in the belief that certain evil people have raised others from
the dead to work their fields for them.
The form of witch belief varies with the social structure,
as does the relationship of victim and accused, for the points
of friction in a society vary with the form of residence and
economic cooperation (i.e., who lives and works together),
the occasions of competition, and the location of authority.
Injury is thought to come from those with whom one has
quarreled: a co-wife, mother-in-law, half sibling, fellow em-
ployee, rival claimant for inheritance, affine claiming mar-
riage cattle, litigant in court against whom judgment has
been given, or fellow priest. In some societies it is mostly
women, poor men, and juniors who are accused; but in socie-
ties where egalitarian values are stressed the rich man is sus-
pect, as is the successful grower of cash crops who is thought
to have attracted the fertility of his neighbors’ fields to his
own. The one legitimately greater than the commoner (i.e.,
the chief) may covet the cattle of a wealthy stock owner, who
is then accused of some wrongdoing—or so outsiders have
thought.
Again and again during the colonial period, “witch-
finding” movements arose when some prophet would call on
his people to reject evil, to purge themselves of witchcraft
and medicines used for sorcery. Over large regions people in
fact complied, bringing out horns of medicines or other ob-
jects to throw publicly on a pyre and implicitly or explicitly
admitting evil in themselves and expressing goodwill to all.
The bamucapi movement which swept through what are
now Zambia, Malawi, and parts of Zimbabwe and Tanzania
in 1934 was followed by a somewhat similar movement in
much the same area (but with greatest influence in what is
now Tanzania) between 1956 and 1964. Long before these
movements arose, the Xhosa of the eastern Cape frontier had
repeatedly been urged to purify themselves and reject witch-
craft. In 1856 Nongqause, a sixteen-year-old medium, re-
ported to the noted diviner Mhlakaza, her father’s brother,
that the shades had told her they would come to the rescue
of their Xhosa descendants in their long war with whites over
land on the eastern frontier, on condition that the living pu-
rify themselves and kill all their cattle. In the famine that en-
sued, twenty thousand people died. There is no evidence that
such revivalist movements began in the colonial period: They
may well have happened periodically before that, although
certain characteristics of movements in colonial times, nota-
bly millennialism, were related to Christian missionary
teaching.
People are known to confess to the practice of witch-
craft, usually following an accusation and pressure to confess.
One young mother in Pondoland explained to this writer
that her baby had at first refused to nurse because she had
had a witch-lover (who appeared in the form of a young man
she named). The mother had then confessed, complying
with the instructions of the midwives and giving her account
precisely in terms of current beliefs; she was now being
cleansed, and the baby was nursing all right. In some areas
confessions have at times been extracted forcibly (through a
poison ordeal or torture), since the recovery of the victim is
held to depend upon the witch’s confession and subsequent
expression of goodwill toward the victim.
RITUAL, ORDER, AND THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. Analy-
sis of ritual is important in any study of religion, for ritual
enshrines the dogma and values of participants. There is al-
ways a gap between the values expressed and everyday prac-
tice, but ideals and ideas of ultimate reality are embodied in
ritual action. In southern Africa there is constant emphasis
on fertility—of human beings, stock, and fields; on health;
on goodwill between kinsmen and neighbors; on amity
among the ruling men of the region; on respect of juniors
for seniors and the responsibility of seniors toward their de-
pendents; on the continuation of life after death.Order exists in the universe, and the natural and social
orders are felt to be interrelated: As in King Lear, disharmony
in the world of humans is reflected both in the world of phys-
ical elements and in the tempest within a person’s mind—in
madness. If the divine king breaks a taboo, drought or flood
may follow; if the ritual for a widow or a nubile girl is ne-
glected, she may become distraught. Right order is expressed
in traditional custom, and in their essence, rituals—whether
positive action or negative avoidance—express the sacredness
both of physiological processes, that is, menstruation, co-
ition, parturition, and death, and of the approved relation-
ships of men and women, old and young, leaders and follow-
ers. Both family and communal rituals are occasions of
emotion, and the celebrations themselves arouse emotion, as
is obvious to any observer who listens to the drumbeat and
watches the dancing. Rituals, then, channel emotion and
teach the mourner, the adolescent, or the parent what it is
proper to feel. Nyakyusa mourners were required to express
the passion of grief and fear to the men “fighting death” in
the war dance and to widows, mothers, and sisters weeping
violently and smearing themselves with ash and mud; but the
rituals reveal little of the actual experience of the individual.Any understanding of religious experience must come
primarily from what individuals report of their own lives.
Firsthand accounts are meager, but there is evidence that an
awareness of the numinous exists. The talk of priests hints
at their fear of a grove in which a founding hero or chief has
been buried; at a communion meal of living and dead kins-
men, there is a sense that the shades are present and that the
participants find satisfaction in their company; people speak
of the comfort felt in a moment of danger when a man or
woman has called on the shade of a parent or grandparent
and sensed its presence; the fear aroused by a nightmare may
be interpreted as the attack of a witch. Dreams are indeed
the most common experience of the unseen, and so real that
in recording the experiences of southern Africans I often had
to ask, “Were you asleep or awake when this happened?”
Those closest to their shades, and hence most aware of the
numinous, are the hereditary priests, or rainmakers, and di-
viners who have been “called” and who practice as mediums.8660 SOUTHERN AFRICAN RELIGIONS: AN OVERVIEW