spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

connection with the human beings who stay behind. When a healer goes too far across a border,
he or she runs the risk of being accused of witchcraft. In the perspective of fellow human beings,
the endowment of spiritual power on the healer seems to have turned into the use of an
illegitimate force (Ellis & Ter Haar 2004:99). The healer, who is supposed to bring different
realms together and to establish wholeness in a situation of affliction, seems to be doing the
opposite by moving too far away or by reversing the status quo of the community 22 .
The practices of a healer, then, always take place in the vicinity of borders. If a healer is unable
to reach and challenge those borders, or leaves the borders too far behind in physical or
conceptual journeys, then the healer’s powers are questioned by the community that relies on the
mediation of that healer. In other words, within the setting of African traditional healing
practices the healer is identified with boundaries, whether literal or figurative. The healer is a
border guard: he or she crosses borders and dissolves existing frontiers, while simultaneously
producing new borders and defenses. This element of re-organizing and negotiating the limits of
conventional or familiar healing knowledge 23 , ideas and techniques materializes in many
different ways and dimensions.
Some practices of healers as border-crossers and border-guards are illustrated by various
scholars. For example, Luedke (2006) shows how self-made prophet healers in Mozambique
erect new borders by constructing their own authority, whereby healing institutions are created
and social bodies are transformed. Simmons (2006) discusses the way in which Zimbabwean
healers cross the boundary between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ by professionalizing and
commercializing African vernacular medicine in response to the disorder within the formal
healthcare sector. Pfeiffer (2006) explores the Mozambican situation in which church-related
healers and prophets mark a clear boundary by contrasting themselves with the healing practices
of traditional healers, who seem to offer their services at a high price (and thereby creating
another division between male clients who aim at accessing more social power, and poor females
22. The notion of danger in the activities of someone who is bestowed with spiritual power is clearly linked with
boundaries, and with the way boundaries are perceived. Ellis & Ter Haar (2004:99) recount the situation of women
who are able to exercise (political) power due to their being possessed by spirits. However, when the possessed
women transgress the limits that are set by men, the women’s spiritual power is perceived as a dangerous and
destructive form of power (cf. Lewis 1989:66-71).
23. African traditional healers receive their knowledge about healing from the spiritual world, but this knowledge is
usually not fully clear to the healers themselves; they know what to do, but this does not necessarily mean that they
understand exactly what is happening. So it seems that even for the healers there is a dimension of mystery in the
healing process (West 2005:49f; Luedke & West 2006:11).
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