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The Importance of African Prophets

© Jessica Powers

Religion is one of those subjects that invariably engenders discussion and debate, sometimes quite bitter debate. The very nature of our reactions to it indicate how important it is as a historical subject, how much it shapes our daily lives (even if we are irreligious or non-religious), and how as citizens of nations where religion(s) is present, we must somehow respond to the questions posed by religion.

In the West, we have long separated the sacred from the secular. When and how that process occurred is the subject of a different article. In Africa, that divide is more recent. Thus, when scholars look at religion in African history (whether Christianity, Islam, or indigenous expressions of faith), they are often able to look at the very center of daily life.

To me, the most compelling part of religion is these odd, sometimes broken, very passionate people who rise up as leaders and prophets. These men and women can bring disaster and destruction as well as life and riches. (See my recent article on the Cattle Killings in South Africa for a discussion on one disasterous prophet/prophecy.)

Recently, I read a book entitled Revealing Prophets, edited by David Anderson and Douglas Johnson. (For full citation, see below.) I noticed a number of thematic similarities among the essays that discussed different prophets in East Africa. First of all, many of these prophets were critical to the survival and persistance of resistance movements. Second, prophecy was one way for women to gain power. Third, prophecy turns out to be an important tool in society that shaped and explained identity--individual, social, and political.

Iris Berger, for example, writes about the kubandwa spirit mediumship of interlacustrine East Africa, arguing that it connected states and lineages with women's personal experiences because its central concern was female fertility. This power gained by women through religious concerns over fertility may have changed and taken on different implications through the historical changes of several centuries but it remained a central concern and a continuing way for women to access power.

I wondered while reading this what the actual religion was like, how spirit mediums behaved and what their relationship to society was, how people perceived them, or what in fact this emphasis on fertility actually meant in the daily lives of people. Details varied from region to region, I'm sure; thus, Berger can only give a very general idea of how rites were enacted. Nevertheless, her point is clear: kubanda gave women power and a voice. Further, male power as lineage heads, family heads, or kings must be understood as occurring on terrain that emphasized sexuality and reproduction-similar to the point that Helen Bradford made in her article, "Women, gender and colonialism: rethinking the history of the British Cape Colony and its frontier zones, c. 1806-70." As other religions formed and shaped in the region, kubanda continued to provide a "language...of power that was accessible to women as well as to men" (80).