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Territorial Cults in the history of Central Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Terence Ranger
Terence Ranger
Affiliation:
U.C.L.A
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Extract

Recent research on the territorial cults of Central Africa allows us to arrive at some tentative general patterns. The historical development of territorial cults has been worked out most fully for Malawi. Here it seems to be agreed that there was an essentially similar early cultic pattern among the proto-Chewa, the proto-Mang'anja and the proto-Tumbuka. Cults dedicated to the High God and tended by spirit wives were widely diffused. Much of the religious history of Malawi can be seen in terms of the differing relationships of these cults with incoming political authorities, producing a richly various situation.

It is not clear whether this sort of analysis can be applied to the wealth of material available on Shona territorial cults, even though the initial comparisons are suggestive. It is plain, however, that the most interesting recent work on these territorial cults suggests other dynamics of change. Shona cult history is not merely a matter of inter-relationships between cults and kings, but also very much a matter of the working out of built-in conflicts within cultic systems themselves. The much more dynamic view which it is now necessary to hold of the operations of Shona religion makes a great deal more sense of nineteenth and twentieth-century data than the previous centralized and hierarchical analysis.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , October 1973 , pp. 581 - 597
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

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2 The rapid development of the field is apparent in the contrast between this article and the initial hypotheses about cults of kingship made in ‘Introduction’, The Historical Study of African Religion, eds. Ranger, T. O. and Kimambo, Isaria (London, 1972), 4–9.Google Scholar

3 This article is a revision of a report on the Lusaka Conference which first appeared in the newsletter, African Religious Research, II, no. 2, Dec. 1972. The whole issue of the newsletter was devoted to a report on the Conference, which also discussed the history of mass spirit possession and of witchcraft eradication movements in Central Africa. African Religious Research appears twice yearly and aims to provide information about the progress of historical research on African religious systems. It contains reports of past and future conferences, book reviews and essays in addition to a listing of on-going research. It can be obtained free, thanks to the support of the Ford Foundation, by request to Professor Terence Ranger, African Studies Centre, U.C.L.A., Los Angeles, California 90024.Google Scholar

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11 Schoffeleers has explored the relations of the M'bona cult with Christianity further in, ‘The Interaction between the M'bona cult and Christianity, 1859–1963’, Themes in the Christian History of Central Africa, edited T. O. Ranger and John Weller, forthcoming. An earlier and slightly different account of the history of the M'bona cult is, ‘The History and Role of the M'Bona cult among the Mang'anja’Google Scholar, The Historical Study of African Religion, edited Ranger, T. O. and Kimambo, Isaria (London, 1972).Google Scholar

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25 I owe this information about the Chisumphi cult of affliction in Chipata to Bill Rau, who is preparing a doctorate for U.C.L.A. on the history of the Chipata Ngoni, and who is contributing a paper to Matthew Schoffeleers's book.Google Scholar

26 Daneel, M. L., Old and New in Southern Shona Independent Churches, 126.Google Scholar

27 Houser, Tillman, ‘The extent of Karanga-speaking spirit possession among the Hlengwe in Rhodesia’, Lusaka, 5 09 1972.Google ScholarAt the Lusaka conference other examples were given of the ‘break-down’ of structured territorial cults into wider spirit possession. Douglas Werner reconstructed the Bemba case in these terms. The Ngulu ‘nature’ spirits, which now possess people in Ubemba in a cult of affliction, were once the focus of a very decentralized territorial cult system. When the Bemba chiefly dynasty developed, the cult of the veneration of the chiefly dead was built up as the central cult of the state. Ngulu possession became more diffused, though still limited and was linked with the legitimization of professional skills. In recent times, when the veneration of chiefly ancestors has lost much of its central significance, Ngulu possession has developed into a cult of affliction.Google Scholar

28 The last three paragraphs are a greatly condensed version of a long report of the discussions at Lusaka on the history of mass spirit possession in Central Africa, published in African Religious Research, II, no. 2 (November 1972), 57–26. The point that was being made was not, of course, that all peripheral spirit possession can be accounted for by the break-down of control over territorial cults or by the break-down of territorial cultsaltogether, but merely that enough of it can be explained in this way to make the question an important one in the historical study of possession. A discussion of the links between territorial cults and movements of witchcraft eradication—an important topic which it has been impossible to pursue here—can be found ins African Religious Research, II, no. 2 (November 1972), 27–29. Readers of this article, who wish to follow up the papers to which it mainly refers, can obtain sets of the Lusaka conference proceedings on application to the Publications Officer, Institute for African Studies, University of Zambia, P.O. Box 900, Lusaka, Zambia, at the cost of duplication and postage. The conference proceedings are not to be published as such, but two books will develop out of the conference. One of these is Matthew Schoffeleers's collection on territorial cults. The other will be a comparative study of witchcraft eradication movements, to be edited by Terence Ranger and Sholto Cross, under the title, The Problem of Evil in Eastern Africa.Google Scholar