Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T20:19:46.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Early Days of Johane Masowe: Self-Doubt, Uncertainty, and Religious Transformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2005

Matthew Engelke
Matthew Engelke
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1932 a young man called Shoniwa Masedza was working for a cobbler near Salisbury, the capital of Southern Rhodesia. Masedza had come from his home in Makoni, near the border with Portuguese East Africa, in the late 1920s. He had held a number of odd jobs in and around the capital: driving wagons, working as a “garden boy,” apprenticing with a carpenter. Just after starting with the shoemaker, some time around May 1932, Shoniwa fell ill, suffering from “severe pains in the head.” He lost his speech for four months and was “unable to walk about.” During his sickness he studied the Bible “continuously.” He dreamt that he had died, and in the dream he heard a voice saying he was now Johane Masowe—Africa's “John the Baptist.” Upon recovering, Johane went to a nearby hill called Marimba. He stayed there for forty days, praying to God “day and night” without sleep. He survived on wild honey. Johane was told by a voice (which he believed to be the Voice of God) that he had been “sent from Heaven to carry out religious work among the natives.” He was told also that Africans must burn their witchcraft medicines, and must not commit adultery or rape. After these experiences, Johane no longer suffered from pains in the head.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , October 2005 , pp. 781 - 808
Copyright
© 2005 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Appiah Kwame Anthony 1992 In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture New York Oxford University Press
Augustine of Hippo 1997 [c. 397] The Confessions Maria Boulding, trans. New York Vintage
Berger Peter 1967 The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion New York Anchor Books
Bhabha Homi 1994 Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority Under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817 In The Location of Culture New York Routledge 102–22
Boddy Janice 1988 Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zar Cult Madison University of Wisconsin Press
Bourdillon Michael 1987 The Shona Peoples Gweru, Zimbabwe Mambo Press
Brown Peter 1967 Augustine of Hippo: A Biography London Faber and Faber
Bultmann Rudolf 1956 Primitive Christianity in Its Contemporary Setting London Thames and Hudson
Crapanzano Vincent 2000 Serving the Word: Literalism in America from the Pulpit to the Bench New York The New Press
Csordas Thomas 1997 Language, Charisma, and Creativity: The Ritual Life of a Religious Movement Berkeley University of California Press
Dewey John 1930 The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action London Allen and Unwin
Dillon-Malone Clive 1978 The Korsten Basketmakers: A Study of the Masowe Apostles Manchester Manchester University Press
Dirks Nicholas 2002 Annals of the Archive: Ethnographic Notes on the Sources of History Brian Keith Axel From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and Its Futures Durham Duke University Press 47–65
Éla Jean-Marc 1994 Christianity and Liberation in Africa Rosino Gibellini Paths of African Theology Maryknoll, N.Y. Orbis Books 136–53
Engelke Matthew 2003 The Book, the Church, and the “Incomprehensible Paradox”: Christianity in African History Journal of Southern African Studies 29 1 294–303Google Scholar
Engelke Matthew 2004a Text and Performance in an African Church: The Book, “Live and Direct” American Ethnologist 31 1 76–91Google Scholar
Engelke Matthew 2004b Discontinuity and the Discourse of Conversion Journal of Religion in Africa 34 1/2 82–109Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard E. E. 1965 Theories of Primitive Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Ewald Janet 1988 Speaking, Writing, and Authority: Explorations in and from the Kingdom of Taqali Comparative Studies in Society and History 30 2 199–224Google Scholar
Fabian Johannes 1991a [1979] Text as Terror: Second Thoughts about Charisma Time and the Work of Anthropology: Critical Essays, 1971–1991 Amsterdam Harwood Academic Publishers 65–85
Fabian Johannes 1991b [1981] Six Theses Regarding the Anthropology of African Religious Movements Time and the Work of Anthropology: Critical Essays, 1971–1991 Amsterdam Harwood Academic Publishers 113–29
Geertz Clifford 1973 Religion as a Cultural System The Interpretation of Cultures New York Basic Books 87–125
Harding Susan 2000 The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics Princeton Princeton University Press
Jules-Rosette Bennetta 1975 African Apostles: Ritual and Conversion in the Church of John Maranke Ithaca Cornell University Press
Lambek Michael 1993 Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte: Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery, and Spirit Possession Toronto University of Toronto Press
Lambek Michael 1995 Choking on the Quran: And Other Consuming Parables from the Western Indian Ocean Front Wendy James The Pursuit of Certainty: Religions and Cultural Formulations London Routledge 258–81
Lan David 1985 Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe Berkeley University of California Press
Mandela Nelson 1994 Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela London Little, Brown
Maxwell David 1999a Christians and Chiefs in Zimbabwe: A Social History of the Hwesa People, c. 1870s–1990s Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press
Maxwell David 1999b Historicizing Christian Independency: The Southern African Pentecostal Movement, c. 1908–1960 Journal of African History 39 2 243–64Google Scholar
Maxwell David 2001 “Sacred History, Social History”: Traditions and Texts in the Making of a Southern African Transnational Religious Movement Comparative Studies in Society and History 43 3 502–24Google Scholar
Menand Louis 2001 The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America New York Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux
Mukonyora Isabel 1998a The Complementarity of Male and Female Imagery in Theological Language: A Study of the Valentinian and Masowe Theological Systems Ph.D. thesis Faculty of Theology University of Oxford
Mukonyora Isabel 1998b The Dramatization of Life and Death by Johane Masowe Zambezia 25 2 191–207Google Scholar
Mukonyora Isabel 2000 Marginality and Protest in the Wilderness: The Role of Women in Shaping Masowe Thought Pattern Southern African Feminist Review 4 2 1–22Google Scholar
Murphree Marshall 1969 Christianity among the Shona L.S.E. Monographs on Social Anthropology no. 36 London Athlone
Ngųgį wa Thiong'o 1981 Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary London Heinemann
Palmer Robin 1977 Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia London Heinemann
Parry Richard 1999 Culture, Organization, and Class: The African Experience in Salisbury, 1892–1935 Brian Raftopoulous and Tsuneo Yoshikuni Sites of Struggle: Essays in Zimbabwe's Urban History Harare, Zimbabwe Weaver Press 53–94
Ranger Terence 1970 The African Voice in Southern Rhodesia, 1898–1930 London Heinemann
Ranger Terence 1981 “Poverty and Prophetism: Religious Movements in Makoni District, 1929–1940” Paper read at School of Oriental and African Studies University of London
Ranger Terence 1983 The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger The Invention of Tradition Cambridge Cambridge University Press 211–62
Ranger Terence 1991 Missionaries, Migrants, and the Manyika: The Invention of Ethnicity in Zimbabwe Leroy Vail The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa Berkeley University of California Press 118–50
Ranger Terence 1999 “Taking on the Missionary's Task”: African Spirituality and the Mission Churches of Manicaland in the 1930s Journal of Religion in Africa 29 2 175–205Google Scholar
Reynolds Pamela 1996 Traditional Healers and Childhood in Zimbabwe Athens Ohio University Press
Stock Brian 1996 Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation Cambridge Harvard University Press
Summers Carol 2002 Colonial Lessons: Africans' Education in Southern Rhodesia, 1918–1940 Oxford James Currey
Sundkler Bengt 1961 [1948] Bantu Prophets in South Africa Oxford Oxford University Press
Turner Victor 1967 The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual Ithaca Cornell University Press
Turner Victor 1969 The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure Ithaca Cornell University Press
Van Onselen Charles 1982 Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914 Volume 1 New York Longman
Wacker Grant 2001 Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture Cambridge Harvard University Press
West Harry 2003 “Who Rules Us Now?” Identity Tokens, Sorcery, and Other Metaphors in the 1994 Mozambican Elections Harry West and Todd Sanders Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order Durham Duke University Press 92–124