jesuítas, Maputo, Relatórios Annuais da Missão de São Francisco Xavier de Lifidzi, 1945, 1953–1955, 1958–1963, plus statistics from Latin versions of reports, 1946–53, 1958, 1963.

¹⁷ A. Garcia, Missão da Zambézia (Braga, Editorial A.O., 1979), p. 69.

¹⁸ A. Helgesson, Church, State, and People in Mozambique (Uppsala, Swedish Institute of Missionary Research, 1994), pp. 280–6.

¹⁹ Biblioteca da Residência dos Padres Jesuítas, Maputo, Relatórios Annuais da Missão de São Francisco Xavier de Lifidzi, 1945, 1953–1955, 1958–1963, plus statistics from Latin versions of reports, 1946–53, 1958, 1963; Relatórios Annuais da Missão do Imaculado Coração de Maria de Fonte Boa, 1954–1963, plus statistics from Latin version of reports, 1946–1964.

²⁰ Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique, Maputo. Inventário dos Relatórios das Inspecções Ordinários, 1936–1974, Circunscrição do Angónia-1957 (Caixa 59), ‘Relatório da Inspecção Ordinário a Circunscrição da Angónia, Realizado pelo Inspector Administrativo Manuel Metelo Raposo de Liz Teixeira’, 1957.

²¹ Biblioteca da Residência dos Padres Jesuítas, Maputo, Relatórios Annuais da Missão do Imaculado Coração de Maria de Fonte Boa (1957), p. 4.

²² I. Lamba, ‘The Cape Dutch Reformed Church Mission in Malawi: A Preliminary Historical Examination of Its Educational Philosophy and Application, 1889–1931’, History of Education Quarterly, 24 (1984), pp. 373–92; R. Stuart, ‘Anglican Missionaries and a Chewa “Dini”: Conversion and Rejection in Central Malawi’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 10, 1 (1979), pp. 46–69.

²³ C. Chakanza, An Annotated List of Independent Churches in Malawi (Zomba, Malawi, Department of Religious Studies, Chancellor College, 1980); C. Chakanza, ‘Towards an Interpretation of Independent Churches in Malawi’, Africa Theological Journal, 11, 2 (1982), pp. 133–42.

²⁴ C. Chakanza, ‘Religious Independency in Malawi: The Catholic Church, a Negative Case’, African Ecclesial Review, 24, 3 (1982), pp. 154–5.

²⁵ M.G. Marwick, ‘Another Modern Anti-Witchcraft Movement in East Central Africa’, Africa, 20, 2 (1950), pp. 100–12; J.M. Schoffeleers, ‘Christ in African Folk Theology: The Nganga Paradigm’, in T. Blakely, W. van Beek and D. Thomson (eds), Religion in Africa (London, James Currey, 1994), pp. 72–88; S. Friedson, Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996).

²⁶ V. Turner, The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University, 1967); V. Turner, The Drums of Affliction (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1968); J. Janzen, Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992); R. van Dijk, R. Reis and M. Spierenburg (eds), The Quest for Fruition through Ngoma: The Political Aspects of Healing in Southern Africa (Oxford, James Currey, 2000).

²⁷ A. Weiner, ‘Cultural Difference and the Density of Objects’, American Ethnologist, 21, 2 (May 1994), pp. 391–403.

²⁸ M. Ferme, The Underneath of Things: Violence, History and the Everyday in Sierra Leone (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001); N.R. Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon: Of Birth Ritual, Medicalization and Mobility in the Congo (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1999).

²⁹ R. Shaw, Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imagination in Sierra Leone (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 7.

³⁰ Ibid., p. 5.

³¹ J. Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 204–6, 219–28.

³² Ibid., p. 225.

³³ Similarly, Dillon-Malone describes participants in a Mutumwa healing church in Zambia massaging the bodies of individuals after possession by the Holy Spirit: C. Dillon-Malone, ‘The “Mutumwa” Churches of Zambia: An Indigenous African Religious Healing Movement’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 14, 3 (1983), p. 216.

³⁴ Jonker describes a similar practice in Zambia: C. Jonker, ‘The Politics of Therapeutic Ngoma: The Zionist Churches of Urban Zambia’, in van Dijk et al. (eds), The Quest for Fruition through Ngoma (Oxford, James Currey, 2000), pp. 117–32.

³⁵ J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier, Volume 1 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 192.

³⁶ Ibid., 228–9.

³⁷ I. Hofmeyr, ‘Jonah and the Swallowing Monster: Orality and Literacy on a Berlin Mission Station in the Transvaal’, Journal of Southern African Studies (JSAS), 17, 4 (1991), p. 644.

³⁸ P. Harries, ‘Missionaries, Marxists and Magic: Power and the Politics of Literacy in South-East Africa’, JSAS, 27, 3 (September 2001), pp. 418–21. Lambek, Owusu-Ansah, and Ferme discuss the use of the Koran as a medicinal object in Islamic healing, including the wearing and ingesting of its text: M. Lambek, ‘Certain Knowledge, Contestable Authority: Power and Practice on the Islamic Periphery’, American Ethnologist, 17 (1990), pp. 23–40; D. Owusu-Ansah, ‘Prayer, Amulets, and Healing’, in N. Levtzion and R. Pouwels (eds), The History of Islam in Africa (Athens, OH, Ohio University Press, 2000); Ferme, The Underneath of Things. Comaroff also notes that South African Zionist healers sometimes apply newspapers or the ash of burnt newspapers to the bodies of afflicted patients: Comaroff, Body of Power, p. 250. Drewal reports that books are an important element in West African Mami Wata shrines, as writing is associated with ‘overseas strangers’: H. Drewal, ‘Mami Wata Shrines: Exotica and the Construction of Self’, in M.J. Arnoldi, C. Geary and K. Hardin (eds), African Material Culture (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1996), pp. 322–3.

³⁹ Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, pp. 185–9.

⁴⁰ A. Richards, ‘A Modern Movement of Witch Finders’, in M. Marwick (ed.), Witchcraft and Sorcery (Baltimore, Penguin Books, 1970 [1935]).

⁴¹ Dillon-Malone suggests a similar lineage for the Mutumwa healing churches of Zambia in ‘The ‘Mutumwa’ Churches’, pp. 206–7; on witch-finding movements in Malawi, see C. Chakanza, Provisional Annotated Chronological List of Witch-finding Movements in Malawi, 1850–1980 (Zomba, Malawi, Dept. of Religious Studies, Chancellor College, 1985).

⁴² J.M. Schoffeleers, ‘The AIDS Pandemic, the Prophet Billy Chisupe, and the Democratization Process in Malawi’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 29, 4 (1999), p. 411.

⁴³ M. Douglas, Purity and Danger (London, Routledge, 1966); Comaroff argues that the following of biblical food taboos by African religious groups is not best interpreted as the shoring up of social boundaries as Douglas (1966) has suggested, but represents African resistance to items perceived as ‘emblematic of the world from which the Zionist wishes to be severed’, that is the world of the coloniser: Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance, pp. 217–9. For example, Sundkler suggests that Zulu Zionists originally eschewed smoking as an act of resistance against being paid for their labour with tobacco: B. Sundkler, Zulu Zion and Some Swazi Zionists (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 44ff, in Comaroff, Body of Power, p. 218.

⁴⁴ Similarly, Shipton describes the complicated relationship between tobacco use and production and Pentecostal Christianity in Kenya: P. Shipton, Bitter Money (Washington, DC, American Anthropological Association, 1989).

⁴⁵ In a similar way, Malaquais discusses architecture, particularly church buildings, as statements of power used by Africans and missionaries in Cameroon in their struggles for control across the twentieth century: D. Malaquais, ‘Building in the Name of God: Architecture, Resistance, and the Christian Faith in the Bamileke Highlands of Western Cameroon’, African Studies Review, 42, 1 (April 1999), pp. 49–78.

⁴⁶ See T. Luedke, ‘Presidents, Bishops, and Mothers: The Construction of Authority in Mozambican Healing’, in T. Luedke and H. West (eds), Borders and Healers: Brokering Therapeutic Resources in Southeast Africa (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2006).

⁴⁷ P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 87–95; J. Fernandez, ‘Emergence and Convergence in Some African Sacred Places’, in S. Low and D. Lawrence-Zuniga (eds), The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture (Malden, MA, Blackwell, 2003), pp. 187–203; Comaroff, Body of Power, pp. 214–5.

⁴⁸ On the ‘dividuality’ of persons in contexts of spirit possession, see J. Boddy, ‘Afterword: Embodying Ethnography’, in M. Lambek and A. Strathern (eds), Bodies and Persons (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998).

⁴⁹ D. Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1987), p. 28.

⁵⁰ Miller, ‘Materiality: An Introduction’, in Miller (ed.), Materialty, p. 9.

⁵¹ W. Keane, ‘Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material Things’, in Miller (ed.), Materialty.