Abstract
This essay examines African understandings of life, sickness, death, and life after death by concentrating on the Ndebele people of Matabo in Zimbabwe who are part of the Nguni people of Southern Africa and who have a strong Zulu cultural basis. For the Ndebele of Matabo, dying is a physical, medical, and spiritual phenomenon. Healing through medicine is always prioritized when there is a sickness, but all medical treatment is subordinate to the spiritual world. The Ndebele understand that when people eventually die, despite medical attention, it is a sign that the spiritual world is more powerful than the medical world. Those who die are said to have responded to a call from their ancestors. For them, death is a transition from the world of the living living to the world of the living dead. This essay will briefly explore the African Ndebele concepts of life, death, the ritualization and medicalization of death and dying, and life after death. It will argue that, for the Ndebele, death is not a medical phenomenon but a response to a calling by ancestors to the spiritual world at the fulfilment of one’s time on earth as determined by the abaphansi. Death, therefore, is ritualized, not medicalized.
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Notes
- 1.
Matabo is part of the greater Mberengwa district of Zimbabwe. It is uniquely Ndebele-speaking in a Shona-speaking province.
- 2.
AIR is commonly referred to as African Traditional Religion (ATR). I prefer AIR over ATR, since I see Christianity as an ATR but not an AIR due to the fact that it is now more than three centuries old in Africa. How long does it take for a practice to become a tradition?
- 3.
This paper presents only a summarised version of the history of the Ndebele people.
- 4.
The Ndebele culture is in conversation with Christianity. The Christian God is commonly written with a capital letter “G” whereas any other God is written with a small letter “g.” This has the connotation of subordinating other gods to the Christian God. But the Ndebele God is God (not god) for the Ndebele. The use of capital letters and small letters has political connotations among the Ndebele who feel that Christianity is belittling their (Ndebele) God. So from the perspective of a post-colonial or de-colonial theory, one should make an effort not to subordinate the Ndebele God(s) to the Christian God.
- 5.
Which side it is laid on depends on where it is buried with respect to forefathers—the deceased must face in the direction of those who died before them (Moyo 2014, p. 119).
- 6.
For Christians the world of the living dead is heaven, whereas for adherents of AIR it is phansi (down). There are some Ndebele who speak of both worlds to their deceased.
- 7.
The primary agent for westernisation in Matabo in particular and Southern Africa in general is the Church. The gospel and western culture came to Africa as one package. The contemporary cultural practices around death and dying in Matabo are always in conversation with Christianity. In Matabo all funerals, whether for Christians or members of AIR, are conducted by a Christian minster. This is a new practice and culture for Matabo.
- 8.
Usually a cow or a goat is prepared, depending on the economic status of the family of the deceased (Moyo 2014, p. 119).
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Moyo, H. (2019). The Ritualization of Death and Dying: The Journey from the Living Living to the Living Dead in African Religions. In: Knepper, T.D., Bregman, L., Gottschalk, M. (eds) Death and Dying. Comparative Philosophy of Religion, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19300-3_8
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