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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The Spirit of God, Pigs and Demons: The 'Samuelites' of Southern Africa
Author:Landau, Paul S.ISNI
Year:1999
Periodical:Journal of Religion in Africa
Volume:29
Issue:3
Pages:313-340
Language:English
Geographic term:Botswana
Subjects:African Independent Churches
African religions
prophets
spirit possession
faith healing
Religion and Witchcraft
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/1581528
Abstract:This essay examines a religious story in order to understand the way people make sense of the world. The author first heard the story of the Prophet Mokaleng in 1989. The story takes place in Matsiloje, a village in the former Tati District in northeast Botswana, where the Spiritual Healing Church (SHC) was founded. It concerns an episode of spirit possession in 1923, under the waning rule of a South African expatriate chief, Samuel Moroka, and relevant events afterwards. The author shows that this narrative deals with the sad history of Chief Samuel's people through the figure of the Christian prophet and Church founder, Mokaleng. Twenty years after Samuel's community of refugees gave up their search to find land and peace in southern Africa, the SHC emerged as a forum in which to reconsider their plight. The SHC prophet reflected Samuel across a wide divide of tragedy, hope, and of memory and forgetting. Notes, ref.
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