spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

out of oppressing spirits and through the accepting of a new Spirit. Within the framework of
spiritual warfare, the power of the Spirit becomes meaningful as the power causing a
breakthrough and as the power becoming a reality in the worldview of the believer who seeks
liberation and redemption. The individual process of healing and transformation involves the
reconstruction of the personal identity in relation to the surrounding community (Mwaura
2006:79). Whether it is about a hidden conflict that is uprooted, or a particular relationship needs
to be re-balanced, or whether transgressions need to be confessed, the pastoral client is
encouraged to refuse the existing situation and to start developing a new self-understanding and
identity with the help of the power of the Spirit. The support-seeking, isolated person enters a
process of change towards being accepted and affirmed by the surrounding community. As such
the community responds by adjusting and adapting itself to the individual’s process of
transformation. The community shares in the reconciliation that evolves from the individual, and
opens up for the integration of the renewed identity of its member. The restoration of
relationships between individuals, family and community is a necessary process of change
towards the well-being of the community.
A specific kind of individual and communal religious transformation is about the rescinding of
ancestral sins or generational curses. Over against the power of ancestral malediction, the power
of the Spirit is upheld, so that the idea that the forefathers’ iniquities can be projected to the
following generations is terminated. The individual is supposed to take a clear stance on the
wrongs of his or her past, and of any kind of deliberate or accidental involvement in rituals
pertaining to spirits and other powers. With the help of the power of the Spirit, the individual
will be able to disempower the threat of the curse caused by other people’s transgressions. The
cutting short of inherited guilt reveals the perception of the power of the Spirit as having a wide,
collective and transgenerational reach.
Social, economic, or political transformation
Unemployment, broken families, poverty, the lack of any perspective on life, barrenness and
large physical distance to one’s own family are interpreted as an indication of oppression by evil
spirits, who need to be dispelled by calling upon the power of the Holy Spirit. The healing ritual
fulfills a crucial role in the process of transition that people are faced with when existing norms,
values and power relations have lost their jurisdiction and are no longer undefiled. In other
words, the concept of power plays an important role as a vehicle of transformation for believers
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