African Beliefs Research Articles

Understanding Christian translation and its missiological relevance

Christian translation is integral to Christian missions that benefit the ingenious people and the gospel. Among early missionary activities, translations of the Bible to vernacular language have tremendous implications for the gospel propagation. Its roots are well spelt out in the early church, which endorsed Christianity as a universal faith. The researchers observe the historical and missiological perspective of Bible translation. They used library materials and internet sources to explain the meaning of translation, such as explaining a text language in the context of the recipients. This article contains a biblical basis for Bible translations, as it was from the early scriptures, and it concludes by explaining the relevance of Christian translation in terms of literacy, preservation of culture and freedom from slavery, among others. Christian translation has helped to create different versions of the Bible; the New Testament alone is available in 1551 languages out of over 7100 languages worldwide. Christian translation shows that Christian missionaries are not another form of a colonising agency because their activities resulted in actions that led to the end of colonisation in many parts of Africa. The author used a descriptive research method for this article.Contribution: From the analysis, Christian translation is a vital part of Christian missions that has many benefits for the ingenious people by preserving their cultural practices and language, among others. It also made Christianity not to be perceived as a foreign religion that has no link with the African Belief system. Christians are to seek to translate more materials, especially the Bible, into other peoples’ languages to have a lasting impact on the indigenous people.

Multiple Secularities in Africa – An Introduction

Abstract Raising timely and urgent questions about the forms, scope and boundaries of religious authority and practice, this article offers novel ways for the study of secularities and secularisms in contemporary African societies. In recent scholarly debates on secularity, Africa has been marginal. Part of the reason, it was suggested was that African ways of being in, and knowing, the world lay outside the religious-secular divide. We contest such positions. Secularism was clearly part of modernists colonial ideologies that called for the eradication of African beliefs described as backward and irrational. We find that the colonial encounter had a powerful historical impact, essentializing and othering African societies as marked by holistic indigenous cultures rather than differentiated religions. We suggest that the complex interplay of different African and European cultures has simultaneously shaped the social construction and historical development of multiple secularities. We propose that the concept of multiple secularities provides creative avenues to rethink religion, political authority and belonging. We consider secularities as contested arrangements of religious and other spheres whose dynamics include processes of de-differentiation and de-secularization.

Issues of Ethic-identity Crisis in Ngugi’s Matigari and Mda’s The Heart of Redness in the post-colonial era

Postcolonial identity takes on various guises in the newly independent African states after the demise of colonialism. In considering these guises, this article examines the various manifestations of post-colonial identity crisis in a comparative study of Matigari by Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1998) and The Heart of Redness by Zakes Mda (2000). The characters in both novels depict two groups in African society during the post-colonial era; namely those who aspire to western values, culture, and beliefs and those who aim to revive their traditional African beliefs and culture. This identity crisis is furthermore exacerbated in terms of those who are aligned to the new nation state, since they feel privileged and connected, and those who feel marginalised and disconnected from the nation state as they are forced to live on the periphery of society. In discussing post-colonial identity crisis in the two novels, common themes such as the influence of western values and culture on African society, conflicts between past, present and future, the petit bourgeoisie, the alienated and the outsider protagonists will be examined comparatively as they are depicted in the novels. The themes shed light on how ethnic-identity crisis is manifested in post-colonial society and how this has an impact on the success of the nation state.

Women entrepreneurship in marginalized communities: Does culture, Ubuntu, religiosity and ancestral relevance matter?

ABSTRACT Poverty alleviation at the bottom of the pyramid hitches, inter alia, on rural women entrepreneurship in emerging and marginalized economies. The study was focused on understanding the influence of cultural orientations (vertical individualism and horizontal collectivism) and peculiar African beliefs (social axioms) of Ubuntu, ancestral relevance and religiosity on rural women’s entrepreneurial intentions. Data was collected from 200 rural women in Zimbabwe. Analysis of data was done using structural equation modeling in Amos. Results revealed significant relationships between cultural orientations and African beliefs, as well as between Ubuntu and entrepreneurial intention. However, religiosity and ancestral relevance were not significantly related to entrepreneurial intention. In promoting rural women entrepreneurship, Governments, Non-Governmental organizations and financial institutions may include culture orientations and Ubuntu in their training manuals and also in screening potential entrepreneurs on loan applications.

The Influence of African Traditional Beliefs and Practices on Neo-Prophetic Christianity: An Analysis

The rapid expansion of the neo-prophetic strand of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in Africa has resulted in much public and academic scrutiny against the backdrop of perceived appropriation of elements of indigenous African faith. Even though African countries have retained secularism in place of a state religion, many African states, notably Ghana, have remained steadfastly committed to their traditional religions, sometimes even working in tandem with monotheistic Abrahamic religions like Islam and Christianity. Unquestionably, indigenous African religious beliefs have had a significant impact on African mental matrixes, which in turn has affected the practice of Christianity. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate how Ghanaian Christianity was impacted by traditional African beliefs and customs. In particular, a study of neo-prophetic churches at Manso Dome-Beposo within the Ashanti Region of Ghana was employed. The data for the study was gathered using interview guidelines and qualitative approaches. The data collected was thematically analyzed in line with the reviewed literature. The study found that most prophetic explorations involve the use of rituals, artefacts, and stylistic forms, which are similar to Abisa in the Akan spiritual cosmology. The study found out again that, there are several elements suggestive of African traditional religious influence on Christianity. For instance, it was observed that the notion of the existence of evil spirits in Akan cosmology has strongly influenced contemporary prophetism in Ghana. The study concluded that although the idea that Christianity has been affected by African traditional religion may not have empirical validity, there are plenty of visible indicators to back up this assertion. It has been recommended that with the evidence of possible syncretism, a clear distinction should be made between the culture and the religious activities of the people since at times the church wrongfully accuses members even when they are performing culturing duties. This will help the church authorities to inculturate Christian liturgy. Keywords: Inculturation, African Traditional Religion, Syncretism

Christology for African Community in View of African Ancestors

Africa is an exciting and diverse continent. It’s a world where the physical and the spiritual come together. This is especially notable when one explores the traditional African belief of ancestors among many other beliefs. Ancestral belief is a significant part of countless African communities, and even among some African Christians. It is my hope when comparing the characteristics of the African ancestors with that of our Lord Jesus Christ, we will come to find that while some of Jesus’s characteristics are relatable, they are ultimately incomparable, fulfilling all positive notions of African ancestors. More than that, Jesus, the God-Man, comes and offers us and our communities hope and redemption. In this article we will begin by seeking to understand ancestral belief, after which we will identify some characteristics from the ancestors and see how those of Jesus Christ compare, thus developing a Christology relatable for Africa. Each of these characteristics will begin with a brief identification, followed by biblical and theological discussions. The last section will show that Christ the Redeemer of African community has offered superabundant fulfilment of ancestral characteristics.

Challenges and opportunities of Facebook during bereavement: experiences from Taung in South Africa

Bereavement is something that we experience in one way or another. It involves many steps from one culture to the other. Many scholars have documented the role of social media tools in bereavement processes. In this study, I look at the challenges and opportunities offered by Facebook during bereavement, especially in a community that is still traditional and has yet to fully comprehend the importance of social media, particularly in matters considered sacred. The study used interviews with residents from Taung to collect data. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the collected data from the interviews. The study findings indicate some challenges associated with bereavement on Facebook: emotional shock, lack of sensitivity, misinformation, and cultural dilution. There are also opportunities: fast news sharing, ongoing emotional support, and sharing of memories. The study argues that the findings should expand our understanding and knowledge of bereavement in some African cultures and use social media tools to complement and not destroy African beliefs and practices.

Black Music Aesthetics in General Music Part 1: Exploring Black Musics

Black Music Aesthetics (BMA), guided by conceptual approaches grounded in African belief systems, are found in the structure and performance practices of Black musics. Music education in American society leans strongly toward Western European aesthetics, which includes: the centrality of rhythm, pitch, and harmony to musical understanding; a reliance on written notation for preserving and sharing musical ideas; and a primary focus on sounds. While Black music and musicality can be explored using Western European aesthetics, they cannot be thoroughly explored in this way. In this series of articles, I draw on the work of ethnomusicologists to define BMA and provide concrete examples for incorporating them in general music. The first article in this series provides a historical foundation and definition for BMA and offers examples of how it can be centered in the study of Black musics.

The Church and the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Intricate Role of Masculinities of the Clergymen

This article seeks to determine how the masculinities of clergymen influenced the church’s responses to Covid-19. In Malawi, about 70% of confirmed Covid-19 cases were men, and about 83% of those who died were men. Pastors influence the church’s response to the world. There are many responses from the Churches to the need for prevention and care during Covid-19. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research on the church’s responses to Covid-19 in the global south and how the masculinities of clergymen played a role in the church’s reactions during Covid-19. The article, thus, focuses on clergymen’s masculinities of power and authority in influencing the church’s responses to Covid-19. This article builds on grounded theory and qualitative methods. The article is based on data from two evangelical and two mainline churches in the four cities of Malawi. The study found that the masculinities of clergymen had little influence on the responses of evangelical churches during Covid-19. However, the masculinities of clergymen significantly impacted the responses of mainline churches within the confines of Sunday services but not outside it. We found that African realities, such as African beliefs in healing, among others, limited the role of masculinities of clergymen in evangelical churches during and after Sunday services. This article discusses ways of solidifying the roles of clergymen in the church responses.

Moon Witch, Spider King

Moon Witch, Spider King

Religious and Medical Pluralism Among Traditional Healers in Johannesburg, South Africa

Religion and spirituality are powerful social forces in contemporary South Africa. Traditional Health Practitioners (THPs) are commonly consulted for both spiritual and medical ailments as a first line of care. Many studies have assessed African traditional health seeking behaviors but few have examined beliefs, practices, and behaviors of THPs themselves. This study sought to explore spiritual worldviews among South African THPs. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 18 THPs in Johannesburg, South Africa between January and May, 2022. Interviews were transcribed and translated into English. Data were managed using NVivo 12 software and thematically analyzed. The majority of THPs interviewed indicated that initiation as a THP was almost always preceded by a sickness accompanied by dreams/visions that represented an “ancestral calling” to become a healer. Most THPs also trained as both sangomas—who healed according to traditional beliefs—and prophets—who healed according to Christian beliefs. This reflects a syncretic relationship between traditional African beliefs and Christianity. However, not all churches are accepting of traditional beliefs and subsequently these THPs are members only at non-Pentecostal AIC churches who blend both African and Christian practices. Similar to these forms of religious pluralism melding Christianity and traditional beliefs, many THPs also often practice medical pluralism, mixing Western treatments with traditional practices/medicines. THPs are able to adapt elements of Western and African beliefs into healing practices that span multiple religious and medical fields. Thus, collaborative and decentralized healthcare services may be highly acceptable among such a pluralistic community.

Waterscapes and wet bodies: Beach culture in Atlantic Africa and the diaspora, 1444-1888

Waterscapes and Wet Bodies: Beach Culture in Atlantic Africa and the Diaspora, 1444-1888 considers how Atlantic Africans constructed social, cultural, and spiritual relationships with waterscapes. John Gillis’s historical analyses of human relationships with oceanic coastlines creating, what he called, “human shores” helps us consider how Atlantic Africans perceived and interacted with Atlantic shorelines, as well as shores along rivers and lakes. Believing water was a sacred and secular space, Africans created human shores along saltwater, freshwater, and brackish waterways where they forged enduring connections with waterscapes, a term signifying how water and adjacent lands were seamlessly merged into unifying culturescapes. Africans developed emersionary aquatic traditions—including swimming, underwater diving, surfing, canoeing, and fishing—that inspired and required them to interact with water on a daily basis. Enslaved Africans recreated and reimagined African beliefs about water and aquatic traditions throughout the Americans to help provide their lives with a sense of meaning purpose and value, as well as cultural continuity to the communities they had been stole from. Maritime maroons, who were captives who escaped across water, employed African canoeing, swimming, and paddleboarding skills and understandings of navigation to escape from slavery. They illustrate how Africans and members of the diaspora transformed the Caribbean into a physical and spiritual “sea of islands” that was part of a larger aqueous continent, linking African-descended communities in Africa, the Caribbean, North America, South America, Europe, and the spirit realm, located at the bottom of the ocean, into one vast cultural space.

African Belief Systems and Gendering of Eco-Justice

The African belief system appears to outline concerns and care for the environment, which can form a basis for sustainability. This system also seems to speak to gender roles and responsibilities. The taboo system, for instance, has clear gendered guidelines for human and environmental responsibilities and rights, that appear to be interconnected. A reflection on the African belief system may therefore allow us interrogate and explain the roles of men and women, girls and boys, on climate change, and their response thereto. Since these beliefs and practices are lived side-by-side with modernity, an exploration of gender roles within the belief system may be useful in the overall mainstreaming of the work of men and women in climate change. The article draws from gender perspectives of a few African communities, to show how these perspectives provide varying platforms for addressing or neglecting effects of climate change in the continent, but also how the system affects livelihoods of men and women. Further, the paper explores ways in which the positive approaches can be mainstreamed in state-led approaches to eco-justice for sustainability. Keywords: Africa Belief System, Climate Change, Eco-Justice, Gender, Intersectionality, Modernity, Sustainability

Fears, Deaths, Mourning, and Burials in Times of COVID-19 Pandemic in Nigeria

Extant studies on deaths in Nigeria have been conducted without much critical focus on how the public responded to emergency politics or the government’s interventions during pandemics. Fundamentally, this is the gap this research aims to fill. This study focuses on pain events, grieves, and mourning following COVID-19-related deaths. Thus, this study analyzes the intersections between COVID-19 and death discourse by exposing and interrogating the variances, ambiguities, ambivalences, corollaries, and paradoxes amid convoluted public health conversations. This research employed both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources include African beliefs, newspapers reports of past and current pandemics, and radio, television, and social media narratives. Secondary sources include reviews of existing literature on deaths and pandemics. Historical analysis is used in this study, identifying two categories of dead bodies created during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first category is Pandemic Dead Bodies (PDBs) and the second category is Non-Pandemic Dead Bodies (NPDBs). Many concomitants characterizing Pandemic Dead Bodies including stigmatization, apathy, otherization, ambiguities, genderization, demographication, politicization, contestations, and weaponization are interrogated from socio-historical perspectives. Heightening the stress of grieving families are issues around deaths, as burials are postponed or held within the restrictions of National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) COVID-19 protocols, often with the presence of limited family members of the deceased. Thus, the pains and grieves are not just about the loss of loved ones, but the inability to give them a befitting burial, since Nigerians love to celebrate the liminality of their loved ones into eternity. Likewise, anticipatory grief became more accentuated and aggravated in Nigeria regarding the manner of announcing the demise of some popular politicians who died of COVID-19. Fundamentally, these problematic encumbrances, nuances, and intrigues concerning deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic are historicized. This study concludes that pains, grief, sorrow, death, and burial are historically constituted and configured regarding social, economic, political, cultural, and environmental interactions.

Les enjeux du décentrement narratif dans « Mémoires de porc-épic » d’Alain Mabanckou

In his rich and varied work, Alain Mabanckou takes up themes widely explored by French-speaking authors, such as the difficult experience of immigration and the presentation of the native country embracing its cultural specificity. The writer’s fame, however, does not come solely from the fact that he offers novels which, through the perspective of direct experience and an unusual style, deal with major subjects of our time. Mabanckou works particularly on the novelistic form; he transforms and refreshes it in an ingenious way, drawing inspiration from both the oral African tradition, whose expressiveness and vigour he seeks to convey, and the Western literary culture, to which he regularly refers by allusions, quotations and borrowings of all kinds. Apart from creating a hybrid novel, in which opposing stylistics intertwine, the writer reorganizes the sphere of storytelling, proceeding with a kind of creative decentering which, paradoxically, places his work at the heart of current novelistic aesthetics. Replacing the impersonal and omniscient narrator who dominates Western fictions with homodiegetic narrators, literary counterparts of an African storyteller, he exploits and develops techniques of unreliable narration, widespread in contemporary novels. Memoirs of a Porcupine is a particularly interesting example in this regard: based on an African belief, it goes so far as to reproduce the impossible narrative situation and makes an animal tell the story. The present article explores this off-center, irrational and logically implausible storytelling that narratologists simply call “unnatural.” Relying on their theories and selected works concerning the literary animal, we will seek to identify the peculiarities of animal discourse and the textual meanings that it implicitly conveys.

Gendered Taboos as an Impediment to African Women’s Leadership: A Decolonial View

Human beings come from various backgrounds shaped by their norms, culture, belief systems, age, social orientation and their language. In addition to all these human beings, the common denominator is that they are different in terms of their parity and equality. This difference of human beings in the world has their own knowledge and cultural practices towards contribution of knowledge. Transformation of leadership which is imperative during the decolonialisation projects demands among other things more information about African traditional leadership. The realisation and existence of such leadership cannot be imagined without the indigenous knowledge which was and is still rich with ingredients of growing and leading African people to the right direction. Our South African context demands that women must also be uplifted to leadership roles in society and the workplace, but this usually collides with different African beliefs that still put women secondary to men, for instance, the issue of taboos which mainly promote the subjection of women. For the sake of this research, the focus is on those taboos which portray women as inferior to men in the society. Two cultures were selected for this purpose, Xitsonga and IsiZulu.

Exploring the Origins and Expansion of the Nyaminyami (Water Spirit) Belief Systems among the BaTonga People of Northwestern Zimbabwe

Abstract Water spirits are an integral part of African traditional religious beliefs and ritual practices. Like many other African traditional religious practices and beliefs, water spirit beliefs are characterized by complex ‘myths’ surrounding their origins. In that regard, this paper explores the origins and expansion of the Nyaminyami (water spirit,) beliefs prevalent among some BaTonga people of northwestern Zimbabwe. It argues that these beliefs were exotic to the BaTonga people. In so doing, it substantiates the assumption by Elizabeth Colson and Thayer Scudder that Nyaminyami was a foreign idea to the BaTonga people. This study brings in new contemporary evidence to substantiate and extend this diffusionist perspective. It provides evidence from ethnographic research conducted among the BaTonga and Shangwe-speaking peoples living in the immediate vicinity of the Kariba Gorge area from April to November 2017. This study also rests on the wider scholarship on water divinities in Africa that explains the emergence of water divinities in different societies through diffusion of ideas. The study further examines the ways by which the cultural borrowing may have occurred, as well as the period and the extent to which the diffusion of ideas occurred, based on the ethnographic evidence.

The indigenous meaning of dysmenorrhea: using modified photovoice to document perspectives of traditional health practitioners (THPs) and indigenous knowledge holders (IKHs)

Background: Globally, health understanding and beliefs vary across sub-cultural groups, depending on geographical location. Increasingly, various parts of the world recognize these perspectives to offer culturally sensitive healthcare services at primary level. Understanding the indigenous perspectives of dysmenorrhea meaning from the custodians of knowledge holders may add to the value of literature that may be used to advocate humanized culturally sensitive healthcare. This article aimed to explore and describe the perspectives regarding the meaning of indigenous dysmenorrhea among Batlokwa traditional health practitioners (THPs) and indigenous knowledge holders (IKHs). Methods: A qualitative, explorative study with a modified photovoice design, which included photographs, interviews and lekgotla discussion was employed to engage THPs and IKHs residing in Botlokwa Limpopo province, South Africa. Initially, a purposive sampling technique was used to select the participants, followed by snowball sampling. The participants themselves analyzed the photographs and described their meaning during individual interview using the acronym “PHOTO”. The researchers employed thematic analysis of interviews and Lekgotla discussion, in which themes were identified, formulated and analyzed from the codified data set. Results: In total, eight women participated in the photovoice study. The findings showed that indigenous understanding of dysmenorrhea stems from the African belief about health and illness with special emphasis on importance of holistic meaning. To the THPs and IKHs dysmenorrhea was a broad and integrated trend of a normal or abnormal process of illness that occurs periodically during menstruation. Conclusions: The THP’s and IKH’s indigenous meaning of dysmenorrhea reflects physical, mental, emotional, social, environmental, political and economic dimensions. Therefore, dysmenorrhea should be understood from a holistic approach. With appropriate partnerships and processes in place, this knowledge may be well represented in dominant healthcare systems and health research.

Stereotyping, Exploitation, and Appropriation of African Traditional Religious Beliefs: The Case of Nyaminyami, Water Spirit, among the Batonga People of Northwestern Zimbabwe, 1860s–1960s

Abstract This article examines the forms of knowledge that existed between Africans and Europeans regarding local indigenous religious beliefs, focusing particularly on the case of Nyaminyami, a water spirit that is part of the belief systems prevalent among some BaTonga people of northwestern Zimbabwe. The article briefly outlines the “traditional” BaTonga beliefs and practices relating to Nyaminyami, which were diametrically opposed to those of the Europeans. It then scrutinizes the ways the beliefs have been exploited and appropriated by different interest groups and races from the 1860s to the 1960s. The BaTonga people, who held strong beliefs in Nyaminyami, and European colonists used the idea of Nyaminyami for different social, political, and environmental agendas prior to, during, and after resettlement. Nyaminyami played changing sociocultural and economic functions for the BaTonga people over time. They revered Nyaminyami as their river god in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; they also appropriated the beliefs by rallying behind the river god for protection from their displacement in 1958 following the construction of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River. Nyaminyami was also appropriated by European interest groups who used the idea of Nyaminyami to cast Africa as the “dark continent” and to stereotype the BaTonga people as primitive. This article relies on data obtained through a reading of European explorers' texts and by gathering oral traditions among the BaTonga and Shangwe.

RELATING RELIGION IN MATTHEW JABULANI MNGADI’S NOVELS

Religion is one of the defining tropes and corner stones of Mngadi’s novels yet literary scholars have paid little attention to this aspect of his literature. The scant literary scholarship on Mngadi’s exploration of religion has inspired this researcher to undertake the current study. In his novels, religion takes various forms, including traditional belief system and Christianity. This paper contends that Mngadi looks at different forms of religion, particularly Christianity and traditional African belief, with a critical eye. As a postcolonial novelist, Mngadi neither fully accepts one religion nor completely rejects the other form. Instead, he advocates for a mutual mingling of the two supposedly contrasting forms of religion. The paper argues that the novelist depicts religious forms at cross roads, in conflict with each other and in future harmony. The paper illustrates that by referring to Mngadi’s two novels, namely, Imiyalezo (1978) and Yiza Mntanami (2007).