spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

prophet-healer is seen as someone who is anointed and set apart for the service to God and his
people.
When examining the works of a prophet-healer, one should be able to discern true calling and
anointment, because if the power of the Spirit is truly with the prophetic leader, the anointment
should result in a powerful ministry where people are healed, where prosperity in its broadest
meaning becomes reality, and where the number of believers increases. So quantitative and
qualitative growth affirms the authority and the anointment of a prophet-healer. Besides speaking
the inspired word of God, the prophet-healer is bestowed with prophetic powers that will enable
him or her to advance people’s healing processes. The prophet-healer is gifted with the ability to
uproot the cause of affliction, and to indicate the way forward for the pastoral client. It is this
diagnostic ability of the prophet-healer that brings to mind the role of the prophet within the
African traditional religious frame of reference.
Redefinition of individual personality
Spiritual healing does not only carry a soteriological meaning, but also embraces a dimension of
emancipation and social transformation. The healing ritual provides the space where the pastoral
client acquires a new understanding of him- or herself, and where the pastoral client renews his
or her individual and communal identity.
Philomena Mwaura (2001, 2006), exploring the power dynamic between the mediator and the
recipient of spiritual healing interventions within some AICs in Kenya, sheds light on the
meaning of the healing ritual in the self-understanding of the individual and the community.
Mwaura examines what happens during the healing ritual that is interpreted as a sign of
conversion and of God’s grace, and concludes the ritual is a valuable moment in the process of
transformation that the pastoral client needs to go through in his or her search for healing. The
prophet-healer diagnoses (with his/her gift of the Spirit) and reveals the root of the problem,
affliction, or illness within the hermeneutic of spiritual warfare. Entities like spirits, witchcraft,
generational curses and jealousy are articulated in relation to the power of the Spirit, the grace of
God, the blood of Christ and the Christian victory. The prophet-healer has now introduced a
specific structure in the pastoral client’s problematic life situation, so that the pastoral client’s
understanding of his or her situation is reconstructed. Mwaura (2006:79) states that “the patient
experiences the recreation of the good cosmos as a new ordering of his/her consciousness and
his/her feelings”. With the healing ritual, the prophet-healer guides the pastoral client in
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