Feder, Inspiring for Liberation – Legitimizing for Occupation(cf. West 2007:490). He then reported having visions and dreams. Since
he also realized that he was meant to be a healer, he started wandering
around the country healing people. Although he originally had no inter-
est in founding his own church, the Native Land Act of 1913 encouraged
Shembe to buy land which was supposed to be sold to white farmers and
found his own church on the new bought ground. He rented this fertile
land to fellows of his community who could not afford to buy land
(Heuser 2003:128-130). The amaNazaretha church founded by Shembe
survives until today.
When Isaiah Shembe died in 1935, his son Johannes Galilee became his
successor. In 1975, the amaNazaretha Church split into two strands: one
led by the older son Amos Shembe and the other by Isaiah’s grand-son
Londa Shembe. The amaNazaretha Church has today more than 500,000
members (Hexham 1997:220). Gerald West even assumes that it could
be more than one million members (West 2006:157).
Isaiah Shembe probably knew the Bible very well, although it is quite
likely that he was illiterate. Studies, such as the one by West (West 2007),
show that Isaiah Shembe used biblical stories (e.g. Jephtha’s daughter)
together with other narratives to form a new text. How could he have
known the biblical text without having read it? The New Testament
scholar Maarman Samuel Tshehla presumes that Shembe used “Bible
literacy” which is a “form of literacy... characterized by functionally non-
literate people who ‘spell-read’ the Bible” (West 2007:492). Tshehla ex-
plains: “They combine their knowledge of biblical tradition, collected
over the years from sermons and/or public readings of the Bible, with
patient identification of each letter and syllable until each word, phrase
or sentence rings familiar” (Tshehla 2004:184).
This hermeneutical presupposition will shape the following analysis of
some texts or phenomenon related to the Exodus.
Moses is often regarded as a figure of identification for Isaiah Shembe
(Vilakazi, Mthethwa, and Mpanza 1986:39-40; Berner 2006:149;
Sundkler 1948:277). Therefore, I will trace the Moses-figure within the
texts and oral traditions left by Isaiah Shembe.
Gerhardus Oosthuizen wrote in his monograph The Theology of Southern
African Messiah, which mainly contains the hymns of Isaiah Shembe,
that he is “the Moses not only of the Zulu nation but of Africa” (Oost-
huizen 1967:45). There is a chain of argument which has to be followed:
firstly, Oosthuizen explains that in Zulu tradition there is a person called