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The cultural history of apartheid and the politics of healing in a South African indigenous church

Thomas, Linda Elaine, Ph.D.

The American University, 1993

UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106

HEALING IN A SOUTH AFRICAN INDIGENOUS CHURCH

Linda E. Thomas

submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

of The American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Anthropology

Signatures of Committee:

////S/93 Date

1993

The American University

Washington, D.C. 20016 7563

TEE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ©COPYRIGHT

LINDA E. THOMAS

1993

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Dedication

To my parents, Henry and Mary, whose example taught me the tenacity to hope for, fight for, and live for the truth.

To my spiritual parents, Reverend Leslie and Mrs. Antoinette Dyson, whose belief and love sustained me during my years of ontological inquiry.

To my new found African parents, Reverend and Mrs. Xaba, who embraced and claimed me as a daughter of South Africa. Through them I received new life.

Amandla1

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF APARTHEID AND THE POLITICS OF HEALING IN A SOUTH AFRICAN INDIGENOUS CHURCH

Linda E . Thomas

ABSTRACT

The cultural history of South Africa records the

events that led to the establishment of apartheid, the legal

system which subjugated the black majority to an inferior

status based on race. While apartheid became the official

policy of South Africa in 1948, prior to that year white

minority governments enacted laws and manufactured attitudes

that led to the political domination of black people. The

ramification of policies of discrimination has for decades

caused black people's intellectual, economic, political, and

educational pursuits to be substandard. Yet, the resiliency

of black South Africans has been demonstrated many times

over in movements of resistance. People such as Nelson and

Winnie Mandela challenged the South African government

concerning its continued domination of blacks. Grass roots

movements all over the country used various means of

resistance. One vehicle of resistance at the grassroots

level was the emergence of African indigenous churches. In

the context of sacred space, these churches, which attract

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the poorest of the poor, utilize symbolic orders that

transform peoples' lives to the extent that they become

empowered social actors. Moreover, these churches design

rituals of healing in which people who suffer from various

sicknesses are healed physically and, more often than not,

transformed emotionally.

This study focuses on healing rituals in an

African indigenous church located in a black township in

Cape Town known as Guguletu. It is based on fieldwork

conducted from June 15, 1991 - January 15, 1992 and during

the month of August 1992.

The primary focus of the research involves the

study of religion as a cultural system. The goal is to

examine how micro-level social relations, as reflected in an

African indigenous church, impact and are impacted by macro

level political, social and economic structures, as well as

by the struggles in the Republic of South Africa. The

interpersonal social relations of poor black South Africans

are examined with the intent of discovering how they

employed religious healing rituals as a force for

reorienting their social reality, a material world that is

permeated with the legacy of apartheid. The ways in which

this material world is symbolically transformed by healing

rituals into a life enhancing reality are explored.

The specific location of the study is an African

indigenous church called St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. It is part of a larger indigenous church movement that is

the most rapidly growing segment of religious life in South

Africa. These churches stand in counterdistinction to the

"historical churches."

The conclusion is drawn that the rituals of

healing are expressions of protest by nonelites who are

thereby transforming the world in which they live.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The journey to the completion of the Ph.D. in

cultural and social anthropology began while I was a pastor

of local churches in the New York Conference of the United

Methodist Church. I searched for a discipline that would

bring together my commitment to issues of cultural

diversity, race, gender, politics, economy, and global

concerns. Willingness to live with ambiguity, and the

support of persons who made up my "personal board of

visioners," helped me to clarify my goals and to choose

anthropology as the discipline that would best bring

together my varied interests. As I draw to the conclusion

of the formal requirements for this degree, I can earnestly

say that I know that I have pursued the appropriate

discipline.

This study would have been impossible without the

support that I received from friends in South Africa. My

thanks begin with Drs. Charles Villa-Vicencio and John de

Gruchy of the University of Cape Town who invited me to be a

visiting scholar at the university and thus to, have an

institutional affiliation from which to conduct my research.

It was a privilege to be at the University of Cape Town

because it has the oldest Department of Anthropology in the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. world. I had many stimulating conversations with scholars.

I am most grateful for the hours shared with Drs. Martin

West, Harriet Ngubane and Mamphele Ramphele. Dr. West's

willingness to meet with me during my first week in Cape

Town was instrumental in getting my field work off to a

rapid start. His generous affirmation of my methodology and

decision to do an in-depth study on one indigenous church

was particularly helpful. Dr. Ramphele's help in locating a

research assistant was invaluable. Through her I was able

to obtain the services of Mrs. Barbara Mantata, the

assistant with whom Dr. Ramphele had worked, and this was a

decided advantage. Mrs. Mantata provided excellent skill in

translating during interviews and helping to verify

transcription of tapes. Mr. Percival Mbulelo Bhoqo is also

acknowledged for providing excellent skill in translation.

Special thanks are extended to Dr. Ngubane who knew about

St. John's Church and had a keen interest in my research.

Her comments were very instructive in relating her work on

healing among the Zulus to my own among a congregation of

Xhosa-speaking St. John's members. Sincere gratitude is

extended to the library staff at the University of Cape

Town, particularly, Ms. Celia Walter who provided invaluable

assistance in locating important research materials while I

was in South Africa and who has continued to send material

as necessary after my departure.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I also want to acknowledge Reverend Lesiba and

Mrs. Nyameka Nkhumise who invited me to live with them in

Guguletu where I was able to practice speaking Xhosa and to

experience township life.

None of this work would be possible were it not

for Reverend and Mrs. Xaba who accepted me into the St.

John's community. Reverend Xaba's commitment to spend time

with me, to patiently share the rituals and to grant

permission to interview members was extremely generous. The

Xabas introduced me to many other persons in St. John's

wider church. Their insistence that I attend St. John's

festivals added clarity to my research. My appreciation is

extended to the family of Reverend Xaba, who informed me of

his death, permitting me to return to South Africa for his

funeral. While the reason for the return trip was an

unhappy one, I was able to be reunited with persons who had

become an important part of my life.

I am earnestly thankful to the family of Mother

Christina Nku whom I visited twice during my stay in South

Africa. Dr. Lydia August, the daughter of Mother Nku, was

most generous in providing information about her mother from

handwritten family documents. These documents supplemented

my field data in important ways.

The American University has been an extremely

supportive and academically rigorous environment in which to

pursue my scholarship. The faculty of the Anthropology

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Department have challenged me in ways that have strengthened

my scholarship and affirmed the subjects that I have

studied. A word of special thanks to Dr. Ruth Landman, who

was present for initial conversations in which I shared my

dreams for what I hoped to accomplish, and is present now as

I complete this dissertation. Drs. Dolores Koenig and Brett

Williams, who read and considered the following pages, have

dedicated much time to this project; to them I express

sincere thanks.

The Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the

United Methodist Church assisted in providing mentors and

finance through their Woman of Color Scholarship Program.

Ms. Angella Current and the Reverend Kathy Sage, who are

responsible for the initiation of the WOC Program, are to be

commended for their vision and commitment to such an

extraordinary program. To date, there are no other

denominations that have committed such direct encouragement

to women of color, to pursue Ph.D. degrees and to teach in

United Methodist Seminaries. Along with the Board of Higher

Education of the United Methodist Church, I wish to

acknowledge two theological schools, within that tradition,

that supported my educational goals. I began this degree

while serving as Dean of Students at Wesley Theological

School in Washington, D.C. Many thanks to Dr. Douglass

Lewis, President and Dr. Marjorie Suchocki, formerly

Academic Dean, who not only believed in my goal, but made

vii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. pursuit of it possible by freeing me of some institutional

responsibilities. I complete the degree while serving on

the faculty of The Iliff School of Theology in Denver,

Colorado, as Instructor in Anthropology and Ministry. I

thank Dr. Donald Messer, President and Dr. Jane Smith, Vice

President and Academic Dean, for providing the special

opportunity to do field research, teach and complete the

dissertation. Without the support of these two

institutions, my life would have been far more complicated

as I pursued the degree. The faculty of Iliff has also been

extremely supportive and I extend thanks to them. I draw

particular attention to the efforts of my research

assistants, Felix Kwakye-Nuako, Tamra Bradshaw, Patrica

Singleton and Dena Williams, who provided precise skill in

areas too numerous to mention. Thanks are extended to Chris

Sutton, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography at

Denver University, who with meticulousness drew the map of

the research areas included in this study. I also

acknowledge and thank Margaret Manion, faculty secretary,

who diligently worked on various drafts of the manuscript.

Finally, I express love, admiration, and gratitude

to my sisters and brother, Joyce Barton Davis, Beverly

Gaither, Harriet Taylor and Henry Richmond Thomas; my nephew

and niece, Brett Thomas Barton and Shane1 Mary Gaither, for

their willingness to listen and understand.

viii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iv

LIST OF T A B L E S ...... xiii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS...... xiv

Chapter

1. AN INQUIRY INTO AFRICAN INDIGENOUS CHURCHES .... 1

Statement of Purpose The African Indigenous Churches Context of the Study and Its Contribution to Anthropology General Direction and Outline

2. THEORETICAL ORIENTATION ...... 19

Introduction Theoretical Considerations Implications of Apartheid Law and Other Hegemonic Issues Summary

3. FIELD RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ...... 44

Introduction Methods Utilized Structured Interviews Life Histories Group Discussions Observation of Living Space Search for Literature Dealing with Specific Information Related to Townships Protection of Study Participants Analysis of Data My Task as Ethnographer Summary

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4. CRITICAL EVENTS IN SOUTH AFRICA'S HISTORY OF CULTURAL CONTACT AND SUBSEQUENT RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS ...... 58

Introduction Southern Africa Prior to European Conquest, 270-1400 The Indigenous People Inhabiting the Cape Region, 1400-1650 European Expansionism, 1652-1700 The Xhosa and Europeans in Conflict Over Land, 1700-1805 British Reoccupation of the Cape Province, 1806-1861 Historic Background of Protestant Missionary Movement, 1652-1899 The Beginnings of the African Indigenous Church Movement Discovery of Gold and Diamonds and the Establishment of the Union of South Africa The Rise of Afrikaner and African Nationalism and Their Church Movements Summary

5. ETHNOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF ST JOHN'S APOSTOLIC FAITH MISSION - GUGULETU...... 96 Introduction Voices of St. John's Members Tshawe Thole Nyawuza Mrs. Ntiliti Myira Banzi Mrs. Joxo Thobeka Ndsilibe and Yoliswa Beliqoco Reverend Mjoli and Mrs. Mjoli Mrs. Mazibula Thozama Manqwati, Nozipo, Xolisa Nonceba Interview Commonalities Summary

6. THE THEOLOGY AND RITUAL OF ST. JOHN'S APOSTOLIC FAITH MISSION - GUGULETU...... 189

Introduction The Religious Belief System of St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission - Guguletu Belief in God Belief in Divination Belief in Spirits and Ancestors

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Belief in Mind/Matter Reciprocity Jesus as Healer and Liberator The Holy Spirit and Healing Service of Healing Sermons Invented Tradition, Selected Conservatism, and Syncretism. Invented Tradition Selective Conservatism Syncretism Summary

7. SYMBOLS IN ST. JOHN’S - GUGULETU R I T U A L ...... 236

Introduct ion Symbolic Representations At St. John's Symbolic Use of Water Candles as Symbols The Staff as Symbol Color Symbolism The Eucharist as Symbol Summary

8. THE CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF ILLNESS ...... 251

Overview of Ethnomedicine Social Costs of Production and Health Care in South Africa Emic and Etic Approaches to Health Care Kleinman's Model of Health Care as a Cultural System The Professional Sector The Popular Sector The Folk Sector Biblical Theology as a Foundation for Ritual Healing John 5: An Essential Biblical Text for Healing at St. John1s Social Networks Family Taxonomy of Sickness Worship Services The Priest-Healer Summary

9. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS ...... 286

Healing Rituals Communal Survival Strategies Resulting from Healing Rituals St. John's and the Politics of Resistance An Etic Interpretation

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPENDIX 1 306

APPENDIX 2 319

BIBLIOGRAPHY 320

xii

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Table Page

1. Sex, Age, Place of Birth, Marital Status Number of Surviving Children, Number of Deceased Children ...... 185

2. Education, Employment Status, Monthly Income, Current Residence Location, Number of Rooms in Residence ...... 186

3. Housing Conditions ...... 187

4. Sex, Language, Church Affiliation Prior to St. John's Membership ...... 188

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure Page

1. "Research Area: Guguletu - Location of St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission" ...... 319

xiv

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: AN INQUIRY INTO AFRICAN INDIGENOUS CHURCHES

Religion must be understood for "its function as a social field and social medium of communication and struggle" (Maduro 1982:7).

Statement of Purpose

This dissertation will use Clifford Geertz's

(1973:87-125) notion of religion as a cultural system to

examine, from a cultural historical perspective, how micro

level social relations, as reflected in the healing rituals

of an African indigenous church, impact and are impacted by

macro-level political, social and economic structures, as

well as by the struggles in the Republic of South Africa.

Geertz posits that religion plays a significant role in the

social life of people as it functions as a symbolic form

which integrates the way that they construct their lives.

Interpersonal social relations of poor black South Africans

will be examined with the intent of discovering how they

employ healing rituals as a force for reorienting their

social reality, a material world that is permeated with the

legacy of apartheid, and symbolically transforming it into a

life-enhancing reality. The transformations are necessary,

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even during the present so-called post-apartheid era,1

because the insidious effects of apartheid ideology and

practice perpetuate structures that diminish human life.

This study of healing rituals in an African

indigenous church is based on field work conducted from June

1991 through January 1992 and in August 1992 in the Republic

of South Africa. I travelled throughout the country with

informants to secular and religious rituals as well as

religious festivals in urban and rural settings. The

primary location for data collection and the base of the

*The term post-apartheid is used in this dissertation with qualification. The phrase "so-called post-apartheid era" is used to acknowledge that in June 1991, the laws considered to be the "pillars of apartheid" were repealed. These laws will be discussed in the Chapter 2. However, while the laws considered to be the pillars of apartheid have been repealed, other structural pillars of apartheid remain in place. The remaining pillars affect economy, education, and all other infrastructure. Thus, while there has been change, little has been transformed in the way that life is transacted for the majority of the population, black South Africans. For example, the homelands which were established in 1950 as the official place of residence of black South Africans, continue to exist. These so-called independent countries depend on the present Nationalist government for support. The leaders of the homelands, therefore, function as an extension of the South African government.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. research, however, was an African2 township called

Guguletu, located in Cape Town.2

The analysis section of this work will give

attention to healing rituals observed during worship at St.

John's Apostolic Faith Mission Church - Guguletu.

Interviews were conducted with eighteen of St. John's forty-

eight members. These interviews detail illnesses described

by the members themselves, their accounts of the treatment

they received at St. John's, and members' descriptions of

the social situation in which they live.

The African Indigenous Churches

The African indigenous churches are one arena in

which black South Africans make religious expression. These

churches are founded and organized by Africans and employ

indigenous African religious practices within the context of

their Christian activities. Harold Turner describes the

African indigenous churches as "churches founded by Africans

who usually have some kind of Christian background and who

have developed forms of Christianity expressed in African

cultural ways to meet the needs of African peoples as they

2In this dissertation, "African" will refer to black South Africans. This designation follows the official government classification policy under the "Population Registration Act" (West 1988:108). While the Population Registration Act was repealed in June 1991, the government and general public continue to utilize the term "African" to designate black people in South Africa. Other racial categories in South Africa are Colored, Asian, and white.

2See map in Appendix 2.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. themselves determine" (H. Turner 1977:105).4 Since 1900,

these churches have experienced a phenomenal rate of

membership growth throughout the continent (Barrett

1968:41,65-66).

Christian churches were introduced in South Africa

by European and American missionaries. Churches founded for

Africans were often referred to as "mission churches," and

failed to adequately meet the spiritual needs of indigenous

African people. Thus, in the words of Charles Villa-

Vicencio, they looked "beyond the established churches for

their salvation" (Villa-Vicencio 1988:31). The African

indigenous churches, therefore, emerged as a challenge to

the missionary work of the early nineteenth century.

Missionaries were successful in converting large numbers of

Africans to Christianity and expected indigenous people to

give up indigenous religious practices. Recognizing the

oppressiveness of white rule, many indigenous people

responded with acts of resistance. These acts included

separating from churches initiated by missionaries and

developing indigenous churches, as well as refusal to accept

Christianity in any form. The African indigenous churches

were a renunciation of the inferior position that Africans

held in mission churches.

4Harold Turner has written extensively on African independent churches throughout Africa. See H. Turner, African Independent Churches. Vol. I and II. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967) for further information.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5

Many of the leaders of African indigenous churches

left the so-called "Mother Churches" because they were not

willing to submit to the discipline and, moreover, felt

muzzled and frustrated (Saunders 1970:555; Vilakazi

1986:17). According to Absolom Vilakazi, this inner

dissatisfaction opened doors for Africans to turn to their

own resources. Human dignity was the mandate that many

black South Africans set for themselves. In the words of

Vilakazi, ". . . if the opportunity for the maintenance of

that dignity is denied to the Africans by the white man,

then the Africans will create and inhabit their own world

and its own values" (Vilakazi 1986:17).

Many Africans realized that their indigenous

culture was negatively impacted by the culture of the

missionaries and the African indigenous church was a way to

restore honor and purpose. In sum, the African indigenous

churches were formed and organized in opposition to

missionary control. A decision was made, on the part of

indigenous people, to adapt the message of the church to the

heritage of African peoples (Sundkler 1961:38; Saunders

1970; Vilakazi 1986:17).

Speaking of the rise of the African indigenous

churches, G.C. Oosthuizen and Irving Hexham write,

There was a time when these churches were treated with great suspicion from the White population and with contempt by educated Blacks. Missionaries considered them theologically dangerous while Christian Blacks [who were part of the mission churches] considered them out of step with true

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Christianity which, of course, was defined by the missionaries (Oosthuizen and Hexham 1992:1).

They continue, "These Churches are on the front-line of the

indigenization process of Christianity in Africa, particular

South Africa" (Oosthuizen and Hexham 1992:1). Although

often repudiated, the African indigenous churches developed

their own rituals. They have a closer relationship to the

grassroots level of indigenous Africa than the "mission

church" (Dr. G.C. Oosthuizen, interview by author, Durban,

Natal, Republic of South Africa, 17 August 1992). The

systematic study of healing rituals at St. John's - Guguletu

will significantly contribute to scholars' understanding of

indigenous appropriation of imported religious beliefs and

practices.

St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission Church of

Guguletu is but one congregation within an ecclesiastical

movement of African indigenous churches in South Africa

which includes the Ethiopian Church movement, the Christian

Catholic Church in Zion, and the Apostolic Faith Mission.

Central to initiating this ecclesiastical movement was

Nehemiah Tile of the Thembu Church. In the 1880s, he

established the first independent congregation (Saunders

1970:561-63).5

5Saunders' article "Tile and the Thembu Church: Politics and Independency on the Cape Eastern Frontier in the Late Nineteenth Century" JAH 11 (4) (1970): 553-570, provides a detailed description on Tile and the Thembu Church. A precise date for the establishment of the church is not given.

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As early as 1892, Moses Mokone, another Methodist,

organized an Ethiopian Church because of continuing

injustices perpetrated upon Africans by white missionaries.

Black South African leaders also founded two branches of

Christian associations whose origins were in the United

States.6 The Christian Catholic Church in Zion, founded by

Alexander Dowie in Africa in 1896, originated in Zion City,

Illinois. The Apostolic Faith Mission was founded in 1908

in South Africa, but is a branch of the originating body

from the United States. Both Zion and Apostolic became part

of the African indigenous church movement as African

leadership became active in these associations. It is a

focused study of healing rituals within one congregation of

the Apostolic Faith Mission Association that concerns this

anthropological study.

Consistent with the disciplinary interest of

anthropology, the approach to healing rituals of St. John's

assumes a cultural historical perspective. This particular

congregation exists within the apartheid township of

Guguletu, within the city of Cape Town, within the Republic

of South Africa. The socio-political and economic

structures of South Africa are prescribed by the system of

racial segregation called apartheid. The importation of

6For a full description of Ethiopianism see Chirenje, J. Mutero, Ethiopianism and Afro-Americans in Southern Africa. 1883-1916. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

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Christianity and formation of mission churches for blacks in

South Africa adjusted and adhered to the macro social

structures that impelled the genesis of apartheid. Indeed,

it was because white missionaries conformed to the

institution of colonial racial domination that indigenous

congregations began to form.

The expansion of European empires around the world

augmented an ideology which promoted the seizure of land and

the conquest of indigenous peoples. European Christians

zealously supported this ideology and committed mission

personnel and money to these conquered nations. This

insatiable religious fervor became the means by which

missionaries promoted the colonialism of the state as

benevolent care-giver and soul-saver (Comaroff and Comaroff

1991:5-11; Comaroff and Comaroff 1992:235-263). Using the

Biblical text which was Jesus' final instruction to the

disciples to " [t]herefore go and make disciples of all

nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the

Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19),7 the

missionaries justified their actions for joining and

augmenting the hegemonic forces of the state which

subordinated conquered peoples. While apartheid officially

started in the twentieth century, the Europeans who

conquered the indigenous peoples of South Africa, subjugated

7A11 scriptural references are from the New International Version of the Holy Bible, Zondervan Bible Publishers, Grand Rapids, MI, 1978.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. them from the beginning based on the ascribed attribute of

race. Thus, missionaries conformed to the

institutionalization of separateness, based on race, that

the colonists initiated as churches began to form. The

macro-level of secular racism influenced the micro-level

institutionalization of congregations. Thus, Geertz's

thesis that religion uses symbolic forms to direct social

reality is enacted with the missionaries' historical use of

decisions by the state to perpetuate an oppressive system of

racial domination. Missionaries used the symbols of

Christianity to practice the secular commitments of the

state. It can therefore be claimed that the mission

churches accommodated and adhered to the macro-social

structure of what eventually became apartheid.

Trevor Verryn suggested that seven interrelated

socio-cultural factors led to the emergence of the

indigenous churches:

1) the persistence of white leaders in the institutional churches, which prohibited blacks from assuming leadership positions;

2) race intolerance in the institutional churches;

3) the use of punitive actions to repress black peoples' hopes and dreams and what white leaders judged as rebelliousness;

4) the prototype of Western schismatic and church customs;

5) women being regarded as ancillary;

6) leadership friction and;

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7) the faithfulness of African Christians to their own customs, which they included in their churches (Verryn 1972:17-32).

These factors are all descriptive of circumstances which

gave birth to St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission Church of

South Africa.

The fact that indigenous churches like St. John's

draw their origins within and in response to white

domination through apartheid, is a persistent analytical

consideration for this study. It would be impossible to

overlook the fact, in the words of Villa-Vicencio, that:

"shaped by the dominant white colonial-capitalist culture of

the time, the mission churches were experienced by black

converts as being as foreign as colonialism itself" (Villa-

Vicencio 1988:32). In response, Africans appropriated

components of Christianity and created their own indigenous

religious communities.

Most congregations are house churches and do not

have more than 25 to 60 members and adherents. The micro

level social relations of these churches are represented by

the small size of the congregations that perform rituals in

modest spaces. James Kiernan (1976a:358) calls those who

gather for rituals in this context "bands." This

designation denotes the small number of members who gather

for rituals and the intimacy that is reflected in social

relations which activate caring networks. All congregations

form a strong sense of community, focus on mutual aid and

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use 90 percent of their income to assist members and

adherents who are in need (Dr. G.C. Oosthuizen, interview by

author, Durban, Natal, South Africa, 17 August 1992).

Context of the Study and Its Contribution to Anthropology

St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission Church was

founded in 1938 by Mother Christina Nku. Mother Nku was

originally part of the Apostolic Faith Mission which came to

South Africa from the United States in 1908, but she decided

to launch her own church which would firmly include African

indigenous elements. St. John's therefore, is part of the

African indigenous church movement and has congregations

throughout Southern Africa. Its total membership is over

two million. The Guguletu congregation, with about forty-

eight members, was founded in 1952.

My field research was concerned with healing

rituals of the St. John's religious community and conducted

in the context of the socio-political events of 1991,

immediately following Nelson Mandela's release from prison.

Mandela has been a prominent leader in the black

independence struggles of South Africa and the period after

his release was a time of rapid transition in the country.

The period of transition involved myriad

contradictions that affected the daily lives of black South

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Africans. Some of the contradictions included the taxi war8

that was taking place in the townships in Cape Town; school

children not going to school because of the violence in the

townships; and poorly paid migrant workers living in

8The Group Areas Act instituted in 1950 legislated that Africans must live in segregated residential areas. The practical effect of the law was that Africans lived the farthest away from the center city, usually referred to as "downtown," and whites lived the closest. The colored and Asian populations lived in areas between Africans and whites. Africans supplied the labor pool for work in downtown and outlying areas; for instance, African women worked in the homes of white families. This required transport to and from home and the place of employment. The administration of formal transportation systems was separated by race and the quality of transport services for Africans was quite inferior. There emerged as a consequence, an informal transportation system known as "taxis." Taxis are minibuses that hold up to twenty passengers comfortably. These minibuses run the same route as the buses in the formal transport system, but far more frequently. While the fare is the same as in the formal transportation system, the volume of passengers and frequency of trips is the means by which the taxi companies make a profit. In the African townships in Cape Town, two taxi companies participated in the informal network. Laguna, an historically African run company, originated in the 1960s. It had established a firm economic base because it was the only taxi company providing services. In the 1980s, white businessmen financed another taxi company called Webta, which provided driving jobs for Africans living in the townships. Its routes overlapped with those established by Laguna and for the first time there was competition in the taxi market. In 1991, the competitiveness rose to the point of Laguna losing profits. Webta, being financed by white businessmen, could pay their drivers more, as well as put more taxis on the road. As a result of Webta's advantage, a war began between the two companies, with the community in the middle. The war involved taxis being attacked by gun fire by unknown people, the homes of drivers being burned out in the middle of the night, and taxis being destroyed by fire. The war raged for at least one year. Passengers were hurt because shooting happened randomly and was unannounced. The war ended in the first quarter of 1992 with both companies reaching a peaceful settlement for their continuance.

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townships, at great distances from their families. Poverty

and violence were, and continue to be, the order of the day.

Other contradictions were more global; for example, the

apartheid laws were being repealed. The all party

Convention for a Democratic South Africa began talks in

December 1991. A "third force" operated to destabilize the

possibility of black rule despite the all white affirmative

referendum vote in March 1992 (Denver Post, December 27,

1992:2a). Yet, the quality of life was not shifting in any

dramatic way for black South Africans.

The research questions that I posed during this

time of rapid transition in South Africa were: What role do

healing rituals, as exhibited in St. John's Apostolic Faith

Mission Church - Guguletu, play in the lives of members

during this period of liminality in the political life of

South Africa? Are healing rituals symbolic forms that

assuage some of the contradictions in the lives of poor

black South Africans? These contradictions are indicative

of an "in between time" or a period of liminality (V. Turner

1969:93). Liminality, as reflected in South Africa, is a

period betwixt and between balance and chaos; a stage

betwixt and between symmetry and asymmetry; a season betwixt

and between self-determination and authoritarian rule; an

interval betwixt and between equality of rights,

opportunity, fair treatment and inequality, barriers and

injustice. Liminality in South Africa is a period of

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extreme ambiguity, uncertainty and suffering for persons who

are disenfranchised.

In light of this cultural history and within the

context of these contradictions, I explore how religion, as

expressed through healing rituals, functions as a symbolic

form which integrates the means by which St. John's members

construct their lives. Does the incorporation of indigenous

African religious practices within a Christian context, as

expressed in healing rituals, represent a health care system

that successfully functions outside the conventional realm

of hospitals and doctors' offices?

These explorations will help to clarify the

dialectical relationship between healing and the micro and

macro levels of political, social, and economic structures.

General Direction and Outline

This dissertation endeavors to bring a cultural

historical approach to understanding healing rituals in an

indigenous church in South Africa. It is important to note

that, while apartheid laws were formally repealed in June

1991, the macro-structural relics of apartheid remain

entrenched in the fabric of South African society,

particularly in its ideological/intellectual,

political/economic, psycho/social and secular/sacred

constructions.9 Thus, I argue that the repeal of the laws

9Dr. Mamphele Ramphele uses the constructs "ideological/intellectual, political/economic, and psycho/social" in her study on hostel dwellers in African

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has not substantially changed the deep structures that

fortify apartheid in South Africa, leaving it, still, a

country divided on the basis of race. The methodology

employed in the dissertation reflects an attempt to

integrate history, the speech of informants, rituals of

healing, and hermeneutics, as the lives of members of St.

John's Church are considered. The conclusion is a

constructive integration of reflection on healing rituals

among poor black South Africans, living in modern day South

Africa, who actively participate in an African indigenous

church as a way to enhance meaning in their lives.

The dissertation is divided into nine chapters,

with the first outlining the socio-cultural factors in the

emergence of African indigenous churches in southern Africa.

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the theoretical literature

related to symbolic orders, historical transformation, the

background of apartheid laws, and an explication of the

concept of "space," as it is used occasionally in the text

of the dissertation.

Chapter 3 provides a summary of the specific

anthropological methodology used while conducting field

research in South Africa. Chapter 4 gives a broad overview

townships in Cape Town. See her dissertation, The Politics of Space; Life in the Migrant Labour Hostels of the Western Cape. (Cape Town: Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cape Town, 1991, p. 3, 67).

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of the history of South Africa, drawing together the central

issues that gave rise to twentieth century apartheid.

Chapter 5 presents an ethnographic profile of the

members of St. John's - Guguletu focusing on life histories.

Chapter 6 presents the theology and rituals of St. John's

Apostolic Faith Mission Church - Guguletu and examines the

belief system of the church. This chapter also analyzes

sermons and considers the issue of syncretism in the

particular context of South Africa. Chapter 7 examines the

ritual use of symbols of healing at St. John's, highlighting

particular symbols that members viewed as significant.

Chapter 8 presents theoretical approaches on the

cultural construction of illness. The chapter includes

discourse from St. John's members that illustrate their

understanding of illness. A detailed exploration of health,

factors that compromise health, and steps taken by St.

John's members for the preservation of health, are

presented. Chapter 9 presents concluding remarks about the

healing rituals that have been considered in the

dissertation.

It is important to discuss several limitations of

this study. For example, this dissertation will not

specifically address the broad political, economic and

sociological ramifications of apartheid. That is the task

of other projects. The attempt here is simply to provide a

detailed examination of one central aspect of the life of an

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African indigenous church, its healing rituals, and the ways

in which these rituals lead to the enhancement of life for a

particular group of black South Africans.

I have chosen the Protestant tradition as the

religious perspective for this project, and therein lies

another limitation. The operative assumption is that

healing takes place in a variety of both secular and sacred

institutions and that there are important inferences that

can be made about healing in the context of an African

indigenous church. By choosing one particular theological

and ecclesial tradition— St. John's— it will be possible to

illustrate concretely how the history of apartheid affects

poor black South Africans, and how and why healing rituals

provide one way to respond to systems that oppress people.

Other religious traditions, such as Roman Catholicism,

Islam, or Judaism will not be dealt with at all in this

dissertation. However, the methodology of this project

should provide a means by which one can approach the

dynamics and dimensions of healing in other traditions.

I want to acknowledge that I am an active participant

in the Protestant tradition as an ordained minister of the

United Methodist Church. My interest in South Africa spans

several years. My first statement about South Africa was

written in 1978 when I responded as a scholarship applicant

to an essay question regarding a critical global issue about

which the international community would be concerned in the

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1980s. My essay dealt with apartheid in South Africa and

helped to crystallize my profound interest in the politics

of racism in South Africa. I continued to follow events

taking place in the country via the media and became

involved in the anti-apartheid movement in the United

States. In time, I realized that having experienced racial

discrimination personally in the context of the United

States as an African American woman, I had a real interest

in understanding the dynamics of legalized racism in South

Africa as it is structured in apartheid. More particularly,

I had an interest in understanding the mythology of racial

superiority in South Africa, hoping that such a cross-

cultural study would give me insights about my experience in

America. This disclosure about my personal experience of

racial discrimination in America and my decision to locate

this study of healing rituals in South Africa, may or may

not be a limitation for this study. Readers will have to

decide for themselves whether or not it is a limitation.

With these qualifications, pursuing an historical

cultural approach to healing in South Africa via this

dissertation, is fitting.

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THEORETICAL ORIENTATION

"... theoretically informed history and historically informed theory must be joined together to account for populations specifiable in time and space, both as outcomes of significant processes and as their carriers" (Wolf 1982:21).

Introduction

This is a study of ritual and healing in an

African indigenous church which seeks to determine the

relationship between primary social relations and struggles

within the national political, social and economic

structures of the Republic of South Africa. This study thus

examines how national political, social and economic

structures influence local level social relations.

My starting points of theoretical intersection are

health and social ritual. In this regard, Steven Feierman

is taken seriously when he makes a decisive point that

the history of therapeutics must . . . take into account all the forces which shape local networks, in other words everything which affects community and domestic organization. The history of health care is inseparable from the total history of communal organization of the economy (Feierman 1985:73) .

In this examination, relations between patients and healers

were approached within the context of culturally constructed

reality. Carolyn Sargent suggests that in their shared

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context, social participants have common understandings of

illness and healing. Decisions regarding therapeutic

choices and compliance with prescribed regimes are affected

by the extent to which patients and healers share a common

view of illness and healing (Sargent 1982:93).

The empirical focus of this study is on St. John's

Apostolic Faith Mission Church in Guguletu, Cape Town, where

rituals of healing that explicitly function to ease the

contradictions and challenges of the reality of South

African social relations are daily performed. These

relations reflect the discrimination, legally sanctioned by

the South African government until 1991, determined by skin

color, economic status, gender, age, and geographic location

(Ramphele 1991:4; Wilson and Ramphele 1989:4-9; New York

Times, June 1, 1992, 3a). While negotiations for a new

constitution are underway, the South African national

government prominently displays its minority elected

leadership that is primarily white and male. South African

blacks still wait for franchise, radical change in economic

structures, as well as structural power that extends to all

domains (Bozzoli 1983; Ramphele and Boonzaier 1988:153-166;

Ramphele 1991:55).

This study of rituals of healing at St. John's

Apostolic Faith Mission Church - Guguletu, suggests that the

rituals of healing are a response to pollution which is

viewed as a socio-cultural force that increases

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susceptibility to illness, and creates misfortune and poor

luck (Douglas 1966:1-6; Ngubane 1977:78). Pollution is

associated with birth and death, events in the life cycle

that are viewed as the great mysteries of life. South

African anthropologist Harriet Ngubane, who did fieldwork

among the Zulu on healing and ritual, suggests that there is

a "this world and other world" belief system; that is, there

exists the present world in which human beings live, and

there also exists the "other world," which is the place

where people who have moved through the passage of death

enter a new state of beingness, as ancestor or spirit

(Ngubane 1977:77). The concepts of "this" world and the

"other" world have an overlapping area that is characterized

by danger and marginality.1

Theoretical Considerations

Victor Turner's study of Ndembu ritual symbols

argues that, while symbols may normally represent a specific

system of meaning, when merged with one another, the

specific systems can produce additional symbols and systems

of meaning (V. Turner 1967:21). The meaning of one symbol

may change when it is coalesced with another. This is so

because tangible characteristics of an object used for a

symbol do not necessarily influence what the symbol

represents. Symbols' meanings arise from the context in

*For more detail on pollution as characterized by a sense of danger and marginality, see Douglas 1966:94-113; Turner 1968:89, Leach 1977:24.

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which they are used as well as from the intent of their

users. Turner describes ritual as a "musical score" in

which notes represent ritualistic symbols (V. Turner

1967:48). Rituals used in healing and on other occasions at

St. John's employ a series of symbols that reflect Turner's

metaphor. The semantic structure of ritual used among St.

John's members is intended to make perceivable, discernible,

and detectable that which is intangible: religious beliefs,

opinions, attitudes, and the emotional nature of individuals

(V. Turner 1967:21). Turner's considerations are important

for demonstrating how the symbolization process among

members of St. John's functions to create an affinity

between the unknown and the known. This affinity serves to

demonstrate ritual connectedness between norms and values of

the membership with the larger context of South African

society, in spite of material and political contradictions.

Turner's general approach to religion will be

helpful for this study of ritual and healing. For Turner,

religion has a structural essence that corresponds to the

patterns of society and its expected continuation.

Religious beliefs and practices are tied to the process of

the conservation as well as the fundamental change of the

structures of human society (V. Turner 1969:4). In studying

the beliefs and practices of St. John's members, this study

will attempt to show how the arrangement of society is

reproduced at the symbolic level of the ritual process.

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Turner's concept of "liminality and communitas"

will also be used in this study. According to Turner, when

the liminal state occurs during the rites of passage,

communitas emerges in opposition to patterned behavior and

differentiated reality. While Turner views society as a

world of structured positions in which segments are

hierarchically arranged and contested, he also views its

coherence and sensitivity as depending upon the

reaffirmation of the essence of humankind through the means

of exposing and flattening statutes made viable by

liminality or the interactive methodology that consists of

ensuing occasions of elevation and flatness, "communitas and

structure, similitude and distinctiveness, justice and

injustice" (V. Turner 1969:97).

According to Turner, then, society is predisposed

to fluctuate between structure and communitas, which, when

joined, depict the state of humanity. More explicitly,

communitas penetrates structures during the liminal state

and creates a sense of marginality that may decline to

servility. Yet, even in its state of marginality or

subservience, communitas is considered to be a blessed or

pure state, perhaps because it violates that which

constitutes typical behavior in formal social organizations

and relationships. Moreover, it is associated with events

which create opportunities for unparalleled power. This

dialectical transaction between structure and communitas

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empowers people to rearrange that which forms and informs

life. In actuality, it is not possible for a society to

operate satisfactorily without this interaction (V. Turner

1969:129).

Turner further amplifies ;his explanation of

liminality by suggesting that rituals may be viewed as

processes of status elevation and reversal. He argues that

in status elevation and reversal the weak become strong and

the strong, weak, due to the potency of the meaning

exhibited in the ritual process. He uses the African

installation rites to illustrate rituals of elevation in

which the person portraying the liminal motif represents the

undesirable aspects of society and in which the postulant

assumes a state of meekness prior to being elevated.

Rituals of status reversal depict a reordering of statuses

so that structurally dominant or subordinate positions may

be inverted (V. Turner 1969:172).

From Turner's point of view, society functions

from a perspective of two primary models. The first model

is that of a society which is composed of formal positions

and roles that ignore the individual behind the social

persona. In the second model, society is viewed as "a

communitas of concrete idiosyncratic individuals. ..." (V.

Turner 1969:177). In the final analysis, the significance

of communitas is its potential to bring together the various

social structures that are a part of society. Turner

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believes that people need to take part in both models.

Society is underpinned by the dialectical process that moves

between ensuing intervals of structure and communitas.

Ultimately, society experiences renewal when people who are

constrained by its structures encounter liminality and

communitas.

Roger Keesing (1987) provides an approach that

will, in a very helpful manner, propel the theoretical

orientation of this study. While Victor Turner provides

invaluable theoretical material to do an interpretation of

symbolization, Keesing provides a theoretical backdrop that

pushes questions related to symbolic interpretation to a yet

more critical stance. He asserts that when culture is

viewed as a collective phenomenon, knowledge needs to be

viewed as distributed and controlled (Keesing 1987:161-74).

Keesing further suggests that the question "who creates and

defines cultural meanings, and to what ends" needs to be

raised (Keesing 1987:161-162). The context of this study of

St. John's and healing rituals was carried out within a

state that has formally practiced legalized subordination

based on race for over forty years, and much longer

informally. The ideology of apartheid controls cultural

meanings even in the current transition to a post-apartheid

South Africa. Further, Keesing's theoretical approach is

important because it provides a framework for expecting

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varied readings of the "cultures as text" approach in

interpretative anthropology (Keesing 1987:161).

Jean Comaroff writes about the historical

transformation of culture in her work among the Barolong boo

Ratshidi (Tshidi) along the Botswana-South Africa border.

By examining ritual initiation and various rituals of the

spirit churches, she suggests that the symbols used embody

"the prevailing modes of consciousness" (Comaroff 1985:123).

For Comaroff, there is a culturally formed "consciousness"

which mediates socio-cultural order and everyday experience.

She views the African indigenous churches as instruments of

rebellion against a general loss of autonomy. These

churches formed their own versions of Christianity with

their own African leaders and in so doing pushed aside the

mainline churches which were led by whites. She sees in

their ritual, dance, song and spirit mediumship a message of

political resistance and a statement of struggle for

liberation (Comaroff 1985:187-193). The aim of this study

is to examine St. John's healing rituals to ascertain

whether or not the symbolic orientations utilized in micro

space are expressions that mediate power on the part of

black people who are disenfranchised in South Africa.

Comaroff's suggestion that spirit churches have culturally

formed consciousness will serve as a springboard for

discovering how St. John's members view the world in which

they live and negotiate. Attention will be given to

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determining whether or not St. John's healing rituals are

expressions of rebellion by people living in social

relations of micro-structure opposing the hegemonic macro

structure of apartheid.

The foremost challenge for an ethnographer is, as

Geertz suggests, to use anthropology as an interpretive

science, searching for meaning in the rituals of healing of

St. John's members (Geertz 1973:5). Indeed, there is a

complex symbol system that the members of St. John's utilize

in a public context. The task is to examine what Geertz

calls the "structures of significance" and not only offer a

"thick description" but go further, as Keesing suggests, to

examine the "cultural meanings." This becomes critical as

the rituals and symbols of St. John's members are examined.

By keeping the historic and economic policies of apartheid

in clear focus, there is less possibility of examining the

rituals in a static fashion. The cultural history of South

Africa necessitates that the rituals of St. John's Church be

examined as dynamic forces that constantly interact with

history. The cultures as text approach, particularly in

South Africa, is read quite differently depending upon the

voice that is given articulation. This study chooses to

give voice to low-income urban black South Africans. The

data will reveal that, from an income perspective, the

members of St. John's Church are on the edge of economic

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extinction.2 The St. John's - Guguletu congregation,

specifically those members who had experiences of healing,

shared a commitment to healing for others whose lives were

affected by ill-health, unemployment and general lack of

access to basic resources for life. Through the social

relations of the congregation, those who were vulnerable

obtained a sense of security when they were under the direct

care of the church.3 This time of movement toward stability

caused a shift in the identity of the person who became an

adherent of St. John's because the church brought

2See Table 2, page 186 for data on the monthly income of those St. John's members interviewed.

3Persons who did not have access to other shelter were permitted to live in shacks that were located on the premises of the church. There was a shack for women and children and a shack for men. The shacks were small structures made of corrugated iron. The dimensions were approximately 15' by 12'. There was no inside toilet or running water. When I visited the shacks to conduct interviews there were as many as fifteen adult women and seven children in one shack. There were only four men who lived in the shack which stood next to the one for women and children. Two types of persons lived in the shacks and networks reflected these two types. First, there were those who were sick and unable to work. Second, there were those who were sick and had been healed, but had no other shelter than the shack. These people had jobs to which they went daily. All of the women were employed as domestics in hotels or in the homes of white people. One man had a job working in a "bottle" store that sold alcoholic beverages. Those who were employed shared their money with those who were not working. There was a kind of "round-robin" network, in which, each week, one of the persons who was employed shared money with all of those who were not. The following week, another working person did the same thing. Food was shared in common, with those who were working providing for those who were not. These networks were similar to those Conquergood (1992:95-144) found in a polyethnic tenement located in Chicago, Illinois.

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restoration to the person's life. This was a transformative

period in the person's life.4

If Geertz's definition of religion is applied to

St. John's Church, we are compelled to ask how symbolic

order transforms cosmic notions of St. John's adherents into

their world of social relationships. This study will

therefore analyze the meaning of the symbol systems of St.

John's members and suggest how these systems of meaning are

related to the social structure and cultural historical

processes of South African society.

Mary Douglas's theoretical approach to ritual,

particularly her thesis about attitudes toward dirt and

uncleanliness, will be helpful in this analysis of St.

John's Church. That is to say, there are many cultures that

share a common world view about dirt and uncleanliness that

may be utilized in studying St. John's (Douglas 1966:1-28).

Douglas's theory came from her work in the Congo in which

she postulated three concepts. First, that dirt signifies

disorder, second, that dirt denotes the attitude of the

observer, and third, that dirt repels order (Douglas

1966:2). Douglas writes about the rituals of purity and

impurity that bring together experience through symbolic

interactions that are accessible to all people. In the

4Persons are adherents through the period of time that they are affiliated with the church. Adherents attend worship, give money and items used in rituals such as candles, soap, matches, and salt. Membership requires baptism.

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design, diverse components are related and dissimilar

experience is assigned meaning (Douglas 1966:2).

The social situation in which adherents of St.

John's exist is often considered by them to be toxic or

polluted. James Kiernan suggests that African indigenous

church members isolate themselves from the secular "this

worldly" life of the townships (Kiernan 1974:79-90;

1984:219-36). At St. John's the ritual of worship is held

four times a day, seven days a week, which gives members who

choose to attend services little time to mix with other

township people. Thus, in a sense, the rhythm of the

schedule of worship services is a ritual itself which

discourages St. John's adherents from co-mingling with

others outside the church. Those who live in shacks located

on the church premises have to get permission from the

priest-healer, Reverend Xaba,5 to leave the premises unless

they are employed and are going to a job site. Otherwise,

women and men who live in the shacks are encouraged to

attend worship services and interact with members who have

homes located in the surrounding townships and who come to

the church for various rituals.

Implications of Apartheid Law and Other Hegemonic Issues

Since the adherents of St. John's Church are

black, they have been systematically excluded from

5Pseudonyms are used for St. John's - Guguletu members and adherents throughout the text.

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constructively taking part in the established political and

economic arenas of South African life. This exclusion has

persisted under racially discriminatory laws which

successive governments have enforced. Even the mobility of

black people was limited by legislative means until the

promulgation of the Abolition of Influx Control Act of

1986.6

The history of apartheid reveals myriad laws which

give it its central structure. Public conversations about

affairs vital to black people were diminished by the

restrictive laws of the Riotous Assembly and the Suppression

of Communism Act. Black South Africans did not have the

political right to organize from 1948-1991. Laws such as

the Bantu Administration Act of 1927, Public Safety Act of

1953, Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1953, Criminal Procedure

Act of 1955, General Law Amendments of 1963, General Law

Amendment Act of 1966, and the Terrorism Act of 1967 held

Movement of black South Africans to urban areas was strictly limited, but not rendered impossible, by the influx controls that were a part of the Native Laws Amendment Act of 1937. Blacks were required to obtain government permission before leaving the homelands for urban areas. Twice yearly, industrial censuses forced the removal of "surplus" blacks from the towns by ministerial order. In general, blacks working in low-level positions for whites, often as domestics, were allowed to remain in urban areas. These laws and censuses were officially abolished by the Abolition of Influx Control Act of 1986. Regulation in terms of availability of housing continued to limit movement of blacks to cities. (See Davenport 1991:286; Thompson 1990:166; Posel 1991:42-44).

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Black South Africans hostage in their own country7 (UN 1969:

10,47,52,77,80; Horrell 1978:1-8;171-195).

Over the years, the structure of apartheid and its

militaristic enforcement through the South African defense

force created apprehension among black South Africans about

speaking out. In the words of Dr. Mamphela Ramphele: ”Fear

and lack of trust between people have had the effect of

drawing organizations into secrecy, further limiting public

debate and encouraging authoritarian practices within the

political organization” (Ramphele 1991:72). She goes on to

suggest that the February 2, 1990 speech by state president

De Klerk, which unbanned political groups, had the potential

of opening up dialogue between the government and the black

majority.

The transition which is taking place in national

politics will affect the lives of people in local

communities. For example, hostels8 are local communities

7These laws strictly limited the freedom of black South Africans in several ways, including: allowing the State President the power to move any ethnic group of black people, any portion of a black ethnic group or black individual to any location within the union; allowing the government to detain suspects in solitary confinement indefinitely with or without just cause; empowering the government officials to declare a state of emergency and impose restrictions over all or parts of South Africa at their discretion; imposing severe penalties for disturbing the peace or incitement (Davenport 1991:336,346,389).

8Hostels were initially designed as buildings to house single African male migrant workers. The hostels located in Cape Town hold up to sixteen beds with an average living space of 1.85 square meters (Thomas 1987). Although originally meant to only accommodate males, at present the

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that desperately need to be transformed by the policies of

the national government. Ramphele uses the construct of

"space" to suggest that the limited physical space available

to black South Africans living in hostels, who work at the

behest of a white government, confines them politically and

psycho-socially as well (Ramphele 1991:69-73;82-87). This

construct of "space" is useful for the analysis of ritual

healing in this study. Rituals take place in "space" which

is set aside as sacred. The sanctuary of the church as well

as other buildings located on the church grounds, are

considered by St. John's adherents as sacred and as the

space in which people's lives are transformed.

However, Ramphele's concept of space has very

broad meaning. She uses it in a political/economic,

ideological/intellectual as well as psycho-social

perspective (Ramphele 1991:3). The constructs of space and

ritual will be examined from all these perspectives.

Ritualized space from an ideological/intellectual

point of view refers to the universe in which social

activity takes place. It is the place in which standard

hostels include men, women and children. It is estimated that hostel dwellers make up 11% of Africans living in Cape Town (Heap and Ramphele 1991). The hostels are typically sparse with excessive overcrowding. Each twin-sized bed is occupied by an average of 2.8 persons. The ratio of people to working toilets is 133:1 and people to working water spigots is 117:1 (Ramphele 1989; Segar 1988). Hostel dwellers are poverty-stricken. Most of the male workers are employed as unskilled laborers earning R100 per week. This money is to provide for families who live a great distance away in the Eastern Cape (Heap and Ramphele 1991).

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expectations are sorted out for shared dialogue. Ramphele

defines "intellectual space" as "the capacity for critical

awareness of one's environment and the position one occupies

in the power structure of one's society" (Ramphele 1991:73).

Ritualized space and intellectual space are in constant

interaction serving as a way for the adherents of St. John's

Church to make sense of life and to exist in a country

immersed in political space known as apartheid.

Indeed, "apartheid space" is a construct that has

been officially in place in South Africa since 1948.

Drawing upon Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony and his

suggestion that there exist in societies two controlling

superstructures, namely "civil society" which represents the

private citizenry, and "political society" which represents

the state or juridical government (Gramsci 1971:12-13), one

can argue that in South Africa hegemony involves the

interaction of two superstructures represented historically

by a ruling white citizenry and the Nationalist government

over and against the subaltern classes, represented by the

black majority as well as the so-called Colored, Indian and

Asian populations. In South Africa, the "ruling class's

hegemony" (Gramsci 1971:210) is not only manufactured in its

ideology of white dominance that has had no boundaries in

structurally disempowering subaltern classes in every sphere

of life, it is instituted in the Constitution and the

legislature, despite the removal of the laws considered to

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be the pillars of apartheid. For instance, the ten African

homelands which were established in 1972 to maintain a black

labor reservoir for governmental needs remain intact

(Horrell 1978:204). The "hegemonic function of the law"

(Genovese 1972:25) in South Africa is more extreme than the

American legal system that gave slaveholders as the ruling

class in the South throughout the 1800s, dominion over

slaves (Genovese 1972:25-49). The power of the law cannot

be underestimated, particularly when it favors the ruling

class. Writing about the power of the law in the American

south during the period of American slavery, Eugene Genovese

asserts: "the law cannot be viewed as something passive and

reflective, but must be viewed as an active, partially

autonomous force, ..." (Genovese 1972:26).

Gramsci's construct of institutionalized power in

the hand of a ruling class is supported by F. Youngman and

T. J. Jackson Lears. Youngman defines Gramsci's concept of

hegemony as an incontrovertible process that controls and

fortifies all levels of society's private and public

institutions, particularly those involved with the

development of intellectual and moral convictions (Youngman

1986:72).

A similar opinion is offered by Lears in his

presentation on cultural hegemony. He argues that the

theory of cultural hegemony demonstrates how the shared

values of the elite have dominion over, and the consent of,

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the majority in the existing social order. In capitalist

systems this means that subordinates have their own view of

the world and are simultaneously possessed by one. Lears

refers to this phenomenon as "contradictory consciousness"

(Lears 1985:570). From an ideological point of departure,

Pierre Bourdieu suggests that the effectiveness of

ideological domination is greatest when it is so ingrained

as a part of life that it is not verbalized (Bourdieu

1977:87,188).

Hegemony is a force that also influences classless

societies. As previously noted, Keesing argues that

interpretive anthropology's "cultures as text" paradigm is

inadequate because texts may be "differently read" (Keesing

1987:161). From a perspective of sociology of knowledge,

Keesing further argues that in tribal societies knowledge is

a form of power that is "distributed and controlled"

(Keesing 1987:161). Moreover, he asserts that, "even in

classless societies, who knows what becomes a serious issue"

(Keesing 1987:161). Consequently, one may argue that

hegemony operates in societies regardless of their socio

economic construction. It also includes hierarchical

structures and their role in culture, for instance, the way

females and males, or children and adults, or in the case of

South Africa, the way that people of various skin colors

interact with micro and macro systems. Thus, hegemony

involves the analysis of the roles of dominance and

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subordinance which are reflected more often than not as

powerful people who control production dominate less

powerful people who do not control production (Gramsci

1971:12).

Education is a key institution in the intellectual

space paradigm. Apartheid, as a dominant ideology, has

stagnated the educational development of black South

Africans. Apartheid has had a systematic and clearly stated

policy of starving black intellectual development. The

chief architect of apartheid, former prime minister and

professor of psychology, Dr. H.F. Verwoerd, instituted

"bantu education" (Karis and Gerhart 1977(3):29). He said

the following in reference to the education of black South

Africans who are pejoratively referred to as "bantu:"

Education must train and teach people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live. . . . The Bantu must be guided to serve his [sic] own community in all respects. There is no place for him [sic] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour (Karis and Gerhart 1977(3):29).

The coercive force of apartheid has had a destructive and

impairing effect on the intellectual development of black

South Africans. Apartheid legislation determined that black

people would have such limited educational opportunities

that intellectual development would be stifled to the point

that black people would effectively have no voice nor

participate in intellectual debates of national importance.

The assurance of inadequate education was determined

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materially by the government's inadequate subsidization of

the education of black children. In 1984, R234 ($84)9 per

child was spent for the education of black children, while

Rl,654 ($591) per child was spent on the education of white

children. African children received one-seventh or 14 per

cent state subsidy compared to white children receiving 86

per cent (Wilson and Ramphele 1989:141). The systematic

discrimination in the education of black children in South

Africa was designed to circumvent across several generations

the creative and strategic planning on the part of black

people to participate in solving the problems of their

nation, townships and homelands. The goal of apartheid,

particularly its restriction on black intellectual

development, was to deny black people a voice in the future

of their country. The objective of apartheid was to limit

intellectual discourse to white people, so that they could

claim entitlement to run the nation, while simultaneously

claiming that the majority of the people did not have the

intellectual capacity to do so. Thus, white South Africans

arrogated the benefits of citizenship for themselves. White

South Africans usurped the power of black people to

9The rate of exchange of South African rand per US dollar in 1991 was approximately R2.8 to $1US.

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determine the future for themselves or for South Africa as a

whole.10

The significance of intellectual space for the

process of change in South Africa cannot be overemphasized.

That the majority of St. John's adherents have not had an

education beyond Standard 6, is testimony to the

disadvantages that have been an historical part of their

individual lives and has systemically impacted what they

have experienced collectively at the expense of the macro

level.11 Poverty and lack of education are the

contextualized situation in which the adherents of St.

John's Church find themselves. This context is important

from a cultural historical point of view because it is

necessary for the daily lives of the powerless to be

illuminated. Looking at the culture from the perspective of

the powerless redefines discourse. When ideas, concerns and

the history of the powerless become an intentional part of

intellectual pursuit and conversation, there is a pronounced

change in the terms and subject matter of the discourse

since it must then consider the day to day lives of those on

the underside of powerful social structures. In such

conversation, the discourse is redefined and there is a

10See Ramphele 1991:77 for her analysis of apartheid education. See also, Wilson and Ramphele 1989:144-145 for information on the inadequate training of teachers for black children and lack of facilities.

uSee Table 2, page 186.

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debunking of the conundrum that unqualifiably accepts

scientific investigation as devoid of bias (Ramphele

1991:78-9). The fact that John's adherents had very little

formal schooling takes on immense significance, especially

in light of their educational position in South Africa's

hierarchical society.

Comaroff and Ramphele make use of the theoretical

construct "psycho-social" space (Comaroff 1985:54; Ramphele

1991:67;82-88). Comaroff's use is in reference to the

'inhabited space' in which one finds oneself and Ramphele's

is in reference to the concrete reality of limited space in

which hostel dwellers live (Comaroff 1985:54; Ramphele

1991:67;82-88). Both the Comaroff and Ramphele constructs

of psycho-social space were valuable in the present study,

although the findings may challenge their conclusions. The

ritual space in which St. John's adherents find themselves,

as mentioned above, is transformative space. In order for

transformation to take place, however, the sacred space must

provide an environment that gives permission for one to

aspire toward wholeness in life. For most of St. John's

adherents this means to be healed of an ailment or disease.

It is clear that the space in which St. John's members

exist, whether in their tiny homes or the sacred space of

the church building, influences their view of life.

Ramphele suggests that space has the effect of enlarging or

confining the hopes and dreams of people's lives. She

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writes that "inhabited space has a major impact on the self-

image of individuals and their perception of their place in

society" (Ramphele 1991:82).12 Her fieldwork among hostel

dwellers shows that limited space militates against one

having a positive self-image and therefore, does not

encourage one to move toward transformation. This is

contrary to my observations: this thesis sets out to make

the case that while St. John's adherents live their lives in

limited space,13 when they enter the ritual space of symbols

as well as physical space that is believed to be sacred,

self-appreciative attitudes encourage adherents to live a

liberative life in spite of the larger malevolent apartheid

structure.

If culture is viewed from the perspective of South

African anthropologist Robert Thornton, what St. John's

adherents do in rituals becomes intelligible to the

outsider, Thornton suggests that culture is "a product

which can be, and is, commandeered at various important

I2See also Hayden 1984:40; Moore 1986:167.

13The enforcement of apartheid's Group Area Act required the races to live in separate geographic areas. The physical space allotted to blacks is indicative of the hierarchical structure of South Africa. Blacks, who make up 84 percent of the population, live on 12 percent of the land. As such, the living space of the majority of the population is extremely limited. Some adherents of St. John's live in tiny houses in black townships. On the average, adherents live in three rooms that are occupied by no less than five people of both sexes. Often there is a shack in the rear of the main structure which accommodates single males. Toilets are located outside the house. See Table 2, page 186.

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historical stages, by both those working for or against

transformation to strengthen their status" (Thornton

1988:24). Keeping this definition of culture in mind, the

ritual behavior of St. John's adherents will reveal that

indigenous African religion is conserved in Christianity.

Thus, one can speak of Africanized Christianity in

describing the rituals of St. John's as well as other

African indigenous churches (Mbiti 1970:430; Muzorewa

1985:35-45; Walker 1979:1-8).

There is an overlapping relationship among the

four types of space that have been explored in this chapter.

The superstructure of political/economic space which is

mediated in an apartheid culture gives meaning to, and is

given meaning by, the material, psycho-social and

ideological/intellectual space in which people find

themselves. As Ramphele suggests, there is continual

movement from one use of space to another. The ritual

processes which are formed by St. John's adherents are

rituals of sustenance in an apartheid culture and constitute

a liberative quest which this study seeks to explore.

Summary

The intention of this study is to advance a

knowledge of how rituals of healing, in the South African

context, can be understood to provide meaning to historical

circumstances and their embodiment in symbolic orders. It

is hoped that this study will contribute to the

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comprehension of elements necessary for the process of

transformation from a system of dominating apartheid space

to shared equitable social and political relations. The

next chapter will present the anthropological methodology

used to collect data for this dissertation.

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FIELD RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Henceforth, neither the experience nor the interpretive activity of the scientific researcher can be considered innocent. It becomes necessary to conceive ethnography, not as the experience and interpretation of a circumscribed "other" reality, but rather as a constructive negotiation involving at least two, and usually more, conscious, politically significant subjects. Paradigms of experience and interpretation are yielding to paradigms of discourse, of dialogue and polyphony (Clifford 1983:133).

Introduction

Recent ethnographic methodology literature raises

questions about the appropriateness of using "traditional"

models of conducting field research. The most urgent matter

stressed in the literature is the knowledge and power of the

researchers who have the capacity to exert authority over

the persons being studied. Some scholars assert that it is

necessary to examine, not only methods of inquiry, but the

relationship of the ethnographer to the people who are the

locus of the research in reference to elaborate social

networks of power (Marcus 1986:165-193; Marcus and Fischer

1986:33-44; Clifford 1988:21-54; Rosaldo 1989:25-45;

Ramphele 1990:1-15).

The cardinal question that these scholars are

raising is, how much will the observed participate in the

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design, implementation, and actual conduct of the research

of which they are the subject? This is a difficult question

for every ethnographer, including myself. In my own case,

my interest in the church in South Africa was stimulated

when I visited the country in 1985. While I managed to

maintain contacts with many whom I met in 1985, those

contacts were primarily associated with officials in the

Methodist Church of Southern Africa. Since my research

project was with those who were members of the African

indigenous churches, I had to build new contacts upon

arriving in South Africa to conduct the study. Therefore,

the plans for my research emerged with the greatest of

obstacles, insofar as arranging for a participatory

approach. Thus, I must admit that from initiation, this

field research developed along traditional lines. That is,

the design was created "at a distance." I read literature

about the African indigenous church, and before leaving for

the field, I talked with as many experts in this area of

study as possible. Fortunately, there were several South

Africans in the United States with whom I was able to make

contact about this topic. For instance, Dr. Jean Comaroff,

of the University of Chicago, granted me an interview in

which she provided contacts and talked about her research in

South Africa. Nevertheless, limitations of money, time, as

well as geographic distance, made it impossible for me to

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create an initial design which included input from those

whom I would observe.

However, upon arrival at my research location, I

was able to arrange several sessions with local informants

who provided invaluable input which prompted me to modify my

research design. Thus, the initial research design shifted

dramatically after I integrated the local knowledge and

categories of members of the indigenous churches along with

others. While all informants were fluent in English,

conversations with those in the Cape region were conducted

in their mother-tongue "Xhosa." These conversations were

facilitated by my research assistant, Mrs. Barbara Mantata,

an indigenous Xhosa speaker, who lived in the African

township, New Cross Roads, and who previously did extensive

fieldwork with Dr. Mamphela Ramphele of the University of

Cape Town, in African townships in Cape Town. Mrs. Mantata

accompanied me to all informal and structured interviews.

Her translations were verified by a second Xhosa speaking

research assistant, Mr. Percival Mbulelo Bhoqo, who lived in

a rural Xhosa-speaking area in the Orange Free State. Mr.

Bhoqo moved to Cape Town for the period of time during which

my research was conducted. There were occasions when both

research assistants worked together. Both were necessary,

particularly because my lessons in Xhosa commenced after my

arrival at the field site. Hence, I was not fluent in the

language.

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Another forum that greatly influenced my research

design was a symposium on the African Indigenous Church held

at the Witwatersrand University, July 3-5, 1991. The

research unit for New Religious Movements and Indigenous

Churches, sponsored by the Human Sciences Research Council

under the University of Zululand, was responsible for

bringing together members and ministers of African

indigenous churches, as well as scholars. Since this

symposium was held two weeks after my arrival, I used it as

an opportunity to do informal interviews to develop a

schedule of questions to ask during structured interviews

with members of St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission Church.

The symposium provided a rare opportunity to meet African

indigenous church members and leaders as well as scholars

from all over Southern Africa. I understand participatory

research to include a mechanism for the researcher to have

constant feed-back from and accountability to those being

studied. Indeed, the symposium provided a means to get

input from ideas presented in papers and to have

conversations with participants. However, because it was a

one time event, any subsequent contacts with those present

were limited to telephone conversations, and occasionally,

follow-up interviews. While it would have been desirable to

have regular personal contact with symposium participants in

order to be engaged in an informal accountability, this was

not possible.

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Methods Utilized

There are several units of analysis in this study.

I attempted to use various methods so that the data base

would be substantial. Thus, the data collection included:

-structured interviews/life histories of eighteen St. John's members

-an audit of the physical environment of the homes of eighteen interviewees

-a literature review of detailed material that pertained to the townships at the local government level and from the private sector

-group discussions

-observation of ritual and worship

Structured Interviews

Open-ended structured interviews were conducted in

the space in which people lived. Some were held in private

homes and others were held in one-room shacks that were

located at St. John's Church. The selection of persons to

be interviewed was arbitrary; interviews were conducted with

whoever was available and willing.

The arbitrary selection process was used in order

to interview as many of the forty-eight members of the

congregation as possible. I began by interviewing Reverend

Xaba, the priest/healer, so that he might know the kinds of

questions that I would ask members of the church. I also

hoped that by interviewing him first, others might have less

reluctance about being interviewed.

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Interviews were set-up by talking with members

after Sunday worship. The times of the interview were

determined by the schedule of the interviewee. Often,

interviews had to be rescheduled because of unforeseen

circumstances arising in the lives of members. Since the

majority of them did not have telephones, I would find that

an interview had been canceled only after I arrived at the

designated time. All interviews were conducted in Xhosa

with the aid of a research assistant.

Life Histories

While interviews were conducted with eighteen

members in individual and group settings, only seventeen

life histories of St. John's members are recorded because

one person declined to speak in a group interview. The

interviews utilized open ended questions and provided

information about the member's social background. This

social information was added to the data on rituals in which

I observed members participate. The questions attempted to

bring time-depth to the field of knowledge about the person.

That is, people were asked to talk about the earliest

memories of their lives; to talk about the people who raised

them; the traditions that were part of their families of

origin; experiences of births and deaths; the religious

beliefs and practices of the people who surrounded them in

their early years. The life histories encouraged people to

talk about what motivated them to become members of St.

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John's, to tell about their illness and the healing process.

They were also asked to give a running commentary of a

typical day in their lives— what time they got up; how they

used their mornings, afternoons and evenings; what kind of

food they ate; how they obtained and prepared it, etc.

(Ramphele 1991:35). Lastly, questions were asked about the

changes occurring in South Africa and hopes for the future.

Group Discussions

Interviews with people who lived in the one-room

shacks located on church property were conducted in small

groups of four to six persons. During the group interviews,

I used Bennett and McAvity's technique of asking questions

and observing the interaction among participants (Bennett

and McAvity 1985). Mrs. Barbara Mantata, my research

assistant, was present for all group interviews.

Observation of Living Space

Each interview included questions about other

household members as well as about the physical space in

which the individual lived. Generally, these questions were

about the number of rooms in the house, whether or not there

was running water and a toilet.

Search for Literature Dealing With Specific Information Related to Townships

I gathered as much information as possible about

the demographics of the African townships in Cape Town. I

also attempted to uncover plans for the future, projected

population, unemployment figures, etc. These data came from

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the City Council of Cape Town, the South Africa Research

Unit (SALDU) at the University of Cape Town, the Urban

Foundation and the South African Institute on Race Relations

(SAIRR).

Protection of Study Participants

The political situation in South Africa, on both macro

and micro levels was quite volatile. I protected the

identity of my informants by reading a statement of my

research aims before all interviews and explaining that if

they wished not to participate it was their privilege to

refuse. Before leaving for the field, the required

protection of human subjects procedure was cleared by the

anthropology department at the American University. All

interviews were confidential and my research assistants were

asked to abide by the code of confidentiality as well.

Pseudonyms are used for members of St. John's - Guguletu

throughout the text.

Analysis of Data

The data collected have been subjected to

qualitative analyses. My orientation to the analysis has

utilized Clifford's dialogical and polyphonic method in an

attempt to have a dialogical authorial voice. Thus, the

"original speech"1 included in the text was translated by

‘This ethnographic category created by Dr. Harold Recinos intends for the reader to hear the world view of the informant in his/her own words. The use of such data limit the influence of the ethnographer. Although ethnographic data are not unbiased, a method that results in the words of

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Mrs. Barbara Mantata, and verified by Mr. Percival Mbulelo

Bhoqo. As a researcher, given certain limitations, I have

tried not to be the singular voice of authority to interpret

the data but have utilized an approach that gives the voice

of the informants a major role so that the reader may bring

her/his own interpretation of the data. Thus, I viewed and

attempted to use Clifford's approach as a corrective to the

limitations of interpreting culture as "text" and take into

account the "subjectivities and specific contextual

overtone" (Clifford 1988:42) in the data as it arose in a

period of South African history in which the laws supporting

apartheid were repealed while the ideological, political,

and economic structures of apartheid remained firmly

entrenched in the culture.

Victor Turner's approach to the analysis of ritual

data has aided my examination of healing rituals (V. Turner

1967:51). I have analyzed symbolization on an exegetical

level, that is, in light of indigenous interpretation. I

have also examined symbols on an operational level, that is,

specifying how they were used ritualistically. Finally,

symbols have been examined in relation to other symbols to

discern if there were any emergent patterns.

the informant being utilized shifts the power of the ethnographer and provides a way for the informant to speak for him/her self. (See: Recinos, Harold. "The Politics of Salvadorian Refugee Popular Religion." The American University, Ph.D., Dissertation, 1993).

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Data collected from structured interviews and life

histories have been integrated to fill out other data. On

my return trip to South Africa in August 1992, I was able to

re-interview several informants, repeating many of the

questions previously asked in the period of June 1991

through January 1992. All of the previously collected data

were verified in the second interviews.

As mentioned in Chapter 1, theoretically speaking,

my analysis used the categories of ideological/intellectual,

political/economic, psycho/social and sacred/secular space.

The events that affected the lives of St. John's members

never escaped the ideology of apartheid which saturated

South African society to the point that its being a deeply

ingrained condition of life was not discussed (Bourdieu

1977:87 & 188; Comaroff 1985:5). The lives of the St.

John's members were constantly affected by the

political/economic sphere of national and local concerns.

The psycho/social and sacred/secular space is the dimension

over which the adherents had the most control and through

which the rituals of healing were appropriated.

The use of categories "micro-level" and "macro

level" are of great importance in the analysis of data.

Public events related to the social lives of St. John's

members are examined from the micro-level. Ramphele's

construct of space is useful since St. John's members were

affected by the local and national events which influenced

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the diseases that were manifested and the rituals which were

created.

As I conducted interviews in the homes of members

in Guguletu and the adjacent townships of Cross Roads,

Nyanga, New Cross Roads, and Langa, I not only became

familiar with micro-level issues that affected the lives of

people, I became familiar with macro-level issues as well.

In regard to the latter, the leading issue was the level of

violence in the townships of Cross Roads, New Cross Roads

and Nyanga. Two primary factors were the catalyst for the

violence. First, there existed a high unemployment rate and

its corollary effects of lack of food, shelter and health

care. Moreover, the taxi war claimed the lives of black

South Africans daily. The structure of apartheid separated

the living space of the designated race groups to such an

extent that the taxi war was basically confined to

African townships. Taxis were the means by which the

African population commuted to Cape Town proper. Thus, on a

daily basis, people's lives were at risk as they travelled

to and from work. The war had a devastating effect on the

economy and psychology of many black persons who lived in

the townships.2

2I was able to conduct research in the townships only when it was deemed safe to do so by my research assistant. To illustrate the ensuing danger: one day as I drove to an interview with my research assistant, a taxi which was in front of us was attacked by gun fire. The riders in the taxi were hysterical as they fled the van while it was still in motion. I managed to make a U-turn and get out of the

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Walter Pitts' technique of the ritual frame was

utilized in order to obtain "snap shots" of the various

stages of.ritual in action (Pitts 1989:283-285). My

methodological approach to worship services was to examine

the order and the parts of the service, observe the

participants and record their activities. I recorded songs

and words used in rituals. I chronicled what God was called

and how God was described. I also noted the kind of

theology that was espoused and the way in which operational

symbols, such as the Bible, water, candles, and colors were

used. An analysis of the operational symbols as well as

other symbols will be presented in Chapter 7. All of the

services at St. John's - Guguletu were conducted in Xhosa.

Services conducted at church festivals that

brought together St. John's members of various ethnic groups

and from congregations located throughout the country were

multi-lingual. While many people knew several languages,

simultaneous translation was provided during the services.

Mv Task as Ethnographer

In a general sense, I viewed my task as an

ethnographer, studying rituals of healing in St. John's

within the complex culture of apartheid, as asking two

fundamental questions. First, how does the cultural system

of healing found in St. John's work? And second, how has

this particular cultural system come to be as it is (Kaplan

line of fire.

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and Manners 1972:2)? Michael Agar claims that the goal of

cognitive anthropology is being able to behave appropriately

within the object community. To do so, he finds the

implicit goal of anthropology to be "to learn" (Agar

1980:77). More specifically, Agar states that the goal of

ethnography is to interpret complex sequences of speech and

behavior, then to restate our understanding of the speech

and behavior to confirm our interpretation (Agar 1980:79).

Achieving this goal involves participating within, yet

without the community. Agar suggests that ethnographers are

able to build a theory of events by talking with informants,

to establish the relationships among a series of events

(Agar 1980:115). Agar places his ultimate value on deriving

an ethnographic perspective from the interpretation of

reality shared by group members (Agar 1980:195).

What Agar argues is supported by Victor Turner's

suggiestion that in order to make a structural analysis of a

society it is necessary to discover how society is organized

and to observe the connections and conflicts between groups

and individuals that are ritually represented (V. Turner

1967:27).

The schedule of questions that I asked during

structured interviews3 attempted to do what Agar and Turner

suggest. The questions were intended to learn, from St.

John's members, what various symbols meant and how the

3See Appendix 1.

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symbols related, not only to ritual, but to other areas of

their daily lives as well. Photography was used to record

segments of rituals and these photographs were used in the

interviews to explore the semantic meaning of a particular

ritual segment. Interviews included questions that

addressed several themes such as: the history of the

church, current concerns about South Africa, the violence in

the townships, the future of South Africa, networks in the

local community and work.

Summary

This chapter has outlined the issues raised in

recent ethnographic literature relating to the way that the

anthropologist conducts and interprets data from field work.

The various methodologies adopted for the study were

intended to provide a dialogical authorial voice to the

dissertation. It is important to understand the history of

South Africa and the formation of the deep structures of

apartheid in order to put the study of St. John's - Guguletu

in a cultural historical perspective. The pages that follow

outline the history of South Africa and the rise of the

apartheid State.

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CRITICAL EVENTS IN SOUTH AFRICA'S HISTORY OF CULTURAL CONTACT AND SUBSEQUENT RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS

Colonialism is not merely satisfied with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native's brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it (Fanon 1966:169-170).

Introduction

History is the means by which present and future

generations learn about and make claims upon the past. It

is not unusual for the history of conquering nations to

dominate historical records while the history of those

conquered is falsified or destroyed (Fanon 1966:169-170).

It follows then, that most histories of South Africa begin

with the arrival of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century

and the Dutch in the seventeenth century. Recent trends in

historiography reveal that before Europeans arrived, there

were well developed indigenous civilizations in the area now

known as South Africa (Barnard 1992:28; Davenport 1991:8;

Hall 1990:13; Thompson 1990:6; Marks 1980:9; Inskeep

1978:86-93; 94). Beginning in the third century, a period

known to archaeologists as the Early Iron Age, these early

communities had developed an agricultural society that

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included the domestication of animals (Hall 1990:1,24;

Maylam 1986:5-6; Wilson and Thompson 1969 (I):31-39).

The task of this chapter is to chronicle the

events that led to cultural contact among various peoples

who occupied the area now known as South Africa from the

third to the twentieth centuries. Admittedly, such an

extensive expanse of time necessitates presenting only a

survey of the critical historical development of present day

South Africa. The concerns discussed demonstrate that

nineteenth century European imperialism, the migration of

Europeans to the Cape and the systematic decimation of

indigenous people by white settlers and colonial governments

were the underlying means by which the seeds of apartheid

were planted, coming to full fruition in the twentieth

century. Even as the twenty-first century dawns, black

South Africans are still trying to recover land and rights

which were stripped from their ancestors. In giving a broad

historical overview, this chapter will focus attention on

underlying themes that led to the establishment of

apartheid. It is understood that the present day Republic

of South Africa is itself a colonial creation and thus does

not exhibit a pre-colonial identity.

Southern Africa Prior to European Conquest. 270-1400

Archaeological evidence indicates that some

settlements in southern Africa, specifically in what is now,

the Transvaal, date back to about the year 270 A.D. One

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such finding, at a farm in Silver Leaves, located in the

northern Transvaal, provides evidence that indigenous people

lived on the continent during the Early Iron Age. T. Maggs

comments on one of several Early Iron Age sites in Natal

that date back to 600 A.D.:

By A.D. 600 if not earlier the lower-lying areas of the Tugela Basin, below an altitude of about 1000m, were dotted with EIA [Early Iron Age] settlements. These were quite large villages, separated from one another by several kilometers and situated on the best arable land (Maylam 1986:3) .

Carbon dating by archaeologists shows that Iron Age farmers

arrived in the area south of the Limpopo River, as well as

north of it, during the early first millennium A.D. These

findings support the thesis that the area now known as South

Africa was widely settled by Khoikhoi and San before 1488

when Portuguese sailors arrived (Barnard 1992:28; Davenport

1991:8; Thompson 1990:6; Marks 1980:9). Alan Barnard states

the following about these aboriginal inhabitants:

. . . the present-day Bushmen1 (sic) (and in particular, the non-Khoe-speaking Bushmen) can be regarded as the aboriginal inhabitants of southern Africa. Although comparisons of stone artifacts have led some archaeologists to suggest the possibility of migrations from East Africa southwards at the beginning of the Late Stone Age, perhaps 10,000 or 12,000 years ago, . . . the prevailing opinion among archaeologists is that such large-scale migrations are unlikely. As Inskeep pointed out in his classic review of South African prehistory (Inskeep 1969:20), the diffusion of tool-making techniques is much more probable (Barnard 1992:28).

•see Gordon 1992:4-8 for the implications of classifying the San, "Bushmen."

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Barnard believes that the original dwellers in the Cape

region were hunter-gatherers who later became herders. They

were not herders who came to the Cape in a late migration to

replace an extinct group of hunter-gathers. The Khoikhoi

and San continuously dwelt in the Cape from the Stone Age.

Davenport supports Barnard's thesis stating "the once

obscure linkage between these Late Stone Age people and the

earliest distinctively Negroid inhabitants, who may have

arrived as early as 8,000 years ago is no longer dependent

on guesswork ..." (Davenport 1991:3). Drawing upon new

data that provide evidence of continuity between Late Stone

Age people and later Bantu-speaking peoples, he concludes

that Khoikhoi and Negroid peoples emerged from common gene

pools. Other data provide evidence that these early

societies evolved through the usual pattern of moving from

hunter-gatherers to herders. Finally, the analysis of rock

art by South African archaeologists has linked the cultures

of the Stone and Iron Ages. These three reasons compel

recent scholarship to conclude that:

The myth, . . . long propagated, that the Bantu speaking peoples arrived as immigrants on the highveld of the transvaal at the same time as the Europeans first settled in Table Bay, has been demolished as a consequence of archaeological research (Davenport 1991:8).

The aforementioned evidence stands in contra

distinction to an older hypothesis that suggests that two

waves of great migration moved southward from central Africa

bringing Khoikhoi pastoralists, San and other Bantu-speaking

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mixed farmers to the Cape region (Thompson 1990:11; Stow

1905). The notion that the "bantu" are fairly recent

arrivals to South Africa having come from the North, is

supported by van Jaarsveld. He, however, does admit that

the San and Khoikhoi occupied the Cape before the arrival of

the Europeans, but asserts that "the greater part of the

Cape . . . had never been inhabited by Bantu people before

the arrival of the Whites" (van Jaarsveld 1975:57).

The latter arguments are important because they

reinforce the ideology of apartheid that has promoted the

myth that the ancestors of present day black South Africans

entered the country in the seventeenth century at the same

time as the Europeans (Marquard 1960:1; Marks 1980:7-12;

McLaughlin 1981:5; Hall 1990:1-4). Such myths support the

thesis that conquerors try to create or rewrite history to

serve their own agendas. For instance, Europeans who

migrated to southern Africa in the nineteenth century were

influenced by Social Darwinism. The resulting attitude was

one of cultural superiority over and against the indigenous

people with whom they had contact. Imperialism was

justified because indigenous people needed to be brought

into the then modern age. Martin Hall, a South African

archaeologist, elucidates this point:

Evolutionary views were quite consistent with the politics and economy of the age. During the later nineteenth century more colonies had been added to the empires of Europe, and to some extent the theory of social evolution satisfied the need for an ethic to smooth and justify this process. When

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the population of an occupied country was seen as stuck on a lower branch of the evolutionary tree, then it could be argued that it was a duty of those higher up to bring the benefits of civilisation to the less fortunate (Hall 1990:5).

The Indigenous People Inhabiting the Cape Region. 1400-1650

Indigenous people, known as the San and Khoikhoi,

lived in the Cape region. The San lived a migratory

lifestyle which included hunting and gathering. The

Khoikhoi were originally hunter-gatherers who lived

primarily along the Orange River and the coastal region of

present day Namibia and the Transkei. The Khoikhoi and

their Bantu-speaking neighbors intermarried and conducted

trade in cattle, iron and copper. After white settlement,

San and Khoikhoi traded cattle for Dutch Company tobacco and

were brokers for trade that developed between the Dutch and

Xhosa in the East (Gordon 1992:15-23; Davenport 1991:67-69;

Thompson 1990:5-30). European advance cost the Khoikhoi

their land, cattle and trading role. They were twice

defeated in battle in the seventeenth century and decimated

by smallpox in 1713 and 1755. They ultimately lost their

identity as a distinct group as they became servants to

whites, specifically, herders, laborers, and members of the

militia. Some went to mission stations set up by Europeans

in the late eighteenth century while others withdrew to the

valley of the Orange River (Davenport 1991:6-8). Other

African groups, particularly those who have come to be

called Nguni and Sotho, lived sedentary lives in villages

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throughout the area now known as South Africa. These Bantu

speaking groups flourished in patrilineal societies. Their

economy was based on hunting and herding animals and

agriculture (Thompson 1990:16-19).

The Cape territory has historically been occupied

by Africans known as Xhosas. Several dialects of the Xhosa

language are spoken. As a group, the Xhosa may be divided

into several sub-groups that are politically autonomous and

have their own stories of antiquity and customs. There is a

sense of distinctiveness among the various Xhosa sub-groups

which are known as: the Thembu, Mpondo, Mpondomise,

Bomvana, Bhaca, Hlubi, Mfengu, Xesibe and Ntlangwini.

Together these groups are customarily known as the Southern

or Cape Nguni, which distinguishes them from the Northern

Nguni or Zulu (Bundy 1988:13-14; Hammond-Tooke 1975:550).

The structure and organization of the different Nguni states

varied but generally there was considerable cultural

homogeneity among these people. Politically they were

arranged in lineages, clans and chiefdoms. Socially they

were ordered by kinship ties. Property rights and social

ties of the individual were determined by one's membership

in a particular, permanent kinship group (Bundy 1988:13-15).

European Expansionism. 1652-1700

There was considerable economic activity

dominating much of Europe in the mid-seventeenth century.

The British were colonizing North America. The Netherlands

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was a bustling commercial center. France, the Netherlands

and England were racing to gain economic control of East

Asia.

Jan van Riebeeck, representing the Dutch East

India Company, arrived at the Cape in 1652 to establish a

refreshment station. The half way point between the

Netherlands and East Asia, ships stopped at the Cape to

purchase fresh food. Initially, the station was to be

temporary, but European migration increased. While van

Riebeeck's mission was primarily for commercial purposes on

behalf of the Dutch East India Company, his personal pride

as a Dutchman as well as his religious commitment to the

Reformed church were expressed by his words, "That the

natives or their children are able to learn the Dutch

language is important and a very good thing, but of greater

moment is the furtherance of our Reformed Christian

religion" (Templin 1984:16). By the eighteenth century, the

refreshment station had become a colony with four districts

which had become home for approximately 30,000 people

(Marquard 1960:6). People indigenous to the area and others

imported from East and West Africa and Madagascar became

slaves and non-slave laborers.

The Xhosa and Europeans in Conflict Over Land. 1700-1805

By 1700 many Europeans had settled in the Cape and

problems between white settlers and indigenous people began

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to emerge. Conflict was caused primarily by Afrikaner2

farmers who moved farther inland. The Afrikaners met the

Xhosa, west of the Gamtoos River, at the beginning of the

eighteenth century (Hunter 1961:2; McLaughlin 1981:10-12).

In time the Afrikaners traded cattle and ivory with the

Xhosa. By 1770, travel was frequent from the Cape to the

Great Fish River located in the southern frontier of the

Xhosa area. The exchange of cattle was extremely important

for the Afrikaners because ships coming from the Netherlands

stopped to refresh at the Cape giving them an opportunity to

sell cattle, received from the Xhosa, at a higher price to

ship personnel. The Afrikaners profited enormously from

this arrangement. The barter system used by the Xhosa

allowed the Afrikaners to give only small quantities of

glass beads and iron nails in exchange for cattle (Wilson

and Thompson 1969 (I):64-65;81).

During the 1780s and 1790s, substantial political

and economic pressure was placed on the Xhosa for land and

material resources (Bundy 1988:29). It was during the last

quarter of the eighteenth century that the Xhosa and

Afrikaners began to move to the area between the Gamtoos and

Great Fish Rivers. This move was necessary to provide land

for the growing population of both groups and grazing areas

for cattle. The Boers, who were Afrikaner farmers, were

2The shared experience of a Dutch national heritage, along with being geographically located in Africa, resulted in the Dutch being called "Afrikaners."

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warned by the East India Company and by the Cape government

not to continue to move inland. Nonetheless, by 1770 many

Boer families moved into the area beyond the Great Fish

River, well into Nguni territory. By 1775, a series of

frontier wars began between the Boer settlers and coalitions

of Khoi, San, and Xhosas. While Africans very ably made war

and killed hundreds of white settlers, the superior weaponry

of the settlers gave them victory over the Africans. Many

Africans living in the interior lost their land and cattle,

and were made slaves of the settlers.

By 1778, the Cape Colony governor made a treaty

with two Xhosa chiefs that limited the area to which the

Xhosa had access. There was a grave misunderstanding

between the Cape administration and the Xhosa. The chiefs

did not understand that their people's westward movement was

to be suspended (McLaughlin 1981:11). In 1779, a frontier

war began as a result of Afrikaner attempts to move Xhosa

tribes from the region west of the Great Fish River. Boers

attacked Xhosa settlements and Xhosas invaded Boer farms.

Both sides took cattle as war booty. Upon their arrival in

South Africa in 1795, the British took possession of the

Cape as a peace settlement from the Netherlands to prevent

it from falling to Napoleon. This initial occupation lasted

eight years. In 1803 the administration of the Cape was

passed on to the Batavian Republic (also known as the United

Netherlands) by the Treaty of Amiens (Davenport 1991:35-38).

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During the British occupation Afrikaner settlers continued

to move eastward. A frontier war was waged in 1799 with the

Boers attempting to eliminate Xhosa tribes which crossed

borders created by the colonial government. The Xhosa did

not acknowledge the existence of the boundaries and wars

continued into the nineteenth century (Templin 1984:43).

British Reoccupation of the Caoe Province. 1806-1861

In 1806 Britain reoccupied the Cape Province. The

Napoleonic Wars caused hardship in England resulting in the

migration of 5000 British citizens to the province (Marquard

1960:8). In the second decade of the nineteenth century,

many of the Afrikaner settlers in the Eastern Cape became

increasingly uncomfortable with British administration of

the colony. Great economic expansion and administrative

reform resulted from British occupation of the Cape. These

reforms were detested by the Afrikaners who had been in the

region for over 150 years. They had grown used to being

sovereign in a foreign land and had become a quite

independent people (Marquard 1960:8; Sillery 1971:8). They

had fought with the indigenous people for the land and had

effectively made many of the indigenous people subservient.

The tension that existed between the Netherlands and England

was transferred to Africa and played out between the

Afrikaner settlers and the British colonial officers sent to

the area. By the first decade of the nineteenth century,

the Afrikaners had firmly established customs and ways of

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conducting life in the settlement. Most were farmers who

lived on large farms located a distance from town. The

British on the other hand, as newer arrivals, lived in town.

The British settlers were proud that their nation had been

successful in winning the Cape and many other territories

around the world. No longer supported by the Dutch

government in the Netherlands, the Afrikaner settlers closed

ranks and bonded around their shared identity in order to

hold on to their traditions, land and other belongings.

Their consolidation and ascendant nationalism was

precipitated by British domination. The new identity of the

Dutch as "Afrikaners" signified a link with their Dutch

heritage and a claim that Africa was their new home

(Davenport 1991:20). Thus, an Afrikaner nationalism emerged

among these inhabitants of the Cape who traced their roots

to the Netherlands. This new group identity stood in

contrast to British and African identities. John De Gruchy

comments on the newly emerged Afrikaner nationalism:

[The] struggle [of the Dutch] against imperialism, an alien culture, liberalism, and interfering missionaries was about to begin, and it would not end until it had produced an Afrikaner Nationalism equal to the task of subduing the land and reshaping society (De Gruchy 1986:11)

Despite the new nationalism, the Afrikaners joined

the British settlers in fighting against the Xhosa as the

need for land increased for all three groups. During the

fourth frontier war in 1812, the colonial government used

military forces who set up posts inside the frontier. At

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the completion of the fifth frontier war in 1819, a non

combat sector was set up between the Great Fish and

Keiskanme Rivers. To strengthen the European presence, in

1820, 4000 British settlers were allotted farms along the

western banks of the Great Fish River.

During 1856-7, in a desperate attempt to be free

of European domination, the Xhosa killed their cattle and

planted no grain believing that this act would bring their

ancestors to their rescue by sweeping the Europeans into the

sea. This action, known as the Great Xhosa Cattle-killing

Movement (Hunter 1961:3; Peires 1989) was unsuccessful and

there followed a severe famine. By 1857, the territory west

of the Fish River was occupied by the Afrikaners. The land

between the Fish and Kei Rivers was also occupied by

European farms and Xhosa locations. The cattle-killing

debacle forced the Xhosa to migrate to the Cape Colony for

work, with many never returning to their former homes. Sir

George Grey, who was the principal British officer in the

Cape from 1854-1861, took the Xhosa's land and gave it to

thousands of whites who had farms on the reserves and to the

Mfengu, who were Fingo refugees driven from Natal by the

rise of the Zulu kingdom (Hunter 1961:3; Bundy 1988:33). At

the same time, he took away the authority of the chiefs and

gave power to local magistrates (Hunter 1961:3; Simons

1968:29). The Xhosa-speaking tribes were "conquered,

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broken, scattered and expelled from their ancestral lands"

(Simons 1968:29).

Historic Background of Protestant Missionary Movement. 1652-1899

The history of contact between Europeans and

indigenous African peoples who inhabited the Cape would not

be complete without a retrospective examination of

missionary contact with indigenous peoples. It is to this

task that I now turn. This section examines the religion of

the settlers advanced through missionaries and how this

religion influenced indigenous peoples.

The Protestant evangelism that began in the Cape

during the mid-seventeenth century was heavily influenced by

the "spirit of pietism" flourishing in Europe earlier in the

same century. The Netherlands, England and Germany were

especially preoccupied with "personal Christianity" which

emphasized conversion (Groves 1948:169). Records show that

in 1655, a missionary named Wylant, who was the "Comforter

of the Sick" among the Dutch settlers, wrote to the Classis

(Presbytery) of Amsterdam saying the following about his

work among the Khoikhoi:

for twice already have I got one of their youths to stay with me, whom I desired to benefit, and to teach reading and writing, and from whom I also hoped to learn their language, in order to bring them to the light of the truth. But it did not prove a success, for they were so accustomed to run wild, that they cannot place themselves in subjection to us, so that there seems to be little hope for these people (Du Plessis 1911:25).

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The work of Wylant and his successor Pieter van der Stael to

instruct the Khoikhoi in the Christian religion was highly

unsuccessful (Du Plessis 1911:26). In 1665, the Dutch

appointed Johan van Arckel, the first full-time permanent

clergy in the Cape. He, however, died less than six months

after his arrival. After his death there was no clear plan

by the Colony or Dutch colonists to evangelize the Khoikhoi

(Du Plessis 1911:32).

Influenced by a spirit of pietism, the Moravian

Church of the Brethren committed itself to evangelism in

foreign lands in the early eighteenth century. The Cape was

one of the areas that the Church of the Brethren sent its

missionaries. In 1737, the second full-time Protestant

missionary was sent to Cape Town with the purpose "of

converting the Hottentots from heathendom to Christianity"

(Du Plessis 1911:52; Groves 1948:170). George Schmidt began

his work about 100 miles east of Cape Town in a place called

Baviaans Kloof (Vale of the Baboons). Schmidt was forced to

stop his missionary work in Cape Town after ten years

because the doctrine of universal grace, which he taught the

indigenous people, was in conflict with the Dutch church's

doctrine of limited grace as found in conservative

Calvinism. Schmidt became a threat to the authority of the

Dutch church in the Cape primarily because his message

equalized, in the eyes of God, the indigenous people and the

white settlers. The dominance of the white settlers over

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the indigenous people was challenged from theological and

spiritual perspectives (Du Plessis 1911:56-59; De Gruchy

1986:2).

The late eighteenth century was a period of

prolific missionary work initiated by mission societies.

The London Missionary Society was established in 1785. When

the London Missionary Society went to the Cape it was

initially not welcomed by the Dutch because it was seen as

encroaching into the work of the Dutch Reformed Church. As

early as 1799 the London Missionary Society sent Johannes

van der Kemp and John Edmonds to work with Xhosas who were

settled along the eastern borders of the Cape Colony in

Graaff Reinet. Although van der Kemp's work was delayed by

the frontier wars, in September 1799 he met with Xhosa Chief

Gaika and was successful in obtaining the chief's consent to

work among his people. The continuation of the frontier

wars caused van der Kemp to suspend his work near the end of

1800. He then turned his attention to the Khoikhoi within

the Cape Colony (Groves 1948:223-4).

Van der Kemp was especially disliked by the

Afrikaners for a variety of reasons. First, he was of Dutch

descent, in tune with enlightenment thought and held more

liberal views than the isolated Afrikaners. Second, he had

the audacity to be affiliated with a British missionary

society. Third, he married an indigenous woman and,

finally, he consistently advocated for the needs and rights

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of indigenous people. The Afrikaners called him a traitor

and an immoral person (De Gruchy 1986:12-13).

In 1799, missionaries Kicherer and Edwards of the

London Missionary Society, responding to a request by "three

Bushman deputies," did work in the northern frontier along

the Zak River about 500 miles northeast of Cape Town (Groves

1948:225). These missionaries made their center among San

settlements; however, there was little success. Robert

Moffat, writing about this experience, said:

The Bushmen, with few exceptions, could never appreciate his [missionary Kicherer's] object, but, as a people, continued to harass and impoverish those who remained attached to the objects of the missionary (Groves 1948:225).

This mission work was abandoned in 1806.

The growing friction between the "settler" church

and the "mission" church continued as more missionaries

arrived from Europe and America. The white settlers were

not happy with the missionary plans to evangelize indigenous

people. The settlers believed that the gospel message would

threaten their labor base which consisted of indigenous

people. Missionary Charles Brownlee exhausted himself

trying to convince white settlers that it was untrue that

Christianized indigenous people were uncooperative servants

(De Gruchy 1986:1-2).

Tension grew as the number of indigenous converts

multiplied. Between 1665 and 1795, 2,012 slaves were

baptized. Christian baptism is a ritual or sacrament which

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theologically brings an individual into the community of

believers and sets aside differences between people. This

sacrament frees one to enter a new life as a converted

person. This is based on the New Testament book of

Galatians which asserts that in Christ ”[t]here is neither •

Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are

all one ..." (Galatians 3:28). Even though baptism

emphasized a changed existence and freedom in Christ, very

few baptized slaves were given liberty, because the

commercial interests of the European Christians were more

important than theological integrity. Race discrimination

was differentiated in ways that were advantageous for white

settlers. For instance, one of the first Khoi converts was

a woman whose indigenous name was Krotoa (Du Plessis

1911:26). Before Krotoa converted the settlers changed her

name to Eva. She was baptized on 3 May 1662 and two years

later married a Dutch officer named Pieter van Meerhof (Du

Plessis 1911:28). At that time, marriage between indigenous

women and European men was accepted in the Cape.

Nevertheless, during nineteenth century missionary work,

contradictions emerged regarding the way that white settlers

viewed private versus public relations with indigenous

people. Moreover, white settlers cast aside the teaching of

Galatians, that all believers are one in Christ when it came

to the ritual of Holy Communion, and refused to participate

in this rite with indigenous converts. Holy Communion or

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the Eucharist is the ritual or sacrament that symbolizes the

sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the redemption of humankind.

The ways in which the settlers separated the Christian faith

from their daily behavior shows in the words of J. Alton

Templin that "the Christian faith was used, . . . as a

civilizing or 'taming' influence, meant to make Africans

amenable to the wishes of white settlers" (Templin 1984:22).

De Gruchy supplements Templin's interpretation about the

ambiguity between faith and practice among the settlers. He

writes: "Racial prejudice and the interests of labor and

land clashed with theology" (De Gruchy 1986:7). Neither

Templin nor De Gruchy explains how white male settlers were

able to justify private relationships with indigenous

women.3 The union of indigenous women and male settlers

produced the present "Cape Colored"4 population.

When the British occupied the Cape for the first

time in 1795, missionaries from several denominations

eagerly developed evangelistic thrusts among European

settlers and indigenous peoples. As the presence of

missionaries from England increased, Van Lier, a missionary

with the Dutch Reformed Church, who arrived in the Cape in

3See Stoler (1991) for further elucidation on the dynamics of race, gender and imperialism.

4The term "Cape Colored" is the official designation that the South African government gave people who were of racially mixed heritage. Apartheid law required all people living in South Africa to be racially classified. This law, the Population Registration Act, was repealed in 1991.

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1786, began preaching that all were sinners and in need of

Christ. His theological concern was not limited to the

European community and he became active in bringing

Christianity to Africans and slaves. As a result of his

work, indigenous people were actively recruited to become a

part of the Dutch Reformed Church (Du Plessis 1911:63).

Other sympathetic missionaries from the Dutch Reformed

Church included the Reverends Michael Christiaan Vos,

Johannes de Voocht, Petrus Kalden, Johan Heinrich and

Hendrik Willem Ballot (Du Plessis 1911:34,47,65,67; Templin

1984:72-73). John Edmonds and William Edwards of the

Anglican Church and at least four others from the London

Missionary Society also worked to take the Christian message

to Africans and slaves (Du Plessis 1911:96,101; Templin

1984:73). European settlers resisted the presence of the

missionaries and many were expelled. While the Afrikaners

wanted more educational leadership, such leadership was

accepted only if it augmented the white supremacist

tendencies of the Afrikaners over the Africans (Templin

1984:72-73).

After the second occupation of the Cape by the

British, the London Missionary Society played a significant

role in advocacy for indigenous people. The missionaries of

the London Missionary Society were social beings who had

been greatly affected by the Industrial Revolution which had

transformed social relations in England. During the

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Industrial Revolution class consciousness led to antagonism

between the classes. The social effects of

industrialization were strongly debated. The published

letters of William Dodd (1847) suggest that social

stratification in England was arranged in eight separate

classes which included: royalty, nobility, capitalists,

gentlemen of trade (which included the professions and the

clergy), skilled laborers, common laborers, honorable

paupers, and dishonorable poor. The first four classes were

considered to be "privileged."

While the clergy were considered to be part of a

privileged class, many, however, had climbed to that status

from a lower one. Even though they occupied the status of

the privileged, they were the lowest paid among the group.

Comaroff and Comaroff write:

Low churchmen were not merely the lowest-paid members of the privileged orders; many of them, especially in rural northern parishes, were former artisans who climbed unsteadily into the ranks of the middle class (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991:59).

The Industrial Revolution with its redistribution

of status in British society generated a group of

Nonconformist clergy who went as missionaries to southern

Africa. Once again Comaroff and Comaroff expound on the

nature of these Nonconformist missionaries:

The industrial revolution, then, forged the particular sociological context from which arose the clerical army of Nonconformist missionaries to the colonies. Their position as the 'dominated fraction of a dominant class' within British society was to have profound effect on the role of

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these men in the imperial scheme of things. But more pervasively, the fact that they came from this context, from a social niche wrought by the process of class formation and by an ethos of upward mobility, was also to affect their everyday dealings with "the Other" (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991:59).

The Nonconformist missionaries made a great impact

on issues of advocacy for indigenous people. One major

accomplishment that resulted from the presence of Dr. John

Philip, chief executive of the London Missionary Society,

was the Fiftieth Ordinance which was passed in 1828. This

ordinance reversed previous pass laws5 required by the Dutch

to monitor the movement of indigenous people. Moreover, the

Fiftieth Ordinance framed a regulation that established

equality in the eyes of the law for "all free persons of

color", which included Africans, Cape Colored, the San, and

the Khoikhoi (Marquard 1960:8; De Gruchy 1986:18). This

caused great consternation among the Afrikaners. Five years

later, slavery was abolished which meant that all persons of

color were free and therefore equal.

In keeping with the spirit of the Fiftieth

Ordinance, the 1829 synod of the Dutch Reformed Church as

well as several subsequent synods affirmed that Holy

Communion would be served to indigenous and European

5A variety of pass laws, limiting the movement of Africans, resulted in the imprisonment of over seventeen million blacks between 1916 and 1986. Although the Fiftieth Ordinance repealed all pass laws enacted prior to 1828, similar laws were subsequently enacted. The repeal of the Urban Areas Act in 1986 once again removed all pass laws (Davenport 1991:441-42).

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Christians simultaneously. Nonetheless, tensions mounted to

the point that in 1857, the Dutch church reversed its

earlier position. The new resolution stated:

The Synod considers it desirable and scriptural that our members from the Heathen be received and absorbed into our existing congregations wherever possible; but where this measure, as a result of the weakness of some, impedes the furtherance of the cause of Christ among the Heathen, the congregation from the Heathen, already founded or still to be founded, shall enjoy its Christian privileges in a separate building or institution (De Gruchy 1986:8).

The "heathen" refers to indigenous converts and "the

weakness of some" alludes to white settlers. The 1857 synod

yielded to the social pressures of the time. With so many

indigenous people in slavery, the church chose not to

practice its theology that all people are equal in the eyes

of God. The theology of equality preached on Sundays did

not correspond to the social inequality that existed on the

succeeding days of the week. Passage of this resolution by

the Dutch church institutionalized racism and established a

precedent for this church that sanctioned the racially

discriminatory practices of the white settler population.

It was clear that Africans were to be subordinate to the

white settlers. Moreover, any theological doctrine that

sanctioned equality for them was a threat to Christian

settlers (Templin 1984:37). The dichotomy of the

"Christian" European and the "heathen" African, in time,

would be augmented by a specific theology which undergirded

structured racial discrimination. The theology and practice

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of racial discrimination developed into the hegemonic

structure of apartheid that was officially established in

the twentieth century.

For many Afrikaners, the changes initiated by the

British colonial government, under the influence of British

missionaries, proved too much to endure. Beginning in 1834,

many migrated to areas beyond British rule in a move known

as the Great Trek. Templin suggests that the frontier Boers

became increasingly differentiated from Cape Afrikaners.

Specifically he writes, "The Boers of the eastern frontier

now realized that equal justice for all people would include

the Khoikhoi and the San, whom they did not wish to consider

their equals" (Templin 1984:78). The frontier Boers

strongly opposed equality with indigenous people and assumed

their own superiority.

Davenport suggests that the trekkers were discreet

about their decision for choosing to relocate beyond British

rule, thus making it difficult fully to trace all the

reasons why most of them left the Cape (Davenport 1991:46).

What is clear however, is that from a theological point of

view, the Boers viewed the great trek as the new Exodus

(Templin 1984:87). Some plausible reasons for the trekkers'

decision to leave include their fear of the raiding of

cattle by the Xhosa and an apprehensiveness about the future

security of their land in light of British governor, Sir

Lowry Cole's, threat to put unsold land up for auction in

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1832. There were Afrikaners who occupied loan farms who may

have feared such an auction. It is important to note that

it was not only the landless who left the Cape. Many

trekkers made huge financial sacrifices to leave while

others left as debtors (Davenport 1991:44-48). Another

plausible reason for their leaving may have been disgust at

the new laws which equalized people of color in the Cape

with the settlers. One such Afrikaner, Anna Steenkamp,

protested the new laws and decided to join the great trek.

She believed that the equalization of indigenous people and

whites was against the wishes of God. Her own words make

the point: "[The passage of the Fiftieth Ordinance is a]

shameful and unjust proceeding with reference to the freedom

of the slaves." "Yet," she continued,

. . . it is not their freedom that drove us to such lengths, as their being placed on an equal footing with Christians, contrary to the laws of God and the natural distinction of race and religion, so that it was intolerable for any decent Christian to bow beneath such a yoke; wherefore we withdrew in order to preserve our doctrines in purity (De Gruchy 1986:19).

De Gruchy asserts yet another reason for the great trek,

having to do with economics. It was an assumption that the

culture of indigenous peoples was abhorred and that they

were treated with disrespect from the earliest days. It is

critically important, however, to remember that the Dutch

took possession of the Cape for monetary profit.

. . . the Cape was colonized in order to facilitate trade with the East. Settlement necessitated the acquisition of land and labor.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. . . . Thus, when we come to analyze the reasons for the trek, as well as the rationale for much else in the growth of racial discrimination in South Africa, the question of land and labor looms large (De Gruchy 1986:19).

The trekkers went north in search of their own

land. They went without the blessings of the Dutch Reformed

Church; ministers of that tradition were forbidden to

accompany them. They were lay men and women who read their

Bibles and identified with the exodus of the people of

Israel and the testing in the wilderness of Israel.

Calvin's doctrine of predestination supported their belief

that it was pre-ordained by God that they have the land to

which they were trekking. The Afrikaners viewed themselves

as God's elect or chosen people, and so constructed reality

in a way which made them parallel the experience of the

ancient Israelites. They were God's elect because of their

education, skin color and culture. Their beliefs changed

Calvinism from a theological doctrine to a socio-cultural

principle, as they modified Calvinism to a folk theology

that met their needs on the frontier. The Afrikaners used

orthodox Calvinism to claim freedom as a right given to them

as God's elect and used the ideas of election and freedom to

legitimize their subjugation of Africans. Divine election

gave them freedom from British control and a mandate to

preserve the racial differences made by God. Thus,

Afrikaners believed that they were divinely sanctioned to be

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separated from people of different races (Templin 1984:281-

291) .

The Afrikaners realized that they were the same

race as the British, but could not tolerate being dominated

by British colonial rule. They also believed that they were

superior to the Africans, and thus, were to be separated

from them. Since British rule prevented their pre-ordained

superiority over indigenous peoples, an ideological chasm

developed between the Afrikaners and the British. Thus, the

Afrikaners' use of the doctrine of election was not a

theological idea as found in Calvinism, but a socio-cultural

construct created to support their ends. The trekkers had

guns and forcibly removed any hindrance. In their minds,

there was no doubt that divine providence was leading them

away from a God forsaken civilization and to a promised

land. In sum, economic hardship and disdain for the

Fiftieth Ordinance probably played a role in the decision of

the Afrikaners to leave the Cape. It seems most plausible,

however, that the trekkers viewed the political situation of

British rule as intolerable, sensed that they were losing

control of the Cape and responded by leaving.

Even though the frontier wars raged, other mission

stations were erected by the missionaries. In 1841, at

Lovedale, a seminary was founded to groom Europeans and

Africans to be teachers in mission schools (Wilson and

Thompson 1969 (I):239). By 1845, seven permanent stations

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had been established by the London Missionary Society and

the Scottish Presbyterian Church. Missionaries were bearers

of European culture, particularly the Protestant work ethic.

Students at Lovedale were compelled to do manual labor

daily, which resulted in European nineteenth century farming

methods superseding Xhosa planting traditions (Wilson and

Thompson 1969 (I):239;263).

By the 1860s, the British settlers joined the

Afrikaners in their complaints about zealous efforts of

workers of the London Missionary Society who sought to

protect indigenous people. It took less than fifty years

for settlers from Britain to begin to participate in the

land and labor enterprise which abused indigenous people (De

Gruchy 1986:91). For the sake of capital development, both

the Afrikaners and the British discriminated against

indigenous people. The settler community perceived that the

missionaries were ignoring their needs and were advocates

solely for the needs of the Colored and Africans. The

settlers were resentful because they believed that

indigenous people were to serve their needs. Moreover the

settlers believed that the missionaries were meddling

outsiders who protected those who stole their cattle and who

were rivals in the frontier wars (De Gruchy 1986:12).

Thus, the relationship between white settlers and

missionaries was extremely fragile and strained. Great

consternation was caused by European missionaries' support

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of indigenous people. The settlers expected missionaries to

support efforts to dominate indigenous peoples. It is

important to note, however, that for all the support the

missionaries gave to indigenous people, there was a cost.

The missionaries carried an air of cultural elitism that was

played out in their demands that indigenous people conform

to European modes of worship, dress, agriculture and

division of labor between males and females. Whether it was

dominance from white settlers who were overtly

discriminatory or dominance from the benevolent evangelism

of the missionaries, indigenous peoples' values, heritage,

and customs were banished to the background (Beidelman

1982:17).

There are several schools of thought that

interpret the practices of missionaries in southern Africa.

Some have viewed the missionaries as playing the role of

goodwill workers and philanthropists (Wilson 1969:266-9;

Sillery 1971), while others have raised questions about

their central role in the transmission of a culture of

colonization (Beidelman 1982:5-6; Bundy 1988:35-7, 59-60;

Comaroff and Comaroff 1985; Gray 1990:79-80) and imperialism

(Majeke 1953; Dachs 1972; Beidelman 1982:3-4). A more

moderate view suggests that the missionaries forged a

partnership between evangelization and colonization (Du

Plessis 1911; Etherington 1978:59; Comaroff and Comaroff

1991:306;316). These varying perspectives suggest that

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there were aspects of missionary movements that assisted as

well as obstructed the lives of indigenous peoples. One

conclusion is clear, the work of missions played a central

role in causing social change to occur in the lives and

social structures of indigenous people. It is difficult to

draw a singular conclusion about the role of missionaries,

principally because, to do so ignores the power of Africans

and their rulers. These rulers, to some extent determined

the kind of contact that missionaries were permitted to have

with their people.

There were African Christians who continued

fundamentally to live out of their African world views,

despite their contact with European Christians. Richard

Gray claims that the assertion that Christianity in black

Africa was purely an "ideological super-structure of Western

capitalism ignores the fundamental contributions of African

Christians" (Gray 1990:60). For example, the southern

African King Moshoeshoe of the Basuto Kingdom, had little

tolerance for missionaries. He viewed the Paris Evangelical

missionaries as a link to the British colonial government

and, thus, restricted their work to that which he considered

to be beneficial for his people (Gray 1990:61). The Nguni

of Natal put up a determined resistance to Christianity,

using persuasion, physical force and magic to pull people

away from missionaries. The Natal Nguni were particularly

careful to protect their children from missionary influence

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (Etherington 1978:64). Some Nguni were converted, and a few

tried mission station life, but returned to previous

lifestyles after deciding that the latter was morally

superior. Others who were converted retained old customs,

particularly belief in folk medicine, without breaking with

Christianity (Etherington 1978:135-136).

The resistance of some Africans to Christianity

was precipitated by the view that missionaries served as the

vanguard of colonialism. The symbols, thoughts and

practices that the missionaries introduced intermingled with

indigenous social systems, which in turn facilitated

contradictions within those indigenous systems. The symbols

of the missionaries provided the framework for the

institutionalization of colonial hierarchy (Comaroff 1985:1-

2).

In the pioneer, pre-colonial period, African

rulers and elders viewed missionaries as agents of Western

technology and material influence. Moreover, missionaries

were viewed as potential alternative sources of supernatural

powers. Few African rulers overlooked the possibility that

their supreme God may have brought the missionaries to their

land. While the religion of the missionaries was resisted

in many ways, they were increasingly relied upon as

political allies by African leaders (Comaroff 1985:153).

However, by the latter half of the nineteenth

century, the missionaries' early ideal of equality with

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Africans was replaced by an aggressive, if often benevolent

paternalism. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century,

western missionaries believed they were representatives of a

culture and way of life greatly superior to that of the

Africans (Gray 1990:62). Thus, for many Africans the

missionaries were indistinguishable from traders, soldiers,

administrators and settlers. The labor needs of the colony

often overlapped with what the missionaries were teaching

the Africans. Gray notes that,

The insistence by many White missionaries on the virtues of regular labour, obedience, individual effort and responsibility neatly fitted the needs of industrial and plantation capitalism, even if their gift of literacy and their control over education enabled a tiny, favoured elite to enjoy some of the benefits of the new era (Gray 1990:59).

Comaroff and Comaroff claim that the European

evangelists played a part in reorganizing production,

abetting the use of capital, contributed to the rise of

peasant agriculture and encouraged the emergence of classes,

which included a black elite and labor class (Comaroff and

Comaroff 1991:8). The separation of the secular power of

the colonial government and the sacred authority of the

missionaries was promoted in theory. The amount of

involvement between the two is ambiguous (Comaroff and

Comaroff 1991:252). As early as 1892, some African people

were apprehensive about the missionaries' role of "cultural

broker" (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992:306) between the whites

and blacks, and recognizing their alliance with colonialism,

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rose up in defiance and initiated the African indigenous

church movement.

The Beginnings of the African Indigenous Church Movement

Nehemiah Tile of the Thembu Church came into

leadership in 1904 as the central figure in initiating the

African indigenous church movement, following several years

of unrest within the Methodist Churches' mission activities

in the Transkei. The unrest resulted from Tile's reaction

against injustices toward Africans, especially in the

context of the missionaries' support of colonial politics.

During these years of the 1890s and early 1900s, Moses

Mokone founded the Ethiopian Church (1892), also as a

response to the perpetration of injustices upon blacks.

Ethiopia, an age old African state, free from colonial

control and mentioned in Psalm 68:31, became the symbol of

liberation. The Ethiopian Church movement was a part of an

emerging African nationalism that was facilitated by

Africans who were educated in mission schools and urban

workers. Educated Christians were the promoters of African

nationalism, launching the movement and directing its goals

(Wilson and Thompson 1971 (II):433).

Discovery of Gold and Diamonds and the Establish ment of the Union of South Africa

During the second half of the nineteenth century,

gold and diamonds were discovered. Diamond mines in

Kimberley and gold mines in the Witwatersrand meant that

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Africans from various groups migrated from rural areas to

towns seeking employment in the mines. The African

nationalist movement's implementation depended on the

spirited interaction of those who had the benefit of formal

education and those who had not had such benefits. Since

large numbers of educated Africans had jobs that

geographically separated them from masses of African

workers, the impetus of the nationalist movement was

delayed. However, in time, the climate for African

nationalism improved as increasing numbers of rural Africans

migrated to urban settings for work. In 1911, approximately

one hundred thousand Africans in Johannesburg as well as

half a million Africans in all urban areas comprised more

than one-third of the total urban population (Wilson and

Thompson 1971(II):436).

Discord between the Afrikaners and British

escalated and a struggle ensued as to proprietorship of the

gems and precious metal. The indigenous people were on the

sidelines and not considered players in this struggle for

hegemony of the treasures. The conflict intensified and led

to the Anglo-Boer war, resulting in a victory for the

British in 1902. Shortly after the conclusion of the war,

consideration was given to the creation of a Union of South

Africa consisting of the British provinces and the Afrikaner

republics. The voices of Africans were ignored because

neither the British nor the Afrikaners were interested in

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sharing power with blacks. As a result of urbanization and

industrialization, various African groups once again began

an intentional promotion of African nationalism. Church

leaders in the Ethiopian Church movement assisted in the

formation of the South African Native Congress6 in 1912

(Chirenje 1987:159). Additionally, during these years there

was a short period of radical trade unionism among Africans

working at the mines (Wilson and Thompson 1971(II):437).

After several years of dispute, Afrikaners and the

English came to a compromise and set up a constitution,

sanctioned by both the British parliament in Westminster and

the delegates of the republics and of the Cape and Natal

colonies. The union of the Afrikaners and English carried a

heavy cost, especially for the Colored and blacks who lived

in the Cape Colony; the franchise which had been their right

was abrogated. This was part of the settlement insisted

upon by the Afrikaners prior to their confirmation of the

union (Davenport 1991:220-225). The representatives of the

Transvaal and Orange Free State forced the constitution to

be supremacist in favor of whites. Wilson and Thompson made

a prudent comment on the role of Britain as an active

participant in sanctioning the white minority to a position

of dominance in South Africa:

6The South African Native Congress was renamed the African National Congress in the 1920s. See Chirenje 1987:159).

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In withdrawing from South Africa, Great Britain left behind a caste-like society, dominated by its white minority. The price of unity and concilia tion was the institutionalization of white supremacy (Wilson and Thompson 1971(II):364).

The initial meeting of the parliament of the new Union took

place in Cape Town in 1910. Pretoria received designation

as the executive capital (De Gruchy 1986:27). The Supreme

court sat in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State.

The Rise of Afrikaner and African Nationalism and Their Church Movements

After the Union was established, the Afrikaners

worked feverishly to claim a national identity and restore

ownership of the land they initially took from indigenous

people and later lost to the British. In 1914, the

Afrikaners founded the Nationalist Party, whose philosophy

it was to gain strength by isolation and unification as a

national group. The language they shared as well as

traditions, religion, and history was to be honored.

Moreover, the theme embracing this movement was voiced in

its motto "Isolation is Strength" (De Gruchy 1979:28-29).

Thus, the Afrikaners intentionally began a separation

campaign. Their raison d'etre lay in their belief that God

called them to be a chosen people as a separate nation

within the union. The Afrikaners had a constitution which

permitted racial discrimination; now through the National

Party they began to enforce language and educational reforms

supporting their dominance. Ultimately, in 1948, they were

able to extend this to the national level, when they took

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control of the central government. The Dutch Reformed

Church in South Africa believed Calvinist theology, which

was interpreted to mean that Afrikaners were God's elect

people, was fulfilled when the Nationalists won control of

the government. Now that theology would be augmented in the

public realm of government and, thus, provide a rationale

for the emerging structure of apartheid.

In contrast to the rise of the Afrikaner

government and the Dutch Reformed Church there was a growing

African nationalism and African indigenous church movement.

While varying in nature, these churches fluctuated from

26,500 members and associates of Reverend Mpambane Mzimba's

church in 1904, to 3000 members of Shembe II's church in

Natal. In 1966 Bishop Lekganyane reported that the Zion

Christian Church had 600,000 members. Total membership of

indigenous churches in I960 was 1,500,000, which comprised

approximately 20 per cent of the black Christians in South

Africa (Wilson and Thompson 1971(II):81). In 1966

indigenous church membership exceeded three million, which

is equivalent to one fourth of all African Christians in

South Africa (Barrett 1968:23).

Summary

The intent of this chapter has been to present a

broad overview of the history of the area now known as South

Africa. This history has outlined the people who

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encountered each other and the salient consequences of such

contact.

Various arguments of who occupied the land mass at

the tip of Africa have also been outlined and missionary

activity has been chronicled. The rise of the African

indigenous church and the discovery of gold and diamonds

bring sacred and secular themes together in a compelling

way. The emergence of the apartheid state and control by

Afrikaners influenced the lives of black South Africans in a

critical fashion. The African indigenous church emerged as

a vehicle that played an important role spiritually and

foreshadowed the emergence of the African National Congress.

The next chapter examines the lives of eighteen

members of St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission - Guguletu.

It is an ethnographic profile which details member's lives

in life history format.

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ETHNOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF ST. JOHN'S - GUGULETU

What the ethnographer studies is how people create meaning or significance in their lives, how they interpret objects and events. . . A corollary of this position is that the people who are being studied should be allowed to speak for themselves whenever possible, for they are the only true experts on themselves (Brown 1991:14).

Introduction

Eighteen members of St. John's - Guguletu were

interviewed during the course of my fieldwork. The purpose

of this chapter is to give an inside view of the lives of

these members. Major topics are: the reasons they came to

St. John's, a brief sketch of their family life and what it

is like to live in a South African township during a period

of rapid social change.

In many ways the members of St. John's - Guguletu

were like a family who gathered together in varying con

figurations at different times. For instance, three of the

women who were interviewed lived together in a one room

shack located at the church, while others lived in

individual homes scattered throughout Guguletu and adjacent

townships.1 Sunday morning was one time that members

^ee map of research area in Appendix 2.

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gathered at the church to worship. During the week members

volunteered to assist sick persons who lived on the church

premises. While there was coming and going, the periods of

time shared together usually centered around worship,

healing or living together.

My goal in this chapter is to have each of those

interviewed give their own account of coming to St. John's

and tell their story of healing in their own words. Some of

the stories will be uneven simply because my skill as an

ethnographer grew over time. That is, I relaxed in the

interviews as I became more experienced with a process that

involved interactions between me, the person being

interviewed, and the interpreter/translator. The sum result

of my effort is to provide as complete and holistic a view

as possible of each individual and their reasons for coming

to the church. I will include a brief background of their

lives and as many aspects as I can of the lives of poor

black South Africans who are members of St. John's.

Of the twenty people interviewed at St. John's -

Guguletu, eighteen were members and two were clergy. This

chapter will utilize only the data collected from members,

with one exception. One clergyperson who is the spouse of a

member comments on the healing of his wife. Data were

collected from seventeen of the eighteen members because one

woman declined answering the questions reflected in

Appendix 1. Of the eighteen members interviewed, fourteen

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were female, while four were male. The total membership of

the church as recorded in the official membership ledger was

forty-eight, which means that 37.5 per cent of the

congregation was interviewed. The interviews, however, were

conducted with active members who attended church regularly.

The average church attendance by members for the twenty

Sundays for which data were collected was eighteen.

The average age of the members interviewed was

43.5 years2 and the average level of education was 5.7 which

corresponds to about six years of schooling. Of the

eighteen members interviewed seven were unemployed, five

were employed, four were retired with pensions, and one was

disabled.3

Of those interviewed, seven were married, two were

divorced, five were single (never married), and three were

widowed. Marital status was unknown for one of those

interviewed. All persons who had been or were presently

married had children. Some persons who were never married

also had children.4

Fifteen of the eighteen members interviewed were

born in either the Transkei or Ciskei homelands. One member

was born in Cape Town and one in the northern Cape Province.

2See Table 2 on page 186 for the ages of those interviewed.

3See Table 2 on page 186 for specific information.

4Specific information regarding marital status and number of children is recorded in Table 1. See page 185.

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Seven persons born in the Transkei and Ciskei had children

who died in their respective homelands, while eight persons

born in the Transkei and Ciskei had no deceased children.

All of the children of the two members born in the Cape

Province were living.5

The data collected show the following regarding

religious affiliation: five women and three men listed St.

John's as the only church with which they had ever been

affiliated. Three women and one man were affiliated with

the Methodist Church prior to becoming members of St.

John's. Three women were part of the Anglican Church prior

to affiliating with St. John's. One woman was affiliated

with the Old Apostolic Zion Church, another woman was

associated with the Roman Catholic Church, and yet another

was a member of the Presbyterian Church of Africa.6

Before finalizing a schedule of questions to ask

members of St. John's, I conducted a series of informal

pilot interviews. During these informal interviews with

black South Africans, I learned that questions that asked

about the ethnicity or "tribal group" were offensive. One

women gave a very strong response saying,

Linda, if you want to collect any data, you must not ask about the ethnicity of African people. People do not know you and it has been a government ploy to send people to us to divide black people in South Africa precisely along the

5See Table 1 on page 185.

6See Table 4 on page 188.

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lines of ethnicity. They [the government] say we are different because of our ethnicity. Yes, there are cultural differences between African people living in South Africa, but not enough difference to keep us divided from one another politically.

This response was supported by several other persons; thus,

I did not ask a guestion about ethnicity. However, I did

ask a series of questions about language, since the language

a person spoke could possibly tell me something about the

cultural background of persons I interviewed. Of the

eighteen persons interviewed, seventeen said that Xhosa was

the language that they spoke at home, that it was their

mother tongue, and that it was the language that they were

most comfortable speaking. One woman who had moved to Cape

Town from Bophuthatswana said that the language she was most

comfortable speaking was Setswana. This is the language

spoken by Tswana people.7

With regard to monthly income, thirteen people had

incomes from a single source or a combination of sources

which included formal employment, informal employment (e.g.,

sewing, selling goods), a pension, or from family members

who worked. Three persons had no monthly income. The

highest monthly income was reported by a woman who did

sewing for others in her spare time earning about R310 a

month; she also received a pension of R250 per month. Her

husband was formally employed and earned R440 per month.

7See Table 4 on page 188.

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This made their monthly income a total of R1000. The lowest

monthly income was a widow's pension of R222. All those who

had monthly incomes and disclosed them were female. The one

male who was employed would not disclose his monthly

income.8

All persons who were interviewed resided in

limited physical space with several other persons, who were

sometimes family members, sometimes church members and

sometimes non-family or non-church members with whom they

shared living space to reduce expenses.9 There were seven

people, three male and four female who lived in one room

shacks on the church property. Three males lived in one

shack along with two other males. There were two beds, and

no kitchen. Cooking was done on a small one-burner gas

stove and toilets were outside. Four women and their

children lived in another one room shack which stood next to

the shack in which the males lived. Usually ten women and

five children lived in the women's shack. A married couple

lived in a two room shack in an adjacent township known as

Nyanga. There was no indoor plumbing. They also cooked on

a gas burner. One woman lived a four room house with her

family in a city approximately one hundred miles from Cape

Town known as Paarl. Seven others who were interviewed

lived in homes located in Guguletu. All of the homes were

8See Table 2 on page 186.

9See Tables 2 and 3 on pages 186 and 187 respectively.

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small. Four houses had four rooms and the remaining three

homes had three rooms. Usually there was a kitchen and a

living room with the remaining rooms being sleeping areas.

The toilet in all seven homes was located outdoors. Of the

seven homes, all had two beds in which several people slept,

while remaining persons slept on the floor. One four room

home had twelve occupants. Four to six persons lived in

each of the remaining six homes. Two homes in Guguletu had

a shack located in back of the main structure. This was

usually where single males slept.

The stories of each of the seventeen members

follow. They are told in the actual words of the people.

Background information concerning each member is located at

the end of this chapter.

Voices of St. John's Members10

Tshawe

Tshawe was the daughter of Jezile who was a

minister of a St. John's congregation in Paarl which was two

hours away from Cape Town. She came to the St. John's -

Guguletu congregation on the first Sunday in September

because she wanted to go to the ocean with Reverend Xaba,

the pastor, for a purification ritual which members were

expected to participate in once a month. As it happened,

10Each interview begins with a subheading showing the name of the person interviewed, followed by a brief history of the person and their relationship with St. John's and a transcription of the interview.

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Reverend Xaba decided not to go to the ocean because not

enough members showed up and it was getting close to the 11

a.m. worship time. Tshawe talked with me for a brief period

while we waited. She was a part of St. John's because she

was the daughter of parents who were ministers of the

denomination. Thus, she did not talk about having an

illness, but instead talked about worship services,

ancestors, customs, and initiation rites girls and boys.

Her story follows:

I was born in a Christian home. Both my mother

and father attended St. John's. My father is a St. John's

minister in the Transkei and my mother has a congregation in

Paarl. At a young age I could see the benefits of St.

John's and I believed. When I am in church I get relief. I

go to worship four times a day at my mother's church— at

5:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m., 3:00p.m. and 7:00 p.m. On Sunday, we

worship at 11:00 a.m. The 5:00 a.m. service is fifteen

minutes with prayer; the 9 a.m service is thirty minutes

with prayer; the 3:00 p.m. service is fifteen minutes and

the 7:00 p.m. service is one hour. I love to go to all of

the services and feel myself a part of each service. In

worship we hear from the elders and how they came to be

Christian— not just born again Christians— but how they

became Christian as they heard the word of the Bible. At

St. John's we believe in healing. We believe in the

miracles of God and Jesus. We drink the water and hands are

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laid upon people and prayers are said for healing. The

priests at St. John's have a way of seeing that a person is

sick. Sometimes it is because the ancestors are unhappy.

I am very active in the church, but my activity is

not in just going to services. It is in doing the right

things and I know what is right.

The ancestors speak to God for us because they are

nearer to God then we are. When the ancestors are unhappy,

we do a sacrifice. We have to spill the blood of two

chickens or a goat. Sometimes we put out sour porridge for

the ancestors. Whatever we do for them must be holy and

done in a holy place such as the church. If it is a beast

that we slaughter, we burn the inside of the beast. We

cannot eat the kidney, because that is the meat for the

ancestors. The smoke that rises from the cooking of the

meat is for the ancestors.

I do rituals at my home as well. When someone is

born we must report the birth to the ancestors. When my

child was born, we went back to my husband's family in the

Transkei and made a sacrifice. We prepared samp and

mealies11 made into a samp millet and gave it for the

ancestors. The ancestors then appeared in our dreams. The

ancestors must appear in dreams to show us that they are

happy with the sacrifice.

nSamp and mealie meal is food that poor people eat. Samp is a white starchy grain and mealie is also a white starchy grain which sticks together when cooked.

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When daughters go on menstruation there is a

sacrifice. The girl makes a rope out of fish tails to show

when she has her period. We also make a sacrifice at the

time of circumcision when boys become men.12 And at

marriage, the woman must get a cow, otherwise there will be

a problem in the marriage or no children. The woman to be

married stays in a separate room behind a curtain

(umkhusane). We call this ritual ukuthomba because the

woman does not appear to the people.

Thole

Thole was 38 years old and had lived at St. John's

for less than a year. He came to the church through the

assistance of a maternal aunt who knew about Reverend Xaba.

His aunt was extremely worried about him because he tried to

commit suicide. Reverend Xaba took Thole into the church

community after discerning that he wanted to be healed.

Thole shared living accommodations with three other men who

lived in the one room shack located on the church's

property. His story follows:

I came to St. John's nine months ago. My life was

a wretch and I did too much drinking. The real reason for

my coming was because I had too many enemies. I was very

12Circumcision school is held when boys are about eighteen years old. The boys are taken away for a period of about three weeks for secret ceremonies. Upon return home, the boys who are now men, are given a big feast. Family and friends are present and ritual speeches are made at the celebration.

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depressed— so depressed that I took a knife and cut my neck.

I wanted to be dead. I was found by friends who took me to

the hospital. My friends told my Aunt Bongiwe what happened

and she came to see me. My mother's sister looked at me and

said, "My sister's son what causes you to do this?" I could

not look at her for I was so ashamed. She said to me, "I am

going to take you to the people at St. John's. I have heard

about their healing. I know Mama Xaba who is at that

church. You must go there to be healed." I had never heard

of St. John's before, but I had no where else to go. So on

the day I was released from the hospital, my Aunt Bongiwe

came for me. We went by taxi to the church in Guguletu. I

met Tata13 Xaba. My aunt explained what had happened; how I

tried to kill myself. Tata Xaba looked at me and said, "Do

you want to be healed?" I was frightened that this man who

I did not know should ask me such a question. In a

hesitating way, I said, "Yes." He pointed to the shack and

said, "You can live there. Put your things inside. You

will live with the other men who are sick and we will show

you the way of St. John's." My aunt was very gracious to

Tata Xaba. She took his hand to express her thanks, looked

at me and then left.

I lived in a shack with four other men who were

sick. One had come all the way from the Transkei to be

,3"Tata" is an informal expression used to address an adult male. It is a term of respect and familiarity.

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healed. The three others had been healed but still lived in

the shack. Over the next days, Tata Xaba instructed me in

the ways of St. John's. He propheted me by looking in the

Bible and telling me everything about my life. He told me

that I must go to church four times a day and that I must

take a bath in the blessed water in order to be healed.

Other members of the church came to the church on Wednesdays

to help Tata Xaba with the sick. The women prepared a bath

for me to wash myself. During my first month I took a bath,

I had an enema and vomited bad things out of me with the

water. So, I began to feel better and I could see how the

God of Mother Christina and Tata Masango14 was working in my

life. I began to read my Bible and stand in front of the

congregation and testify and ask God for help. So now my

life is better.

Before I came to St. John's I was a sinner. I was

married but, now I am divorced. I had three children. One

was born to the woman to whom I was married. The other two

were with two other women. Only two of my children are

alive. They live with their mothers.

Nyawuza

Nyawuza was the nephew of Reverend Xaba and lived

in the one room shack with Thole and two other men. Nyawuza

14Mother Christina was the founder of St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission Church and Tata Masango became the Archbishop of the Church after a splinter group seceded in 1968.

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was twenty-three years old and had been at St. John's for

six weeks. Before coining to St. John's - Guguletu, he lived

in the Transkei province of Willowvale. While there, he

heard voices and had pains in his neck and back. He went to

a medical doctor, and received some medicine, but after a

few weeks he still did not get better. He told his mother

about his discomfort and she decided that it would be best

if they journeyed to Cape Town to be with her brother,

Reverend Xaba. She believed that her brother could heal her

son. Nyawuza provided the following details of his life:

I was born in the Transkei, in a district called

Willowvale in 1968. I have been at St. John's for only six

weeks. I came because I was sick. I have pains on my back,

and all the time I have terrible headaches. All the time in

my ears, there is a voice. It is like somebody is talking

in my ears. These voices talk in the middle of the night.

I cannot even say what they say. I can only say that they

talk, but I do not know what they mean or what they say. I

went to the clinic and received some pills from the doctor.

The pills seemed to make no difference. I did not get

better.

My mother looked at me one day and said, "What is

wrong with you, my son. Why don't you eat?" I told her

about the voices and about my back and terrible headaches.

She said to me, "We must go to St. John's people in Cape

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Town." We came to Cape Town because Tata Xaba is my

mother's brother. He is a healer and prophet.

When we arrived at my mother's brother's house,

she told him that I was sick. My mother's brother said to

me, "What are you sick with?" I told him about the voices

that talk in my ears. I told him that I do not know what

they say. I told him about the pain in my back and the

headaches.

Every day the people at St. John's prayed for me

and gave me the water to drink. I also took the tablets

that the doctor gave to me. The St. John's mothers gave me

an enema, and water to drink. Then I vomited and they

bathed me. They also gave me this belt to put around my

neck to help with healing and take away the pain. I had

this terrible pain in my back. It was just pinching like

there was a needle, then it was just going up and down my

back. So they gave me this belt. From the day Mother Xaba

gave me this belt that Tata Xaba prayed for, and I put it

on, the pain stopped. I do not wake up hearing the voices.

Since I have been wearing the belt, I never have pain going

up and down my back.

I go to the church twice a day. I like prayer.

The people can pray all day and I am happy with prayer.

Mrs. Ntiliti

Mrs. Ntiliti considered her home of origin to be

Bophuthatswana which was a homeland in the Transvaal. She

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was Tswana and moved to Cape Town in 1942. She was a very

dedicated member of St. John's and was one of the

evangelists in the church. She lived in a small three room

house which was a few blocks from the church. She outlined

her story:

I was born March 23, 1923 on a farm where my

father worked in the northern Cape. We are Tswana and our

clan name is Barutsihi. I came to Cape Town in 1942 in

search of a job. You see, I couldn't get a job in Kimberley

where I actually grew up. I had to establish a firm address

here in order to get a job because of the laws.15 They

don't do that any more— that is the pass laws. We don't

have to have special documents in order to work here now. I

was a domestic servant and I had to stay where I worked but

my home was actually in Kudumane. I still want to go and

live there. I very much want to go to live there because

I'm old now and I'm not working any more. It is poverty

that keeps me from going. I live only on my pension which

is R222. Every now and then one of my children will send me

R50, but that is not reliable. I have no other source of

income and I have three boys to care for. Two of my

grandsons live with me and a grandson of my friend. We all

live here together. Two boys live in a shanty in the

backyard and one sleeps inside with me.

15Pass laws restricted the movement of blacks from one area to another without government approval.

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I was born into a Christian home. My mother and

father were both Christian and at first we belonged to the

African Methodist Episcopal Church. I am the only one who

is a member of St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission. I came

to St. John's because I was sick and I could not get well.

Medicine didn't help. I heard that I could get help from

the St. John's people because they prayed. So I went there

to the church. Well, I got well and I decided to stay.

The prayer works wonders. Every time I have

problems, I run to the church and ask the minister to pray

for me or for my children. You know, my daughter phoned me,

the youngest one in Mmbatho. She told me, "Mother, my

sister is to go to Kimberly to a hospital. It is possible

that from Kimberly, she will go to Cape Town to have an

operation." The moment I put down the phone, I ran to the

store and bought candles, matches, medicines and everything.

I took all these things, candles, matches, salt and R2, to

Tata Xaba. I told him my problems about my daughter. After

that, I asked him if I should go to the festival where they

do healing in Newcastle. I was doubting about whether I

should go to Newcastle, but the moment I heard my daughter

was sick, I decided to go. Tata Xaba said to me, "Yes, go."

I went to Newcastle. When the festival in Newcastle was

finished, I went to my sister in Johannesburg. When I got

there with my sister, I was afraid to phone my daughter in

Mmbatho, to find out how her sister was and whether she was

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in Kimberly or Cape Town. I hoped that she had not yet gone

to Cape Town since I had not yet returned home. I left for

Cape Town on August 21 and she also left Kimberly on the

same day to go to the hospital in Cape Town. You know, that

was very wonderful to me because all that was done through

prayer. You see, I went to Newcastle and prayed there. I

asked everyone there to pray for my daughter and things went

smoothly. She had an operation and there was no problem.

She is in the hospital now. She is waiting to get better.

I don't like other churches. They don't do what

St. John's does. When I don't feel well, I ask for the

water. I drank the water and brought it back up again. I

had an enema and I had a bath and food. That's what I like

about St. John's.

St. John's is a church where people mostly thank

God for helping them to get through their problems. You

know, like on Sunday, a lady said that she was unlucky. She

was looking for a job and she couldn't get a proper job.

She heard about this church and came to us. Tata Xaba

prayed for her. They did everything that is usually done

for everybody. We prayed for her and she went home. She

went and looked for a job and found one. Now she is never

without a job. You see, it's that kind of church!

People thank God for their children. Sometimes,

the people come and pray for their children. The children

do all sorts of naughty things. The parents come to church

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to pray for their children and their children will get

better and some will come to church. I remember a story

that Archbishop Masango told about a mother whose son was in

jail. She came to St. John's to pray for her son. One day

it happened that her child came out of jail. He started

coming to St. John's. Archbishop Masango said, "When I was

sitting in my office, I heard the voice of a child. He was

asking for prayer and remembering how his mother prayed for

him when he was in jail." When the child left jail, he came

back home a different person. He decided to go to church.

You can even go to St. John's when you have

problems at your house. One lady at church said that her

husband loves to quarrel for no reason at all. Ever since

she came to St. John's Church and asked for prayer for her

husband, he has stopped everything. They live like a

perfect family. So, some people at St. John's are sick,

some are not sick. Some come to church because they are

unable to have children. They ask for prayer. They say,

"We don't have children," and the minister or bishop prays

for them. Afterwards, God gives them children.

When children are sick and become well, they

decide to stay at the church too. One woman once said to

me,

My children were sick. One was more sick than the other. But, both were so sick. I took them to St. John's and whenever I sat down, my feet would rise from the ground. A mother in the church took my son and put him in the place where my feet kept rising. She looked at me and said, 'Why don't you

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give God what's God's? Why don't you get on your feet like God wants you to and stop stamping your feet?'

The woman said to me, "I wasn't sick but I had sickness in

me. It was in me, but hidden. It made my children sick."

My own grandson was healed at St. John's. He was

sick from the waist down and couldn't walk straight. He

kept saying to me, "I can't walk properly." His knees

started knocking. One Saturday morning, I told him to go to

the church. I gave him soap and said, "Go to the church and

they will do everything for you." He went to the church and

saw Tata Xaba. Tata Xaba could see that he wasn't walking

properly and began to talk with him. When they sat down

together, my grandson started crying and Tata Xaba asked

him, "What's wrong?" My grandson said, "I can't walk

properly." Tata Xaba told him, "Go and tell the one working

with the water to do everything for you." The water was

made and he was given an enema and a bath. Tata Xaba prayed

for him and my grandson was well. I mean, the church knows

about the healing. My grandson knows about it and my

children know, although they don't go there. But they know.

Myira

Myira was fifty-six years old and was born in the

Lady Frye district of the Transkei. She was divorced and

lived in a four room house in Guguletu with twelve other

family members. The following is her account of coming to

St. John's:

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I used to be a member of the Methodist Church but

have been attending St. John's for three years. I began to

go to St. John's in 1986. I could not get any work. Then I

ended up in the hospital and the doctors could not find out

what was wrong with me. I thought that I had low blood. I

went to Tata Xaba at St. John's and he asked me if I wanted

to be healed. Then he propheted me. He said that I must

start coming to the church and he prayed for me and gave me

water to drink. He said that I must begin to live in the

right way. I went to the river for baptism. Now I go to

church on Sundays. I like the way the St. John's people

sing. I am an active member at the church. I give wood to

the church. At home, I pray before going to sleep. My

whole family prays. On Sunday, we do not do certain things.

We cannot go to get wood. We cannot do washing.

Banzi

Banzi was thirty-one years old. He had been at

St. John's for nine months and was very devoted to the

church. He credited St. John's members with helping him to

develop a relationship with God. Banzi deeply valued this

relationship because of the affect that political events and

violence had upon his life. As a younger man he worked in

the mines and as a result understood life in South Africa

from the perspective of a worker. Banzi willingly answered

all questions during our conversation, but declined to

disclose his monthly income. His story follows:

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The violence here in South Africa happens because

we are under pressure. The pressure is like this: black

people don't get what they want. Apartheid divides black

people. People are living in a terrible way. For example,

the Group Areas Act divided us in our place.

I don't support De Klerk, so I won't say anything

about him. I don't see any results from the removing of the

rules of apartheid. Not one. What I see is that instead of

making things better, he's making things worse. Maybe,

though, there's a very good future for the new South Africa

since I see there are people who stand up and go and fight

for us.

The taxi war is caused by two companies that do

not have the same views. There are the two organizations

called Laguna and Webta. They won't work together. The

drivers disagree. Some say, ''We are to do one thing,” and

then others say, "No, we can't work.” So there are

differences between the taxi drivers and the taxi owners.

I think the church can play a big role in working

against the violence. For instance, all the churches can

come together and pray to God. The church can pray for God

to give light to the people so that they can understand each

other. So if there is fighting between people through the

light of God, there won't be blood. People will understand

each other.

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The church can call both taxi organizations and

then ask them to make peace. It's not necessary to know

about deep beliefs as long as they try to make peace between

those two organizations. Then after they pray together with

these two organizations, maybe God will do something.

While I don’t know too much about Archbishop Tutu,

I do know that he always goes where there is violence and

tries to make peace. He goes and tries to make peace and to

ask the people to come together.

Apartheid affected me very much because some

members of my family are in jail. Some members of my family

died, so it is something that affects my life. It has been

very bad for me. For example, when I went to Johannesburg

looking for work, there was a time when we were in the train

and the soldiers and policemen came and hit us and shot us.

I used to pray very hard because every day when I went to

work I didn't know if I was coming back. So I prayed and

God helped me a lot because I'm still alive.

I can say that my church plays a big role in my

prayers. I pray for myself because there is so much

violence. I was one of the people on the train and didn't

know that the soldiers were hitting people and killing

people who were on board. When I got off, I found that

there was a problem on the train. You see, God helps me a

lot. I prayed there. I also thanked my church because

there was a problem and God helped me. God helps me a lot.

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But, I also play a big role because I pray for myself. Yes,

I was safe. There was also a time that I didn't have a

ticket in my hand, but I just looked down and I found a

ticket. I gave it to them because otherwise they would hit

me. Others had nothing to give them. We had to push to

get off the train. I can say, I praise my God because he

helped me with that problem. Even the ticket, I picked up

from the floor. I know that God helped me to get this

ticket because I just found it and gave it to the soldier.

Then I was safe.

In 1985 I had a problem while in Johannesburg.

There was not so much violence by a black toward a black.

The Inkatha16 business was not involved. We were all on one

side, so I was safe. Among the hostel dwellers there was a

strike but there was no Inkatha against us. We were

fighting against our oppressors. We demanded the wages

because our oppressors were the white people. We didn't

have the fighting that they have now in Johannesburg. I

went back home when there was fighting. I was safe because

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I went back to the Transkei. I got a job there but I was

not satisfied with it so I went to Cape Town.

I won't tell you how it is going to be but the

only thing I can tell you is this: I pray to God for my

future because I want to see who's going to be the leader in

the next years and how he's going to rule. I want to see

how he's going to treat my people who have been suffering

for a long time. That's the only thing I pray to God for.

Please God keep me and I want to live a little bit longer so

that I can see my future and who is going to be the leader.

I wish a black man would lead our country because all of

Africa is for black men. We have been suffering for a long

time. I wish the leader of our future could be a black man.

I wish those people from South Africa who were in

exile could help with leading. I think they learned a lot

when they were away and they are educated. They understand

how to rule people. These South Africans were in America

and England. These people who were overseas know everything

and they have been educated. Each family has got somebody

overseas. Yes, they are the Africans. Yes, I will make an

example. I think these people are our families. They were

Africans and some of them can't even speak our language.

They speak English like you. I know that you are black and

you came from this world, from South Africa. I'm definitely

sure that your parents were from South Africa and of Africa.

But maybe your parents were running away from the oppressors

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or maybe they go there for other reasons. But, I know that

you are from Africa. I'm talking about those people who can

help us.

I think that the church people are busy healing

people. They were frightened because if they talked about

politics and the church they used to take you to jail. So I

think that's why the church people choose to be quiet about

politics in church. This is why they are busy healing.

They are praying for people, then they are busy helping

people. They think that if we talk about politics, it will

put us in a tight corner so they choose to leave it to

others. Some of the other churches preach about politics,

but we never do in our church.

Mr. Mandela has done the best. It means a lot to

me that he is free. Since he's been out of jail the exiles

are coming back home, and political prisoners from jails are

to be released. We cried for Mr. Mandela for many years

because we needed him outside, so that he can do what he's

trying to do now. He is sitting down with Mr. De Klerk to

talk with him. We knew that if he could come out he would

do that.

I understand what's going on in South Africa

because I worked in the factories. I worked in the mines so

I tasted some of the bad things. I saw who the oppressor

was. I noticed many things. That's why I understand what

is going on in South Africa because I'm a worker.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. To work in the mines is a very troubling thing.

It's really bad. You exist between dying and being alive.

It's very hard because while you are working, you are not

working in a happy way. You work just because you have

problems. There's a lot of things to say about it. To work

in the mines is very hard. While the white people are

kicking us, while we are busy digging, we don't get money.

There we work very hard and we don't get money. While we

are busy working, they are kicking us. They do everything

that they want to do under the ground.

I am thirty-one years old and when I had a problem

I went here and there. Maybe I worked in Transvaal from

January to June. Then I changed jobs because there was a

white person who wanted to hit me while I was working. I

ran away from there and went to Vrystaat to take a job. I

got there and had the same problem I had the first time. So

this is how we move from work to work.

It was very bad to me because I didn't want to

leave my parents behind in the Transkei. I was also happy

because I learned a lot from them. The only thing that gave

me strength is accepting God. All the other years I did not

know that there was something like a God. I never knew he's

alive. Before I thought these problems were something that

you can talk about, but not to a living God. I pray so that

I can survive everything that I do. I can say I'm safe now.

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I'm still struggling. There are problems. The problems

never stop, but I'm praying so that I can survive.

I'm new in my job, but before I used to do like

this: for my holiday I used to go and visit my family in

Durban, maybe in Umtata, and maybe in East London. When I

go, I have a purpose because I want to know how can I

survive in my life. I am struggling and if I get my

holiday, I think I must go to my brother or to my family in

Durban. I don't just go there for a holiday. I go to ask

how can I survive. My brother can tell me and give me the

plans, that's all.

Mrs. Joxo

Mrs. Joxo came to St. John's because of the

illness of her son. He was mentally ill and she believed

that the minister at St. John's could help her. She began

going to St. John's prior to the arrival of Tata Xaba. The

church provided her with support as she and her family went

through many difficulties. Her story is outlined below:

I am a widow and have three children living. My

husband and my first born are both gone. I was born in the

province of St. Matthew's in the Ciskei in 1923. I came to

Cape Town in 1942 to marry my husband. While I was a

student in the Ciskei, I had a fall. I was pregnant and

unmarried.

I completed standard six at school, but could not

go further because my father passed away. Financially,

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everything was quite tight because my mother was alone. She

struggled to educate me. Furthermore, my mother was a step

mother to my father's children. My mother and the step

children were always fighting. I grew up in a terrible way.

My mother's parents forced her to marry another man and it

was very bad for her. She was forced to get married because

when my father died, he left nothing. My mother had to

work. She did the washing of students who went to St.

Matthew's College.

The customs that we had at home included

imbekeleko. which is done when a child is born. We

slaughtered a goat and had a dinner. We also slaughtered a

goat when boys came back from the forest from circumcision

school.

I used to go to the Anglican Church. My parents

were Christians. I began to go to St. John's because my

first born child, the one born before I was married, was

sick. He was a little boy and had Xhosa sickness (izifo

sesiXhosa) . The people used to say that he had ''white

sickness" which is connected to the witch doctors. We went

all over the place trying to find people who could help him.

No one could help him. Then, he began to get sick mentally.

This made the problem even more difficult. Some mothers

from St. John's came to my house. One of them was from the

Transkei. She told me about my child's sickness. She

couldn't stay to help him, because it was the time of the

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pass laws. After she left for the Transkei, I began to go

to St. John's in Guguletu. I took my son with me and told

the priest about him. The priest was a woman named Mother

Makheso. She gave him water to vomit. She also bathed him

and gave him an enema. Unfortunately, this mother did not

stay at St. John's - Guguletu a long time. When she left,

my son did not want to go to church. He refused to go,

though I tried to force him. I decided to go and joined St.

John's. I asked the new priest, Tata Xaba, to come to my

house to hold my son. Tata Xaba used to bring the rituals

to my house.

Even though we did the rituals for this child, the

child died. It is a terrible story. One day I left my son

at home alone with my granddaughter. He was a man and my

granddaughter, a little one. On that day, he raped the

little one. When I returned home, I thought that she was

frightened because she was carrying on. He raped her and

after that the child never told anyone. I could see that

the child was sick and that she did not seem better for a

long time. I took her to the Red Cross Hospital and then

they found that the child was raped. The hospital took

action against the rape. They made a case. We tried our

best to get my son admitted to Valkenberg or Lentegeur

Hospital. The social workers asked the police to go and

fetch my son because a place was being prepared at one of

the hospitals. Instead, the policemen put him in jail.

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When I went to the jail to see my son, I couldn't find him.

I went all over the jail, but I never found my son. I went

to the Poolsmoor jail to find him. I was told that he was

there and that he was alright. His case came up, but he did

not win. He was given a three year prison sentence. He

stayed in the Poolsmoor jail for one more month which was in

February. In March my son was dead. They said that he died

of kidney failure. The police told me that I could take his

body to bury at home, so that is what I did. I don't know

what to believe about my son's death. I was told that they

took him to Groote Schuur Hospital. I heard from a friend

that she did see my son in the hospital.

I get a pension, so I don't work outside my home

during the day. I clean my house and when I can, I relax.

I had a knee operation some time ago. It was necessary

because of the work I did in the kitchen where I worked and

going up and down stairs.

I like everything in St. John's because when the

people preach, you can feel it in your blood. You can feel

it in your blood when they sing. You can feel the spirit.

As for rituals, I buy salt and take it to the

church. There is a special place outside the church, where

we put our things. We call it the lake (ichibi). We take

all the things like salt and water. We take them every

Sunday. The minister prays for the salt and water and then

I take it home. With the water I spray my house all over,

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including outside so that I can stay away from the evil

spirits. The children also drink the water.

In our church there are healing rituals. When

people come, members pray for them. Then the person vomits

and takes a bath. These are all important rituals that are

done in our church. And then, the sick must attend the

services in the church. When following these rituals, many

people dream clearly, and see everything. A person may get

messages through their dreams. If the messages are not

followed then it's bad luck for you. Sometimes you dream

about your ancestors and they tell you what you must do.

Then sometimes you dream of something that happened in the

church. Sometimes your ancestors, your grandfather or your

mother, the ones who have passed away a long time ago

appear. You dream of them talking to you and they say, "I'm

thirsty." Then you have to make Xhosa beer so that

everybody can come and drink it.

The only thing that I know is that the ancestors

help you. They always keep you safe. The ancestors are

related to the living because we come from them. Sometimes

I slip into a trouble and feel an evil spirit, but at the

same time I feel that there is something safe that surrounds

me. I can feel that there is a heavy thing that is around

me. Then I become safe because the ancestors are living.

They help me. God is also there. I make Xhosa beer and

even slaughter something for my ancestors to show my respect

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and thankfulness for their protection. The Bible tells

about the ancestors. Sometimes you see your ancestors, and

sometimes they come straight to you. They say, "Don't go

that way." Then if you force yourself to go that way, you

have problems. I believe that we are together with the

ancestors.

I really don't know what to say about the current

situation in South Africa. I know when I don't know

something. I really don't understand what's going on. I

really don't know why there is so much violence in the

townships. Really I don't know.

The violence has affected my family directly. My

son in Khayelitsha was affected by the violence because he

had a taxi there. He was working for his boss by going to

collect people who were staying at a hotel with this taxi

one afternoon. About three o'clock, they wanted to kill

him. They wanted to shoot him. There were guns around him.

Then they took him out and they ran away with his taxi.

They pushed him away and run away with the taxi. This

happened about three months ago. It's still new.

My son is still working. He still drives a taxi.

My son always comes to my house, especially on the weekends.

The violence in Khayelitsha is so terrible for him.

Sometimes he doesn't work in the taxi rank but instead he

collects people at the hotels at night. Then, sometimes the

people there in Khayelitsha stop his taxi, so he sleeps here

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to avoid the problems. I don't know what the cause of the

taxi war is because we haven't got a person who's got a taxi

nearby.

We grew up in a situation of apartheid, so I can't

say now that apartheid is gone. Apartheid is like this:

the white people always do their things separate from us.

We are used to being on the other side. Everything they do

is always making everything to be separate from us. I don't

know if it will be different for my grandchildren.

I see on TV that they say that there are changes

but, I really don't know if there is a change. Nothing has

been changed in my life. Those things that were expensive

are still expensive. We can't afford to buy many things.

How am I going to buy the things? I haven't got money.

It was a terrible thing when Mandela was in

prison. I don't know the things of politics. I was happy

when he was released because he was a long time in jail.

I don't know what I think about the future. I'm

old. I don't know what I'm going to do about the future.

The only thing I can do to change my life is to follow Jesus

Christ. All other things now are too late for me.

The role that women have at St. John's is to wash

the sick people. They also help by giving the sick people

water to vomit and enemas. Women help to enlarge the

congregation because they help the people. Sometimes they

prophet people who have been away and those people come

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straight in the congregation. The mothers are playing a big

role in the church. The mothers of Cape Town are the

workers. Most of the time they are at work, so they don't

work too much in the church unless they get that chance.

When I worked, I was a domestic in the houses of

white people. I worked in the kitchen. I cooked and looked

after their children.

Even the work here, there's no work for the blacks

and no money for the blacks. If you work in the factory,

they don't want to pay blacks. I see that some blacks are

working but, there's no money for the blacks.

The blacks are fighting against one another. You

hear that somebody's been killed by another black. The

black man is shooting another black man. I'm not going to

say anything. What I can say is that there's no money in

South Africa. I was working in the kitchen. I never get

anything. There is money for the white people and they

share amongst themselves.

Thobeka

Thobeka came to St. John's because her child was

sick and because she had been called to be a witch doctor

and wanted to resist it. She talked about her struggle with

amafufunvana.

I was born in the Ciskei in a town named Gxala. I

came to Cape Town because my child was sick with worms. We

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came to Cape Town to be with the child's father who was

working.

I went to St. John's for two reasons. First, I

was married in the church. Second, I had an illness which

would make me become a witch doctor. We call this illness

amafufunvana. It is an evil spirit because you just become

mad and you don't know what's going on in your body. You

don't know what's going on with anything. Sometimes you run

straight into a car because you want to be killed. You hit

people. You don't know what you are doing. I had this

illness for two years, from 1977 to 1979. The first St.

John's Church I attended was in the Ciskei.

A symbol is to have a thing that you believe in.

The cross on the floor at St. John's means that it's a holy

place. The other symbol is when people stand in front of

the church and ask for something. It is important to do

that. If you stand there and ask, the people pray together

and help your own prayers. Then after that you see the

answer.

I was baptized in March 1990, then I began to wear

the blue and white uniform. I found out about St. John's in

Guguletu because I went all over the place asking. Then

people told me.

I spray with the water at my house especially when

the children cry at night.

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The ancestors are the people who have died. They

can talk to us. Sometimes they talk when you have a dream

and sometimes they talk while you are awake. You have to

respect the ancestors. You have to do everything they ask

of you. One time the ancestors asked me for Xhosa beer.

When the ancestors ask something of me and I do it, then I

become healthy.

I was born in 1969. The custom of my community

that I liked best was the party we had before the boys go to

circumcision. We call it umbavizelo. Another custom that

we had took place when a baby was born. We slaughtered a

goat. If the ancestors said something, we slaughtered an

ox.

I spend my day cleaning my house. I clean the

dishes, my two children and I cook. I get up at eight

o'clock and I go to bed at nine o'clock.

Twelve people live here. We have two shacks in

the back yard. Four people live in one shack and four live

in the other. Four also live in this house.

My husband is a casual worker. He earns R150 a

week.

I describe the current situation in South Africa

as bad. We are hungry and we are pulling hard. It is so

difficult for us. The violence in the townships is because

the white people don't give us jobs. We haven't seen any

action that apartheid has ended. If De Klerk says this is

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so, it is only in his mind. He lies. Apartheid laws are

changed only in the minds. Even if I'm working, I don't get

the same wages as white people. If you are looking for a

job, you don't get a job. The cause of the taxi war is

money.

The future holds nothing for me because I'm not

educated. If I were a teacher, I would get a job, but I

haven't got a job because I am not educated. So, it's bad

for me and for my future. I think about education for the

future of my children.

Ndsilibe and Yoliswa Beliqoco

Ndsilibe and Yoliswa lived in Nyanga, an African

township which was adjacent to Guguletu. They lived in a

two room house constructed of galvanized zinc which was

located across the street from a single sex male hostel.

The neighborhood was very crime ridden. There was no indoor

plumbing. When I arrived Yoliswa was warming water for tea

on a gas cooker. The walls of the house were plastered with

newspaper. I was invited to sit on a box and my research

assistant, Barbara, sat next to me. Ndsilibe, who came to

St. John's seeking relief of illness that plagued him from

childhood, began our conversation:

I do not know the year that I was born, but I do

know the day. It was May 14th. I think that I was born in

1962. I was born in Mabazeal, Transkei. We have lived

together in this place for seven months. It is called

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Kalanyoni and is part of Nyanga. I have two children who

are in the Transkei. I have not found work for three years

now. I have never been to school.

I came to Cape Town four years ago to look for a

job. I never found one, so I sell some vegetables— cabbages

and things. I have been at St. John's for four years.

Before going there, I did not go to church. My parents were

not Christians; they lived traditionally. Sometimes they go

to attend the Xhosa beer17. They lived the way they decided

to live. I don't know how to explain their way of life. I

came to St. John's because I was pulling hard. I was sick

all the time. Since I was sick, I decided to become a part

of this church.

I like the symbols at St. John's because if

something is going to happen to me, I see it. I believe

because before I never saw anything that was going to happen

to me, but now I can. That's why I said, I like it. I very

much like the symbols. By symbols, I mean when I can tell a

person the things that happens to him at his home; or what

kind of sickness he has. When I tell him the things that I

do, I ask, "Do I lie?" That is what I mean by symbol; it is

the same thing as to prophet someone. The special God of

St. John's, he just answers anytime. When you want

something, he answers you. And if he's not going to have

17Attending the Xhosa beer means that a special occasion has taken place where Xhosa beer was served.

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something then God tells you that you can't get this. You

can see when you're not going to get that.

We believe in the ancestors at St. John's and I

will tell you about what we believe. First of all, the

ancestors are ruling. When a child is small, he does not

know God, so the ancestors rule the child. When a person

becomes an adult and does something for God, he is also

taking care of the ancestors. When a person becomes a

Christian the ancestors show their actions. They need their

work to be done. When a person does the work of the

ancestors, he is doing the work of God. The Bible has a

chapter that says to respect your mother and father. That's

why we respect the ancestors because they talk and give you

something. That is why we say the ancestors are working

together with God.

When I was a boy living in the Transkei, I just

lived the way I wanted to. If I woke up in the morning and

there were no chores, I would go my way. At two o'clock in

the afternoon we would go to collect our animals and bring

them home. After taking the cattle and sheep home, there

would sometimes be a party. I just lived the way I wanted

because I was not under the control of my parents. I used

to be in the control of my parents before I was a man.

Sometimes I went to Johannesburg to work for my parents.

When I began to work, I thought that I was really in control

of myself as a man. Nobody needed anything from me. Then I

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began to have dreams; sometimes the same dream more than

once. I thought that I must follow my dream. When I did

not follow my dreams, I started to have problems and I made

a lot of mistakes. Once I made a mistake, I remembered my

dream. But then I began to get clever and know that the

dreams meant something. I began to take the dreams to my

parents. Sometimes they told me what the dream meant. It

maybe meant something I must do. As Xhosas, we have

different clan names which means that we must do special

cultural things. It passes through the children, the

cultural things that we must do. Sometimes I saw some

things in my dreams that did not happen to me, but they

happened to my brothers. Sometimes my parents, because they

were old, forgot to do cultural things for me. In other

houses the parents do for their children when they were very

small. If a custom is passed to you and you become old and

do not pass it on, you are naughty. It is then that you

notice in your dreams that something must be done. The

ancestors tell these things to you in dreams.

We also have cultural traditions in my family.

When a baby is born, we put red stuff all over the body.

Then we slaughter a goat for the child. The child is

supposed to stay behind the door for four days. Then the

child is shown to the ancestors. Sometimes they cut a

finger off. They say the child needs this procedure. Our

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great-grandfathers were born when this custom was done. So

we continue to do it.

Yoliswa shared her story: I was born into the

Mamqoco clan on July 28, 1968 in the Ciskei, Mdatshane

District. The community where I grew up was very similar to

Cape Town because I grew up in the city. There were people

who worked and there were people who killed each other.

Some people were drunkards and some were Christians.

My family and neighbors kept our customs. For one

thing, circumcision, which is when a boy becomes a man, is

performed. On that occasion, the people sacrifice a goat.

Many people come to celebrate and drink liquor and dance.

The fathers take the boys into the forest and stay for three

weeks. When they come back home the boys are men and there

is a big celebration. We have Xhosa beer. The boys wear

red ochre (ukugatywa) on their faces and have to be covered

with clothes and they wear a black head cover. They stay

indoors for three days after coming from the forest. After

three days, the boys are dressed in khaki clothes and on

becoming a man they wear cloaks. Many boys go to

Johannesburg to find work when they become men.

When girls get married their status is changed to

amakoti. The woman must always have her head covered and

wear a scarf around the waist. When a woman is going to be

married she must sit behind the door for a week. In some

families, she must sit behind the door for a month. On the

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day that she is able to go out, she is told to fetch water.

Someone goes with her to get the water. Then the woman

begins to work in the house as a married woman. A beast is

slaughtered for the new amakoti. This occasion is called

tsiki. The slaughter of the goat tells the ancestors a new

amakoti is in this place. The woman's and man's family come

together and work together as well as the ancestors on both

sides.

There is one other thing that is ceremonial.

Sometimes a person is born with an ability to see things.

When a person is born that way, the people say that he will

be working with a lot of people. They call that person,

umshorl. a wise person or a witch doctor. These people can

see what will happen through visions. Sometimes they see

things in water. They may even see themselves with white

beads around their heads. As the child grows older, he

tells his parents and family what he sees. The family then

slaughters a goat and this shows that the child accepts from

the ancestors the work that he has been given by them to do;

to be a witch doctor. This person wears white beads. This

person will train others to do the same kind of work.

As for my life now, I came to Cape Town last year.

I have one child who is in the Ciskei with my parents. I

work as a domestic in somebody's house, mostly in the

kitchen for eight months. I wake up at 7:00 a.m. and go to

the terminus to take the bus by 7:20 a.m. My job is in

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Constantia. I work all day and then I come home and just

cook. I earn R300 per month. Since that is not much, we

also sell vegetables and tobacco, but we don't get much from

that.

Before I came to St. John's, I attended the Roman

Catholic Church. My parents were Christians. I have been

attending St. John's for nine months. I go to church on

Sundays, but at other times I pray in my house because the

church is very far away to go at other times.

The ancestors help God; they help each other to

help God. Sometimes the ancestors come to you and ask you

for something. Sometimes what they ask for are things that

they never had a chance to do when they were alive. It is

up to us to do the job that the ancestors were supposed to

do when they were alive. For instance, my mother and father

are still alive. Once they die, they will come to me and

say, "you must do this and that;" those things they never

did when they were alive. Then I will do it, so that they

can get rest in heaven.

Reverend Mjoli and Mrs. Mjoli

Reverend and Mrs. Mjoli had been married several

years and had two adult children. Both were born in the

Transkei, in the Montrier and Qumbui districts respectively.

While Mrs. Mjoli was presently unemployed, for several years

she had worked as a domestic. She completed six years of

schooling. Reverend Mjoli had been unemployed since 1988.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. He worked in township administration in an adjacent township

called Langa. He completed eight years of schooling. The

Mjoli's received R295 a month in pension. Both of their

children were unemployed. Their daughter lived with them

along with her little boy. Occasionally their son sold beer

and sometimes gave them money. Reverend Mjoli began the

interview by talking about the healing of his wife.

I came to St. John's because Mama Skosana healed

my wife. I also liked the way that she did rituals. She

told us that she was taken to heaven in 1928 and that she

had never seen so nice a place as heaven. I could see that

she really was telling the truth. She was not like other

people. You could see that she was one with God. She told

us that she was not to be on earth at all times, but that

she was supposed to go and work in heaven. She told us that

the way she saw herself being involved on earth was with the

miracles of angels and the clapping of hands. She even saw

her father who told her that it was God who was talking to

her. Her father, who was dead, explained that she must come

to the earth and do what God told her. Then her father said

that she must come to the people and do all the work.

Mrs. Mjoli: I grew up in the Anglican Church and

was also married in it. Mama Skosana told me that I was

called to her church, St. John's, since she saw that I was a

spiritual person. She also told me that I mustn't use the

Xhosa medicines (ufouthi). I should rather go to the doctor

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instead of using our cultural medicines. Before this, my

husband never went to church. Now at St. John's he's a

minister.

Reverend Mjoli: What I like most about St. John's

is when the people prophet. The prophets can see the

illnesses of the sick people. Mother Skosana taught us to

respect each other. She also taught the women to stand up

and be strong. Women were not to always watch their husband

and run after him. The women were taught to stand up as

strong women and to understand themselves, the other

mothers, and to do everything that a mother should do. If

you are a woman don't wait; maybe you want to prophet then

you just do so. If you want to do anything then you just do

it. Maybe God wants you to do something.

Mama Skosana used to say that we must love each

other and be spiritual like brothers and sisters. She told

us that we must also teach our children about the church and

about God.

Water is a symbol used in our service. In our

church on Sunday we use water, only water. There is a cross

on the floor in the center aisle. The ministers wash their

hands and pray for the people on that cross. The ministers

pray for people in this location because they prophet the

people. Outside the minister must also wash. There is a

cross outside where they have to wash their hands and pray

for the people. They also pray for the water, for those who

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take it home. We spray with prayed water in our home. We

do this when the children don't sleep in a good way. This

is how we must fight evil spirits.

I have had visions but not all the time. When I

have had a vision, if anything is going to happen to me,

then I see it before it happens. I also have dreams with

messages and if it's a bad thing we have to pray so that

this thing won't happen. Sometimes when we don't understand

the dream, we go to a person in our church and ask him,

"What does this mean?" That person must also look in the

Bible, to see what the dream means.

Mrs. Mazibula

Mrs. Mazibula was sixty-two years old and was born

in Ngqamakwe, Transkei. She was married and gave birth to

ten children; two were miscarried and four died after birth.

She had six years of formal schooling and was a member of

the Methodist Church before becoming a member of St. John's.

She lived in Guguletu in a three room house with her

husband, two of their children and two grandchildren. She

shared the following:

My parents were Christians and I went to church

with them from the time I was born. I belonged to the

Methodist Church before I went to St. John's. One day after

coming from church, I got sick at home. My family took me

to the hospital. I came home from the hospital because I

was not serious like before. I was just a little bit better

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and then I had a vision. I saw St. John's Church in my

vision. It didn't take long for me to heal after I went to

St. John's.

I go to church on Thursday and Friday during the

week. I go and help the people there to give enemas and to

give water. All those who have belts help to give enemas,

and to bathe other sick people. On Wednesday, Saturday and

Sunday the sick people vomit from 10:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.

The enemas are given on the same three days. Those who need

a bath get a bath. Those who are supposed to get an enema

get an enema and those who are supposed to vomit are given

water to vomit.

I like to come to the church on Thursdays because

it is Mother's day. The service starts at 4:00 p.m and all

the mothers are there. If we have problems then we share

them and we pray. The scriptures that are important for our

church are Nehemiah 10 and Leviticus 5.

We do many rituals at our church. We have

communion, but only at night time. We do washing of the

feet. On Sunday, we ask of God the things we need. We pray

for the world and sing. Then we have the healing service

where every one stands in the cue to drink the water. We

call it going to the lake (ichibi).

I do some rituals at home. All the little

children who are sick come to me. I give water and enemas

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when a parent brings a child to me. I use salt and water to

spray my house. That is how I pray for my house.

I believe in my ancestors. When I was sick my

father gave me a stick in my dream. He gave it to me

straight in my hand. When I received the stick from my

father, I saw my whole family, not the ones who are alive,

but all my people who are dead. In the dream, I went to my

brother and told him that I was going to make a dinner for

my family. In the dream I thought to myself, I will call my

mother's family to come and sing to her. Then I cooked. I

didn't have something like a sheep that we slaughter now. I

cooked white beans and poured on a little bit of fish oil.

Then I made kaffir beer18— that is our cultural beer. While

my family was eating some of them sang. My ancestors gave

me a St. John's uniform. They gave me a blue and white

uniform, with a white cape and head covering.

I don't always tell my dreams and visions because

sometimes you see something where you or another is hurt.

If you tell this kind of vision at church, the members won't

be nice to you. That is not good, so I would rather keep my

visions to myself unless, it is such that I can't do

otherwise; then I have to tell.

When we have our healing service during worship,

we call it going to the lake (ichibi). We put up the blue

18Kaffir beer is sometimes called Xhosa beer. It is a home brewed alcoholic beverage made for special occasions.

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and white cloth that the Reverends stand under as they pray

for us after we drink the water and walk under the cloth.

Tata Masango propheted about the blue and white cloth. That

is why we walk under it after drinking the water.

During the week I wake up and by 7:30 a.m. I am

dressed. I am always busy with my housework. I do sewing.

I do washing. I clean my house and cook for my husband. I

also look after my grandchildren. I go to bed at 8:00 p.m.

after watching television. I have never had a holiday.

The situation in South Africa is terrible. It is

a very bad time now. It is a very bad time now because of

the violence. It's so terrible. Terrible. I don't really

know the cause of the violence. We just see that the taxi

people are fighting against another taxi company, but I

can't explain why it is happening.

I don't know how to explain apartheid because most

of the time I am working in the house, but I can say this.

Sometimes you go and get on a bus. Then they say, you can't

get in this carriage because it's for whites only. You

can't go to this place because it's for whites only. You

can't go on the bus, and even in the train, you can't get in

first class unless it's first class that is for blacks only.

There is a special first class for whites only on the

trains. If you are late, you have to go to your own class

on the train. They make a special third class for blacks.

These are some of the things I see with my own two eyes. I

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don't see that apartheid has ended as De Klerk says. I

haven't seen any action to end it. I just see that things

are as they were before. I might see a white person sitting

next to me, but with other things there is no movement. It

is still the same.

The only thing that the church can do about the

violence is to pray. The only thing we want is peace. We

pray for peace. I think that there will be a change in the

new South Africa, but I'm not sure about it. I think that

the children are going to have a better future. I see now

that the leaders are preparing for the new time; the future

of South Africa. I think that the new leader of South

Africa must be a black man. That is the only way I see it.

The way that the church helps me with apartheid is that we

pray.

There are community organizations that help our

neighborhood. When someone on our street dies, we give

money to the people. We help by working hand in hand

through the burial association. We also give money when

someone has a marriage party. We give money to a mother

once a month to uplift her. I also belong to the civic

association which helps if I'm fighting with my neighbor.

The association sorts out all the fighting between me and my

neighbor. If maybe my child is naughty, I take him to the

men of the association executive committee. If the child

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needs a hiding,19 they give it to make the child straight.

If there is someone who wants to fight, who wants to take my

house, then the association helps me. They help with the

things we need in the community. If the government is

fighting against the community, then the civic association

fights against the government for the rights and needs of

the people in the community.

I will tell you about my childhood. We grew up in

Cofimvaba, Transkei in a nice way. We were three girls and

two boys on our farm. Our teachers expected us to go to

church on Sundays. On Monday, you had to tell your teacher

if you went to church. So, we were supposed to go to church

even if we did not like it. As children, we always listened

to our parents. Everyday, including Saturday, we had to

wake up and keep the house clean and cook. On Saturday, we

prepared everything for Sunday. On Sunday, we went to

church. Once we came home from church, we gave dinner to

our parents and then we went with other girls. Sunday

afternoon was when we met our boyfriends. We went to youth

meetings together. At six o'clock we had to go back home

and put on the light. We had to do everything so that it

looked like we hadn't gone out.20 We had to make everything

look nice and clean to satisfy our parents.

19A "hiding" is a "spanking."

20Many girls were under the strict care of their parents. If there was a sense of too much freedom then the girl would not be respected.

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Thozama

Thozama had been a member of St. John's for two

years. She lived in the one room shack with several other

women. She was employed as a domestic. The only child that

she had died while they lived in the Transkei. This is the

account she gave of her life:

I was born in the Namakwe district of the Transkei

in December 1961. When I was a little girl I went to the

Methodist Church. I attended Sunday School and the youth

programs. When I lived in the Transkei I had a little girl

but she died at one month. She had a high temperature, and

then she died. I was not married.

I came to St. John's in 1988. I came because I

was very sick. When I started St. John's I was always

frightened. When I went to the doctor, he said that I had a

problem with my nerves. They treated me and explained that

my nerves were what made me sick. I also came to St. John's

because I did not have a job.

When I came to the church they propheted me by

taking a Bible and telling me about my problems and why I

didn't have a job. They also told me what I must do to help

myself. Then they told me to drink water so that I could

vomit and to take in water for an enema. They also gave me

a bath. They told me that I must also have a bottle of

water to take home. They said to pour some of the water in

the bath. They stressed that I must always use this water

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while I bathed. It did not take long for me to get well and

to find a job. I found a job quickly. At the present time

I work as a domestic in the home of a white family. I

started that job in December 1990. I live at St. John's

Church when I am not working. What I like most about our

church is the music, but I can't sing. I like it when other

people sing.

When I was young and they were going to take a boy

to circumcision school, they used to build a house very far

from our places. Now things have changed. I really don't

know where they take the boys. But, on the day a boy

becomes a man, we do a big party. We put the man in front

of everybody so we can tell him what he must do now, since

his life has been changed and he is a man. The boy now gets

rules; he gets new rules now that he's a man. Now he must

not treat himself as a boy anymore.

Another custom takes place when someone dies.

When my father died, we did the custom to bring him back

home. We did this by slaughtering a big cow. The animal

was a very big one. The fathers and the families talked

before they slaughtered the cow. Then we had a very big

dinner. We wanted everybody to know about this ceremony.

Then we went to the grave. We cooked and ate and gave some

words before we asked other people to talk to my father

while he was dead. We made his grave very beautiful. We

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made it so nice. We slaughtered another cow, and then went

straight to the grave.

We did a similar thing on the day we buried the

dead. We had a big church service and then we went home.

Then we washed our hands as we did when we went to the

grave. Then we ate— everybody ate. The time that we

returned to the grave was not like a funeral day. On the

funeral day the family eats first. On this day, we served

the visitors before the family.

The way I spend my day is like this. At five

o'clock I wake up and go straight to church. The service

ends at half-past five. Then I prepare myself for work. I

take the seven o'clock bus to work. I start at my work at

eight o'clock. It takes me an hour to get to work by bus.

The time that I leave my work depends on me, how fast I am.

Sometimes at half-past two I come home, sometimes at four

o'clock. It just depends on me. I clean the whole house

and I do the washing, and the ironing. I look after the

house till the white people come back. I work five days a

week.

I don't know what to say about the current

situation in South Africa. There is such a lot of tovi-

toyi's that happens here. The tovi-tovi is a march. There

are lot of marches and things like that. I really don't

know why there are so many marches.

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I really don't know and I really don't care what's

going on outside. Even with Mandela, the people are dying a

lot since he was out of the jail.

I'm so used to apartheid, now I really don't worry

about it. Really, I don't know anything because I came to

Cape Town in 1988.

The cause of the taxi war is because of organiza

tions that fight. There is Webta and Laguna. Some people

don't like Webta because it's mixed with white people.

The violence in the township is because of the

fighting between the people. I see lot of kings. This one

doesn't want that one and that one doesn't want this one. I

really don't know what's going on. A king is someone like

Mandela who is standing for his own organization. You know

what I think about the future of South Africa? I think God

can just kill all of us, instead of seeing these things

happen to the people. I just see all this bloodshed that is

happening. Like sometimes we get in the buses. No matter

what we know or even if we don't know anything, we also die,

because those taxis come to us. They want to kill us in the

buses. Nothing has happened to me while I was in the taxi,

but I hear about these things happening to the people. We

in the church have to do something. We must pray to God.

We can pray together and talk to God about this violence.

I think that the next political leader may be a

white person who can rule us. There is too much bloodshed

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happening. That is what I see. I don't believe in Mandela;

since he has been out of the jail there has been much

bloodshed. I don't know what to say, because I think the

white man is the boss of us. In the future, I don't believe

I'll be alive. I don't want to talk about the future

because I'm just waiting to die. Even the future of the

children is uncertain because of what's happening outside.

I don't believe there is a good future for them. Already

they have seen so much wrong in front of their eyes. So

much killing. There's no future for our children. The only

thing that can change these things is that we pray to God.

Then everything can be changed. So far, I don't see

anything that has changed with the church's help.

We try to help each other. Those who are working

are helping others who are not. We put the money together

and share with each other. We do it is this way: this

month we take all our wages and give it to that one. The

next month we take half of our wages and give it to another

person. The following month we keep all our wages. It is

like that so, that we can be five or more people helping

each other. So this month or that month different people

are rich. We go around that way. We also have a funeral

organization, where if somebody died we come together and

everybody brings money. Each person has to give R2, so that

it can help the one who has a problem.

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Manqwati, Nozipo, and Xolisa

The following is from a group interview with three

St. John's women who lived together in the shack located on

the church's premises. Inside the close quarters of the

shack was a bench, six foam rubber mattresses spread across

a dirt floor and a bed upon which three children sat

watching curiously. One woman groaned as she lay on a foam

rubber mattress against a wall. One of the women explained

that this was a sick person who arrived during the night.

One woman washed herself from a basin of water while the

others talked. Another woman heated water on a little gas

burner. It was seven o'clock in the evening.

Manqwati began by talking about her dreams and

about St. John's:

I can't remember the whole dream, but one day here

in the place where we are, I dreamed there was a fire. When

I woke up, the house was on fire; even my blanket was on

fire. I saw my father before he died. Sometimes you dream

about people before they die.

Before I came to this church I used to be in the

other church. I used to go to the people there to tell them

about my dreams and they used to try to help me. I

sometimes dreamed about people who got sick. Before it

happened I dreamed about it. I used to go to my father,

Tata Xaba, about my dreams. When I go to him my dreams

became clear. Most of the time they become clear. This

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. church helps me a lot. I will never change my mind about

this church— never. It helps me a lot so I don't think I

can change my mind. I would never do that.

We wake up about five o'clock and then we go and

pray. Once we're finished at the church, we come back to

the shack. I light a fire and heat up water. Then I wash

myself. At 6:00 a.m. or maybe half past six, I leave for

the train station. Once I get there, I take the half past

seven train, then I get to my work at eight o'clock.

To get to work, I walk from here to Heideveld.

Then, I take a train to Belleville station. I take a

combi/taxi to Durbanville. I started my job in 1989 as a

tea-girl in the offices of the owner of a hotel in

Durbanville. After a year the owner bought another hotel

called the Oxford Hotel and changed its name to "Henry JB."

He took me from being a tea-girl in the first hotel to work

as a cleaner at the Henry JB. He told me that I had been on

a long holiday working at the other hotel and that I had not

really been working as a tea-girl. So I said, "Well, I

don't know."

Now, I'm a domestic at a hotel. I do cleaning at

my job. At twelve o'clock I must finish everything because

they start to open up at twelve o'clock. Then I go and work

upstairs, till four o'clock.

I grew up in the Transkei and I remember playing

as a child. When I was a school child, I stayed at home

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because they didn't have anybody to look after the cattle.

I was a shepherd and looked after all the things. My big

sister got married at a very young age and there was no boy

at home.

In summer when little girls came of age and began

their period, sometimes the people slaughtered a calf. They

said it's the girl's dinner for becoming a woman. On the

day that they had the dinner, the girl would eat alone

inside. She would eat the beast's liver. On the next day

they cooked and kept one leg from the beast. They even kept

the bones. On the third day they burned all the bones and

they cooked again. We all ate together. This party lasted

for the three days. It was a cultural party. All of our

families and children do this. It is our tradition. When

I'm big like this, then there is something they call

uputopa. They put down cultural mats, something like a

blind. Then the girl is put behind the blind. This is

called ookooku. The girls will just look after the one who

has come of age; only the girls. And the mothers, every day

stand in the front of the cattle kraal. On my first day,

they had to slaughter a goat to accept me. So, from the

head down to the feet, they put white clay on me. They put

the clay on my hair and my face so that the mothers couldn't

see my face. Then, they didn't allow me to go out. If I

wanted to go out, I had to wait until it was very late; when

it was dark outside. The dress for this occasion was not to

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wear anything at the top. I had to cover myself with a

blanket and wear only the skirt. There were two special

women who cooked for me. They boiled hot water for me and

even boiled the meat. I didn't eat it with anything. I had

to use wood to eat the meat. In my culture, I must look

after that wood. That special wood mustn't disappear. They

wrote on the wall how many days I was supposed to be there.

They said, "It's the first day today; the second day today;"

and so on. At the end of the week, they slaughtered a cow.

They call it ukutshata. which means married, but it is not

the same as being married to a man. It is the word they use

for this special time. On the next day, all the families

came together and they cooked. After these special

ceremonies, nobody could use the dish, the wood or any of

the things that are special for me. Only I was allowed to

use them. I had to be there for two weeks. On the last

day, another goat was slaughtered for me. While I stood

outside, the grass was cut and put on the floor. Then they

took all the grass and they burned it. Then they took me

home with the other people. Then the ceremonies are

finished. All the cultural things were finished.

These were the ceremonies that we did in the

Transkei. If you are educated you do like this: they take

the girl to the same blind. They do the same ceremonies for

a few days. The short ceremony is for the educated people.

But the big one is our cultural way. Really cultural, it is

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not mixed with anything. My daughters are going to be

educated, so they'll use the short one, which takes three

days.

Nozipo was born in the Transkei. She gave birth

to five children but only two survived. Her little girl,

Thembisa, as well as her son, Mthetheleli, lived with her at

St. John's. She had not seen her husband for several years.

Since the violence in Old Cross Roads made it unsafe for her

to live in her own home, she chose to live at St. John's.

She began by talking about how she began each day:

I get up at five o'clock when the St. John's bells

ring for the first prayers in the mornings. I go for prayer

which lasts for half an hour. At half past five, I come

back to the room, put the paraffin stove on, warm up some

water, wash myself, get dressed and at half past six I walk

to the Heideveld station, where I catch a train at about

seven o'clock to Bonteheuvel and then change for the

Belleville train. At Belleville, I take a taxi that costs

R1.20-R1.50 a journey. I'm supposed to get to my job at

eight o'clock and start work. My work is to clean. I start

cleaning in the pool room which is like a bar. After I

finish at twelve noon, they open up for their customers.

Later, I do the banking and make some tea. When I come in

the morning, I make tea for the secretaries, the staff, and

all the bosses. I also do banking for them. I go to the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. banks for statements and sometimes I go to bank some cheques

for them, like a messenger.

There are altogether ten women who live in this

shack. One comes on the weekend. The one who is lying

there came only yesterday. The kids outside belong here

too. That child's mother is at work. All together there

are five children. All of the children sleep on the floor.

One big boy lives next door with the men. My little girl

can't go to her school in Old Cross Roads. We used to live

in Old Cross Roads. I had to move out of the house where I

lived because of the fighting in the neighborhood. So, I

can't take the child to the school. My sister came here

last Sunday. She said she was going to take her back

because they had a meeting to make peace. But after the

talks, they started shooting again. So, my sister did not

come. That's why Mama Xaba didn't take her to school. The

last time I was at Old Cross Roads, I went to see my sister.

There was another meeting, but we hadn't heard about it.

The other children from Crossroads are now going to school,

but my little one is here. I don't want to take her to my

sister because she lives close to the shooting and where

they throw stones.

Both of my children live with me. My second,

third and fourth children died. I think they died because I

had to leave them at an early age. The second one was a

little girl. I was still living with my mother in the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Transkei, when my daughter died. She was a very pretty girl

and she just started turning the eyes upward. Her eyes

couldn't come back. I didn't know what she had. She had

terrible pain that lasted a day. On the second day she

died.

My third child died at 5 months. I had come to

Cape Town and left him with my mother. The same thing that

happened to my daughter happened to him. It was diarrhea.

All of my children had different fathers. None of them

helped me. On my job I get R120 I get a week. If I go on

to work on Saturdays I get R25 extra.

It is still very difficult to talk about

apartheid, because there's so many things that don't

encourage us; that don't give us hope. Apartheid is slowly,

slowly going away. But still you can see it's difficult to

die. It doesn't die. It still exists.

As for me, what I can explain is that I don't see

any changes at the moment. There are places where they

don't allow us to enter, even our wages are not the same

with colored people. I don't want to say anything about it.

With the country going on like this, we still

can't see what's going to happen because there's this

fighting. Like today, there's a new fight. People are

fighting against the VAT (Valued Added Tax) that the

government wants.

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The people must stop fighting one another and let

the children go to school. The violence is because of

dissatisfaction with the government. I think the fighting

is carried on because the people are not satisfied about

money. Even the taxi war is because of money.

There is an organization for the ministers in the

Western Cape, called IDAMASA (Independent African Ministers

Association of South Africa). They go sometimes to talk to

the people, but the people have gone so far with the

violence that they don't listen. It looks like there's

something behind the violence. Somebody is influencing the

violence from behind.

The churches are trying all their best to stop the

violence, but there are some people who don't want to

listen. They don't believe the church. They even say that

the church people are selling them to the government. And

that is a problem. Now, we can't do otherwise. The only

thing is, we sometimes just cry, especially when they say

the churches are selling the people to the government.

There are people who don't believe the churches. They don't

believe in God. Then these people, the unbelievers, are

those who say, "No, no, no. We don't want to listen to you

because you are going to sell us to the government." And

they say, "You read the Bible of the white man. You talk

about Jesus. You talk about Judaism. It is the same as the

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religion of the Boer.” They say these things because they

can't believe what we believe.

Our own future is a problem. It's a problem,

because you go out and you wait for death. You go into the

train and you wait for death. You go into the bus and you

wait for death. You go to sleep and you're afraid somebody

will shoot you. Somebody will burn your house. Somebody

will just shoot you. So, you just pray for the day that God

will come.

That's why now there's no hope for us. Now the

only thing we can do is pray while we are in our houses. As

you go out of your house, you get a bullet. You don't know

where to go to be safe. So, the only way to be safe is to

come to God, and pray and wait for your day to die. We only

keep on working, trying to earn a little money to get what

we need. The little things that we can get. If you get the

chance to put away R2, you put it away, but you never know

what's going to happen tomorrow.

We keep on going because, we get the spirit from

God because we know ourselves to be under God. We have to

pray. Even on our way, everywhere we go we have to pray.

While we're on the train we have to pray. Even when we

leave the children behind we just say, "God, you're going to

look after our children.” And then, sometimes when we're at

work, we hear the people say that in the location, the

houses are burning.

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We need a future for our children, but we want to

know how can we go through all these problems and get a

future for our children? How can we have a good future for

our children? That's why we pray every time because we also

think that the only thing that can help us is to pray to

God. We haven't got the power. We haven't got the tools to

fight against the white people. We haven't got the things

to fight against them. If we can't fight against them then

we can pray about us. So instead of fighting, we'd rather

pray.

It's like this. My little house in Cross Roads

was burnt down. My little girl can't go to school. I had

to flee from Crossroads.

I took my two kids and came to stay here. I was

waiting for the trouble to finish; to come to an end. It

doesn't come to an end. She's been out of school for a

couple of months now. Now, it's going towards the end of

the year. She's just running around in the house here. She

can't go to school because of the fighting. That's why, now

I say I don't see the future of the country. My sister's

got two daughters and two sons. The big daughter is doing

the matric21 for the second time. She's in a school now, in

Langa. One of her boys is doing Standard 9. His sister,

the little sister, is also doing Standard 9. They have to

21Matric is a test that a person must take in order to graduate from high school.

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stay away from school for a couple of months. I don't know

even now if they go to school, because of the violence and

the fighting that's going on. They are so clever. I mean,

this son is so clever at school, he's wonderful. But, he

can't go to school because the fighting is going on.

Somebody's just running behind him to shoot him. There's

nowhere to stay because somebody's waiting for him— to kill

him. So there is more pain— more pain, because we were just

thinking that in a few years' time, he will be finished with

school. And he will have to help his father and mother who

have nothing. They are just struggling to educate their

children. Even today, they killed a bus driver and hit the

people in the bus. That's why we are here together now in

this small room because we want to pray together. If one of

us is not back from our job we become so frightened for that

one, because we don't know how we would get help. It's

Khayelitsha and Nyanga townships that are the problem.

That's why we thank God because sometimes we get in a place

and then they tell us that somebody was shot, but we always

come home after that thing has happened. Now we feel that

we can stay here where we can pray every time.

Xolisa was the younger sister of Manqwati. During

the interview she bathed herself and listened as the other

women spoke. After I talked with the others, she told me a

few things about her life:

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I was born in the Transkei on March 27, 1972. I

am not married and I have one child. My mother, only my

mother is still alive. She is in the Transkei. I do not

have a job. My sister is helping me. I never worked

because I was in school. I was a student. I have completed

standard 6. I don't get any money from anybody other than

my sister. Even the father of the child doesn't give money.

He is in the Transkei.

I have two sisters who live in the shack with me.

My baby girl is six months old.

Nonceba

Nonceba lived a short distance from the church.

She initially went to St. John's because she was sick. Her

sister, Zenzile Xaba, told her how the water healed people.

Nonceba knew that her sister's husband was a prophet. She

attended the church because she knew that she would get

help. After being a member for five years she was made an

evangelist. She explained her decision to go to St. John's:

My clan name is Mantolo. I came to St. John's

because I was sick. I was healed under St. John's by Tata

Xaba.

My illness began first with coughing. I used to

feel sharp pains in my body. I couldn't sleep. When I came

to St. John's they healed me. They gave me water. They

gave me water to vomit and they gave me a bottle to drink.

It took a long time for me to heal because I was sick for a

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long time. It took some months to heal, but I never counted

how many.

When I was sick I went to church three times a

day. I have been at the church for a long time now. I

sometimes go two times a week, usually on Thursday and

Sunday. Sometimes I want to visit the church all the time.

Tata Xaba is my sister's husband. As I said, I

went to the church because I was sick, then I was healed.

When I was healed, I decided that I must join this church.

I decided that it was the right church for me. Before I was

sick I visited the church sometimes. I used to visit St.

John's because my sister's husband was there and sometimes I

went to visit them.

I like everything about the church. There is

nothing that I do not like. When they sing, I become happy.

I am satisfied with everything that they do there. When I'm

in St. John's I become happy. Even if I've got worries, I

become healed there.

Sometimes the people come to me and say, "I'm

sick." When they do I just say, "I was healed at St.

John's."

At St. John's I am an evangelist. I sit in a

chair that is for evangelists. In our church, evangelists

do the same as everybody else, but there are departments

where other people can't go. Some of the other people don't

go to the pulpit. Sometimes evangelists are told to do that

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and that and that by the minister. Other people can't do

what we do. For instance, the evangelists must go and bathe

somebody. Not everybody can do these things. We sit in the

first row of the church and we sit in the pulpit, too. In

the pulpit, the mother who sits on the very back row is Mama

Xaba. Mama Mjoli, Tata Mjoli's wife, sits in the next to

the last row. Mrs. Ntiliti also sits in the pulpit. She

doesn't have a husband. She doesn't have anybody related to

her who comes to the church. She is one of the ladies who

was elected an evangelist by the church. We had a meeting

in our church and members elected Mrs. Ntiliti as an

evangelist. When we go to the conference in Newcastle three

times year, we elect the women ministers. Mrs. Ntiliti is

one of the ministers. Then we also elect the evangelists,

men and women evangelists. Women ministers cannot do

everything that men do. Those who are elected, they just

help the men. The men are serving the community, not the

mothers. The mothers are not supposed to do that. Those

elected women just help and serve. They clean the glasses

used during communion and help doing things like that.

When I was elected an evangelist, the conference

was in Johannesburg. The late Archbishop Masango was still

alive. You know, when they elect somebody, you just become

frightened. Sometimes you think that you must be out of

your mind. You don't know what's happening.

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Sometimes I see a vision. Then I go to Tata Xaba

and he says that I must do this and that and that.

Sometimes I have dreams which tell me I must do this, then I

just do it. If you go to Tata Xaba you must tell him what

you saw in the vision.

I was born in King William's Town. Our ceremonies

were held when we used to make big dinners when a boy is

circumcised. We also slaughtered some animal when a girl is

going to get married. We do it on her wedding day.

I'm not working anymore. When I was going to work

I was a domestic doing housework. This is my first year not

to work. When I worked, I took a bus and got off just near

the Red Cross Hospital in Rondebosch. I worked in the home

of a white man. I've been working at his house for a long

time. One day he said, "You've been working here a long

time and so you should get a pension." He said he'd give me

the money he could afford to give me. So, he gave me

monthly money. The monthly money helps but, it's not enough

to run a household; the accounts, the phone, the very

important things like the TV, the phone and electricity. I

must pay for those things. I am alone with my four

children. My husband died a long time ago.

There's a big difference because in the Ciskei

it's not the same like here. The time I was just newly

married in the rural area I had three children. They all

died. I gave birth to seven children, but three died.

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That's why I said there is a difference because those that I

had here in Cape Town lived. The other children got sick.

Some of them had fits and died. One child was one year when

he died, the other one was two and a half, and the other one

was seven months.

There's a lot of things that happen from

apartheid. I can't explain all of it. The first thing I

can tell you about apartheid is that it is the thing that we

are fighting. We are fighting against apartheid because

white people don't want to stay together with us because we

are black. That's the first thing about apartheid. Then

the second thing is that we can't sit together and eat

together because they are white. My child can't get married

to a white girl. That is one of the apartheid things. Even

the money, the wages, are not the same.

To live in South Africa, means to pull hard.

Sometimes you don't have money. You struggle. And

sometimes you don't know how to pay these accounts. That's

why I can say we believe in God. And sometimes you just

manage that way, sometimes you just feel that you don't eat,

you would rather pay the account.

God helps us in so many things, so many ways, even

the apartheid. I can say God helps us, sometimes to pay our

bills. I just get something. Sometimes people give money

to me. It just comes. Sometimes, someone thinks that I

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must give that person something, so I get. That is God's

way.

I don't believe that apartheid has ended.

I just see the things of apartheid still happening now.

There is VAT. There are things they said they are not going

to do anymore. They still do these things. Our wages are

not the same as the white people. De Klerk can't do that,

he can't, not him.

About the violence, the first thing I say is that

there are a lot of alcoholic people. They also make this

violence. The violence is because it's one person who's

doing these things. All these things that happen, it's only

one group of people who are doing these things, these

terrible things. De Klerk is the first person who is doing

all these things.

There's nothing that the church can do but pray.

Prayer is the only thing to bring unity. We must pray and

cry to God. The future of our grandchildren will be

terrible because we are also under the hands of the terrible

people.

We help each other with the burial society. We

also have the other societies that are called Zenzela Club,

43rd Club, and Masizake Club. In the Zenzela Club, we

collect money from each member and put it in the bank. If

somebody dies then we take from that money. The 43rd Club

and the Masizake Club does the same as the Zenzela Club.

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St. John's people don't like to talk about

politics because it is not a good thing to talk about.

Interview Commonalities

Themes that emerge from the life story reflections

of members include issues that affect the community as a

whole as well as particular problems. These themes include

violence, poverty, the church's role in the larger

community, the relationship between God, the ancestors and

the living, the future of the country, the care of children

and healing.

One theme that was clearly articulated by the

majority of the members was violence. The violence of the

taxi war was particularly salient because all those

interviewed relied upon the informal transportation system

provided by the Laguna and Webta Taxi Companies.

Four women spoke in detail about the way that the

violence interrupted the education of their school-aged

children. Nozipo said that her daughter was not able to go

to school in Cross Roads because of fighting in the

community where the school was located. She also said that

her sister's children had to stay away from school for two

months "because of the guns." Of all those interviewed,

Nozipo spoke most passionately about the violence. She said

that the nature of their lives is to "wait for death"

because one could not be sure when a bullet would take a

life. Her feelings were mixed. She spoke of death and

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hopelessness while at the same time she spoke of the

tenacity that members received from the "spirit of God" to

whom they prayed while on the train and to whom they turned

over their children for protection.

Banzi, the one male who was employed, talked about

violence from a historical-political perspective. He

explained that the violence was directly tied to apartheid

and the oppression of black people. His reflection about

violence was not limited to the local taxi war in Cape Town.

He talked about the violence that members of his family

suffered while in jail. He also talked about the two levels

of violence he personally experienced when he worked in

Johannesburg. He experienced violence when he travelled to

work by train and from white supervisors at the mines, while

at work. He retreated to his home in the Transkei when the

violence escalated beyond a point which he could tolerate.

Many members articulated that structural apartheid

continued to function despite the removal of the so-called

"pillars of apartheid" in 1991. Some members commented that

De Klerk was dishonest to say that things in South Africa

had changed significantly. From their point of view very

little had changed. For example, Banzi emphatically stated

that he did not support De Klerk; he stated that he did not

see any changes resulting from the lifting of the laws of

apartheid. Mrs. Joxo reflected that while she heard on

television that there were changes, nothing had changed in

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her life. She articulated a concrete example of there being

no change from her point of view, citing the cost of living

relative to her income. She did not have money to buy

necessary items for her family.

Poverty is a theme that is particularly salient

throughout the interviews.22 Fourteen households reported

monthly incomes, with the highest being R1000. Four women

who were employed as domestics had earnings which ranged

from R440 to R580 per month; three women who were pensioners

22See Table 2, page 186 for data on the monthly income of those St. John's members interviewed which averages R394 for a family of 5.6. The average national monthly cost of living for an Africa household of five persons is R1217 (The South African Township Annual 1992:30). Since the average monthly income of St. John's members is well below the average national cost of living, it is possible to conclude, based on empirical evidence, that St. John's members live in abject poverty. The South African Institute on Race Relations' annual Race Relations Survey records that in 1990/91 the monthly household subsistence level for Africans in Cape Town was R604 (Race Relations Survey 1992:255). In 1989/90 the monthly household subsistence level for Africans was R508 (Race Relations Survey 1990:660). These figures are calculated for an African family of six. Household subsistence level is the amount of income that allows a family to barely get by. The South African Advertising Research Foundation (SAARF) conducted a national survey from August 1988 to April 1989 which included 16,400 urban and rural households from all racial groups. The data show that the average monthly household income was: Africans (R521); Colored (Rl,059); Indians (Rl,604); and whites (R3,297) (Race Relations Survey 1990:658). The same research group conducted a national survey from September 1989 to June 1990, in which 18,415 urban and rural people from all racial groups were interviewed. The data show the following in reference to monthly household income: Africans (R662); Colored (Rl,279); Indians (R2,005); and whites (R3,931) (Race Relations Survey 1990:254). Both of these national surveys were part of the All Media and Products Survey (AMPS).

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had monthly incomes that ranged from R222-R715. Seven

persons were unemployed. Three were males who lived in the

shacks at St. John's and four were women, three of whom were

married to spouses who were employed, one was a single

mother who lived in the shacks and was supported by two

sisters who lived with her. The data on monthly income

supports comments from members like Nonceba who said that

she struggled with paying monthly bills on her pension

income or Mrs. Ntiliti, who wanted to return to her home

town of Kudumane, but said that she could not because of

poverty. Thobeka succinctly articulated the relationship

between violence, unemployment and white people when she

said, "The violence in the townships is because white people

don't give us jobs." Lack of money was a major problem with

which St. John's members struggled.

Members' lack of money and concern about the

education of their children coalesced to form another theme

that might best be called, "concern for the future of their

children." Thobeka directly identified education as a

variable that would influence the future welfare of her

children. She stated that she knew that it was "bad" for

her and her future because she was not educated. Hence, she

viewed her own limitations as being tied to her lack of

education. This belief about her own welfare provided

evidence that the same could happen to her children if they

lacked education. Nozipo spoke with desperation about the

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future of her children saying, "We need a future for our

children . . . how can we get one?"

The role of St. John's Church in the care of its

members was another theme that regularly emerged in these

reflections in two ways. First, several said that the only

thing that they could do about the structural problems that

they experienced was to pray. Second, many talked about St.

John's in a way that signaled its major role in helping them

cope with the problems they experienced personally and as a

community. Several people talked about being healed at St.

John's. Thole shared how Tata Xaba let him live in a shack

at St. John's during the period of time he was recovering

from his suicide attempt. His decision to join St. John's

and his active participation as a member reflected a change

in his life. His attendance at the daily worship services

and interaction with others in the St. John's community

provided a network of people who affirmed him. In time, he

was able to affirm himself and engaged in activities such as

standing in front of the congregation to read his Bible,

testify and ask God for help. Nyawuza talked about having

severe head and back aches and being healed by drinking

blessed water and using colored belts given to him by Mama

Xaba. Mrs. Ntiliti talked about the comfort she received

from Reverend Xaba and the rituals when she found out that

one of her daughters was very sick. The rituals included

donating candles, matches, salt and R2 as an offering to the

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church, and attending a St. John's festival in Newcastle,

Natal. While attending the festival she asked for prayers

from members of other congregations. She also talked about

the healing of her grandson who had difficulty walking.

After her grandson, talked with Reverend Xaba and did all

the rituals he was healed.

Banzi talked about the church in reference to the

larger community. He said that he thought that the church

could help eliminate the taxi war by asking the companies to

make peace. He believed that if the church could bring the

two companies together for prayer, that God would intervene

and cause the violence to end. Banzi connected renewal in

his life with his ability to pray for himself. He said that

he prayed for himself because there was so much violence.

He had many close encounters with violence and believed that

the church helped to protect him because he could pray for

himself. He explained that members of St. John's Church

were busy healing because in the past black people had been

put in jail for being political. Since it was not safe for

them to talk about politics openly, they focused on healing.

Mrs. Joxo shared that she initially began going to

St. John's because her son had Xhosa sickness (izifo

sesiXhpsa). She had experienced many difficulties because

of the mental illness of her son. She had to deal with the

consequences of her son's rape of her granddaughter, the

intervention by social workers, the jailing of her son by

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the police when she had been told that he would be admitted

to a local hospital and his unresolved death. Through all

these personal crises, the church represented by Mother

Makheso and Tata Xaba, gave her a place of support. Mrs.

Joxo said that she liked everything about St. John's

because, "when the people preach, you can feel it in your

blood. . . . You can feel the spirit." It was that spirit

of St. John's that helped Mrs. Joxo with her specific

personal struggles, and also with her concerns related to

apartheid. She said that there was very little work for

blacks and that if blacks worked, often they were not paid.

She also said that blacks fighting against each other

created problems. The rituals of the church and

relationships within the church helped her to survive

despite the hardships.

Ndsilibe talked about how he liked the rituals at

St. John's because they provided the means for him to

communicate with God. He was impressed that the God of St.

John's answered his prayers. He said, "The special God of

St. John's, he just answers anytime."

Members helping each other is a theme that emerges

from the reflections. Persons who had personally

experienced healing often demonstrated their gratitude by

assisting other sick persons. For instance, Mrs. Mazibula

and other women in the church assisted Reverend Xaba in

giving baths, enemas and emetic substances to the sick. A

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core group of helpers emerged composed of members who had

been healed now helping others who were sick in specific

ways. For example, Thozama explained that those who were

employed helped those who were unemployed. She said, "We

try to help each other. Those who are working are helping

others who are not. We put the money together and share

with each other." Chronic violence in townships meant that

untimely deaths were a variable with which members were

constantly concerned. Burial societies were created to

assist with funeral expenses, making it possible for members

to receive financial assistance when necessary. Again,

Thozama explained,

We also have a funeral organization, where if somebody died we come together and everybody brings money. Each person has to give R2, so that it can help the one who has the problem.

It is important to note that members acknowledged

that they also received help from ancestors. As previously

mentioned by Ngubane in chapter 2, interaction between "this

world and the other world" was a regular activity of life.

Significantly, there was an active relationship between St.

John's members and their ancestors. Ndsilibe linked his

belief in the ancestors with the Bible. He articulated:

The Bible has a chapter that says to respect your mother and father. That's why we respect the ancestors because they talk and give you something. That is why we say the ancestors are working together with God.

Ndsilibe's belief that both God and the ancestors helped him

reveals a cultural belief system in which two supernatural

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powers cared for people in "this world." Yoliswa summed up

the relationship between God, the ancestors and St. John's

members this way:

The ancestors help God; they help each other help God. Sometimes the ancestors come to you and ask you for something. Sometimes what they ask for are things that they never had the chance to do when they were alive. It is up to us to do the job that the ancestors were supposed to do when they were alive.

There was a reciprocal helping relationship

between the St. John's members and their ancestors. As

articulated by Yoliswa, the ancestors communicated their

wants and desires to the living, and the living in turn

accommodated the ancestors by fulfilling their requests. If

the requests were satisfactorily fulfilled, the ancestors

safeguarded the living.

The ancestors communicated with their descendants

through dreams. Mrs. Joxo explained the importance of

dreams:

A person may get messages through their dreams. If the messages are not followed then it's bad luck for you. Sometimes you dream about your ancestors and they tell you what you must do. Then sometimes you dream of something that happened in the church. Sometimes your ancestors, your grandfather or you mother, the ones who have passed away a long time ago appear. You dream of them talking to you and they say, "I'm thirsty." Then you have to make Xhosa beer so that everybody can come and drink it.

Again, Mrs. Joxo highlighted the role of the ancestors in

protecting their descendants saying: "The only thing that I

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know is that the ancestors help you. They always keep you

safe."

The relationship between God, the ancestors and

St. John's members was prominently displayed in the

reflections. The ancestors communicated directly to God on

behalf of their descendants and also acted independently of

God to help them. The living honored the ancestors by

ritualistically acknowledging them with dinners and

sacrifices. For example, Mrs. Mazibula prepared a special

dinner for her family after she had a dream in which her

deceased father gave her a stick and many other deceased

family members appeared. Among St. John's members there

existed a community between the living and the ancestors.

This relationship provided continuity with the past,

preservation of moral values, and protection. God was the

ultimate source of protection to whom both the ancestors and

the living paid homage.

Another significant finding was that ten of the

eighteen people interviewed were members of other churches

before affiliating with St. John's, while eight persons

joined St. John's as their first and only church

affiliation. The ten people who changed their membership to

St. John's had previously been affiliated with historic

churches such as the Methodist, Anglican, Roman Catholic

Churches, indigenous churches such as the Old Apostolic Zion

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Church, and an Ethiopian church called the Presbyterian

Church of Africa.23

Eight of the members interviewed switched from an

historic church to St. John's. For example, Myira reported

that prior to joining St. John's in 1968, she had been a

member of the Methodist Church. When she continued to be

sick after seeking professional medical assistance, along

with experiencing unemployment, she sought out Reverend

Xaba. He propheted her and told her to attend St. John's.

She was given the blessed water to drink and told to live in

the "right way." In time, she was baptized and became a

member of St. John's. Prior to her affiliation with St.

John's, Mrs. Joxo was Anglican. She received unconditional

support from Mother Makheso and Reverend Xaba, motivating

her and her son to leave the Anglican Church and join St.

John's.

Ndsilibe had no prior church affiliation before

becoming a member of St. John's. Born into a non-Christian

home, he described the religious life of his parents saying,

My parents were not Christians. They lived traditionally. Sometimes they go to attend the Xhosa beer. They lived the way they decided to live. I don't know how to explain their way of life.

Ndsilibe became a member of St. John's because he was sick

and unemployed. His own words best describe his reasons for

joining: "I came to St. John's because I was pulling hard.

23See Table 4 on page 188.

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I was sick all the time. Since I was sick, I decided to

become a part of this church."

Yoliswa was a member of the Roman Catholic Church

prior to affiliating with St. John's. She, unlike her

husband Ndsilibe, had been born into a Christian family.

She began to attend St. John's because of an illness and

unemployment.24 She participated in the rituals, drank and

sprayed her house with the blessed water and not only

recovered from her illness, but found a new job.

Being healed of a sickness or finding relief from

unemployment were reasons many people left their original

church and affiliated with St. John's. At St. John's people

received tangible benefits from participating in specific

ritual acts. Moreover, people believed that they were

healed as a result of their ritualized behavior and faith.

Those healed said that they felt well physically, mentally

and spiritually. Thus, there was considerable motivation to

give up previous church affiliation or to become part of St.

John's as a new initiate.

A final observation that is important to note

about St. John's members is the regularity with which they

travelled between their primary residence in Cape Town and

their place of birth in the Eastern Cape. A brief

historical comment is warranted to enlarge upon the

importance of this theme. Before the arrival of the Dutch

24See chapter 8 for the details of Yoliswa's illness.

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in 1652, Xhosa-speaking Africans occupied the Eastern Cape

and freely migrated as herders over vast distances. As

discussed in chapter 4, when European settlers moved east of

Cape Town, there was a series of frontier wars in which

Africans were defeated and land confiscated. As a result of

this defeat and because settlers needed cheap labor, many

Africans from the Eastern Cape migrated to join others

already in the Western Cape Province. Thus, the Eastern

Cape has for generations been the area where Xhosa-speaking

Africans have lineage homes. In 1951, the South African

government instituted a "homelands policy" that originally

created eight, then eventually ten, independent African

nations within the borders of South Africa, with their own

black government for each "ethnic group" of black South

Africans (Thompson 1990:191). With the institution

alization of this policy, blacks were no longer citizens of

South Africa but instead citizens of their place of birth or

respective homeland, and had to petition for permission to

live outside their homeland. Pass laws monitored the

movement of black people who were required to have a

"passbook" in their possession at all times. Since there

was a need for laborers in gold and diamond mines in various

parts of South Africa, the homelands were de facto labor

reservoirs, from which black men were forced to migrate in

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order to work in urban areas.25 Men were separated from

their families for months because of their employment in

urban settings. As more and more black South Africans

petitioned to have permission to live in urban areas,

African townships grew. Blacks living in Cape Town moved

back and forth, legally and illegally, to the Eastern Cape

homelands of the Transkei and Ciskei.

St. John's members had ancestral ties to the

Eastern Cape. Thirteen members were born in the Transkei,

two in the Ciskei, one in Cape Town and another in the

Northern Cape. Thus, fifteen people had ties to the

Transkei and Ciskei because it was their place of birth;

while sixteen members had relatives who lived in these two

homelands. The commitment to keep continuity with the past

was one of the compelling reasons St. John's members

travelled to the Transkei and Ciskei. Respect for the

ancestors meant that members travelled to their own or their

spouse's place of birth to have rituals at the birth of a

child as illustrated by Tshawe returning to her husband's

place of birth when their child was born. She shared:

When my child was born, we went back to my husband's family in the Transkei and made a sacrifice. We prepared samp and mealies made into a samp millet and gave it for the ancestors. The ancestors then appeared to us in our dreams. The ancestors must appear in dreams to show us that they are happy with the sacrifice.

^See Crush et al (1991) for a detailed history of migrant labor in South Africa.

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Members also travelled to the homelands at the death of

family members who lived there. Commitment to proper

respect for family customs seemed to supersede concern about

travel costs. Because the ties that urban Xhosa-speaking

Africans had to the Transkei and Ciskei were strong, regular

taxi-service was provided to various locations within these

homelands. When a relative in the homelands died, various

burial societies helped to provide financial support.

Nonceba reported that she made contributions to three

different burial societies:

We help each other with the burial society. We also have the other societies that are called Zenzela Club, 43rd Club and Masizake Club. In the Zenzela Club, we collect money from each member and put it in the bank. If somebody dies then we take from that money. The 43rd Club and the Masizake Club does the same as the Zenzela Club.

The burial societies then made it possible for people to

have some financial support at times of death because people

made contributions that were called upon as needed. Hence,

migration between African townships in Cape Town and the

Transkei and Ciskei was a theme in these reflections.

Summary

In sum, the majority of St. John's members had a

personal experience with healing through the rituals of the

church. This personal experience of healing made St. John's

important to their lives. When members talked about larger

issues that affected them collectively, violence, for

instance, was an overarching theme, the role of the church

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was to pray for change to occur. Thus, while there was

articulation of issues from a macro-level affecting their

lives, the articulated remedy was to pray. Personal issues,

particularly illness, could be influenced directly by the

church's rituals. In the next chapter the theology and

ritual that are the core of St. John's - Guguletu's ministry

of healing are examined.

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Table #2

Sex, Age, Place of Birth, Marital Status, Number of Surviving Children, Number of Deceased Children

Subject Sex Marital Age Place o f Number of Number of Number Status' Birth Surviving Deceased Children Children

1 F M 25 Cape Town 1 0

2 M D 38 Transkei 2 1 Willowvale

3 M S 23 Transkei 0 0 Willowvale

4 FW 68 Northern Cape 4 0

5 F D 56 Transkei 0 4 Lady Frye

6 MS 31 Transkei 0 0 Ngqamakwe

7 F -— __ ——

8 F W 68 Ciskei- 3 2 St Matthew

9 F M 30 Ciskei 2 0 Gxala

10 M M 29 Transkei 2 0 Mabazeal

11 FM 23 Ciskei 1 0 Mdatshane

12 FM 74 Transkei 2 0 Qumbui

13 F M 62 Transkei 4 6 Ngqamakwe

14 FS 40 Transkei 0 1

15 FS 38 Transkei 2 0

16 FM 51 Transkei 2 3

17 F S 19Transkei 1 0

18 F w 74 Transkei 4 3 King Williams Town

1 Key for Marital Status: M = Married D = Divorced S = Single (Never Married) W = Widow/Widower

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Table #2

Education, Employment Status, Monthly Income, Current Residence Location, Number of Rooms in Residence

Subject Sex Marital Education2 Employment Monthly Current Rooms in Number Status' Status3 Household Residence Residence Income4 Location

1 F M Univ U R560 Paarl 4 (11) 2 M D S4 U 0 St John's 1

3 M S S7 U 0 St J o h n 's 1

4 F W S4 P R222 Guguletu 3

5 F D S10 D R500 Guguletu 4

6 M S S7 E ?* St John's 1

7 F - — —— __

8 FW S6 P R715 Guguletu 4

9 F M S5 U R600 Guguletu 4

10 M M None u R300 Nyanga 2

11 F M S7 E R300 Nyanga 2

12 F M S6 U R295 Guguletu 4

13 F M S6 P R1000 Guguletu 3

14 F S S5 E R500 St Jo h n 's 1

15 F S SI E R440 St John's 1

16 F M S6 E R580 St John’s 1

17 F S S6 U 0 St Jo h n 's 1

18 F S6 P R295 Guguletu 3 ... W .

1 Key for Marital Status: M = Married D = Divorced S = Single (Never Married) W = Widow/Widower

2 Key for Education: There are 10 levels of education in South Africa called "Standards"; (11) - University

s Key for Employment Status: U = Unemployed P = Pensioner E = Employed D = Disabled ?*= Income not disclosed

4 Key for Monthly Household Income: The rate of exchange of South African rand to U.S. dollar in 1991 was approximately R2.8 to $1US.

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Housing Conditions

Subject Sex Marital Rooms Bed Toilet LISS2 Number Number Status' Sharing Kitchen3

1 F M 4 2 0 4 4

2 M D 1 2 0 4 N/A*

3 M S 1 2 0 4 N/A*

4 F W 3 2 0 4 4

5 F D 4 4 0 12 12

6 M S 1 2 0 4 N/A*

7 F — — _ __ __

8 F W 4 1 0 4 4

9 F M 4 1 0 4 4

10 M M 2 2 0 2 2

11 F M 2 2 0 2 2

12 F M 4 3 0 5 5

13 F M 3 2 0 6 6

14 F S 1 1 0 15 N/A*

15 F S 1 1 0 15 N/A*

16 F M 1 1 0 15 N/A*

17 F S 1 1 0 15 N/A*

18 F W 3 3 0 5 5

1 Key for Marital Status: M = Married D = Divorced S = Single (Never Married) W - Widow/Widower

2 LISS = The number of people living in the same space.

3 Number connotes individuals sharing the same kitchen N/R = Not applicable * = Shack dwellers with no kitchen

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Table #4

Sex, Language, Church Affiliation Prior to St. John's Membership

Subject Sex Marital Status' Language Church Affiliation Number (Prior to membership at St. John’s)*

1 FM Xhosa None

2 MD Xhosa None

3 MS Xhosa None 4 FW Setswana None

5 FD Xhosa Methodist

6 MS Xhosa Methodist

7 F — Xhosa Anglican

8 FW Xhosa Anglican

9 F M Xhosa Old Apostolic Zion

10 MM Xhosa None

11 F M Xhosa Roman Catholic

12 FM Xhosa Anglican

13 F M Xhosa Methodist

14 F S Xhosa Methodist

15 F S Xhosa None

16 FM Xhosa None

17 FS Xhosa None

18 F W Xhosa Presbyterian Church of Africa

* All interviewees were members of St. John's at the time interviews were conducted.

Key for Marital Status M = Married D = Divorced S = Single (Never Married) W = Widow/Widower

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THE THEOLOGY AND RITUAL OF ST. JOHN'S APOSTOLIC FAITH MISSION - GUGULETU

The anthropological study of religion is therefore a two-stage operation: first, an analysis of the system of meanings embodied in the symbols which make up the religion proper, and second, the relating of these systems to social-structural and psychological process (Geertz 1973:125).

This means therefore that authentic theological speech arises only from an oppressed community which realizes that its humanity is inseparable from the liberation from earthly bondage. All other speech is at best irrelevant and at worst blasphemous (Cone as quoted in Moore 1974:48,56- 57) .

Introduction

Ritual is the enactment of people's beliefs. As

it relates to religion, ritual is the drama human beings

perform to build a relationship between themselves and their

beliefs. Ritual expression at St. John's Apostolic Faith

Mission - Guguletu was usually associated with moral

problems, social conflict and the healing of illness.

Ritual was a means by which St. John's members came to terms

with that which was out of order. Thus, it was a means to

resolve conflict.

Victor Turner suggests that peoples' perceptions

of the activity of supernatural forces coincide with the

ritual action they perform (V. Turner 1982:84-85). The way

189

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people know things, how they feel and what they do, are all

intimately linked to ritual activity. According to Turner,

while the cognitive, affective and volitional are all

essential, they are rarely manifested in their absolute form

(V. Turner 1982:84). These elements are, in the words of

Turner, "... only comprehensible as lived experience" (V.

Turner 1982:84-85). Turner's interpretation of ritual

behavior in relationship to belief in God takes seriously

cultural context, personal experience, symbolic roles and

patterns of human transactions which depict an accessibility

to what lies ahead. These factors will be considered as the

theology and ritual healing activity of St. John's are

examined.

Specifically, this chapter will examine the

theology of St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission and the way

that theology augmented the church's focus on healing. The

first section of the chapter will focus on belief systems; a

second section, highlighting sermons that were preached

during worship services, will examine how theology was

interpreted to and by members, and a third section will

consider invented tradition as discussed by black South

African scholars who, like members of St. John's, have

refashioned the received religion of missionaries into a

transformative religion for black South Africans.

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The Religious Belief System of St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission - Guguletu

Belief in God

In Xhosa religion the Supreme Being, which created

all that exists, is usually conceived as an exalted person

or absolute being, identified with the sky (Schneider

1981:189; Hodgson 1982:101). The qualities of the Supreme

Being are represented by notions such as the construction of

the natural world and the configuration of the universe in a

manner in which good is inherent although the existence of

evil is acknowledged to be caused by human beings. One's

well being, inclusive of health and fertility, is

considered to be a part of the normal cycle of life and any

aberration is attributed to the influence of pernicious

persons (Peires 1982:67). The unseen world, as created by

the Supreme Being, is understandable and can be influenced

by human beings. Religion is a part of all aspects of life;

and thus, there is not a religious/secular dichotomy.

Practitioners such as diviners understand the unseen world

and interact with it in order for people to enjoy success

and happiness in life (Peires 1982:67; Hodgson 1982:107).

The cosmology of the Xhosas did not include belief

structures that accommodated the coming of the missionaries

and the threat that the latter represented. There were

aspects of received religion that the Xhosas readily

accepted and parts that they disregarded. For instance,

while Christianity's notion of God was readily accepted by

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some Xhosas, others believed that because the missionaries

were connected to the very colonial government that imposed

restrictions in their lives, this new God could not be

trusted, nor accepted. These latter Xhosas reconfirmed

their commitment to the Xhosa God, Mdalidiphu. creator of

the deep, while the former Xhosas continued their allegiance

to Thixo, the God of the missionaries, and submitted to the

peace and protection that were associated with this God.

Thus, there existed both acceptance and rejection of the God

associated with missionaries. Indeed, both responses were

ways in which the Xhosas constructed a new world view to

accommodate the presence of the missionaries (Peires

1982:73).

At St. John's in Guguletu, the assimilation of

received religion by church members was represented in the

ritual practices and beliefs exhibited in their discourse

about God. Those persons interviewed referred to God

exclusively as Thixo and Jehovah. When asked about the

origin of the names by which they called God, the response

from those interviewed was consistently, "this is the name

the Bible gives to God." The majority of persons

interviewed had a Bible written in the Xhosa language.

God was believed to be the ultimate power of the

universe with whom members spoke directly. In commenting on

township violence, one woman kept repeating "we must pray to

God." She continued saying, "We must talk to God about this

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violence. If we pray to God, everything can be changed."

God was also depicted as a caretaker who was always

available to address the needs and concerns of people. God

had the capacity to love, the strength to protect, and was

always present. These three attributes were summarized by

one informant who, while talking about the violence in her

community said, "The only way to safety is to come to God."

For this informant, God provided a sense of security that

was necessary to live in her environment of violence.

Another woman characterized God as "a spirit."

She expressed her certainty of God's dependability saying,

"God is our shepherd. He helps us all the time." She

continued saying, "He is father to us. He is the man to the

widow."

God was viewed as an all knowing Creator. One

informant described God saying, "God is the man who created

the people, us." While discussing God's ability to know the

best in all situations, another St. John's member said in

reference to township violence, "Only God knows and only God

will allow this violence and will stop this violence."

Another member, connecting her struggle to pay her bills

with apartheid said, "We don't know how to pay accounts;

that's why I can say we believe in God. God helps us in so

many ways, even apartheid. God helps us, sometimes to pay

accounts."

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Finally, God was healer in all matters. God as

healer was concerned with the difficulties of the world as

well as with the suffering of individual people. One

informant said, "God is King. No one has the power that God

does. God is the one who heals us in this world." Another

member said, "I think that God does anything for you. He

heals. God helps you to do everything."

Belief in Divination

Mircea Eliade provides a framework with which to

consider the experience of St. John's members with the

supernatural or divine through the created order. He

writes:

For religious man [sic], the world always presents a supernatural valence, that is, reveals a modality of the sacred. Every cosmic fragment is transparent; its own mode of existence shows a particular structure of being, and hence of the sacred (Eliade 1961:10-11;137).

At St. John's the "particular structure" was perceived or

conceived as various divinities with which, or with whom, it

was necessary to live in balance. Revelation played an

important role because it assumed personal transaction

between the God who revealed and human beings to whom

disclosures were made (Idowu 1973:56). More often than not,

Reverend Xaba was the medium though which revelation

emerged. He and other members who were designated as

prophets had the ability to divine. Church members went to

Reverend Xaba and members who were prophets to find out why

a particular circumstance had taken place, to know the

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reason a sickness had developed or why a death had occurred.

Most of the revelations that Reverend Xaba and prophets

within the church communicated to members were personal and

helped one to understand why a misfortune had occurred and

how harmony was restored in the universe in which she/he

lived.

If one wanted to fulfill his/her destiny, one

needed the support of the ancestors. This was due to the

prevailing sense that, alone, human beings were fragile.

One was constantly aware of spiritual beings and of one's

position in the foreordained cosmos. Members volunteered

that Reverend Xaba had the ability to divine. Mrs. Ntiliti

said referring to Reverend Xaba, 11. . .he propheted me,"

which meant that Tata Xaba acted as a diviner and told her

important things about her present and future life. Thole

corroborated Mrs. Ntiliti's belief that Reverend Xaba was a

prophet. He said the following about Reverend Xaba, "He

propheted me by looking in the Bible and telling me

everything about my life." A key element of divining in a

Christian context was the use of the Bible and the ability

to tell the person about his/her past life and about the

future. At the funeral of Tata Xaba1, a woman told me, "I

am not sure what I am going to do. Tata Xaba was not only

my spiritual father, he always told me what to expect

■Reverend Xaba, the priest/healer at St. John's died suddenly in July 1992. I returned to South Africa for his funeral which was on August 8, 1992.

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through his prophecy." Clearly, Reverend Xaba was viewed

by members as a prophet. Nyawuza linked Reverend Xaba's

ability to divine with his power to heal, saying, "He is a

healer and prophet."

As previously mentioned, there were members of St.

John's who were prophets. Informants talked about prophets

in the church in a general way without naming specific

persons. For instance, Mrs. Joxo said, "Sometimes they

[women] prophet people who have been away and those people

come straight in the congregation." Mrs. Joxo was

responding to a question about the role that women played in

the church. Her response suggests that women prophets

helped others who have been away from the church for various

reasons. The prophecy of the women helped to redirect the

lives of others who may have strayed from the ways of the

church. Tata Mjoli explicitly stated that what he liked

most about St. John's was the prophecy. He said, "What I

like most about St. John's is when the people prophet. The

prophets can see the illnesses of the sick people." Once

again, prophecy included the ability to tell people about

their lives and their illnesses. Prophecy ritualistically

was a part of the healing formula in which the prophet and

sick person began to develop a relationship. The prophet's

ability to tell the sick persons about their lives revealed

a sense of prophet's power. When the sick person responded

affirmatively to the prophet's interpretation of the

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person's life, the prophet him/her self had confidence in

his/her ability to divine.

Belief in Spirits and Ancestors

St. John's members accepted continuation of the

spirit after death. This influenced members' fidelity to

ancestor veneration. At St. John's respect and remembrance

of ancestors was incorporated into Christian faith and

practice. Members of St. John's respected their ancestors,

because of commitment to descent and heritage. Ancestors

were the trustees and conservators of ethical behaviors.

Myer Fortes, writing about the Tallensi, concludes that the

living dead

are the jealous guardians of the highest moral values from which all ideal conduct is deemed to flow. The first is the rule that kinship is binding in an absolute sense. From this follows the second rule, that kinship implies amity in an absolute sense. The third rule is the fundamental one [which] postulates that the essential relationship of parent and child . . . may never be violated and is, in that sense, sacred. It is indeed the source of the other rules. (Fortes 1959:66).

Fortes' quotation underscores two vital facets of

ancestral cults as talked about and observed at St. John's:

first, these cults embodied the sacred nature of the family,

and the commitment to continue unity between the deceased

and the living, thus reinforcing goodwill among people.

Second, commitment to the ancestors honored them as the

trustees of the ethics and standards of the family group or

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community; thus, conscientious behavior was exhibited by

devotion to and respect for the ancestors.

Oosthuizen, writing about South Africa, likewise

underlines that people's lives are intertwined with

spiritual beings rather than with objects. As such,

reflection, in this world view, relies authentically on

mutual dependence with the ancestors (1991:21-22). St.

John's members approached the ancestors as often as they

called upon God. Some people asked the ancestors to be an

intermediary to God. Oosthuizen suggests that this is so

because:

The direct presence of the Divine is more than a human being can bear. This is why ancestors are approached rather than the Supreme Being . . . (Oosthuizen 1991:21).

Since God created the universe and all that is in

it, the ancestors are considered to be the framers and

supporters of the world in which their descendants live.

Furthermore, ancestors are believed to be perpetually in the

company of their relatives. In short, the ancestors act as

forerunners, maintaining a continuing line of contact with

the community of their descendants (Shorter 1974:60).

To illustrate St. John's members' belief in and

contact with ancestors in a Christian context, I refer to a

worship service held on Sunday, 20 October 1991. While

giving a testimony on Deuteronomy 16, Mr. Mantolo

incorporated a faith claim about a ''great grand ancestor."

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We have all heard the words . . . God has taken the Israelites out of Egypt . . . He is now sitting with them; making a deal with them; telling them about what should happen in order that he and they can travel the road of life harmoniously . . . The book says, let every male three times a year, on the place chosen for the celebration of the feast of the Passover not come to the temple without anything in his hand. I will ask that you support me in prayers that God may allow the very great grand ancestor to be there as I hold a customary occasion at my home.

A customary occasion was usually held in the home of black

South Africans when a family member had a dream in which a

deceased relative appeared. The customary occasion occurred

within a month of the dream and usually involved the

preparation of large amounts of food. Family members,

church members, friends and neighbors were invited to the

feast. The purpose of the occasion was to honor the

deceased relative. The meal usually included the meat of a

slaughtered animal since this was a ritual means of honoring

the ancestor. The customary occasion's purpose was to

appease the ancestor and, in so doing, reestablish balance

and harmony in the life of the person who had the dream and

to the family to whom that person was connected.

Belief in Mind/Matter Reciprocity

At St. John's, the integrity of the community

involved living in an honest way that was linked to a

trusted relationship with God. The moral order was granted

by God and represented.in the various deep structures of

society. A breach of this order interrupted the balance of

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life and engendered disorder which indicated that a

transgression of some sort had occurred.

The belief that spirit forces may cause sickness

as a result of imbalance in community was enfolded in the

lives of St. John's members. On 20 October 1991, Mr.

Mantolo, who was mentioned earlier, exhorted on Deuteronomy

16 and spoke about sickness caused by "spirits". He said:

Today's scripture reading talks about something. This scripture says: Now that you are here these people were bitten by mosquitos, beforehand in this world . . . We too when we came here were suffering; some of us were inhabited by amafufunvane. These spirits instruct the person they inhabit to perform different things. Some are so overt that they are audible as they talk. God is reminding us of what we are in the world.

Amafufunvane was a unique demonic illness caused by spirits

that inhabit peoples' bodies. Mr. Mantolo inferred that

before some members affiliated with St. John's, spirits may

have directed their lives. According to Mr. Mantolo, God,

in Deuteronomy 16, told people to remember what their lives

were like "in the world" before they came to St. John's.

Jesus as Healer and Liberator

A view in line with St. John's members'

understanding of Jesus is found in Speaking for Ourselves.

This book, which Lydia August, the daughter of the church's

founder Mother Christina Nku, helped to write, is a response

to many outsiders who have studied African indigenous

churches. In the chapter "An Outline of Our Theology" the

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writers reflect their dedication to Christian doctrine as

well as Biblical theology.

In their discussion about Jesus Christ, the

members relate that their greatest expression of unity

occurs at Easter, when many of the churches gather at their

church's headquarters to celebrate the death and

resurrection of Jesus Christ. Their own words best reflect

the meaning of Jesus Christ illustrated in the Easter

celebrations:

This is the most important activity of our church- life. Here we remember that Jesus, who is God made flesh, suffered as we also suffer. We remember that through his suffering he saved us from sin. We remember that he conquered sin and suffering and rose again from the dead. And finally we remember that it is through him that we have the gift of the Holy Spirit today. It is a happy occasion for us, a great festival-much more than Christmas (African Independent Churches 1985:30).

This deep impression marks the acceptance by church members

of the beliefs of the Christian Church, but acceptance that

has been transformed in ways that make sense for the world

in which they live.

It was this spirit that was central to liberating

members of St. John's Church. Admittedly, St. John's and

other indigenous church members' views of the resurrection

as a symbol of victory over the forces of death is not

distinctive from that of the historic churches. Perhaps,

the point of distinctiveness was the social situation in

which St. John's members found themselves as poor black

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people living in the violence of a post-apartheid South

Africa. The application of the symbolism of Jesus' victory

over death was perhaps best illustrated by Nozipo's view of

her world as being full of death, and that it was God as

represented in Jesus who offered hope. She reflected on the

future of the children who lived at the church:

I don't see nicely the future of our children because there's a lot of war and there's a lot of fighting between black to black. Even for children who are only fifteen years old, there's no future. We can just see there's no future for them. If the things that are happening now go on, the future of our children is bad.

Jesus as suffering servant and liberated Christ

was a central force of the theology at St. John's. It was

clear that Jesus was a symbol of healer that members of St.

John's used as their working theology in their intentional

focus on healing. Healing provided liberation in a country

where black people did not have access to adequate health

care. Thus, Jesus as healer and liberator was central to

the theology and work of St. John's.

On Sunday, 8 December 1991, during worship Mr.

Ntili, exhorted on the New Testament scripture, John 9 in

which Jesus healed a man born blind at birth. Mr. Ntili

connected the role of Jesus healing the blind man to the

healing that will come through Jesus' liberating power when

the "blind people" of South Africa, who perpetuate the

oppression of black people, have their eyes opened. Below

is his exhortation:

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Mothers and Fathers . . . I greet you all in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ. We have heard today the . . . reading John 9, . . . a story of the opening of a blind person's eyes. A powerful story, especially if we can delve deeper and find out what God is saying to us. Some meanings have already been exposed by others who witnessed here. We come across a blind person in a world where there was a belief that when a person is born blind; when a person is born a cripple or dumb; the mistake is with the sin of the parents so, he should be ostracized . . . in such a world a blind man . . . suffers. A blind person had a problem of not being accepted by his world. In some cases, such people had a problem of being ostracized and squashed out to live outside residential areas or in the deserted areas because they were branded sinners. So, we find Christ defying the norms, beliefs and expectations of the day, renouncing such beliefs . . . So Jesus said, when a person is born blind it is not the mistake of the parents. This was done so that God could reveal himself among people. When we see things happening in the world, it is not necessarily that people are wrong . . . God is at work to help us know him. When things seem to be out of the way; when they seem not to be in God's control; it is not that God is out of control. He is in control, but God is trying to create a situation that will enable us to understand his words. In other words, God is urging us to part with our anxieties. We must trust that God can solve our problems. Let us do so then, even when battles/wars and all violence takes place. We should not throw away our hope knowing that the time always comes when blind people's eyes are opened. When we see the oppression that takes place in this world, we should not throw our hope away because we know that the time of the opening of the eyes of the blind always comes. When we see the exploitation in places of workers, we should remember that the time of the lifting of people's burdens will come. When we see the world in a state of unrest, when we see crime, when we see women raped, one of the most common crimes today, (women do not walk in freedom) . . . We should remember that this time comes. This time always comes. The time of the opening of the eyes of the blind. Even where you live, being unloved, uncared for, the world talking things about you, the world accusing you, - you must know that there

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is a time when the blind are liberated. Let me stop here. Let us pray.

In this passage, there was direct correlation drawn between

the Biblical passage and the social circumstances in South

Africa. The passage gave a resounding liberation message

that the members ought to remain hopeful even in oppression.

Just as Jesus opened the eyes of the blind man, the eyes of

black South Africans had been opened. Black people

recognized their exploitation, caused by the oppression of

apartheid, and exhibited in violent crimes such as the rape

of women. The time when the eyes of the blind were opened

had a twofold meaning. Black people who were blinded by

oppression will fight for freedom and power. White people

who had been locked in a debilitating pattern of

perpetuating violence upon black people could choose to free

themselves from their evil activities.

The Holy Spirit and Healing

Umova (Spirit) was the means through which the

work of healing took place at St. John's. The church and

all aspects of its life were empowered through umova.

The Holy Spirit (umova) as a spiritual power

usually took possession of persons during worship services.

Possession by the Holy Spirit (umova) was spontaneous and

unpredictable. It was a phenomenon that is difficult to

describe precisely because people responded to it in several

ways. For example, during a particular morning worship

Ndsilibe was suddenly possessed by the Holy Spirit (umova)

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and began to jump up and down rhythmically as a hymn was

being sung. He moved throughout the church while in this

possessed state. His eyes were closed and his arms moved in

a fashion that gave him balance. Occasionally he cried out

an ecstatic utterance. When the hymn came to a close, the

pace of his jumping slowed down and he walked around to calm

himself. When he was ready, he returned to a pew, quite

exhausted.

The outward signs of possession by the Holy Spirit

(umova) had various expressions. Some persons in a

possessed state made jerky movements with their arms and

legs. Others bent over and became completely limp. Still

others became stiff. All usually showed great emotion that

could not easily be contained in a quiet or serene manner.

One woman commented on the inner feelings that were a part

of possession saying, "No matter what your problem may be,

if you have been possessed by the Holy Spirit, you are

always safe." When asked whether or not she had been

possessed, she responded, "I don't know, but I am always

safe."

During structured interviews, St. John's members

were asked about the Holy Spirit and whether they had ever

been possessed by it. Mrs. Mazibula responded:

I know that there is a Holy Spirit (umova\. Everything we do, we do through the Holy Spirit (umova). When we are possessed by the Holy Spirit (umova), . . . we dance. You can't dance if you don't feel the Holy Spirit (umova) on you. We also do some other things. For instance, people

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tell you, you did something but, you didn't know. It's there where we see everything, while we're in the Holy Spirit (umoya).

In another interview, when I asked Reverend and

Mrs. Mjoli, about rituals used in the church, they responded

by talking about the Holy Spirit (umoya).

If a person is just listening to a song and the song satisfies that person— sometimes you will see that person jumping but, the person doesn't know this. You might think that person is mad. And, that is the Spirit (umoya) in that person. He's working through a person.

A final comment on the Holy Spirit, came in Reverend Xaba's

words of welcome to me during a worship service, held on 30

June 1991. Since this was only my second time to worship at

St. John's, he prepared me for seeing members possessed by

the Holy Spirit by saying:

We thank our visitor for coming to this place. We thank her a lot. The Bible tells us that receiving visitors is receiving the angels of heaven. We welcome you wholeheartedly. We want to apologize that you did not understand what is happening here. When the Spirit (umoya) comes upon us, we jump. You should not be amazed.

These comments from Reverend Xaba and members of St. John's

suggest that the Holy Spirit was vital to the life of the

church. Reference to dancing and jumping were the means by

which people knew that a person had been possessed.

Moreover, when the Spirit came upon a person, he/she may not

have known what transpired. This was why others who

witnessed the possession of a member shared with the person

what had happened. Some people experienced a "lightness" in

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their bodies. Mrs. Mjoli said the following about being

possessed:

. . . once I have been possessed by the Holy Spirit? I feel myself very, very light. The way you see me when I'm dancing - you won't believe I'm an old lady . . .

While the Spirit may have possessed a particular

individual, the possession usually took place in the context

of the worshiping community. The dance that usually

accompanied the possession of a person by the Holy Spirit

occurred while the congregation was singing. When people

did the dance, there was hand clapping and the entire

congregation experienced a shift in energy as song and

movement created an ecstatic state that penetrated the

moment. The feelings that were evoked during these moments

were often described as "a lightness" or "I did not know

what I was doing." Possession occurring to one person

sometimes set off a chain reaction where others were

possessed as well. Possession by the Holy Spirit had the

effect of saturating the members with an experience that

could not be ignored. While everyone present may not have

been possessed, everyone present was aware of a shift in the

modality of the ritual moment. Indeed, what occurred could

be called a liminal state in which emotions, sensations, and

time were suspended.

In addition to the holy dance, umova makes it

possible for people to speak in tongues, have visions,

prophesy and heal. Umova "inspires, reveals, and fills with

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power and spiritual gifts" (Ndiokwere 1981:90). Kiernan

suggests that umoya is associated with the movement of air

and breath (Kiernan 1972:200). It is often invoked to cool

down the over-heated body of a sick person (Dube 1991:10).

Vilakazi suggests that umova1s power (amandla) is central to

life and is a part of one's being. He writes:

The spirit, breath or air . . . umova. is the vital force of the body . . . This spirit . . . also gives strength. A tired person halts in his [sic] exertion to "take air" . . . athathe umova. which is the same as "to take strength" (Vilakazi 1962:87).

The strength that umova gives is multiplied when people

gather communally.

The feeling that accompanied the presence of umova

was what kept St. John's members bonded together against the

difficulties of life. Indeed, the feeling evoked in people

as a result of an encounter with umova was one of the

factors that kept them involved in the church. Bonding was

displayed among members as they cared for those who had been

possessed during the service. Reverend Mjoli explained what

happened when a person was possessed,

If you are in church, you will sometimes see us dancing. You cannot dance if you do not feel the Holy Spirit upon you. During the time that you dance, you don't realize what has happened. Others members tell you what happened while you danced in the Holy Spirit.

When the Holy Spirit possessed one person during a worship

service, the experience impacted the entire worshiping

community. The shared moments of the emotion of being in

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the presence of one who was possessed was the adhesive that

bonded the community. At the conclusion of the service

others told the person who had been possessed what happened.

That person would face the reality that he/she had

participated in a drama in which a powerful force put them

in an altered state of consciousness. The result of such an

experience was usually a validation of the power of the Holy

Spirit and a strengthening of belief in the Spirit by the

individual and the collective worshiping community.

Thobeka, commenting on what happened after people were

possessed said, "If you have been possessed by the Holy

Spirit, you help other people."

That an encounter with the Holy Spirit kept people

involved in the church is demonstrated by Nonceba's comment,

Once I joined St. John's, it is the Holy Spirit that makes me to know the word of God and to understand what's going on in the church. I think that this church provides the only way to live.

Service of Healing

The climax of every Sunday morning worship service

at St. John's was a healing ritual. After the sermon,

Reverend Xaba usually said, "It is time to prepare to go to

the lake (ichibi)." To "go to the lake" was symbolic

language that signified the commencement of the ritual drama

of healing. The drama unfolded in the following way.

First, a member, usually a woman, began to sing a hymn

called, "Setena Seliba Samadi" which means "There is a Lake

of Blood." The words are below:

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Seteng Seliba samadi There is a lake of blood Aletareng ya tefelo in the altar of atonement. 1liba se eleng setlhare The lake which is a medicine Maatla a sona the power of which is life. ke bophelo

Esale ke i tlhatswa teng I have been washing myself there, Kentse ke bina topollo Singing the song of salvation ke be ke kene Moreneng until I enter to the Lord Madulong a dinyakallo in the places of joy.

Motlhang o retla kopana One day we shall meet khanyeng le bohle baa in the light; glory with all hlotseng. those who conquered. babinang pel'a konyana Those who sing in front of the lamb, rato le ba lopollotseng About the love that redeemed them.

Bare Amen Haleluhah They say, Amen Hallelujah Hoboraro boo teroneng To the Three in the throne Ntate le Mona le Maya Father, Son and Holy Spirit Let this song be sung eternally.

The words of the hymn are rich in symbolic

meaning. An exegesis of the hymn text suggests that the

lake of blood was an altar of atonement which signified

Jesus' sacrificial death. The lake of blood was medicine

that gave power to life. Thus, the blood of Jesus was

metaphorically a healing medicine that was symbolized by the

blessed water members drank.

While this hymn was sung, the sanctuary was

transformed to represent a lake that metaphorically

represented the pool of healing where Jesus cured a man who

had been an invalid for many years. The lake, which was

called Bethesda in the New Testament book John 3, signified

that persons who wanted to be healed would have the

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opportunity to drink blessed water and be prayed for during

the service. A large spotlessly clean white cloth that was

6 feet in length and 3 feet in width, with blue borders, was

raised above the center aisle. The aisle had a cross

outlined in white tiles against a solid blue background.

The blue and white tiles had been scrubbed until they

shined. The aisle was under a fluorescent light bulb that

was also shaped as a cross. Thus, the blue and white canopy

was completely surrounded by the symbol of the cross. Two

members brought water in a large container to the front of

the sanctuary, which, after being blessed by Reverend Xaba,

was poured into little plastic cups and handed to those who

stood in line to receive it. Having received the water,

people walked under the blue and white cloth to be blessed

by the ministers and their spouses who laid hands upon them.

After everyone had received the water and had a blessing,

Reverend Xaba walked throughout the church and sprinkled the

healing water. This represented a final cleansing and

blessing. Members believed that this blessed water and the

healing rituals changed their lives because the Holy Spirit

which came from a powerful God and Jesus Christ was present.

One member talked about the healing service saying:

Then we have the healing service where everyone stands in the cue to drink the water. We put up the blue and white cloth under which the Reverends stand to pray for us after we drink the water and walk under the cloth.

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More detail about the healing, ritual will be provided in

chapter 8.

An example of the power of water that has been

blessed by the Spirit came from Reverend Xaba during Sunday

worship on 27 October 1991. As the service was about to

end, he said the following:

God's people, time is against us. Time is up. We have people who must live having drunk the water. We live by the water and the laying on of hands. Some people don't understand this. We live by the water anywhere and the laying on of hands . . . May God develop a new well of water . . . May those people who are ill be healed.

The congregants of St. John's drank the water at least once

a week and believed that its healing properties kept them

spiritually and physically well. One could say that

Reverend Xaba, having lived many of the same challenges as

his members, certainly shared their world view. Likewise,

the members expected to be healed or to maintain their

health by drinking the water.

The blessed water was not only used for drinking,

it was used for bathing, vomiting and enemas. The water was

a purifying agent that cleansed bodies internally and

externally. Dirt that entered a person's body from foreign

sources had to be removed, thus making the use of enemas,

and vomiting central ritual activities. During structured

interviews members talked openly about how the blessed water

was used. Thole said, "I had an enema and vomited bad

things out of me with water . . . I began to feel better."

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Mrs. Ntiliti said, "I drank the water and brought it back up

again. I had an enema and I had a bath." A bath usually

accompanied the ritual acts of vomiting and enemas. Unclean

elements from the outside world lay upon the skin and had to

be removed. The following example of removing unclean

spirit elements from the skin is illustrated from a

description I wrote following the funeral and burial of

Reverend Xaba on August 8, 1992:

Saturday was the day that black South Africans buried their dead. It was the day that most people did not work and the community always honored the dead and their families by attending funerals. Services were usually held in the open air. It was difficult to accommodate large crowds in the small structures in which people lived or worshiped. There was however, another compelling reason that funerals were held outdoors. Most Africans believed that the body of a deceased person was unclean. Those who handled the body, those who attended funerals, and those who entered the cemetery entered an unclean state of being. The resolution of being in a polluted state was to wash one's body with water as quickly as possible so that others would not be exposed to the uncleanliness carried by the person who had been exposed. After the burial of Reverend Xaba many people returned to his home. At the outside gate there were large basins of water for people to wash themselves. By washing in this way, each person was cleansed and could enter the home of widow Xaba.

Thus, water was used as a primary cleansing element. The

blessed water had the power to remove unclean spirits. One

informant, Thobeka said that she sprayed her house with the

water, particularly when her children cried during the

night. Children, being very vulnerable, were susceptible to

being disturbed by evil spirits. Water was the source for

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removing the spirits or preventing them from entering a

person's home. Reverend Mjoli explicitly stated the linkage

between evil spirits, children, and blessed water. He said,

We spray with prayed water in our home. We do this when the children don't sleep in a good way. This is how we must fight the evil spirits.

Water then was a source of healing, an element

used to cleanse impurity, and the means through which St.

John's members fought evil spirits. It was a source that

members continually used in many areas of their lives.

Thozama provided a useful illustration of the varied uses of

water. She talked about how St. John's members taught her

how to use the blessed water and how she was healed:

Then they told me to drink water so that I could vomit and take in water for an enema. They also gave me a bath. They told me that I must also have a bottle of water to take home. They said to pour some of the water in the bath. They stressed that I must always use this water while I bathed. It did not take long for me to get well and find a job. I found a job quickly. At the present time I work as a domestic in the home of a white family. I started the job in December 1990.

The use of "prayed water" was a vehicle that transformed the

lives of people who lived in a world dominated by

liminality. Much of the ambiguity of their lives was

motivated by micro and macro structures that worked against

people of African descent.

Sermons

St. John's members' acceptance and rigorous use of

the Bible was directly tied to the symbiotic linkage that

particular texts made to their life condition. Security was

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the benefit received from reading texts about a God who

healed the sick, protected those in hostile environments,

and sheltered those in need. The following exhortations

from St. John's adherents during worship on November 10,

1991 illustrate the power that the struggles of Biblical

characters had for indigenous church members.

Mr. Molo reflecting on David in Psalm 23 said the

following:

I also, on this day wish to give thanks in the house of prayer. I give thanks to the finger that pointed me to lead worship. I give thanks to the angels of the prophets who always support me under the readings that fell upon us today. In the Book of Psalms we hear David giving thanks for God's deeds and asking for prayers. He says that the Lord is his shepherd, he shall not want. God makes him to lie down in green pastures. He says that God leads him in the pathways of righteous ness. David is saying this because he saw God's work. He says that even though I walk in the shadow of the valley of death I shall not fear. He says that even if anything may happen or if all enemies can come from anywhere I shall not fear because of the word of God.

I am also under this great reading of the Psalm. I ask that God may be with me. May he give me to know that I won't go far, but I will ask those who are with me in the plan to be with me. Pray with me.

Mr. Molo identified with the Biblical character David, who

had proclaimed that "The Lord is my shepherd" which means

that for David, God was a guide who cared, showed compassion

and provided strength. Mr. Molo took David's metaphor of

God being a shepherd, for his own life. Mr. Molo believed

that if God provided all of David's needs, then God would do

the same for him. Mr. Molo made reference to Psalm 23's

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images of "green pastures", "pathways of righteousness", and

not being fearful in "the shadow of the valley of death" and

"enemies". He drew on themes which bring comfort and

display resistance. David's life was guided by God and Mr.

Molo wanted the same for his life.

Shortly after Mr. Molo's speech, a second

scripture was read, Revelation 3:1-29. Reverend Xaba gave

the following sermon:

Today we have been given a great book that threatens the nations. We have been given the book of Revelations 3:1-29. It says that each person must choose where she/he wants to go. God says, "I know your name. You say that you are living only to find that you are dead." This scripture reading scares me. I am scared of standing here and talking about such a great book. It says that you may sit here and think that you are alive but, in fact, you are dead. A book which needs a person who can diagnose you as you sit here because as for me it has exposed me. A book which says that I think I am alive but I am dead. I do not do God's work. The book says that you may sit and worship only to find that there is nothing that you are doing. You talk about God's name but you do not do God's work. Down at the bottom it says that if you conquer I will not leave you out of God's books. I feel afraid of this book. I wish to be assisted in asking today. That I may ask God to give me power to serve where I am . . . I am asking to be written in God's books. I ask to be assisted as I pray.

The congregation prayed with Reverend Xaba and he continued:

The book is Revelation 3 from the beginning to the end. But there is a place I like most . . . the fifth verse says that the one who conquers will wear white garments. You cannot wear white garments if you have not gone through battles. There is a big battle that a human being engages in this world. When you go to the night the devil on the left is pulling you. This is why this book of revelations says he/she who wins shall be dressed in white garments. His/Her name is

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written in the book of life. There is a destiny. This battle that we are involved in here shall come to an end. God will call you to Him. But there is something challenging and that is when this battle is over what will you be holding as God calls you. He/She who conquers shall wear white garments. This word is a reminder . . . if you call yourself a Christian. Be patient and endure in your Christianity because you are not going to go along in goodness. When you make a choice to be Christian, the devil wants you. Trust in God who created you and put you in this world. When God sends you down to earth, He wants you do His work. He sends a person down to earth in order to praise Him. On the last day God rewards you because you have been a good child. He then will give you eternal life. If you can see people killing one another here, you will be surprised as to where they say God is. What makes them to kill themselves this way here outside? Are they not afraid of God? Are they not afraid of what will be of them up in Heaven? May God give me a new Spirit. I am asking for repentance under this book of John. This book has been turned open for people who are like you and me; a person who is in a battle. The battles . . . makes it necessary for you to ask for the Holy Spirit.

Reverend Xaba's sermon was intimately tied to the

lives of members of St. John’s. He began by saying that

Revelations 3:1-29 was a threat to the nations. Nations

figuratively meant the African indigenous churches and the

congregations of St. John's in particular. This book was a

threat to the nations because it spoke boldly and exposed

the truth. Even Reverend Xaba said to the congregation, "I

am afraid of such a great book . . . it has exposed me."

The exposure was related to whether or not people had been

following the laws of God, which entailed living a holy and

righteous life, including living by the commandments and

other Biblical codes. The assumption was that if one was

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living a Godly life, then he/she would be "written into

God' s book.11

Reverend Xaba focused on the benefit of living a

Godly life, specifically addressing the fifth verse in which

there was reference to white garments. White was a color

that represented goodness and purity. If one was given the

privilege of wearing a white garment, according to Reverend

Xaba, it meant that the person had engaged in battles with

evil forces and had won the battles by turning to God.

He concluded his comments by relating the

scripture to the violence going on in the townships where

members lived. He asked, "What makes them to kill

themselves this way here outside? Are they not afraid of

God?" Drawing distinction between St. John's members and

"them" who were killing "themselves" outside, Reverend Xaba

asked the ultimate question, "Are they not afraid of God"

who had the power to decide whether one was written into the

book of life?" The elevation of the power of God and the

demotion of human beings who took away the life that God had

given was readily apparent in the contrasts upon which

Reverend Xaba drew. Church members would do well to

continue to keep separate from those who kill and do violent

acts. There were battles in life that required people to

ask for help from the Holy Spirit. Obviously, this was what

people who were not members of St. John's or other churches

needed in their lives.

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These exhortations related Biblical narratives to

challenges found in the daily lives of church members, and,

thus, confirmed the thesis that indigenous churches do not

separate religion from the circumstances of daily life.

This, in fact, is one of the reasons for the popularity of

these churches for poor people. In South Africa, poor

people struggle for life in ways that are far different from

others, black or white, who have financial security. These

churches form a liberating source of renewal for their

members because the church reproduces the challenges with

which they live and offers hope. The question is, of

course, what does liberation mean concretely? Is it a

liberation that causes people to live with their religion as

an opiate or is it a radically transforming liberation that

takes place in this world? Once again, a representative

group of indigenous members respond to this question in

Speaking For Ourselves. Dr. Lydia August's participation in

the writing of this volume gives St. John's members a direct

tie to the views which it articulates. Indigenous church

members write:

Our communities are sometimes accused of being too inward-looking and people ask us what we think about politics. It is difficult for us to know how to answer this question. The members of our Churches are the poorest of the poor, the people with the lowest paying jobs or with no jobs at all.

Our people, therefore, know what it means to be oppressed, exploited and crushed. Those who came from the 'White Churches' will tell you how even in the church they felt humiliated and discrimi-

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nated against and dominated just as they are at work and in the rest of society. But we also know that God does not approve of this evil and that racial discrimination and oppression is rejected by the Bible.

And so what do our people do about it? They join political organisations or trade unions and take part in the struggle for our liberation. But it is a matter of individual choice. Members of the same Church will join different political organisations or trade unions and some will choose not to join anything . . . The 'Churches of the People' and the political organisations or trade unions of the people have different roles to play. It is often that the same people belong to both (African Independent Churches 1985:30-31).

Drawing upon the comments made by African

indigenous church members themselves, and applying them to

St. John's - Guguletu, one can conclude that the church

functioned as a cultural system that provided members with

psychic, social, and political relief from hardships that

were faced daily. Oosthuizen comments on the role of these

indigenous churches as agencies of healing and

transformation in a manner that is directly applicable to

St. John's. St. John's and other indigenous churches

provide restoration in concrete ways because they are

. . . churches in the true sense of the word, they are hospitals and they are social welfare institutions. The liturgical approach, the healing procedures, the strong sense of community in these tremendously dynamic independent church movements in Southern Africa owes much to the approaches in the traditional religious context in spite of their rejection of many aspects of the traditional belief system (Oosthuizen 1991:33-34).

The genesis and raison d'etre of St. John's was

its healing rituals. According to Adrian Hastings,

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indigenous churches across the continent of Africa have a

similar focus:

. . . All across Africa independent churches, while divided on whether or not to reject all use of western medicine, have adopted services of prayer healing dependent upon the throwing out of spirits, the ecstatic utterance of strange tongues, but also the acceptance of long hours of intense prayer of a fairly conventional kind, all based upon a deep sense of the relationship of physical health to spiritual health and the will of God (Hastings 1976:70).

Hastings summarizes his observations:

For many churches, sickness is the prime initiating point of religious life, and their concern for it is an idiom which is local and traditionally their main attraction (Hastings 1976:70).

While members of indigenous churches have not

developed a formal systematic theology, black South African

scholars have reflected upon their history and impact on

life in South Africa. It is important to consider what

black South African scholars are claiming about the African

indigenous churches in light of their Africanization of

Christianity and emphasis on healing.

Invented Tradition. Selective Conservatism, and Syncretism

It is important to consider the scholarship of

black South African scholars, as we consider the healing

rituals at St. John's. While rituals of healing at St.

John's, along with the cognitive reflections that support

them, represented the cultural system of a particular

congregation, the literature and comparative field data

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indicate that similar rituals of healing can be found in

other African indigenous churches (Daneel 1970; 1983;

Comaroff 1985; Kruss 1985:150-202; West 1975:91-124; Kiernan

1976b; Schoffeleers 1991) . An examination of the writings

of some African scholars of religion suggests that

indigenous churches' influence on the lives of black South

Africans, and the particularity of apartheid, generated a

religious movement best described as an invented tradition.

In other words, indigenous people selected religious beliefs

and practices from past generations, and integrated them

with components of a received Christianity, to meet their

specific needs (Mosala 1985:109-111; Pato 1990:27-35).

While most anthropologists would call the integration of

past beliefs and practices with components of received

religion syncretism, some intellectuals who live in the

socio-cultural context of South Africa use the concept of

"invented tradition" (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983:1-14; 211-

262) or the concept of "selective conservatism" (Wilson

1936:548) to explain this integration.

Invented Tradition

African scholars of religion point to their

perception of an invented tradition operative in indigenous

African churches. The analytical category of invented

tradition can provide useful insight into St. John's and

other indigenous churches' healing rituals (Hobsbawm and

Ranger 1983:1-14; 211-262). Moreover, the advantage of this

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analytical idea is that religious experience can be examined

in light of the problems specific to indigenous South

African society. The invented tradition discussed by black

South African scholars is inseparable from the culture

history of South African society; a history that shaped and

reshaped a bundle of social relations by way of an

interactive field constitutive of the white and black world.

Invented tradition uses history to legitimate new tradition

(Hobsbawm 1983:12). The study of invented tradition as it

relates to St. John's and other African indigenous churches

in South Africa requires attention because it provides an

emic explanation for the emergence of African indigenous

churches over and against the historical churches. Thus,

the invented tradition defining African indigenous churches

serves as a framework for interpreting the emergence of an

innovation in the religion of a growing number of South

African Christians. Jean Comaroff's (1985) idea of

dissenting Christianity is a precise expression of the

invented tradition with which African scholars of religion

are concerned.

The social context in which St. John's members

find themselves is changing rapidly. While flux and

transformation are particularly pronounced as South Africa

moves away from structural apartheid toward a democratic

political process, from the historical perspective of

African indigenous churches like St. John's, transformation

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began when the first black South Africans separated

themselves from the historic churches. Thus, St. John's -

Guguletu is a result of founder Mother Christina Nku

separating from the Apostolic Faith Mission which was a

white denomination that originated in the United States.

The social and cultural patterns of the "old traditions" of

the historic churches, which included racial dominance, led

black South Africans to make claims on "traditions" that

predated the arrival of the Europeans.

Arguably, African scholars of religion are both

writing of an invented tradition and contributing with their

works to the creation of this cultural process (Ranger

1983:253). For instance, their reference to an invented

tradition argues that there is a unified African culture

that connects all persons of African descent despite,

regional, ethnic and other particularities.2 It assumes

that a religion of resistance to foreign penetration is

central to every aspect of reality experienced by Africans

across the continent. Every encounter with human beings or

with material matter is an experience of being in touch with

God, ancestors, or spirits which inhabit the universe. In

"traditional" African religion there are numerous gods who

direct life. Among those who practice "traditional"

2Terence Ranger provides a striking example of African intellectual, Michel Kikurwe, developing the idea of a "golden age of traditional African society." See Ranger 1983:253.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. religion, there is a pervasive essence in which the will and

force of spiritual beings fulfill the meaning of being. All

life encompasses religion, and it is the means by which

social conflict is abated (Mbiti 1970c:430; Omoyajowo

1973:5; Idowu 1973:62-68; Shorter 1974a:53-56). The writing

of John Mbiti can be seen as a type of autoethnography

(Fischer 1984:171-241) that vocalizes the meaning of

invented tradition:

Wherever the African is, there is his [sic] religion: he [sic] carries it to the field where he [sic] is sowing seeds or harvesting a new crop; he [sic] takes it with him [sic] to the beer party or to attend a funeral ceremony . . . to the house of parliament. . . . Everybody is a religious carrier. So the belief and action in African traditional society cannot be separated; they belong to the single whole (Mbiti 1970a:2,5).

Mbiti singularly draws upon the notion that despite cultural

differences, Africans across the continent share similar

beliefs about religion. This unified African religious

belief system, while having distinctive features, includes

common themes. Thus, an invented tradition of "unity of

African peoples" creates a myth in which distinctive peoples

are joined in a Pan-African religious spirit. Mbiti asserts

that Africans believe that it is by means of the single

whole that all of life pulsates in a life filled universe.

All power in the universe comes from a supreme God even when

lesser gods and natural objects utilize power. The universe

contains sacred objects and forces which maintain unity in

the various aspects of life. Unity is created through

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ritual as exhibited in the community of the living and the

ancestors, communal accountability, and in relation to the

gods (Omoyajowo 1973:5; Shorter 1974a:58).

According to invented tradition the ritual and

religion of African people have several factors that are

constantly manifested. For instance, there is the

centrality of community, the belief in lesser gods, the

presence of the ancestors and the passivity of a supreme God

(Muzorewa 1985:8-14; Setiloane 1986:17-28). It is asserted

that African peoples concentrate on having a meaningful life

in the present world as opposed to a future world. This is

why the resolution of social contention is vigorously

practiced and not accepted as a matter that will be cared

for in some future time. Thus, there is a genuine belief

that ritual resolves social discord by restoring and

revitalizing life's meaning. Ritual and religion play a

major role in the lives of African peoples (Williams

1985:433-435).

Further support for the invented tradition

discussed by black South African intellectuals comes from

German scholar, H.J. Becken, who writes:

[The African indigenous churches) express their faith in forms which are understandable by their members and by their environment: the symbolism of their clerical and congregational gowns in many colors with their specific meaning, the rich ritual connected with every service, the unreflected acceptance of the explanation and understanding of richness from their environment, all these are not syncretic remnants, but genuine results of the incarnation of the Christian

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message in Africa, which is more closely related to the understanding of healing in the New Testament (Becken 1971:16).

Perhaps the most prudent way to assess the symbols

and actions of the African indigenous churches, and of St.

John's Church in particular, is by employing the approach of

David Chidester who suggests that rituals demonstrate "how

western Christian power symbols have been mobilized to make

strategic claims on traditional symbols of power" (Chidester

1989:25). Chidester amplifies this point by further

clarifying that

. . . 'Christian' beliefs, practices, and forms of association have been appropriated by Africans primarily as vehicles of power in a world of increasingly disempowering power relations. AICs may not be an acculturation, or an Africanization of Christianity, but rather an ongoing, complex mobilization of certain symbolic forms as alternative instruments of power in Africa (Chidester 1988:85).

Invented tradition may serve in the way that Chidester

suggests. It may also provide African intellectuals with

the material to interpret how poor black South Africans,

such as the members of St. John's, have transformed received

religion in light of an historic struggle for liberation

from the oppression of apartheid.

Selective Conservatism

Monica Wilson's concept of "selective

conservatism" asserts that indigenous people in South Africa

selected integral parts of their own 'traditional cultures'

and integrated them with those of an intruding culture, in

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order to fortify their own cultural authority (Wilson

1936:548). While this concept clearly supports the

anthropological meaning of syncretism, it also implicitly

acknowledges the issues of hegemony that are extremely

important in the South Africa. Wilson's decision to use

"selective conservatism" rather than "syncretism" may

indicate a failure of syncretism to adequately explain the

power dynamics which were historically unique as the

Afrikaners, the Britons, and the Africans interacted with

one another in South Africa. Indeed, while syncretism is

not an inherently pejorative term, in the context of

apartheid South Africa, its meaning is not neutral. African

intellectuals seem to be saying that while elites may

control cultural meanings that appear to explain the fusion

of religious ideas and practices from several sources,

people from disadvantaged positions of power have contested

old meanings and created new meanings. Wilson's

acknowledgement of the power of the powerless to choose

supports black South African scholars' observation of an

invented tradition which culturally articulates how a

conquered indigenous people claimed their past and altered

received Christianity to form a very specific belief and

symbol system that contested the conqueror. The power of

the indigenous churches is that they represent a form of

resistance to received religion. Despite the domination of

received religion, indigenous people held onto ancient

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material of indigenous religions in ways that creatively

interact with received Christianity.

Syncretism

Black South African intellectuals argue against

using the "syncretism motif" to explain the merging of old

and new religious belief systems (Pato 1990:25-27; Goba

1988:52). What these scholars argue opposes the standard

analytical idea of syncretism found in the anthropological

literature (Levi-Strauss 1962:16-30; Hannerz 1987;

Herskovits 1967:423-429; 1990:17; 249-251).

Some black South African scholars claim that

interpretation by "theologically inclined" (Goba 1988:52)

scholars of religion has made false claims about

Christianity in Africa, particularly, Christianity as

displayed in African indigenous churches.3 Specifically,

black scholars of religion in South Africa claim that there

has been a misappropriation of the notion of syncretism.

They argue that the meaning of the term as constructed by

some European scholars of religion is not value free as

anthropologists intended its use but instead, it implies

specifically that indigenous religion has contaminated

3Scholars whom Pato and Goba believe have inappropriately linked the emergence of the African indigenous churches with syncretism are Kraemer (1938), Sundkler (1948:297), Luzbetak (1963), Oosthuizen (1968:xiv), Beyerhaus (1969:79), Daneel (1984:67) and Hammond-Tooke (1989:45).

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Christianity. While Christianity itself is syncretist, many

scholars of religion have not viewed it as such.

Since the construction of meaning in South Africa

has disadvantaged black people, African intellectuals argue

for a reconstruction of meaning. African scholars, such as

Luke Pato and Bonganjalo Goba, assert that it is

inappropriate to link the emergence of African indigenous

churches with syncretism for several reasons. First, they

find the syncretism motif to be an etic explanation

postulated by outsiders examining a "foreign" or "culturally

different" phenomenon. In short, they find it offensive to

use the category of syncretism to explain an emic

phenomenon. Second, as an etic category, syncretism carries

an overtone which suggests that Christianity is the

barometer against which other religious expressions can and

should be measured. Christianity is thus elevated to the

status of a pure form which is not itself a product of

syncretism. In sum, Pato and Goba assert that syncretism is

a pejorative paradigm when it is used to explain the

emergence of the African indigenous church (Pato 1990:25-27;

Goba 1988:52).

The explanation that indigenous scholars prefer

suggests that the African indigenous church emerged as a

result of the growth of a "new self-awareness which is the

result of a lengthy socio-cultural and political onslaught

on the Africans" (Pato 1990:24). The African indigenous

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church thus became a symbol of the campaign for liberation

in South Africa because it emerged in a context of social

struggle as black people separated themselves from the

dominating ecclesiastical structures, introduced by white

missionaries, which were a reflection of structures of

domination in the larger society. The process of

colonization pushed African converts into a new society in

which "traditional" religious symbols were forced to be

submerged. The hegemony of the religion of the missionaries

denied the indigenous people the power of their own symbols

(Pato 1990:26). When syncretism is used as an explanation

for the emergence of the African indigenous church, there is

no consideration given to the fact that Christianity was the

imposed religion of a ruling class which disallowed

Africans' use of their own symbols. If those symbols had

not been forced underground, other religious forms might

have emerged. Moreover, the symbols that the missionaries

introduced might not have been utilized at all. Pato

concludes that the African indigenous church

. . . represents a continuity of the struggle which began when the African indigenous cultures were first confronted by colonized power and the world view of European Christendom (Pato 1990:27).

Thus, in the view of Pato syncretism is an unacceptable way

to explain the African indigenous church because it assumes

an "illegitimate mingling" of religious traditions (Pato

1990:25). Pato claims that it is because the blending of

the religious elements was not voluntary, but forced, that

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syncretism does not adequately explain the dynamism with

which the African indigenous church emerged. Pato and

Itumeleng Mosala accent that these churches emerged from an

active battle against the religious values of the oppressor

(Mosala 1985:110; Pato 1990:25). Thus, these scholars call

into question the etic category, syncretism, suggesting that

it is not a neutral term but carries a bias which assumes

power equity between the cultures from which the religions

derive.

Martin West, a South African anthropologist of

indigenous African churches, found similar contestation

against the use of the analytical category syncretism. He

suggested that syncretism and other terms such as "sect,

cult or movement" were most often used by outsiders. So

great was his concern about the value-ladenness of the

category syncretism in the South African context that he

chose not to use it in his writing. He explained his

decision saying:

. . . 'sect', 'cult' or 'movement' . . . are generally used by people who do not belong to the groups they describe, and often give the impression that independent churches are not proper churches, and are in some way inferior; 'separatist' and 'syncretist' also have negative connotations when applied to these churches, and are consequently not used (West 1975:3).

As a student of Monica Wilson, West had an understanding of

the unique political situation in South Africa that

problematized particular anthropological terms.

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In sum, some black South African intellectuals

have challenged the idea that syncretism is a neutral

category in the context of South Africa. Their challenge is

compelling because black South African intellectuals have

lived with the reality of what apartheid concretely means

for black people. Thus, their contestation of syncretism

signals some abnormality about the power dynamics in the

culture in which they live. In short, these intellectuals

suggests that this category continues to perpetuate the

message of apartheid to black people which is, "You are

inferior." When such a claim is inferred about the one area

over which nonelites have modest control through rituals of

healing, then there is contestation.

In South Africa, religious values and symbols have

not declined under an expanding Western society that claimed

the land of non-European communities; instead indigenous

communities have enlisted cultural systems such as religion

to interpret symbols of ultimate significance and express

rituals that promote collective self identities rooted in

political resistance to external domination, (i.e., invented

tradition).

Hence, of interest to anthropologists of African

indigenous churches is the metaphoric role that religion

plays between antagonistic groups in society. How are

social relations imaged by the symbolic universe and ritual

practices of St. John’s? What analytical concepts uncover

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the socio-political processes responsible for the flow of

religious experience in indigenous South African society?

Invented tradition? Selective conservatism? Syncretism?

In the context of apartheid, religion and politics are

entwined by indigenous churches like St. John's into a

single culture complex. Their invented tradition functions

as a metaphoric discourse which delegitimates the

power of the white minority that controls the material

conditions of life.

Summary

This chapter has demonstrated that there is a

cultural belief system and theology that was ritually

operationalized at St. John's - Guguletu. Members' belief

that God's spirit actively cared for believers was evidenced

by the way that they described their relationship with

Thixo. Their speech about how God utilized Reverend Xaba,

worked with their ancestors and sent a Holy Spirit to heal

the sick was evidence of a theology that espoused that God

actively intervened in present history. The chapter's

examination of divination, Jesus Christ and healing provided

additional articulation of St. John's theology and ritual

life.

Sermons were a formal ritualized genre by which to

examine St. John's theology. Reverend Xaba's sermons

revealed a God who empowered the Holy Spirit to heal people

who drank blessed water and followed other ritualized acts.

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Sermons provided a means for Reverend Xaba to teach the

members about the way to live and how to understand the

Bible. Sermons played an important role in the theology of

the church and in member’s lives.

The scholarship of black South African

intellectuals was examined in this chapter since it is these

scholars who have, as indigenous persons, systematically

reflected upon what the theology of St. John's and other

indigenous churches means in the cultural context of South

Africa. Invented tradition is one paradigm by which to

consider the speech of these scholars as they interpret the

theology of churches such as St. John's and argue against

interpretations they believe to be inappropriate.

This chapter on theology and ritual prepares us to

move on to consider the symbols used at St. John's in

chapter 7.

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SYMBOLS IN ST. JOHN'S - GUGULETU RITUAL

"It has long been recognized in anthropological literature that ritual symbols are stimuli of emotion" (V. Turner 1967:29).

"I consider the term 'ritual' to be more fittingly applied to forms of religious behavior associated with social transformations . . ." (V. Turner 1967:95) .

Introduction

Symbols are significant components of ritual

action. The symbols and rituals that people create

dramatize aspects of their lived reality. Together symbols

and ritual action form meaning structures that are

explicitly different from textual material or verbal

articulation.

Eliade writes about the function of symbolism used

in ritual. He says:

. . . the most important function of religious symbolism . . . is its capacity for expressing paradoxical situations, or certain structures of ultimate reality, otherwise quite inexpressible (Eliade 1959:101).

The symbols used at St. John's synthesized the psycho-social

and spiritual dimensions of people's lives. Various

symbols, such as water, candles, and staffs, were used to

dramatize the social structural and psychological processes

236

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with which members lived and established a cultural system

through which reality could be metaphorically re-created and

reconstructed.

The ethnographic profile of St. John's members

empirically demonstrates that many resided in townships

where violence was customary and frequent, many struggled to

find monetary resources to care for themselves and their

families, and many were concerned about the future of their

children in light of the egregious consequences of apartheid

education and limited financial resources. The liminal

social situation in which they lived meant that they looked

for resolution to many conflicts in the ritual forms at St.

John's. The symbols and the rituals created a dialectical

process that involved continual elevation and leveling which

represented the flux of the society in which they lived.

Ultimate meaning, as represented in the symbolization

process among members of St. John's, functioned to create an

affinity between the unknown and the known. In this way,

the psycho-social and spiritual dimension of people's lives

were enjoined.

Symbolic Representations at St. John's

Symbolic Use of Water

Water was the central element used at St. John's

for healing. According to St. John's members, water that

had been blessed provided a cure for many sicknesses.

Ordinary water was transformed into a healing agent only

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when it was blessed, otherwise it was ineffective. The act

of praying over the water was the ritual behavior that

adhered members to a belief system which psychologically and

spiritually connected them with a cosmic power that restored

health. At St. John's, water represented renewed life and

health.1 Often other elements, such as ash and salt, were

added to the water to form a mixture called isiwasho which

incorporated indigenous healing medicines into ritual. Many

St. John's members said that they were given isiwasho to

vomit, to bathe in and for use in administering an enema.

It was also used for baptisms and as a medication for

purification.

Before each healing service members helped

Reverend Xaba prepare for the ritual. I wrote the following

description after observing a healing ritual at St. John's -

Guguletu. It illustrates the significance of proper

preparation and the use of water for cleansing and healing:

One of the men brought out a teapot and water basin. Another man unrolled a large rectangular cloth that was white with a blue border. This blue and white cloth matched the uniforms that members were wearing. Six people, three on each side, held the edges of the sheet in the air so that a canopy was formed. Reverend Xaba came down from the pulpit and walked over to the containers of water. While holding his sacred staff, he stretched his hands over the water and said a prayer to bless it. Then he walked to the man who had the teapot of water. The man poured water over Reverend Xaba's hands enacting a ritual of cleansing. Mrs. Xaba followed next in having her

■See Kiernan 1979:13-21 for additional information on the use of water by indigenous churches.

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hands cleaned with the water. Then I followed in this ritual drama. My hands, too were washed with this mysterious water. I stood with Reverend and Mrs. Xaba under the canopy. Mrs. Ntiliti, the evangelist, followed. Her hands were washed and then she stood under the canopy. The people in the congregation formed a line. Each person was given a little cup of water to drink. Some people drank two cups of the water as though they needed an extra source of healing. Each person, which included little children and adults, walked under the canopy and the four who had their hands washed in the sacred water laid hands upon and blessed them. After all the members walked under the canopy, Reverend Xaba took a cup of the water and drank it. The rest of us followed and repeated his ritual action. We returned to the pulpit while "Seteng Seliba Samadi" which means "There is a Lake of Blood" was sung.

The ritual drama described above demonstrates how

water was used in the healing service. After the water had

been blessed, it was transformed into a powerful life giving

substance. Its use produced a spiritual power that

maintained and restored health in a communal context. The

water was a symbol that absolved pollution and strengthened

a community. Speaking of the power of the Spirit as it

transformed water into an element with healing properties,

Reverend Xaba exclaimed the following in his sermon on

Sunday, 8 December 1991:

. . . I give thanks to God for the way in which I was healed . . . People who drink the water survive when difficulties are encountered.

Another member exclaimed during a testimony, "I used to

suffer in this world and I got a bottle of water . . . The

Spirit of God has brought me into this place." For this

member, the "bottle of water" and the "Spirit of God"

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created the means by which suffering was relieved. The same

member continued, "I remember how I was penniless, without

work, food and even clothes to wear and God brought me here.

He wanted to work through me." When another member was

asked what the water symbolized she responded, "It means

that we will be healed. We believe that it heals. If you

drink the water while you have pains in your body, you feel

healthy.11

Many people who attended the St. John's festival

in New Castle in August 1991 brought containers of water to

be blessed by Archbishop Njobe. The containers were placed

in a special area outside of the sanctuary. Archbishop

Njobe explained why people brought containers of water to be

blessed:

The faith healer prays for the water and then that water can be used for any sickness. It is like a remedy. That is why everyone brings his own bottle full of water. If you come with tap water in a bottle, it is put in the place where we pray for the water (Sehalalelo). It's obvious that there's nothing in the bottle except water. So many people have been healed by drinking that water.

In the St. John's community the symbolization process

transformed water into a healing element that impacted

members in a way that their lives were disengaged from

physical maladies or oppressive societal issues. Belief and

ritual action augmented change in the lives of members in

the St. John's community.

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Members did not comment about the reasons why

blessed water was used for vomiting and enemas. However,

water was associated with cleansing, and purification was

associated with healing. Impurity and dirtiness were the

result of living in a sinful state.2 The use of water for

vomiting, enemas and bathing were symbolic ritual acts that

cleansed one internally and externally. In the discourse

that follows, Mrs. Mazibula talked about how she used water

at St. John's for cleansing and purification:

I go to church on Thursday and Friday during the week. I go and help the people there to give enemas and to give water. All those who have belts help to give enemas, and to bathe other sick people. On Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday the sick people vomit from 10:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. The enemas are given on the same three days. Those who need a bath get a bath. Those who are supposed to get an enema, get an enema and those who are supposed to vomit are given water to vomit.

This ritual use of water purified that which was associated

with dirt and washed away that which might generate

sickness. Purification rituals were regularized and

performed by specialists who wore belts that signified

membership at St. John's and a personal experience of having

been healed by the same rituals that were administered.

Candles as Symbols

Candles had symbolic significance in the various

rituals performed at St. John's and burned continually

2See Ndiokwere 1981:10 for more on indigenous churches and purification of pollution.

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throughout the day and night in the sanctuary.3 Members of

the church brought candles as an offering during worship,

and were responsible for keeping them lighted at all times.

I wrote the following description of the use of candles

which provides a sense of their connection with umova:

The first time I worshiped at St. John’s, I was struck by the presence of white candles burning in every area of the church. My first glimpse of a burning candle occurred when Mrs. Ntiliti escorted me into a room adjacent to the sanctuary where we waited to enter the worship service. It was a very small room and in the corner was a candle burning softly and flickering gently. This lone candle cast a glow that gave the room a welcoming presence. Mrs. Ntiliti got on her knees to pray when we entered the room. I did the same.

After we entered the sanctuary, I saw seven candles burning in a candelabra. They burned throughout the entire service. When a candle burned to a low point, one of the members inserted a new one in its place.

The significance of the burning candles was

related to the flame and the light that they provided.

Burning candles embodied the closeness and the movement of

the Spirit (umova) that gave power (Dube 1991:11). The

light of the candles brought significance to ritual actions

that took place in the space where they were burning.

According to Kiernan:

The candle, once blessed, becomes mystically empowered to dispel the works of darkness and to protect a person against evil spirits and their debilitating effects (Kiernan 1972:214).

3See Kiernan 1972:211-212 for the significance of candles in other indigenous churches.

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Light was a symbol that was associated with honorable

behavior, good health, and good fortune (Ngubane 1977:115).

One of the bishops of St. John's said to me, "Candles and

water are the main things at St. John's. We must always

have candles so that we can see what we are doing." For

St. John's members to see what they were doing signified

according to the same bishop, that they "see how to heal."

In a sermon given on 10 November 1991, Reverend

Xaba drew on imagery found in Revelation 3 and told the

congregation about the significance of candles. He said:

The book [Revelations 3] says there are seven candles. When you see the seven candles that we use when we make a sacrifice, know that it is those seven stars [from Revelations], Those are your stars. Your candles are seven. The book says so . . .

Reverend Xaba's sermon suggested that the seven stars in

Revelations 3 were represented by the seven candles that

continually burned in the sanctuary. When people came to

St. John's to be healed, they often came with a gift of

seven candles to be used in the church. As the stars in

Revelations 3 provided light, the ever burning candles at

St. John's provided closeness to the Spirit.

The Staff as Symbol

The symbolic importance of the staff was

articulated by Mrs. Mazibula. When asked what symbols were

important for St. John's Church, she responded:

Did you see that stick that Reverend Xaba has in his hand when he goes to church? That stick is very important in our church . . . you can't do

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the prophets if you haven't got that stick. He uses it a lot . . . it gives power to somebody who's carrying the stick; to feel the power of God . . . when we pray for the people, we use the stick most of the time.

The stick was called indonaa vokuphilisa and members often

mentioned its importance when asked about healing. Mrs.

Mazibula explained that Reverend Xaba's ability to divine or

prophet came from using the stick and that it also equipped

him with the power to heal. It was an authoritative symbol

in the life of St. John's Church.

Color Symbolism

The symbolic use of color was prolific at St.

John's and was used particularly in relation to healing and

caring for sickness.4 St. John's members made a direct

correlation between use of particular colored belts and

cords for healing. When a colored belt was wrapped around a

part of the body, it was believed to immediately medicate

the unhealthy body part. Mrs. Mazibula explained how and

why belts of various colors were used for healing. She

said:

Even the belt— they give a belt to you to put on. The color they give makes you have good health. But you don't just get belts, you get them when it is necessary. The belts are blue, white, red and green. The red covers you from outside enemies. Blue and white are very good colors so that you don't see terrible things at night. You can dream very good. You can have nice dreams. You can see everything in your dreams and even in visions.

4For use of color in other indigenous churches see (Williams 1982:128;151-152;155-157; Kiernan 1991).

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Green also protects you from outside enemies. It's the same as red.

This quotation from Mrs. Mazibula shows her keen

awareness of the meaning of colors and how they influenced

healing. The colors had a spiritual power that emanated

though a belt. This supports Victor Turner's thesis that

spiritual power is often manifested through the material (V.

Turner 1967:21). This supposition is useful, as the

material objects that St. John's members used were chosen

for the colors that they incorporated and the power

associated with those colors.

During rituals, St. John's healers were required

to wear blue and white which were the colors about which

Mother Christina Nku had a vision before she established the

church in 1938. The colors were used with great reverence

because of their sacred healing power. Bishop Njobe

explained how Mother Nku chose the colors used by the

church:

The white stands for purity and the blue stands for a special peace. These colors are part of the ritual. Mrs. Nku had a vision of these colors that was quite scriptural. The apostles used to take yards of material and sleep on it. The people who touched the material or who were bound to the material would get well. Mother Nku felt that her method was to bless all who passed under the material. Those who passed under the material with these colors were healed.

There were many testimonies offered by people who had been

healed by St. John's members, always while they wore blue

and white. During a sermon, Reverend Xaba pointed to the

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white coat that he wore and exhorted that Revelations 3

promised that God "will bless you in a white garment. When

you came out of water during Baptism you were given new

clothes." He continued saying, "White clothes . . . say

that you have overcome."

Baptism was the ritual required in order for a

person to become a member of St. John's. Only after baptism

could a person wear the blue and white uniform. One

informant said, "When I was baptized, they gave me my

uniform." Another member said, "... today, I am putting

on the white coat as a person who is a believer."

The color blue/green (luhlaza) was worn by all St.

John's members. Women wore a blue shirt and belt along with

a blue cape draped over their shoulders. Men wore a blue

belt across white coats. On Sunday 27 October 1991, Mr.

Ndongeni became a member and was robed in a white coat and

blue belt by Reverend Xaba. During the robing ritual

Reverend Xaba said:

This belt is not for decoration. It is a belt of power. You are being given this belt in order that you can heal people. If you serve us the water, you must use this belt. If anyone is ill, you must pray for that person with this belt on. . . This is not an ornamental belt. This blue and white cannot be worn in town. This blue and white uniform is for the lake. This belt is for sick people.

Reverend Xaba addressed Mr. Ndongeni about the significance

of the belt, particularly its power in healing. He stressed

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healing rituals at St. John's and not worn cavalierly.

Mrs. Mazibula explained the meaning of the blue

belt saying:

. . . the blue belt means that you are a full Apostolic. It means you must work. If anyone comes here and is very sick, you must do something because you have the power of God with this belt.

Thus, the color blue signified God's power at work through a

human source to heal others.

White (mhlpphe), the other color used in the

uniforms worn by St. John's members, represented

cleanliness, purity and virtue. It was related to light and

drew forth all that strengthened life.5 During a worship

service Reverend Xaba said the following about the white

uniforms:

It is the miracle of the laying on of hands and water that has swelled our ranks so that today, we see so many white uniforms. The prophets who came before us worked for the great numbers we have today.

White uniforms, the laying on of hands and water constituted

the recipe for healing at St. John's. The greatest prophet

was Mother Nku because she instructed the church to use the

colors which Reverend Xaba and others believed in as St.

John's recipe for healing. The increased membership of the

church was evidence that healing changed peoples' lives.

5The ethnography of other anthropologists who have done field work in southern Africa suggests that the color white represents well-being, courage, peace, grace and coherence (see V. Turner 1967:57; Ngubane 1977:114).

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On October 12-14, 1991, a St. John's congregation

in Cofimvaba, Transkei held a festival which representatives

from St. John's Churches all over the country attended.6

Festivals were occasions for a church to celebrate its

accomplishments and receive financial gifts from sister

churches. Reverend Xaba was the presiding minister at the

festival's Friday evening service and said the following as

a woman was being given the vows for membership:

With how many people have I shared the miracle of the prophets' healing; the miracle of being healed by the laying of hands? That is why I thank the God of Mother Skosana who picked me up in Cape Town. I thank Father Masango who sent God's person so that today, I am putting a white coat on a person who appears to be a believer. That is why I am here. I have come to be empowered here . . . I have come to put my light on this new believer.

The "white coat" symbolized a new life of empowerment that

was given by former prophets. Mother Skosana was the woman

who healed Reverend Xaba before he became a minister in St.

John's. Father Masango was the archbishop who led a branch

of the church after its initial split.

The various colors that St. John's members used

served as a symbol to outsiders. For instance, the blue and

white uniforms, that represented their church, indicated

that members had chosen to live in a spiritual way. People

were healed through the symbolic power of color.

6I drove a car to the Transkei which is about 600 miles from Cape Town. Transportation was thus provided for me, Reverend and Mrs. Xaba, and my research assistant, Mrs. Barbara Mantata.

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The Eucharist as Symbol

The Eucharist was a ritual that was conducted at

quarterly festivals as well as at festivals hosted by local

churches. Rarely conducted at St. John's - Guguletu, it was

served only in the evening, replicating the time of day when

Jesus served the disciples, according to Biblical scripture.

The service began with foot washing, which enacted the time

that Jesus washed the feet of the twelve disciples and

symbolically became a servant in his community. Afterwards,

bread which symbolized the body of Christ and wine, which

represented the blood of Christ, were blessed and

distributed to those who were full members of the church.

Full membership included those who had been baptized.

Members prepared themselves for the Eucharist by fasting,

praying, and reconciling relationships that may have been

strained.

At the Friday night service mentioned above,

Reverend Xaba said the following after the Eucharist:

There is one word I heard. A word that talks about this evening. Where it is said that Jesus took the bread and blessed it and gave it to his disciples. He took the cup, prayed and blessed it and gave it to his disciples saying that they should drink . . . I am disturbed by the evening when Christ did this and commanded that this be done by us. After tears, after sweating and praying in Gethesmane, Jesus performed a task. He was going to live with his disciples even though he would soon be hung on the cross.

I thank God for my presence here tonight. I wish that God may plead on my behalf as he does for his disciples. I give thanks to the angel of Father Masango and Mother Anna; people who respected God.

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We too are helped by giving respect to God. I too will descend in prayer.

Reverend Xaba remembered Father Masango and Mother Anna, two

prophets of St. John's who were deceased. The service of

Communion was an occasion to remember those who had died and

who were promised eternal life as believers.

Summary

The focus of this chapter has been symbols

utilized at St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission - Guguletu.

These symbols were essential components of the ritual drama

created at worship and healing services. Through the ritual

use of symbols, St. John's members were able to dramatize

ambiguous life situations within a cultural context that

included belief in supernatural powers that augmented

healing in the lives of members. Chapter 8 examines the

cultural construction of illness and provides specific

examples of healing at St. John's.

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THE CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF ILLNESS

"What good is your medicine if you can't tell me why I got sick?" (Pilch 1986:102).

Overview of Ethnomedicine

Ethnomedicine, a growing sub-field of

anthropology, will provide the focus for this chapter on the

cultural construction of illness as reflected in St.

John's - Guguletu's ritual and healing. The sub-field of

ethnomedicine is defined as:

those beliefs and practices relating to disease which are the products of indigenous cultural development and are not explicitly derived from the conceptual framework of modern medicine (Hughes 1968:99).

The intent of researchers in the sub-field is to explore

ways in which communities of people maintain health and

understand the causes of illness. The totality of these

behavioral patterns equals a cultural system which is

explainable through analysis of data from participants.

Biomedicine, one approach within the sub-field of

ethnomedicine, places primary emphasis on biological

indicators of illness, indicators which may or may not be

known to the patient. Through modern western scientific

development, biomedicine has come to dominate legitimacy

251

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with regard to human health. Although information and

knowledge possessed by the patient and his/her socio

cultural patterns of behavior are less significant for

biomedical diagnosis and treatment, this field nevertheless

offers definitions and explanations of human health

problems. Popular and folk (non-biomedical) approaches to

health and bio-medical responses to health stand in counter

distinction to one another and yet, human beings in cultures

around the globe are known to employ all three approaches.

It is not coincidental that poor people, more often than

not, specifically choose the contextual healing of popular

and folk practitioners over practitioners associated with

biomedicine.

Clearly, national political and economic forces

set the stage, influence and eventually determine the kind

of health care a community of people will receive (Feierman

1985:73). The political economy of a nation determines the

distribution of sickness and death because macro-level

decisions related to the social costs of production

determine the micro categories of who will live and who will

die (Feierman 1985:74). The social costs of production are

primarily "factors of production,11 such things as, the

expense of supporting laborers and their relatives, the

expense of sustaining fit labor conditions, and the expense

of supporting retired workers (Feierman 1985:93). Whether

or not national money will be put aside for health care,

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segments of a nation's population will have access to a

healthy life (Feierman 1985:93). An understanding of this

macro-level context is essential for valid anthropological

analysis of healing rituals among members of St. John's

Church - Guguletu.

Social Costs of Production and Health Care in South Africa

Steven Feierman comments on the social costs of

production in South Africa and the relationship of those

costs to health care for people. He says:

South Africa's decision to use a migrant labor workforce has had significant consequences for health within the country and the southern Africa region. The costs of caring for ailments, the costs of old age support, child rearing, and food for workers' families, are borne to the greatest extent possible by the workers and their families (Feierman 1985:95).

The migrant workforce is predominantly composed of African

men who leave their family households in order to secure

income from work in other localities. Characteristically,

monies earned by migrant African men are minimal for

sustaining their households and even these resources are

rarely available for return to the separated family members

This separation of men from families has a simultaneous

effect on the way work is defined for African women. The

South African government further disadvantages the black

population by separating the domestic sphere from the work

place and society in general. This results in women's work

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in the homelands, to be considered not as labor, nor as

production, but almost exclusively as reproductive activity

(Feierman 1985:95). The differentiated valuation of the

labor of men and women produces an unequal system of health

services and makes distinctions in the compensation of the

social costs of production. No national funds are allocated

for the work of women, thereby reducing the available

resources for the care and maintenance of family health for

those left behind by men migrants. There is a clear

correlation between male migrant laborers and the absence of

health care for women and children in homeland communities.

Cross-cultural studies show that the absent incomes of these

fathers and the malnutrition of children go hand in hand

(Feierman 1985:92;101; Thomas 1981:553). It is important to

note that fifteen St. John's members migrated from the

Transkei and Ciskei. Of the fifteen, three were single

women who lived in a one-room shack with their children at

the church. With the abolition of the Influx Control Law in

1986 many black South Africans migrated from the homelands

to urban areas and occupied any vacant land that was

available (Cook 1991:26-42). These migrants, called

informal settlers, hoped to find a better way of life in the

cities of South Africa (Lemon 1991:114-115). African

children living in the city have better access to health

care and food because of their close proximity to resources

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from local clinics and hospitals as well as to neighborhood

networks in the townships (Feierman 1985:92/103). The women

at St. John's who worked as domestics and raised children,

without the presence of fathers, developed a network that

supported the care and nutritional development of their

children.

Ernie and Etic Approaches to Health Care

To fully appreciate approaches to health care in

the context of South Africa, the anthropologist's dichotomy

of "emic", an insider's view, and "etic”, an outsider's

view, is useful. The emic perspective can be seen in a

healer who assesses a patient's chronic headaches and

identifies herbs which may bring relief. Significantly, the

healer gives credence to the patient's report that she did

not dedicate her last born child to a deceased maternal aunt

who was childless. This constitutes an emic approach

because the healer lives in the same cultural micro-level

system as the patient. Biomedicine, on the other hand,

might use laboratory tests to assess the biological cause of

the headaches. This equals the etic approach within an

anthropological framework because many specialties in

biomedicine do not necessarily consider the world in which a

patient lives. The patient may merely be viewed as a "body"

that has a malady, and as such, social relations may be

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inconsequential. In other words, the body1 may be separated

from the social relations (Feierman 1985:109; Helman

1990:89). For the most part, biomedical approaches do not

take seriously popular and folk methods of healing (Kleinman

1980:31-33). The challenge to this anthropological study

of healing rituals at St. John's has been to find the

meaning(s) of the emic health care discourse within St.

John's - Guguletu. More importantly, the challenge has been

to allow St. John's participants to articulate their own

meaning for health and healing and thereby construct their

own socio-cultural context for the phenomena. This

examination, therefore, moves from "etic to emic and back to

etic again" (Malina 1981b:1307) and in so doing makes the

experiences of members of St. John's understandable to those

who do not participate in the rituals.

Before we can adequately examine the internal

dynamics of the meaning of healing rituals at St. John's, we

must clarify these activities with regard to issues of

sickness, disease and illness as understood from a

biomedical perspective. In this regard, Arthur Kleinman's

articulations and model are helpful.

Kleinman's Model of Health Care as a Cultural System

Kleinman suggests that medical anthropology often

views sickness singularly as a way to explain a particular

!See Helman 1990:11-30 for an interpretation of culture and the body.

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reality, while disease and illness are explanatory ideas for

understanding that single reality (Kleinman 1980:72).

Disease is a biomedical construct that explains

abnormalities in the structure and function of organs.

These pathological abnormalities may or may not be

culturally acknowledged (Pilch 1985:143). A disease may

affect the body of an individual, and the treatment that

would be offered is primarily to an individual. From a

biomedical perspective, the "sickness" of a married woman

who is unable to become pregnant may not be caused by a

disease and could proceed as an untreatable incident.

Arthur Kleinman offers a critique of medical

anthropology's etic focus on the healer as a separate entity

and continues to suggest a more inclusive model. He claims

that, "The overwhelming distortion in medical anthropology

. . . has been one in which healers were studied in

isolation as the central component of medicine in society"

(Kleinman 1980:205). His model of health care contains

three intersecting areas: professional, popular, and folk.

The Professional Sector

The professional sector consists of all organized healing professions, including the indigenous professionalized healers (Kleinman 1980:53-59).

The Popular Sector

Included in the popular sector model are the lay, non-professional, and non-specialist practitioners. Usually, this sector has the largest number of practitioners. There is great potential for transcending limitations of bio-

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medical anthropology by exploring the popular sector (Kleinman 1980:50-53).

Folk Sector

This sector includes non-professional specialists who are not connected with formal institutions. While folk medicine is associated with many different dimensions of culture, it is most closely identified with the popular sector and overlaps with the intersection of the professional and popular sectors (Kleinman 1980:59-60).

However, it is Kleinman's description of a local health care

system as a total model that is more in tune with the socio

cultural perspective of anthropology and this research

project.

Patients and healers comprise the cultural system

of Kleinman's health care model and any analysis of healing

must begin with both groups. Healing takes place as an

inclusive entity and not simply through the agency of the

healer (Kleinman 1980:72). A model of the system is a map

which guides understanding of human behavior as it relates

to health care. More specifically, use of the model helps

draw out the ways in which a given group of people think

about health and what actions they take to utilize their

socio-cultural system of care. The actions which people

take are linked to beliefs that reflect cultural

assumptions.

One can say that a health care system is cultural,

yet it is not limited to this. It is also societal in

orientation, design, purpose and relevance (Kleinman

1980:27). Put in succinct terms:

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. . . the health care system is created by a collective view and shared pattern of usage operating on a local level, but seen and used somewhat differently by different social groups, families and individuals (Kleinman 1980:39).

The anthropological study of a health care system,

therefore, may be from a macro or whole society approach, or

a micro or local settings approach. We move now to the

micro perspective, examining the Biblical theology used at

St. John's for healing.

Biblical Theology as a Foundation for Ritual Healing

How can this framework shed light on the biblical

texts used by and for St. John's members? Interviews with

members reflect commitment to Biblical tradition and

allegiance to rituals initiated by St. John's founder,

Mother Nku.

The Old and New Testaments of the Bible provided

the people of St. John's Church with a solid Biblical

theology for their ritualistic activity. The Bible served

as a key source by which people reflected upon their lives.

The majority of the eighteen persons interviewed owned

Bibles and indicated that it was a source of inspiration,

revelation, and a tool with which to reflect upon life.

Indeed, the Bible was the source from which all testimony

emanated during worship services and it was the only

resource used for preaching. When Mrs. Mazibula was asked,

"Why do you have a Bible?", she said,

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I'm supposed to have a Bible because I'm a Christian. Once we go to the church, we are asked to open our Bible. Then we read it. I have to know what is in the Bible."

When she was asked, "How does the Bible guide your life?,"

she responded:

The Bible leads you to the Spirit of God and also to the love of God. It leads you. I have never seen God, but the Bible leads you to love your neighbors and to love the people you see on the streets. That means anybody; your family; your brother, anybody.

St. John's member, Thobeka said the following when

she was asked why she had a Bible,

I have a Bible because I'm a Christian. I must have a Bible. We believe in the Bible. If we didn't need the Bible, we wouldn't be Christian.

Finally, Mrs. Joxo said in response to the same question, "I

must have a Bible. How can I go to my church without a

Bible?"

Reverend Xaba used the Bible when a sick person

came to him to find out the nature of his/her life. During

an interview, Reverend Xaba told me:

The way that I find out about a person is to open the Bible and to see what God's word speaks to me. I can always depend on the Bible to tell me what I need to know and how to instruct the person. The Bible leads me to the truth about the person's illness.

Hence, the Bible provided Reverend Xaba with a source

through which to heal and a means by which to understand the

sickness of adherents. It provided members a way of knowing

about God. As Nonceba said in her interview, "I want to

know the knowledge of the Bible." Hence, the members of St.

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John's understood that being Christian meant to know the

Bible.

The members of St. John's responded to the Bible

with commitment because it was a source by which people came

to understand healing and to experience a renewed life. For

instance, the powerful God revealed in Exodus 15:26 who

says, "I am the Lord, your healer" was literally understood

by St. John's members.

Drawing from the themes found in the Hebrew

scriptures, St. John's members believed that an essential

ingredient in a recipe for healing was living in the "right"

way, which meant living a life as free of sin as possible.

Sickness could be caused by uncleanliness or deviation from

the way of God. To illustrate St. John's focus on righteous

living, I wrote the following description after I went to

Reverend Xaba about my own personal experience of sickness:

When I sought counsel from Reverend Xaba about a health problem, a series of ritualized events occurred over a three week period. During my first meeting with him, he gave me his Bible and asked me to read Leviticus 5. This chapter is about how a person sins, becomes ceremonially unclean, or is guilty of wrong doing. The writer of Leviticus outlines in great detail the ways in which a person may enter a disfavored relationship with God. Silence, regarding knowledge of a private matter that should become publicly known, is a sin (vs. 1); a person may enter a ceremonially unclean state through various actions, for example: by touching the carcasses of unclean animals (vs. 2), or by touching a human being who is in an unclean state (vs. 3), or a person is guilty if an oath is taken thoughtlessly (vs. 4). If a person is guilty of any of these acts then he/she must confess his/her sin and make an appropriate offering, such as a lamb or goat.

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The priest is an intermediary and makes atonement on behalf of the person (vs. 5-6). The sinner is to bring an offering which is affordable (v. 11).

After reading Leviticus 5, Reverend Xaba and I had a discussion about the scripture. He suggested that something concerning my health was out of order and that my health could be restored. He explained that while the scripture suggested that a lamb or goat be offered, the founder of the church, Mother Nku, understood that most people affiliated with St. John's were poor and could not afford to buy a lamb or goat or even a pigeon. The church, therefore, permitted people to make a monetary gift which ritualistically represented a "cow or lamb or goat." A cow was R40, a lamb was R20 and a goat was RIO. He stressed that each person had to decide for him/herself what was affordable.

This brief anecdote from my experience of ritual

at St. John's gives some indication of how Biblical

theology, belief and personal economics were woven together

in the healing process. The Bible provided the theological

foundation for the ritual activity that St. John's members

performed. God was the healer of people who were desperate

for healing. Ritual action was the unfolding drama that

moved members from a state of being out of control in their

social environment to a shared community context in which

Reverend Xaba, who represented the sacred, restored

security, harmony and order within the sacred space of the

church. St. John's members were bombarded with a constant

state of chaos. Chaos, often represented by violence, was a

way of life. While it is an overstatement to say that the

chaos and violence, products of the macro-social system that

was perpetuated by the structures of apartheid, caused

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illness among poor populations like the community at St.

John's, it was not an overstatement to suggest as Ramphele

does that apartheid "affects people's sense of well being

that goes along a continuum" (Ramphele, personal

communication, August 12, 1992). The ritual use of biblical

texts, along with the beliefs of the community of faith in

the power of healing and the sacred power bestowed upon

Reverend Xaba, in combination with ritual behavior, was the

formula that produced the healing of persons.

John 5; An Essential Biblical Text for Healing at St. John's

Drawing on resources from the New Testament,

members of St. John's used John 5 as the central scripture

for healing rituals. Reverend Xaba explained that Mother

Nku made this scripture the foundation of healing in the

church because it is about a man being healed at the pool in

Bethesda. In our conversations, Reverend Xaba always

stressed the importance of this scripture for the history

and healing of the church. He explained that the water that

was "prayed over" symbolized the water described in John 5.

Water that had been blessed was the central healing element

at St. John's Church.

John 5 is about a disabled man who sat at a pool

of water, which was known to be a source of miraculous

healing, in a town called Bethesda. The man sat by the pool

for many years desperately hoping that someone would assist

him into the water. While passing through Bethesda, Jesus

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came to this pool and asked the man if he wanted to be

healed. The man explained that he had no one to help him

get into the pool when the water was stirred. Jesus said to

him "Get upl Pick up your mat and walk." At once the man

was healed and picked up his mat and walked.

The importance of this story for St. John's

community was twofold. First, the disabled man and the

community believed that the water in the pool had healing

properties because many persons had immersed their bodies in

it and been healed. Hence, this story established that

water was an agent of healing used during Biblical times.

Second, the story reinforces Jesus' role as a popular

healer. In the passage immediately before John 5, Jesus

heals an official's son (John 4:43-54). Jesus' method of

healing usually began by his asking the sick person whether

or not she/he wanted to be healed. When he asked the

disabled man at the pool this question he received a

positive response. However, Jesus did not heal him by using

water from the pool. Instead Jesus used the sacred power

that he had as a healer. This act amplifies Jesus' role as

a popular healer. The impact of this scripture on the

theology and ministry of St. John's Church was significant

because both water and popular healing were central elements

in the healing rituals. The water for healing at St. John's

parallels the pool in Bethesda and Reverend Xaba's role as

priest/healer parallels Jesus as a popular healer. Thus,

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John 5 was used as the central theme for all healing

rituals. In the same way that the Biblical community

believed that water and Jesus could heal, so St. John's

community believed that blessed water and Reverend Xaba

could heal.

The service of healing was the last segment of the

Sunday morning worship service. As described in chapter 7,

the water was blessed and given to people to drink in small

cups. Nozipo, who lost three children to illnesses before

becoming a member of St. John's, explained to me that after

she and her last born child, Thembisa, became part of St.

John's and began to drink the water, neither she nor her

daughter had been sick again. The women who lived in the

shack at the church with their children said that they

marveled at the health of their children, who had been

drinking the blessed water at least once a week.

St. John's members, on a micro-level, interfaced

with the larger macro-level South African culture. The

micro-level of St. John's had several components, such as

social networks, the family, and worship services. These

components led to particular practices and categorization of

sickness. It is to these areas that we now turn our

attention.

Social Networks

Kinship, biological or fictive, and other social

networks were present as formal social institutions in St.

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John's - Guguletu congregation. These social networks

played a significant role in the popular sector of the

health care system and were manifested in various ways.

The congregation of St. John's was a close-knit

group. While the official membership was forty-eight,

attendance at the four daily worship services fluctuated,

with the 11 a.m. Sunday worship service having the highest

attendance. Attendance at other services was smaller (ten

or less) and more intimate, having the effect of building

tight network groups among those in attendance. For

example, there was a network of older women members who were

not employed outside their homes and who assisted Reverend

Xaba with the healing rituals. Members in this group lived

in their own homes in Guguletu, had an in-depth knowledge of

the theology and rituals of the church, and usually had

personally experienced healing. Women in this network

formed a stable and committed social group within the

congregation. Reverend Xaba could always rely upon them to

assist with the sick. They were also the women who attended

the Thursday afternoon worship service for "mothers,1' who

were mature married women. Male members who had their own

homes in Guguletu or an adjacent township also formed a

small social network. Most of these men were employed and

therefore unable to assist Reverend Xaba with the sick

during the week. They were present at Sunday worship

services and actively participated in testifying, lighting

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candles, and reading the scriptures. There was a third

network among men and women who lived in the shacks on the

church's premises. Those in this network might have been

sick and unemployed; or well but unemployed; or employed,

but too sick to work, or well and employed. Those in this

network were both members and non-member adherents. The

non-member adherents were usually new arrivals, who came to

St. John's to be healed or who came because they did not

have a place to live. Those who were well and employed

usually had personally experienced being healed at St.

John's. One member in this group had been restored to

health and was looking for a place to live in the township.

The shacks were transitional living quarters established for

persons who were recovering from various kinds of maladies.

The unifying factor among all of the networks was

that each looked after the welfare of its members. For

instance, the older women gave ritual baths and enemas to

the sick who usually lived in the shacks. Those living in

the shacks had an elaborate system of care among themselves.

Those who did not work looked after the children of those

who worked. Those who worked, in turn, shared food and

money with those who did not. When those who were

unemployed managed to acquire work or when those who were

sick gained their health and were once again working, they

shared with others who were sick or unemployed or both.

Thus, a ritualized circle was formed of those who were

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healed and those who found work sharing with others who were

sick and unemployed. Those who lived in the shacks were

usually less stable economically and experienced difficulty

finding a permanent place of residence. They usually had

fairly recently experienced healing in contrast to the group

of older women who assisted Reverend Xaba. Members who were

in good health were usually quite willing to assist with the

sick because they had experienced someone caring for them

when they first came to the church. Thus, the networks

replenished themselves as new arrivals became members and

helped with the healing rituals. There were also members of

the church who were less active; that is, they did not

attend services with regularity, nor assist Reverend Xaba

with the sick. Those who lived in the shacks, the women who

assisted with the healing rituals, and the men who

participated on Sunday mornings were the most active members

and non-member adherents. Women's networks differed from

men's only in that women pensioners made more time available

to be at the church and to assist than men. The networks of

those women who lived in the shacks functioned essentially

in the same manner as the networks of men who were shack

dwellers.

Family

The church provided health care for families who

were associated with St. John's adherents. During an

interview Reverend and Mrs. Mjoli talked about an illness

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Mrs. Mjoli manifested before they were members of St.

John's. Reverend Mjoli originally became a member of the

church as a result of the healer's expectation that he

actively participate in his wife's healing process. Mrs.

Mjoli spoke of her illness:

I was very sick when I came to St. John's; that was the only problem. I was suffering. There was a burning sensation between my shoulders. I heard from somebody that there was a woman called Mama Skosana in Woodstock. So I went to Woodstock. When we met, she said that she could not tell me anything unless I took the Bible and I started to prophet through the Bible.

Mrs. Mjoli explained how she was healed by Mama Skosana:

She prayed for me and she always put her hand on me. She prayed for the water and gave me a bottle. She told me that I must always have this bottle at home and that I must pray at home. She also gave me water so that I could vomit. I also had an enema. I was healed in 1954.

Reverend Mjoli talked about how Mama Skosana insisted that

he come to the church if Mrs. Mjoli was to be treated. He

explained:

Mama Skosana said to my wife, "I will not start your healing process unless you come with your husband." What I liked most about Mama Skosana was that she didn't just take my wife and work only with my wife. She also called me as a husband because she was unwilling to do anything without me as husband.

In this case, Mrs. Mjoli was clearly the

individual with the illness. However, her family,

represented by her husband, had to be involved in order for

her to receive treatment. In effect, the life of the whole

household shifted because both husband and wife became part

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of St. John's community and, subsequently, Mr. Mjoli became

a minister of the church.

In Guguletu, health services available to the

community included a day clinic that was staffed by bio

medical professionals. In the greater Cape Town area, there

were two hospitals with full professional staffs. While

these hospitals were open to all people regardless of race

during the time this research was collected, they previously

had a history of being only for white South Africans. One

cannot ascertain how the change in apartheid policy affected

black people's behavior. That is, even though hospitals

were open to all races, it is difficult to determine if

those who were once forbidden their use, felt comfortable

enough to utilize them (Kistner 1990:2). Members of St.

John's visited the day clinic in Guguletu and some members

utilized the hospitals in Cape Town. However, all members

had an association with the healing system at St. John's.

Thus, members blended health systems, that is they utilized

the bio-medical and popular/folk model. Members' use of the

bio-medical system was not often explicitly mentioned in

interviews. Reference to doctors was usually implicit. For

example, Nyawuza mentioned that he had taken medicine

received from the clinic, but when he did not get relief he

went to Reverend Xaba. He then acknowledged that the belt

that Reverend Xaba had given him to put around his neck had

eased his pain.

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The treatment of disease at St. John's Church

consisted of five key ritual acts which used "prayed water":

drinking the blessed water, inducing vomiting, administering

enemas, bathing with the water and spraying blessed water to

remove evil spirits. Harriet Ngubane's research among Zulu

speaking black South Africans in Natal indicates that there

some Zulu and Xhosa-speaking peoples used similar procedures

to relieve disorders. For example, among Zulu-speaking

people liquid herbal medicine was used as an enema and was

believed to draw harmful substances from internal abdominal

organs. Painful menstruation and barrenness were treated in

this manner using specific roots for each condition (Ngubane

1977:107-108). St. John's members use of water and ash

served a similar purpose.

The presentation of sickness at St. John's

initiated a decisive course of treatment. Ngubane provides

data for the way in which Zulu-speaking people used

procedures to bring relief to disorders without utilizing

bio-medical formal institutions or its representatives.

Similar techniques were used at St. John's for all

sicknesses, thus creating a health care system that

incorporated ritualized procedures that had as their goal

the restoration of health to sick persons.

Taxonomy of Sickness

Kleinman suggests that each part of the health

care system formulates its own clinical reality. This

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reality consists of beliefs, hopes, standards, actions, and

disclosures related to sickness, health care seeking,

practitioner-patient relationships, healing activities and

evaluation of results (Kleinman 1980:42).

Since illness is socio-culturally constructed, the

ways in which people talk about their sickness give insight

into how they view the world. The following interview

provides an example of an illness caused by spiritual

forces, "Xhosa illness,” which was freguently reported to

me:

LT: Tell me about your illness.

XX: I was sick because I had Xhosa sickness to be a witch doctor . . . I was sick from 1985 up to 1989.

LT: What did you do as a witch doctor?

XX: When you're sleeping then you see your ancestors, and they tell you what you must do. They want to put beads on your arms, and then they tell you if you want to be healed, you do this. They show you these beads . . . And while you are sick, (that kind of sickness of being a witch doctor), sometimes you look like a mad person. Sometimes the people don't like you because of your actions and you sometimes like to stay alone without anybody; even a radio, when they switch on a radio you don't like it. It just makes you mad. And you feel that you can stay alone where you are. And then after that, you have to get somebody who can treat you right.

Illnesses caused by spiritual forces were not the

only pathologies that were diagnosed at the church. The

following transcript came from a woman who had asthma. She

described what happened when she came to the church:

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LT: Tell me how did you decide to become a member of St. John's?

XX: It was through ill-health.

LT: What was your illness?

XX: It was asthma.

LT: What happened when you came to St. John's?

XX: Asthma was troubling me more often, but when I came to St. John's I got treatment.

LT: What was the treatment?

XX: I used to have some water to drink, a tot or glass to drink. Sometimes we have a vomit or an enema.

LT: What happened when you drank the water and had the enema?

XX: When I vomited I used to vomit very dirty things, the terrible ones.

LT: When did your healing come?

XX: About three years.

LT: Tell me about the healing, what happened?

XX: There was nothing else but the water, the vomiting, the faith. As I received the treatment, I became better and better . . . So I carried on with the treatment, till I felt that I was 100% better.

Infertility was another category of sickness which

was prevalent. Here are two examples:

LT: How did you become a member of St. John's?

XX: I was looking for the children, when I asked for the children then I got the children.

LT: What do you mean that you were looking for the children?

XX: I couldn't get the children, then I started to come to St. John's.

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LT: And what happened when you came to St. John1s?

XX Then I got the children.

LT: What did they do to help you get the children?

XX: They were praying together with me and they were praying for me, so that I could have children. They used to give me water . . . the prayed water . . . Then I did all the rituals with the water and they prayed for me and I got the children.

Another woman who was infertile told how St.

John's helped her with its rituals:

LT: How did you decide to become a member of St. John's?

XX: I didn't get children when I was married.

LT: What happened when you went to St. John's?

XX: Then I got a baby.

LT: What did the people at St. John's do to help you to get a baby?

XX: They just did all the work they do.

LT: What is the work that they do?

XX: They gave me enema and they gave me water to vomit and they also bathed me.

LT: How long after these treatments did you have a baby?

XX: I didn't have any problem after I took all that. Then I just fell pregnant. I had my baby.

LT: How long did it take you to conceive after starting the treatments at St. John's?

XX: When I went to my husband in Welkom, . . . he was already in St. John's. He took me to his church and explained to the people that I didn't get babies. From that time they

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started to do all their work. They started to give me enemas and those three things. It was not a month before I fell pregnant.

The discourse that follows came from Ndsilibe who

talked about how he became a Christian through his encounter

with healing at St. John's. He described an illness related

to bad spirits:

I became a Christian because I was pulling hard even when I was growing up. It was very bad because I was sick all the time. So, although I was sick, I was healed in this church. That's why I decided to become a Christian in St. John's. I used to dream terrible things— evil things. I dreamed like this: sometimes if I was walking on the street, I saw people who wanted to do something bad to me. So I decided to go to St. John's when I saw all these things that were happening to me. Once in St. John's, they started by giving me water to vomit. They also gave me water so that I could use it at home. Then they prayed for me. They put their hands on my head and they prayed for me. That is why I decided to come to this church because I could see that it healed me. Before I attended St. John’s, even before they helped me to vomit, I took medicine. I also went to the witch doctor. The medicine and the witch doctor never helped me. I got help in St. John's. I could see the difference, so I believed. I feel in my heart that I believe in this church. This church is my shepherd which will look after my life.

Categories of illness which emerge from these

transcripts are: bad spirits, infertility, affliction by

outside spirit forces, and respiratory disease. George

Foster's ethnomedical work in Mexico, prompted him to

conclude that health care systems could be classified and

based on etiology. He divided the causes of disease into

personalistic (intervention from human or divine beings) and

naturalistic (organic disorders). While people tended to

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prefer one or the other as the cause of their sickness,

neither was mutually exclusive (Foster 1976:54).

The original speech of St. John's members suggests

that the health care system reflects both personalistic and

naturalistic etiologies with the personalistic category

provoking a concern about what forces were responsible for

an illness and why it affected a person. About these Foster

said, "In personalistic systems, illness is but a special

case in the explanation of all misfortune" (Foster 1976:

776). Peter Worsley adds an important point: "We are not

dealing with illness but with misfortune and the prevention

of misfortune" (Worsley 1982:327).

The illness episodes reported by St. John's

members are emic explanations which describe a dimension of

the socio-cultural construction of the lives of these

people. Some illnesses were thought to involve incorporeal

forces that acted in ways that people sought to understand.

Healing, as reported in these examples from the

popular sector of the health care system, was more than

self-care. The sick person went to a practitioner for

healing in a community context. More specifically, sick

persons went to a priest-healer affiliated with a church for

healing.

Worship Services

The worship services were stylized ritual forms

which included segments that were consistently repeated;

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thus, order was formed in a way that offered hope to this

community. All services included songs sung a cappella with

stylized rhythmic hand clapping. A portion of the worship

service was devoted to community testimony in which people

talked about their lives and made specific requests to God.

Additionally, the Bible was read and those who wished to do

so, exhorted upon scriptures. Prayer was interspersed

throughout the service. All services were commenced by lay

men or women. The minister usually entered the sanctuary

while testimonies were being given.

Two segments from the ritualized testimonies,

known as the time to "ask of God" (Sivacela Kuwe. Jehovah),

are presented below. In the first, a woman talked about her

own health and made an appeal to God for her husband to find

employment.

I felt that I should come because I feel down. My body is not well . . . I want to ask for my husband that he may get a job . . .

On another Sunday in October 1991, a woman said the following:

I thank God for giving me a job. I used to be unfortunate— whites would not even open their doors for me when I went about asking for a job because I was despicable. But, because of the prayers I received here, things have changed. I used to be pressurized by means of medicine. Someone working his magic on me. I prayed and God showed his presence . . .

Both testimonies show women who were concerned

about their own and their family's livelihood. Unemployment

was a daily reality for many of the members. The

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instability that unemployment caused in their lives was an

issue that these women chose to lift in testimony for God

and the community to hear. The church was a place where

they could talk about their concerns, be understood and

supported. The support was immediate in that after each

"asking,” those present said a prayer for the specific

petitions which were requested.

Reverend Xaba and the members of the church formed

a healing community. St. John's therapeutic healing

community was similar to the one John Janzen discusses in

his work on healing in the Kongo (Janzen 1978b). Janzen's

work led him to conclude that at the onset of sickness, a

network of people gathered to support the sick person and to

influence the type of care that was provided. Janzen called

this circle of people a "therapy managing group." The

networks at St. John's at times resembled Janzen's therapy

management group in their care for the sick. For instance,

a sick person usually came to St. John's because of the

personal testimony of another person or because the sick

person heard about the healing ministry of the church, or

because a St. John's member brought him/her to the church.

The first person that sick people usually met was Reverend

Xaba. In that initial encounter with Reverend Xaba,

therapeutic care began. Typically, he asked the sick

person, "Why have you come here? Do you want to be healed?"

During all his years in ministry, Reverend Xaba could not

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recall a time that a person came to him, but declined to be

healed. Reverend Xaba propheted the person and in so doing

found out more about the individual and her/his

circumstances. Next, Reverend Xaba called on the network of

women members who administered ritual baths, enemas and

vomiting. These members were essentially a therapeutic

health care group. This therapeutic group managed the care

of the person, believed that the person would be healed and

helped the person through the various stages of healing.

For instance, food was prepared for the person,

accommodations arranged and assistance provided for getting

to the church services if it was necessary. Thus, the

members of St. John's formed therapeutic management groups

as they were deemed necessary for the care of sick persons.

The Priest-Healer

Reverend Xaba operated in an environment in which

many other healers were also called upon to make diagnoses

and perform rites of healing. The other healers worked out

of secular context, that is, their work was not grounded in

Christianity, thus, the power of healing did not arise from

commitment to a belief in the Bible and the power of the

Holy Spirit as witnessed in Biblical tradition. Since the

focus of this study is healing in a Christian context, I

will present material on Reverend Xaba, putting him in a

context that acknowledges other secular healers, while not

devoting time on the latter.

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How was the priest-healer effective in the St.

John's community? Many different members called upon

Reverend Xaba in his capacity as priest-healer. Priest-

healer was a role that revealed the power of the sacred.

The priestly role identified him with God and the church.

The role as healer identified him with sacred power which

restored health. Some examples of how people referred to

Reverend Xaba are outlined below. Yoliswa said the

following:

I went to St. John's because I was sick. I came specifically to Cape Town because of St. John's. My sickness was like this. I was asleep and when I woke up I couldn't turn and look on the other side. Since I was ill, I decided to go to Tata Xaba. When I went to him, he put his hand on my head and prayed. He gave me water to drink. He gave me a string of twine to put on around my legs. He also gave me twine to put around my head and around my waist. I told him about my dreams. My dreams were just pushing me to this church. As I followed the rules of the church, they prayed for me. Then I decided to join the church. Up to now, this is how I live. I believe that since I decided to join St. John's, the way I live is different. We are different from the other churches. I do not know other churches that put hands on people and pray. We give the water to drink for healing. We also have special times to pray. I go to church on Sundays, but at other times I pray in my house because the church is very far away to go at other times.

In this passage, Reverend Xaba's role as healer is

highlighted. Yoliswa said, "I was sick so I went to Tata

Xaba." In detail she described what Tata Xaba did, "...

he put a hand on my head . . . he prayed . . . he gave me

water . . . he gave me a twine ..." Tata Xaba, as healer

made contact with Yoliswa, the patient, by touch, he spoke

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to a holy power on her behalf, and gave remedies that in his

mind as healer, were the means to her recovery.

Healing not only restored physical health, it

reestablished the means to a livelihood. Yoliswa told me

what she liked most about St. John's and about how she

found work:

I like the symbols at St. John's. When I started St. John's I was sick and not working. I stayed with Mama Xaba and Tata Xaba at the church. They told me that I must sit down and not look for a job. They said that while I stayed in the church, I would find a job. They were right. Really, I did get a job. I am working for a white family; (white people don't like people; they do funny things). Sometimes I stay at their house for two weeks. But, if I stay there two weeks, before I go, I drink the blessed water and I spray myself with the water. I go straight to work, and they accept me. If I ask something from them, they give it to me. They make me like their child.

The other thing that I like about St. John's is that people come to this house of God because they are sick. We pray for them. We give them the water and they are healed. It is a miracle for them. They don't know how the healing happens.

Living in the sacred space of the church along

with Mama and Tata Xaba and receiving direction from them

changed Yoliswa*s life. She found a job in the home of a

white family that she believed treated her decently. She

also believed that the water helped her relationship with

the white family. Thus, water not only healed physical

sickness but social sickness as well.

At the end of interviews, it was customary for me

to ask if there were any questions that the person wanted to

ask me. One man, showed his ardent belief in the abilities

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of Reverend Xaba by inquiring if I had not already asked

Reverend Xaba, the priest-healer all the questions which I

had just queried of him. This brief exchange illustrates

the confidence that this man had in Tata Xaba's authority in

all matters relating to the church and its ministry.

LT: Do you have any other questions to ask me?

XX: Yes, I want to also ask you about the answers you got about the cloth we put up when we go to the lake on Sundays. I'm definitely sure that before you came to us, you talked to our minister. I want to know what Tata Xaba said to you, because I can't tell you. I want to know what he said and why you want to know from me now?

LT: Oh, . . . when I talked with Father Xaba, I asked him many things, but I did not ask him about the cloth yet. When he comes back from Pretoria, I will talk with him again.

Finally, Mrs. Mazibula described how she began to

go to St. John's and her encounter with Reverend Xaba:

Before I joined the church, I just went to see what was going on inside there. I took a long time. Then after a while I signed my name and they took me to be baptized. When I was baptized, they gave me my uniform. I got sick again, but it didn't take long for me to heal after I went to St. John's. When you are sick, you go to St. John's and the first thing that happens is they take you to Tata Xaba. Then Tata Xaba tells you everything, all your problems. He takes the Bible and looks at the Bible and tells you everything— all that is happening to you and what's going to happen, too. Then after that he tells you what you must do. He tells you that you must come to the church. When you come the members give you some water to drink so that you can vomit and then after that they give you water for an enema. The next time they give you a bath and then some water to take home so that you can spray your house. You also drink the water at home.

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This passage describes the powers of Reverend

Xaba. If a person wanted to go to Reverend Xaba, usually a

member of the church took the person to him. By looking at

and talking to the patient, Reverend Xaba was able to

discern the sickness or malady and recommend the standard

treatment of using blessed water for drinking, vomiting,

enema and bathing.

Summary

Chapter 8 has presented an overview of

ethnomedicine and discussed Kleinman's model of health care

as a cultural system. The chapter has argued that a

cultural approach to health care in South Africa

necessitates that the social costs of production be

considered. South Africa's utilization of a migrant labor

workforce comprised primarily of African males has impacted

all dimensions of life for black South Africans in rural and

urban settings. South Africa's failure to provide adequate

health care for the majority of its population influenced

micro-level social relations like those found at St.

John's - Guguletu. St. John's focus on healing rituals was

in part a response to decades of neglected health services

for black South Africans.

St. John's Church developed a health care system

that was spiritually based and supported by the Biblical

theology found in John 5. This passage presents a healing

process that included water as a restorative agent and Jesus

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as a popular healer. The healing rituals of St. John's

reflected the healing process found in John 5 and thus,

enabled St. John's to have continuity with a selected

Biblical past. Interviews provide evidence that members

were committed to Biblical theology as many read and had a

desire to understand the Bible. Biblical theology was

intimately tied to healing, as my own personal experience

with Reverend Xaba concerning a sickness showed. When we

examined Leviticus 5, I found that there were specific

reasons that one might be ceremonially unclean and thus,

susceptible to sickness. Reverend Xaba recommended that I

make a symbolic sacrifice as suggested in Leviticus. In

addition to Biblical theology, rituals of healing were

sources of rejuvenation. Water that had been blessed was

consumed and used for bathing, vomiting and enemas.

The health care system at St. John's also included

social networks which supported sick persons in various

stages of recovery. Sickness included physical as well as

social maladies caused by circumstances such as

unemployment. Family participation was an essential part of

the healing process as evidenced by the Mjoli case.

The cases presented in the section "Taxonomy of

Sickness" were not singled out purposely, but reflect those

collected in interviews. The cases presented included

infertility, asthma, and sickness caused by bad spirits. In

all sickness categories, the healing process was claimed to

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have worked as a result of following the prescribed St.

John's healing method of drinking blessed water, vomiting,

bathing and having an enema.

Worship services and the presence of Reverend Xaba

as the priest healer were key components to healing at St.

John's. Worship provided a therapeutic means for

congregants to actively participate in testimony, prayer,

singing and healing. Reverend Xaba as priest/healer had

sacred powers from a supernatural source related to the

Christian church. The total health care system at St.

John's therefore included Biblical theology that contained

stories of healing by the popular healer, Jesus; a Biblical

tradition that empowered water to be a healing source,

networks of members, who had personally experienced healing,

caring for others who were sick, meaningful worship services

and a priest/healer who had divine powers. Such a health

care system eased the difficulties of life experienced by

people who lived in particularly harsh social circumstances.

In the next chapter general conclusions for this

study of St. John's - Guguletu are presented.

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GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

The principal goal of this dissertation has been

to examine the healing rituals of St. John's Church in the

historical cultural context of apartheid South Africa.

Healing as it occurred in micro-level social relations, and

within the sacred space of St. John's, as well as its role

in transforming the lives of St. John's members in a way

that empowered them to persevere in macro-level apartheid

space, has been the central focus of the study. Several

major conclusions are drawn from the fieldwork.

First, this dissertation has outlined global and

national events (macro-level) which influenced the

political, social, economic, and religious development of

local communities (micro-level) of black South Africans. A

reading of South African history demonstrates that there is

a systemic link between the historical development of macro

structures that gave advantage to white South Africans and

guaranteed the underdevelopment of African, Asian, and

Colored communities. From the time that Europeans set foot

upon southern African soil and encountered indigenous

peoples, they promoted a situation of dependence that served

to limit the development of black South Africans.

286

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Successive South African governments dictated that economic

profits which resulted from the labor of black South

Africans living in a state of underdevelopment, be utilized

for the benefit of the country and its privileged and

developed minority— white South Africans (see Roseberry

1989:149). Black South Africans suffered the consequences

of underdevelopment, particularly in the area of health

care. Comaroff and Comaroff write about the role of black

South Africans in the global economy and the re-naming of

symbolic meaning:

. . . our own evidence shows that the incorpora tion of black South Africans into a world economy did not simply erode difference or spawn rationalized, homogenous worlds. Money and commodities, literacy, and Christendom challenged local symbols, threatening to convert them into a universal currency. But precisely because the cross, the book, and the coin were such saturated signs, that were variously and ingeniously redeployed to bear a host of new meanings as non- Western peoples, (black South Africans] fashioned their own visions of modernity (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992:5).

Macro-level events influenced micro-level cultural

forms in South Africa. Years of social, political, and

economic dynamics laid the foundation for local communities

of black South Africans to develop their own cultural forms

to create meaning for their lives. St. John's Church was

one expression of the way that black South Africans

"redeployed" signs and created their own local histories

(Comaroff and Comaroff 1992:5). St. John's represented a

particular micro-level expression that helped black South

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Africans negotiate the material social process in which they

were entrenched.

Secondly, the study has demonstrated that healing

rituals are a source for reorienting the social reality of

poor black South Africans. The history and effects of

apartheid have restrained the black population and the poor

in particular. The transformative nature of healing rituals

has influenced whether the effects of apartheid replicated

or transformed social relations. There exists a tension

between replication and transformation (Comaroff 1985:6).

St. John's adherents, as social beings, moved back and forth

between acceptance of the hegemonic apartheid system and its

legacy of abusive racial discrimination on the one hand, and

resisted the dominant macro-level system on the other.

Transformation and replication are categories that are not

static, but are in fact, active historical processes.

Negotiation and renegotiation were represented in healing

rituals and were the processes that occurred among St.

John's members in sacred space. Thus, secular history was

reshaped by nonelites or subordinates in sacred space. The

new order created social relations that provided a means to

cope in a secular world that was disjoined and hostile for

poor black people.

Thirdly, rituals of healing performed in sacred

space empowered people who entered secular space. The

rituals utilized symbols that served as text to understand

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the hermeneutics of the world in which members lived their

lives. It is important to ask how the symbols used in St.

John's rituals interfaced with the social structural and

psychological processes of the lived reality of members.

Victor Turner suggests that a symbol may have many

meanings. Moreover, he suggests that a symbol's meaning

emerges out of the context in which it is used, as well as

from the aim of its users (Turner 1967:21). What does

Turner's theory mean concretely for symbols used at St.

John's? Did these symbols and their various meanings in

macro and micro structures, represent an example of

oppressed people "redeploying" symbolic meaning so that

power was generated on the micro-level, despite exterior

macro forces (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992:5; Kertzer

1988:17,102-124,178; Scott 1990:136-201)? Can it be argued

that the symbols were a means for re-ordering social reality

for St. John's members produced from the interaction of

ideological/intellectual, political/economic, psycho/social,

and sacred/secular macro-systems, as well as from the life

experiences of St. John's members? As St. John's members

entered the liminal period created in ritual and reflected

on the social reality of their lives, might they have

participated in a drama that created a transformation of

imposed categories of domination from the macro-structure

and re-created factors of existence that were life enhancing

on the micro-level? While the macro-level created an

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ideology of apartheid that controlled cultural meaning on

the national level, the micro-level of St. John’s may have

created rituals that contested those meanings in sacred

space and negotiated new meanings to be lived out in secular

space (Roseberry 1989:1-14). This dramatization for

transformation was done using common but essential elements:

water, candles, and colored fabric that protected their

bodies and a Eucharist that protected their spiritual life.

These elements were enhanced by umova. the powerful Spirit

that provided continuity with the past. Might the use of

the Eucharist also have symbolized acceptance of received

religion's symbol of a suffering Jesus who after death was

transformed into the living Christ? Could these symbols of

received religion, that is, the suffering Jesus and

resurrected Christ, have provided an avenue for a suffering

people to be renewed in spite of life's hardships? Is this

what one St. John's member meant when he said, "I used to

suffer in this world and I got the bottle of water . . . I

remember how I was penniless, without food and even clothes

to wear and God brought me here." What did the bottle of

water represent for this member? Was the water a means to

be connected to a community of people who gave him the

physical necessities for life: food, clothing, and shelter?

Was there more meaning in these symbols? Did the candles

and staff as enhanced by umova give a strength to face

obstacles buttressed by a penetrating social structure that

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thwarted life for those who were poor and black in that

land? Indeed, the symbols employed in the rituals at St.

John's gave expression to the paradox of life in South

Africa for those who lived with harsh realities, sickness of

their physical bodies and pollution of their national body;

a body whose structures further impeded already difficult

lives.

Healing Rituals

People who exhibited various sickness episodes

were usually restored by healing rituals. When people

participated in the healing rituals at St. John's they

became part of a communal mutual care network. As people

personally experienced healing of physical ailments or

relief from circumstances such as unemployment, they

customarily became active in attending worship services,

reading the Bible, attending St. John's festivals and

helping others who came to the church for healing. Thus,

adherents were transformed from vulnerable individuals to

members of a community through which they were healed. This

movement from sickness to health took place in the sacred

space of St. John's Church. Hence, the liberating process

of healing in a communal context brought the infirm person

into community, and provided all the necessary things for

the person's physical and emotional livelihood. During the

span of my fieldwork, there were no persons who left the

community because they were unhappy or uncomfortable with

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the community context. Every member whom I interviewed

articulated satisfaction with the role the church had taken

in their lives.

The priest-healer played an important role that

had liberating features for the congregation. Healers had

special skills mediated through supernatural means, and as

such, were elevated and esteemed by the church community.

The relationship between healer and patient reflected a

strong bond that provided an ambience conducive for belief

that healing could and was expected to occur.

There were also confining features of healing

rituals that were connected to the cultural historical

reality in which St. John's members found themselves

socially as they interacted in the secular space of

apartheid. First, St. John's adherents were black, poor,

and had been restricted to an elementary level of education.

Forced to live in African townships, where violence was

rampant, health care minimally supplied, and economic demise

expected, a dualism existed in which St. John's members

lived on the edge of life and, yet, attempts were made to

live with esteem and dignity. The acceptance of the social

limitations caused by apartheid's brutal structural

castration of poor, black, and minimally educated South

Africans had an acute effect on self-image (Fanon 1966:169-

170; Biko 1986:29). Some of the members attested in

interviews that their relationships with white employers,

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and with white people generally, were strained. These

members believed that while the devastating effects of

violence in African townships were perpetrated by blacks,

ultimate responsibility for the violence was felt to have

been with those who initiated and financed it, whites. As

one informant said in regard to the violence, "Behind every

black man who commits a crime is a white man with money."

In response to the cultural historical reality of

life, St. John's members developed a way to reorient life

despite the externally imposed limitations. Thus, the

disordered environment was transformed through healing

rituals into a purposeful and unified atmosphere at the

personal and communal level. One can only honor the mastery

and flexibility which engendered such ingenious responses.

The rituals in a community context helped provide people

with something for which to live. What were the strategies

for living that resulted from healing rituals at St. John's?

Communal Survival Strategies Resulting from Healing Rituals

There are several instances in which St. John's

members as "liminal persona" living in apartheid culture had

their sense of well being put in jeopardy. In other words,

apartheid precipitated a state of uncleanliness (Douglas

1966:7-28) that was often manifested as sickness, violence,

and being systemically cut off from those things to which

white South Africans had access such as land, quality

housing, health care, education, and employment. The

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rituals of healing propelled St. John's members toward

transformation and restructuralization. In a sense, the

congregation represented what Victor Turner called

"communitas"; a microcosm of society that has risen in

opposition to the patterns of behavior of black people who

are dominated by apartheid culture. In this instance, the

nonelites contested the shared knowledge that was

articulated, distributed, and controlled by elites and

refashioned it into cultural meaning that singularly made

sense for the nonelites or those who are marginalized. The

new meanings were created in the ritual actions of the

priest/healer and the congregation. The priest/healer was

one of the roles which represented that which Victor Turner

called status elevation and reversal. An example from my

fieldwork illustrates this point:

I remember meeting a young man who was interested in becoming a member of St. John's. He was unemployed, unable to support his family and quite depressed. During worship, he sat with the other St. John's men. His rumpled and wrinkled shirt and pants were quite a contrast to their sparkling and neatly pressed white coats and blue belts. His quiet demeanor revealed an emotional affect of discouragement with life. As the congregation sang songs and the movement of the Spirit (umoya) possessed some of the evangelists, he sat unaffected. This young man came to St. John's several consecutive Sundays and had many conversations with Reverend Xaba. In time, he partook of the blessed water and participated in the rituals. Over a period of three weeks, I noticed that his countenance changed. The most significant change occurred when he was baptized and was given a white coat and blue belt to wear. It was as if a new person had arrived in the same body. Now as he stood with the St. John's men wearing his sparkling white coat and blue belt,

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his face shone. He emoted a happiness that I had not experienced from him before. He began to testify about what St. John's meant to him as his life took on new meaning. Over a period of time, this man took a key role in facilitating worship services. When he testified other members listened intently. His new role at St. John's stood in stark contrast to who he was when he first came to the church. Previously, he was forlorn and dejected, now he had vitality and hope. His unkempt appearance and sense of insecurity was exchanged for a neat, ordered and hope filled life. He began to work and support his family. His status indeed had been elevated.

This illustration aptly shows how a black man who was

unemployed and without the means of economic support, upon

joining St. John's and personally experiencing care and

community in sacred space, gained a sense of self-esteem and

reordered his life in a way that elevated him. This

elevation helped his self-esteem and helped the community as

they witnessed a positive change in another member's life.

Thus, his elevation was acknowledged and enforced by the St.

John's community, who credited his changed life as coming

from a supernatural source. The rituals of healing were a

form of contestation of the effects of apartheid on the

lives of black South Africans in the context of St. John's,

an African indigenous church.

More specifically, the healing rituals provided a

means for poor black South Africans to turn to a comforting

community and to a respected holy leader, when sickness

appeared. The healer, who lived in the same cultural

context as the patient, provided a source of support that

could best be duplicated by one who lived in the same

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cultural context as the members. When a sickness was acute,

members went to the hospital, but in most cases, the

adherents had an initial consultation with the priest/healer

and followed the prescribed healing applications first.

Another strategy that emerged as a result of

healing rituals was networks of support. Ramphele notes

that a communal survival strategy among hostel dwellers is

an "economy of affection" which includes relatives, "home-

people" famakhava) and acquaintances (Ramphele 1991:456).

In like fashion, St. John's members developed an "economy of

affection" at the church. As noted in chapter 8, when

people were too sick to work, those who had been healed and

had returned to work, shared their income, food and other

services. Those who were well but unemployed, cared for the

children of those who worked. Thus, the sharing of

resources, material and spiritual, was a benefit.

Another strategic result of healing ritual was the

sharing of stories of strength and renewal among members of

St. John's. A person usually came to the church in crisis.

As a result, congregation members shared their journey of

coming to St. John's and what was required for their

healing. Those who were healed participated in helping

newcomers, and newcomers in crisis had a choice about

whether or not to participate in the variety of experiences

the church provided such as the ritual bath, enema and

emetic for healing; church services four times a day; or

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baptism, which resulted in being able to wear the blue and

white uniform. Individualism was minimized, and, therefore,

individuals were quickly incorporated into a community of

love and support. The devastating effects of ill health and

societal conditions could be overcome by a transformed

community who believed in a liberating source beyond

themselves, but it was in fact, the members themselves, who

became the liberating source.

My treatment of healing rituals at St. John's -

Guguletu has been an effort to document a phenomenon that in

the words of Comaroff is "dialectic in a double sense"

(Comaroff 1985:252). First, the rituals were an interaction

between micro and macro apartheid structures and social

relations between poor black South Africans. Secondly, the

cultural historical design of apartheid constructed a

hegemonic system of dominance that enforced the

subordination of blacks. The dynamic interplay between

these factors provides persuasive evidence for explaining

why St. John's founders and members rewrote and

reconstructed the symbolic meaning of the social

expectations and symbols of the missionaries into categories

that were meaningful for their historical world view and

human experience. I suggest that the healing rituals of St.

John's were the aftermath of synchronous parallelism and

transformation, an approach that began as a result of

indigenous African beliefs converging with the expansion of

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European colonialism (Comaroff 1985:252). European

colonialism initiated the present apartheid culture, as

Europeans of Dutch descent were dominated by the English.

The former perceived themselves to have been subordinated by

the English and in time the descendants of the Dutch, the

Afrikaners, moved swiftly, when they came to power, to

oppress the majority of the population, black South

Africans. The cultural history of South Africa reveals an

economic base that relies upon black South Africans

providing the means of production via wage labor. St.

John's members were persons who lived with the tyranny of

this unjust economic system, a system manufactured at the

macro-level of society.

I have posited that the initial encounter between

European and American missionaries and indigenous African

people precipitated interaction between at least two

divergent world views with different systems of symbolic

meaning. The world view of the indigenous peoples in

Southern Africa, being more open and fluid (Setiloane

1986:9-11; Gray 1990:81-84), was able to tolerate and absorb

the symbols of the missionaries while the missionaries' more

exacting, if not closed world view, tolerated and accepted

little of the African's world view. However, all

interacting world views were influenced by one another.

Missionaries came with colonial attitudes and material

goods; they established a dominating presence by force, and

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imposed religious and secular symbol systems on African

peoples. The condensation of symbols, referred to by Levi-

Strauss as "bricolage," depicted the "... universal

process of symbolic construction— the repositioning of signs

in sequences of practice, 'texts'. . ." which brought about

new meanings and replicated traditional meaning (Levi-

Strauss 1966:16-30; Comaroff 1985:253).

St. John's Church, I suggest, by indigenizing

symbols received from missionaries and contesting the

expected norms of imported religion, by incorporating

indigenous symbols in healing rituals, has in fact "signaled

dissent" by inciting a transposition of meaning which was

the result of the contradiction of the social order

generated by apartheid. As Jean Comaroff writes:

The purposive act of reconstruction, on the part of the nonelite, focuses mainly on the attempt to heal dislocations at the level of experience, dislocations which derive from the failure of the prevailing sign system to provide a model for their subjectivity, for their meaningful and material being. Their existence is increasingly dominated by generalized media of exchange— money, the written word, linear time and the universal God— which fail to capture a recognizable self- image. These media circulate through communica tive processes which themselves appear to marginalize peoples at the periphery; hence the major vehicles of value have come to elude their grasp. In these circumstances, efforts are made to restructure activity so as to regain a sense of control (Comaroff 1985:253).

Thus, St. John's and other African indigenous churches are a

form of "dissenting Christianity" that redesigned the signs

of "Protestant orthodoxy and the global industrial culture"

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(Comaroff 1985:253). The reconstituted meaning systems, by

Africans, for themselves, in their own sacred space allowed

value to return to their lives, despite the daily

devaluation they lived with in secular apartheid space.

St. John's, then, symbolized dissenting

Christianity that empowered its members in sacred space, so

that they could live emboldened lives in secular space. In

a sense the sacred space was a ritualized space betwixt and

between the local order and a macro-level world of

apartheid, which drained resources and energy. The

ritualized space, betwixt and between, served to rejuvenate

people. It is true that the healing rituals have not

reversed the powerful structure of the apartheid macro

system, yet, as a socio-cultural form, the healing rituals

empowered those most vulnerable, poor black South Africans,

to live as liberated a life as possible under the press of

the macro-structure. The act of establishing a church as an

institution separated from the colonial powers was an act of

resistance. It meant that there would be separate sacred

space for African peoples to practice religion on their own

terms. Indeed, the symbolic order of the micro-level of the

healing rituals of St. John's stood in stark contrast to the

entrenched patterns of the macro-level. As such, the

symbols of the micro-order worked to disempower apartheid

structures and in so doing, those marginalized gained an

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identity and established accord in a macro-order which was

essentially a chaotic world.

St. John's and the Politics of Resistance

Were rituals of healing the opiate of St. John's

members? Did they pacify people to sleep with the tune of a

lullaby permitting the macro-system to be a giant mother

rocking its baby to sleep a life of subservience? Or are

St. John's and other African indigenous churches firmly

grounded in a politique of resistance, with the genius of

subliminally working against the forces of apartheid, but

perhaps in a disguised form? Certainly, the history of

slavery in America is filled with examples of slaves using

"the Spirituals and the Blues", that is, sung words and

phrases, to serve as signals for escape from bondage (Cone

1972:8-19;133-13 6; Raboteau 1978:73-74;246-50). In my

opinion, St. John's instilled pride in people to the point

that they infrequently utilized hospitals and medical

personnel. When a sickness started, members began with the

diagnosis of their own trusted priest/healer, an act of

protest and defiance against an apartheid health care system

(Kistner 1990; Race Relations Survey 1992:109-166). While

such acts of resistance did not directly challenge the

hegemonic force of the macro-system, they contested and

prevented the polluted system's invasion into structures of

the sacred space of the micro-level of St. John's.

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This type of resistance cannot be discounted,

although it is tacit. While apartheid affected St. John’s

members' perceptions of themselves as black people, it did

not prevent them from creating a symbolic reality that

empowered them in the micro-level and provided tenacity to

function in the macro-world. St. John's members had a

consciousness about their race and the ways in which white

people used color to determine dominance. They had a

consciousness about the evil dominance perpetrated by white

people. They also had a sense of the power of their rituals

to transform their own lives. Thus, they created a counter-

hegemonic force through the use of rituals of healing.

An Etic Interpretation

As previously mentioned in Chapter 8, the New

Testament scripture, John 5 provided St. John's members with

a Biblical basis for their ministry of healing with water.

St. John's members used water in a way that was meaningful

in the particular historical context in which members found

themselves.

Reflecting on the cultural history of South

Africa, and on the theoretical constructs used throughout

this dissertation of macro and micro structures, what might

be inferred from St. John's members' commitment to John 5

and their act of drinking blessed water for healing?

Kleinman makes a distinction among the concepts of illness,

disease and sickness. Drawing upon those categories, the

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macro-structure of apartheid can be understood to be a form

of a societal illness. The formalized configuration of

dominance and oppression that determines the allocation of

medical resources, as well as producing an environment of

abuse and dehumanization, are significant factors in the

determination of a people's and an individual's holistic

health. The rituals of healing, which built on John 5,

provided a counter-hegemonic structure designed and

implemented by nonelites.

Since John 5, as previously discussed in chapter

8, was central to the symbolic order of St. John's, might it

be possible that the disabled man was a metaphor for black

South Africans, who were no longer willing to depend upon

white South Africans for assistance in getting to the pool

of power and healing? Reconstructing the symbol of Jesus

that the missionaries introduced to indigenous African

peoples and linking it to the historical circumstances of

their lives, Jesus' power presented itself in the blessed

water which members drank several times a week. Jesus'

presence and power was manifold among people who believed

that those who died actually entered a new phase of life as

ancestors. Thus, Jesus as ancestor and liberator was the

means by which the micro-structure resolutely stood in

opposition to the macro-structure.

The empowerment that took place on the micro-level

was substantial. The data illustrate how this was

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manifested in social networks among members at St. John's.

Those who were sick had their physical, emotional and

spiritual needs cared for by the community. Family unity is

documented by the case of Reverend and Mrs. Mjoli. Mrs.

Mjoli's healing was directly connected with her family's

openness to, and participation in, the healing process.

Thus, healing used an holistic approach based on family and

community centeredness. Individuality, as traditionally

expressed in Western cultures, was not represented in the

micro-structure of St. John's. Finally, community and

healing were represented in worship services that were

conducted four times daily. Whether a small or large number

of adherents were present, services were conducted. The

micro-level structure at St. John's provided an opportunity

for black South Africans, who did not occupy positions of

influence in the macro-level structure, to assume a sense of

pride, power, and prestige in a community that was

transformed in sacred space.

Geertz's theory of religion as a cultural system

provides a way to understand how the macro-system of South

Africa, as a culture steeped in a history of apartheid, has

given rise to a corresponding micro-system that fights

against the effects of the macro-system. In fact, the

micro-system treats the macro-system as if it were an

illness that can only be overcome with the symbols and power

of a spiritual healing community. Thus, St. John's Church,

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through its healing rituals, provided an alternative liminal

reality that empowered people to survive. The dialectical

relationship between the macro and micro system will

persist. As their interaction continues, new creative

responses will evolve from each as they impact and are

impacted by one another.

This interpretation is decidedly etic. However,

given the complexity of the cultural and political

situation, and the collaboration between the macro and micro

systems, neither emic nor etic interpretations, in

themselves, are adequate to fully understand the dynamics of

life in South Africa for poor black people. What is certain

however, is that St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission Church,

through its ritual healing process, deconstructed a social

reality that was pervaded with the legacy of apartheid and

recreated a reality that was life affirming.

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Schedule of Questions

I am conducting this interview to gather research for my doctoral dissertation. I am a Christian minister and a social scientist from the American University in Washington D.C. in the United States of America. Extreme caution will be used to preserve your anonymity. You do not have to answer any question that makes you uncomfortable.

Date of Interview:

Sociological Information

1. Pseudonym

2. Clan Name

3 . Gender Female______Male

4. Date of Birth

5. Where were you born

6. Where do you live now

7. Home language (Circle)

Xhosa

Zulu

Sotho

Tswana

Venda

English

306

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Afrikaans

English and Afrikaans

Other

8. What is your mother tongue?

What language is most comfortable for you to speak?

What language did/does you mother speak?

What language did/does your father speak?

9. Marital Status:

single 1

married 2

living together 3

widow/widower 4

separated 5

divorced 6

10. How many children have you had?

How -many are living?

11. Where is your family living?

Rural Urban Hostel Multiple Spouse

Mother

Father

Children

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12. Employment Status

Self-employed 1

Formal Employment 2

Retrenched 3

Unemployed 4

Pensioner 5

Grant 6

How long in the above status?

13. Level of education

None 1

Standard I 2

Standard II 3

Standard III 4

Standard IV 5

Standard V 6

Standard VI 7

Standard VII 8

Standard VIII 9

Standard IX 10

Standard X 11

University 12

14. Name of your church:

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15. Religious affiliation before becoming a member of St. John's: (circle)

a. Anglican b. New Apostolic c. Old Apostolic d. Baptist e . Congregat iona1 f. Lutheran g . Methodist h. Dutch Reformed i. Pentecostal j . Presbyterian k. Roman Catholic 1. Seven Day Adventist j. Jehovah's Witness k. Islamic 1. Hindu m. other

16. Who is the founder of your church?

17. Monthly Income (family) Self Others

Formal employment

Informal sector

Pensions

Grants

Other

Questions Related to Church:

1. How long have you been a Christian?

2. Were your parents Christian? Yes No If no, how would you describe their religious life?

3. What made you become a Christian?

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4. Tell me how you decided to become a part of the church that you are now attending.

5. How often do you attend the church? (Including Sunday worship; mid-week services, prayer meeting, healing services, meetings, bible classes).

6. What do you like the most about your church?

7. Is there anything about your church that you do not like?

Yes No If yes, please describe what it is.

8. What rituals are used in your church? When are the rituals done? What do the rituals mean?

9. What symbols are used in the worship services? What is the meaning of these symbols?

10. Do you do any rituals in your home? Yes No If yes, who participants in them? What are they? When do you do them?

11. Have you had visions? Yes No

12. Have you had dreams with messages? Yes No

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13. Was it occupied by a vision? Yes No

14. Was it interpreted by another person? Yes No

15. Do you go to any other healers? Yes No If yes, what happened to you?

16. Are there any requirements for being a member of your church? Yes No

If yes, what are they?

17. Would you describe yourself as being an active member of your church? Yes No

If yes, what makes you describe yourself as such?

18. Are you happy in your church? Yes No

19. How is the church responsive to the needs of children, youth, and young adults?

20. What role do women play in the life of the church?

21. Do women feel affirmed in the church? Yes No If yes, how?

22. Do you feel affirmed as a woman in the church?

Yes No

Questions about Faith:

1. Does God exist?

2. What do you call God in Xhosa?

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3. How do you think about God? What/Who is God in your life?

4. Does Jesus exist?

5. Who is Jesus?

6. What do you call Jesus in Xhosa? By what other names do you call Jesus?

7. Who is Jesus?

8. How do you think about Jesus?

9. If Jesus died on the cross, how does he live?

10. Do you have a Bible?

11. Do you read it?

12. What language is your Bible?

13. Why do you have a Bible?

14. Does the word of God come to us in ways other than the Bible? Yes No If yes, in what other ways?

15. What scriptures are important for your church's ministry? What makes these scriptures important? How are these scriptures applied to your life?

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16. What do you know about the Holy Spirit?

17. What have you heard about the Holy Spirit?

18. What can you tell me about being possessed by the Holy Spirit?

19. Have you ever been possessed by the Holy Spirit? If yes, what happened?

20. What happens to people when they die?

21. What do you know about the ancestors?

22. How do the ancestors relate to the living?

23. How do the living relate to the ancestors?

24. Do you believe in the ancestors? If yes, what do you do to let them know that you believe in them?

25. Do you believe that life continues after death? Yes No

How does this belief affect your present life?

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Questions about Childhood:

1. Tell me about the community where you lived as a child.

2. What are some of your most vivid memories of your childhood? What are your memories of major events that took place as you were growing up?

3. Did your family have any particular customs?

Questions about Daily Life/ Work:

1. Tell me how you spend your day.

If the person is employed:

2. Tell me about the kind of work that you do? How do you spend your time at work?

3. How many hours do you work a day? How many days a week?

4. What time do you have to be at work?

5. What time do you get up in to go to work?

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6. What time do you leave home in order to get to work?

7. How do you get to work? How do you get home from work?

8. What time do you get home from work?

9. How are your children cared for when you are working?

10. Has the church responded to the child care needs of women who work? Yes No

Questions about the future of South Africa:

1. What did Nelson Mandela's release from prison mean to you?

2. What did President De Klerk statement on February 2, 1990 mean to you? (This was the day that the ANC and the PAC was unbanned. It is also the day that De Klerk said that Nelson Mandela would be released.)

3. In light of the abolition of apartheid laws, what are your views about the future of South Africa?

4. How would you describe the current situation in South Africa?

5. How do you feel about your country?

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6. What is the cause of the violence in the townships?

7. Has the violence affected you or your family directly?

Yes No If yes, how?

8. Should the church play any role in responding to the violence? Yes No

If yes, what should the role be? If no, why not?

9. Who do you expect the next political leader of South Africa to be?

10. How has apartheid affected your life and the life of your family?

11. What does your future hold?

12. What do you hope for the future of your children?

13. Has the church helped you in dealing with the effects of apartheid on a day to day basis? Yes No

If yes, how? If no, should it?

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14. Are there any formal/informal societies (e.g., burial societies, etc.) in your community that assist you in any way?

15. What is the cause of the taxi war in Cape Town?

16. Does your church teach anything about politics? Yes No If yes, what? If no, why not?

17. Do you belong to any political organization (e.g., ANC, PAC, Azapo, or trade union)? Yes No

18. How do you view Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his role in the Church?

19. What do you think of feminism?

20. What gives you the stamina to keep going in such difficult circumstances?

21. How do you relax?

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Observations about housing:

Is there electricity? Yes No____

Is there indoor plumbing for water? Yes No

If yes, for how long?

Is the toilet: inside or outside? (circle)

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CAPE STELLENBOSCH TOWN / |

Kilometers

South £ Africa ;||gjDense Urban Areas

Cross Roads, Guguletu, Khayalitsha. Langa. Nyanga - African Townships

Figure 1

Research Area: Guguletu - Location of St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission

319

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