African leadership and the kind of reality of the spirit world

Hermen Kroesbergen

doi:10.4102/hts.v76i2.5846

Abstract

Leadership in Africa is inextricably connected to the spirit world. Leaders may be chosen through elections or other human processes, but ultimately, they are seen as appointed by God. Leaders may base their decisions upon science or intuition, but ultimately, they let themselves be inspired by revelations from the spiritual realm. Yet, what is meant by the spirit world in this respect? In this article, a new way is explored for investigating what references to the spirit world mean. Instead of discussing which theoretical concept applies to the kind of reality spirits have, or what analogy fits spirits, I demonstrate that we can discover what it means to speak of the spirit world by investigating what we already know about it before theoretical labels and comparisons. Such a Wittgensteinian approach in line with the re-emerging brand of ethnographically informed philosophy of religion enhances our understanding of what kind of reality the spirit world has. If you see leadership as being empowered by the spirit world, this is not a choice, option or interpretation, but you cannot see it any other way. Contribution: This article contributes to a better understanding of the kind of reality that the spirit world has, in particular in an African context. The topic of leadership in Africa is used here to illustrate how this kind of reality is often misunderstood. A clear understanding of the kind of reality of the spirit world is indispensable for a proper investigation of Christianity in Africa and religion in general.

Highlights

In 2018, after his own political party had failed, Zambian politician Miles Sampa returns to the ruling party
To discover whether someone believes in the spirit world, we look at their life, to the attitude that someone takes to their life
Whether we believe in the spirit world or not shows itself in the role that what we say about the spirit world plays in our lives, but there are no definitive answers to the question of whether one believes

Summary

Introduction

In 2018, after his own political party had failed, Zambian politician Miles Sampa returns to the ruling party. Even once I truly believe in spirits, even if talk of spirits for me no longer is a replacement for speaking of charisma or Zeitgeist and I really take spirits to be involved in what is happening to me, spirits would still be active in this kind of rest category of what cannot be explained in an ordinary way Both words like charisma and Zeitgeist and words referring to the spirit world are what I (Kroesbergen 2019a:12) called elsewhere ‘left-over containers with respect to explanations’. People who force the description upon me that I am interpreting something is merely showing that they do not believe in the spirit world They think they are looking at the plain facts and observing that I add some further descriptions to those facts, but in reality, so I would say, they are not seeing what is really going on; it is part of the facts that spirits are causing this and that. As a believer in the spirit world, one would say that others are blind to a certain, important aspect of reality

Conclusion

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