Spirits of Protest: Spirit-Mediums and the Articulation of Consensus among the Zezuru of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe)

154 Pages·2007·1.76 MB·English

by  Peter Fry

Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology
General Editor: Jack Goody
14
SPIRITS OF PROTEST
OTHER TITLES IN THE SERIES
1 The PoliticaI Organization of Unyamwezi
R.G. Abrahams
2 Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-East Thailand
SJ. Tambiah
3 Kalahari Village Politics: An African Democracy
Adam Kuper
4 The Rope ofMoka: Big-men and Ceremonial Exchange in Mount Hagen,
New Guinea
Andrew Strathern
5 The Majangir: Ecology and Society of a Southwest Ethiopian People
Jack Stauder
6 Buddhist Monk, Buddhist Layman: A Study of Urban Monastic
Organization in Central Thailand
Jane Bunnag
7 Contexts of Kinship: An Essay in the Family Sociology of the Gonja of
Northern Ghana
Esther N. Goody
8 Marriage among a Matrilineal Elite: A Family Study of Ghanaian Senior
Civil Servants
Christine Oppong
9 Elite Politics in Rural India: Political Stratification and Political Alliances
in Western Maharashtra
Anthony T. Carter
10 Women and Property in Morocco: Their Changing Relation to the Process
of Social Stratification in the Middle Atlas
Vanessa Maher
11 Rethinking Symbolism
Dan Sperber
12 Resources and Population: A Study of the Gurungs of Nepal
Alan MacFarlane
13 Mediterranean Family Structures
J.G. Peristiany (ed.)
Spirits of
Protest
Spirit- mediums and the articulation
of consensus among the Zezuru of
Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe)
PETER FRY
Lecturer in Anthropology
Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge
London New York Melbourne
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© Cambridge University Press 1976
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1976
This digitally printed version 2007
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Fry, Peter.
Spirits of protest.
(Cambridge studies in social anthropology; 14)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Zezuru (Bantu people) - Religion.
2. Spiritualism — Zimbabwe African People's Union.
I. Title.
BL2480.Z4F79 299'.6 75-20832
ISBN 978-0-521-21052-2 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-04075-4 paperback
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Conventions viii
Introduction 1
1 The secular background 5
2 Magico-religious beliefs - the moral significance of explanation 18
3 The sociology of spirit-mediumship 30
4 Zezuru flexibility and Korekore rigidity 54
5 Spirit-mediums in ritual action 68
6 Spirit-mediums and missionaries 107
Notes 124
Bibliography 133
Index 137

Acknowledgments
The research on which this book is based was financed by a Commonwealth
Scholarship for which I thank the Federal Commonwealth Board.
During my research I was fortunate in being affiliated to the Department of
Sociology at the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (now the Uni-
versity College of Rhodesia). There I was given much valuable encouragement
and assistance through Professor Clyde Mitchell's Research Seminar. Latterly
Professor Jaap van Velsen has provided thoughtful criticism and advice and I
have had persistent help and encouragement from the Department of Anthro-
pology at University College London, in particular from the late Professor Daryll
Forde and my research supervisor, Professor Mary Douglas.
To the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil I am grateful for a
sabbatical three months, to Dr Rupert Sheldrake, Dr Keith, Jean and Alison
Campbell and Mr Carlos da Silva for providing the conditions necessary for
writing, to Mr David Trevitchik for genealogies and diagrams and to Mrs G.
Halstead, Mrs P. Blair and Mrs A. Warwick for their typing. I thank Mr S.W.
Averiett for support in trying times.
The debt which cannot ever be settled is with the people of Chiota and all the
many Africans who gave me the privelege of sharing their life over two and a half
years. It would be invidious to mention names for my friends and helpers were
many. To all of them I express my deepest thanks and gratitude.
vu
Conventions
I shall adopt the convention of putting all spirit names in italic; one proper name
followed by another in italic refers to a medium in trance. Thus David/Kafudzi
means David possessed by Kafudzi. The people of Chiota did not always make it
clear whether they were referring to a spirit qua spirit, to a spirit presented
through a medium or to a spirit-medium who was not in trance. Thus in every-
day speech, 'Kafudzi' could mean either Kafudzi acting independently of its
present medium, Kafudzi as presented by David in trance, or David as a normal
person. The convention that I have adopted makes it possible to make these
distinctions while retaining the 'confusions'.
After the research on which this book is based, Rhodesian currency was deci-
malised. I have, however, retained the old notation of pounds, shillings and pence.
Names of individuals and certain spirits have been altered, and at times I have
merged two people into one and vice versa.
Vlll
Introduction
The fieldwork situation
Southern Rhodesia in the first half of the 1960s was the scene of many confron-
tations. African nationalism which had got under way towards the end of the
1950s had been met with a strong white nationalism which swept the polls with
the election to power of Mr Smith's Rhodesia Front party. In 1963 the African
Nationalist movement split into two bitterly opposed parties, the People's Care-
taker Council (PCC) and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) who
fought with one another for the right to represent the mass of the people. During
my fieldwork in Chiota Tribal Trust Land, ZANU and the PCC were banned, Mr
Smith declared unilaterial independence from Britain, and the world reacted with
economic sanctions against Rhodesia. African leaders were rounded up and put
either in detention or in restriction in camps miles out in the bush and the situ-
ation returned to an uneasy peace maintained by a constantly renewed State of
Emergency under which the minority white government used its extra-ordinary
powers to thwart any kind of overt opposition on the part of the Africans.
The task of the fieldworker, which is not easy in any situation, was therefore
daunting. Anthropologists fall into none of 'the known and accepted categories,
neither missionary nor preacher, trader nor administrator' (van Velsen 1964 :
xix) and there was plenty of scope for both the people of Chiota and the govern-
ment to imagine what my purposes could be. To begin work in Chiota required
the permission of the District Commissioner in Marandellas and of the African
council which met in Mahusekwa, the central township of the area. The meeting
was turbulent. While the chiefs present supported my application (three of them
offered houses in which to stay), a number of the elected councillors1 raised
serious objections. Had not Cecil Rhodes claimed to be a friend; had he not given
rise to the situation which now prevailed where Africans were being dominated
by the whites and denied their true worth as citizens?
However, the council finally agreed to my working in the area (they could
hardly refuse, for I was, after all, white) and I took up residence in the village of
one of the chiefs, where I spent the first three months.
For the first year the position was difficult. Many of the people of Chiota
thought that I was an emissary of the government and during the period of strife
between ZANU and the PCC I was even accused by each of being a member of
the other. As often as I tried to deny any allegiance to the police or government
1