spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

impact on African indigenous cultures is not seen as disruptive. Rather, the course of history is
believed to have contributed to diversification and hybridization within continuous indigenous
cultures (cf. Janzen 1992:75; Falola 1996:11-16; Falola 2003:208; Lwanda 2005:35).
Since around the 1960s cultural anthropological studies have been addressing different aspects of
indigenous cultures in Africa. In particular, witchcraft and spirit possession phenomena have
generated extensive ethnographic studies on religion in the region of Southern Africa. Although
most of these in-depth studies had a narrow focus (mainly on one social community, tribe, or
‘study unit’), thus lacking a broader comparative approach, these studies contributed to insights
into indigenous rituals that are upheld by particular social communities and informed by a
specific religious framework.
These indigenous rituals have been described as ‘rituals of affliction’, ‘cults of affliction’, or
‘drums of affliction’. The latter term was coined by the anthropologist Victor Turner in his
groundbreaking studies on various rituals of the Ndembu people in northern Zambia. He
introduced the term as a translation of the indigenous word ngoma (drum) which refers to the
central use of drumming, song and dance in those rituals that deal with the interpretation of
misfortune and affliction. Turner (1981:15f) defined ‘drums of affliction’ as “the interpretation
of misfortune in terms of domination by a specific non-human agent and the attempt to come to
terms with the misfortune by having the afflicted individual, under the guidance of a ‘doctor’ of
that mode, join the cult association venerating that specific agent”.
One of the characteristics of African indigenous rituals, or drums of affliction, is that suffering,
affliction, marginality and adversity are identified and articulated within a social community.
Subsequently the affliction is made useful for (re)ordering and renewing the afflicted individual
and the social community. To illustrate the central meaning of affliction's utilization, Janzen
even refers to the relationship between colonialism and indigenous cults of affliction, explaining
that colonialism unwillingly generated various cults of affliction simply because of “the logic of
the use of affliction and adversity for the organization of social reproduction” (1992:75). This
means that cults of affliction will persist, since they are fuelled by situations of affliction; cults of
affliction transform suffering and affliction into renewal of the social community, that will
continue to experience affliction.
2.2.2 Health notions generated by African religious beliefs
As previously mentioned, the relationship between African religious beliefs (constituting
indigenous religious traditions and cults of affliction) and concepts of health and healing specific
47