IN this episode we argue that indigenous churches are inspired by our African ancestral spirits. We previously have argued that African spirituality has been under intense attack by Western Christianity since the advent of colonialism on the continent. We have shown that the onslaught on African culture and religion by Westerners arose from a realisation that Africans drew their divine mystic powers and strength to resist colonisation from their ancestral spirits. In Zimbabwe, both the First and Second Chimurenga were initiated through direct orders from the Great Ancestral Spirit Murenga Sororenzou, whose voice came through the Njelele shrine at Matombo Hills. The slaughter of spirit mediums of Kaguvi, Nyakasikana (Nehanda), Mukwati and others was a blatant attempt to crush the African people’s source of divine mystic powers, the ancestral spirits. This diabolic strategy of the white invaders succeeded in delaying our liberation from white occupation. The murder of the spirit mediums took the wind out of the African resistance sails in the first liberation war of the 1890s. But in the Second Chimurenga, the liberation fighters invoked the divine mystic powers of our ancestral spirits and relocated the spirit medium of Nehanda Nyakasikana across the Zambezi, out of range of Rhodesian forces. And together with Murenga, Chaminuka, Kaguvi and many other ancestral spirits, Nehanda Nyakasikana rallied the liberation fighters and inspired the people to victory and political independence in 1980. Regular readers of this column will be wondering why we keep repeating this issue of the link between our ancestral spirits and our liberation! It is to emphasise that our salvation will only come from linking up and drawing spiritual power from Musikavanhu, God, through our ancestral spiritual highway. It has worked for us before; it is the only way that it works for us. And so today we re-visit spirit possession and remind ourselves that that in fact is how we link to our Creator. People are not possessed by choice although I understand some parents or individuals do try to induce their ancestral spirits to possess them or their offspring. This is often motivated by greed or the hope that the possessing spirit will bring fortune to the person who is a medium. Family feuds have arisen where an ancestral spirit of known ‘economic’ potential has chosen a medium. Other family members go to all lengths to frustrate the spirit by refusing to carry out required rituals to stabilise the medium. These feuds can turn murderous as has been the case with certain families in Mashonaland East. Here the family members would kill the person who became the spirit medium. The ancestral spirit has solved the problem by choosing daughters-in-law (varoora) as mediums. It would invoke a terrible ‘ngozi’ to kill a ‘muroora’ who is from a different clan altogether. So the muroora is left alone and the ancestral spirit is able to come and possess her at will. Ancestral spirits are known to have zero tolerance for evil practices such witchcraft (uroyi/ubutakhati). The spirit will openly identify and denounce family members guilty of such malpractices. In some cases family members who dabble in sorcery and other black magic practices, fearing that the ancestral spirit will reveal their evil deeds, try to prevent the spirit from establishing a medium within the family. This can result in a lot of friction and some family members relocating to distant areas. It is alleged that is how many families from different parts of Zimbabwe ended up in Gokwe. In truth ancestral spirits (vadzimu) or other spirits (mashavi) make their own choice of who to possess. Usually the person chosen as a medium will be of good temperament and innocent of spilling blood or committing other demonic acts. Male ancestral spirits will often possess female mediums. Ancestral spirit possession of children is also common. The usual route is where the spirit causes the child while still a baby to cry or show signs of illness that cannot be explained. Sometimes a pregnant mother can also have her unborn child targeted for possession by an ancestral spirit. In both cases parents and relatives would consult a n’anga or diviner who will identify the problem and advise on the correct steps to take to stabilise the situation. Ancestral spirits who possess children usually do not physically manifest possession e.g. through speaking out. The child may show unusual behaviour. Physical possession may come later when the child is grown up although there are no rules as to when or how the ancestral spirit might choose to speak out. Let me remind readers that Africans have a way of finding out if the spirit concerned is demonic or divine; they consult relevant ‘authorities’ on these phenomena. Let us look at the scenario where the spirit chooses to possess a person converted to Western Christianity. Most such churches violently denounce ancestral spirit possession as evil and demonic. So steps will be taken to exorcise the ‘devil’ in the possessed person even if it is the spirit of their father, mother or grand-parent. The family may feel ashamed before other church members. So we see that the Christian churches exert enormous pressure on ‘possessed’ members to denounce and reject the ancestral spirits. On their part, the ancestral spirits and the persons so possessed have found a way out of the impasse! As the going says, ‘if you cannot beat them, join them’. And so we come to address the issue of so-called spiritual churches. Because so many Africans have been conditioned by Western missionaries and their churches to reject ancestral spirits, the African spirit mediums join the church and proclaim to be possessed by the spirit of God. Such persons are able to prophesy, to perform acts of healing and other miracles normally associated with ancestral spirit possession. Because this is all happening under the roof of a Western Christian church, the phenomenon is accepted as part of the acts of the Holy Spirit. In a sense it is, as God is one, but in reality the ancestral spirits have gone in through a side door as it were. Most African spiritual churches (chechi dzomweya) are led by persons who are possessed by ancestral spirits. It is safe to say there is no person who is possessed by any spirit other than that of an ancestor ‘mudzimu’. We distinguish demonic from divine spirits; that is natural. We therefore must denounce the hypocrisy of Western Christian churches who claim that their members are the ones possessed by the spirit of God while Africans are possessed by demons! The distinction is made by white missionary churches out to defame, demean, stigmatise and demonise African spirituality. It is part of a strategy to condition Africans to accept that whites and their God are superior and that Africans have no direct access to the Creator except through their white Jesus! That is a blatant lie. We have shown here that ancestral spirit possession is what confers all the divine mystic powers found in indigenous African churches and evidenced in traditional spiritual ceremonies. In Africa’s quest for spiritual independence, indigenous churches will play a major role. They represent our direct contact with the Almighty. Our indigenous African religious organisations, in addressing human problems dwell less on church dogma, Bible interpretation and acts of faith, but more on practical solutions through direct spiritual contact with our God through our ancestors. There is no promise of heavenly life after death, but rather the promise of solutions to health, social and even economic challenges here on mother earth. In the next instalment, we shall look at how some of the independent African churches started and whether they might represent the divine link between the Creator, Musikavanhu, and the African people. The struggle for African spiritual independence continues unabated.