Albinism: a life of ambiguity – a Zimbabwean experience

Abstract

I argue that people with albinism lived in ambiguity. I also assert that the double meaning happened because albinism was linked to water spirits and ascribed/notional celibacy. I also maintain that the biggest obstacle preventing people with albinism from taking full part in Zimbabwean society derives from African traditional religious myths and beliefs, which made them to live in ambiguity. These persist today and stigmatize people with albinism. I also assert that, viewed from the ritual murder and raping context, albinism was believed to bring good health, financial and material wealth, but when examined from the blemish context, people with albinism must be discriminated and killed because they were a curse to the community, for their presence result in natural calamities such as droughts and floods, human, animal and plant diseases and deaths. The research findings were that ambiguity in which people with albinism live was caused by the fact that albinism was linked to water spirits and ascribed celibacy. The research also found that the double meaning of albinism was fuelled by the occult market and a lack of scientific and technological development as well as by poverty and the failure of academic education to produce material prosperity.

Keywords::

• African traditional religion
• albinism
• Christianity
• discrimination
• ritual
• Zimbabwe

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Collis Garikai Machoko

Collis Garikai Machoko is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Huntington University in Canada. He is an Anglican priest who worked as a parish priest in Zimbabwe and Canada and taught at the University of Zimbabwe, Trinity College -University of Toronto, University of Winnipeg, University of Manitoba, and Providence University College. He is an agrologist by profession. He obtained the following degree qualifications all from the University of Zimbabwe: BSc (Hons) agriculture, BA (Hons) religious studies, MA religious studies, DPhil religious studies, and a diploma in systematic theology from Bishop Gaul College in Harare, Zimbabwe.