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N. Adu Kwabena-Essem African beliefs are now given due recognition by Pope John Paul ll. The question is, will the rest of the Western world do the same?
African religions had their biggest boost two years ago when Pope John Paul II, on a visit to Benin, apologized for centuries of ridiculing African cultural beliefs by the Western world. Benin is the home of voodoo, one of the continent's most enduring [religions]. The crucial question is whether the Pope's 'penance' will force others to start respecting African cultures, in particular the belief in African religions.
It is not easy for most people in the West to accept that the much maligned voodoo and other such [religions] and sects in Africa are based on the same universal belief in the supernatural found everywhere in the world. People do not understand and appreciate the complex interplay of religion, medicine and psychology in African beliefs. In other words, the simple fact that Africans have largely reduced religious thought and practice to everyday practice, that African religions seek to link the supernatural with the natural and the mundane, continues to baffle the Western world.
Common Spirits African belief in spirits and juju is just like taking the universal belief in the supernatural to the next logical step. Universal belief in the supernatural and spiritism rests on a conviction of the existence of unseen beings with magical powers that can be harnessed to help the human race in their everyday existence.
Africans include the spirits of dead ancestors and relations among these unseen beings. And the belief is that these beings are to be found anywhere and everywhere. Cults therefore revolve around wherever any such being is presumed to be found. But the need or desire to harness the powers of these unseen beings is separate from the belief in, and worship of, the Supreme Being, or God. Thus, an akan from Ghana, pouring libation, will raise his calabash or glass to God, called Onyankopon or Twereampong - and by 99 other names - before anything else. This is true across the continent.
The commitment to God is, in other words, unaffected by the need to seek the help of minor deities to solve pressing everyday problems. This explains the paradox of many otherwise devout followers of other religions like Christianity, Muslim and so on also concurrently consulting diviners, fetishes and other cults.
And it clears one very important point that people find a puzzlement: one goes to church, tabernacle or mosque for worship but one goes to a fetish priest or to a secret cult to seek medical care, psychological cure or religious comfort.
Confusion of terminologyThis also points to the confusion that arise from the tendency to use words interchangeably while talking about different institutions of religion, and methods of cults and sects. Non-africans tend to look at practically everything from the point of view of a monolithic Africa. Thus, many Western writers talk about 'witch-hunters' as if it is an Africa-wide phenomenon. In fact, although other parts of the continent have diviners or priests of various cults who claim magical powers, the practice of witch-hunting is to be found only in specific parts of the continent, mainly in the east and south.
Similarly, 'medicine man', a term that entered the literature of the occult from the same general parts of Africa, is seldom used in West Africa. Along the West coast, the term would describe a 'cult priest', also called a 'fetish priest'. It will not describe a 'herbalist' or 'traditional healer', who uses herbs, roots and barks to heal, and claim no magical powers.
Along the same lines, it is confusing to talk of 'juju' (jou-jou) as if one is talking of 'voodoo' despite the apparent similarity of parts of their methods. Juju is a cult that is consulted for one reason or another when in need. It is largely psycho-medical buttressed with the power of the supernatural. Ghana's president Jerry John Rawlings, darling of the Western world, was said to be a regular visitor to a juju shrine. He shocked Ghanaians by inviting the vice-president to a fetish shrine to resolve some differences between them.
Settling disputes by this means is pretty common among Africans all over the continent. This is different however, from a voodoo shrine which combines the claimed powers of a juju with the attributes of a church. Voodoo per se is not an Africa-wide church. It is restricted to Dahomey, now called Benin, on the West coast of Africa. It was taken to the Caribbean by slaves. Here it found new roots in Haiti and flourished. Voodoo and the religions Voodoo has not been able to penetrate into other parts of the African continent for a number of reasons. First of all, Africans traditionally do not separate worship from everyday life the way Christianity, Islam, and some other religions do. Like many oriental beliefs, African beliefs are woven into their everyday lives.
Thus, any sect that wants to spread in the continent must adopt one of two methods used by Christianity and Islam. Christianity was successfully spread throughout Africa because the first missionaries indoctrinated young children. They passed on the new beliefs to their off-spring, and so on. The spread of Islam was 'with the sword' in those days: through punishing many of those who resisted its introduction.
Voodoo used neither of these methods and has therefore been unable to spread throughout Africa. More still because other cult practises such as Juju were available to provide major functions of helping cure and providing spiritual fortification. Finally, African traditional beliefs, as far as they can be called African, do not link Heaven with earthly activities.
African belief is basically the humanistic belief that doing good is good. while doing anything bad is bad. You are rewarded here on earth for your good deeds and punished for your iniquities. Indeed, many Africans believe that the ultimate punishment for bad or iniquitous behaviour is death.
Exportable mysticismHowever, if voodoo was successfully exported to the Caribbeans, it is possible that other sects and cults can be exported elsewhere.The Akonedi sect in Ghana has taken in initiates from the United States who have set up what is said to be a very successful shrine in the New York area. Ironically, that export seems to have literally taken the spirit out of the parent shrine which is on the point of collapse. There is always an excuse to look down upon voodoo and other cults and sects, but there's never any reason to believe that they can be dismissed outright.
Reinforcing the belief. It is not that difficult to understand why Africa has been made the exclusive home of what the world sees as weird beliefs and practices. The preferred attitude among the Western people is to raise supernatural beliefs elsewhere than Africa on to a pedestal solely on the premise that they are different and better than what prevails in Africa. Because they regard Africans as incapable of any concept that is profound.
Thus, voodoo, juju or other socalled African cults are discussed vis-à-vis Africans as a means to reinforce the belief in the bluntness of African thought and behaviour. And yet as the activities of spiritual cults in Europe show, spiritism and the call of spirits are the same all over the world.
Indeed, the question is being asked now in parts of Africa as to the nature of the spirit messengers of God, called angels, and what exactly is exorcism in Christian religious practice. And, what are the differences between these angels and the deities that are claimed to be the bases of cults and sects in Africa. They are also wondering about the differences in attitudes toward African sects as against such sects as Scientology, Moonies, The Emin, Children of God and Aetherious Society.
One can take it a step further and ask where does spiritism begin and where does Catholic practice end, when Catholics talk about saints and bow to images of angels and saints? Is it fair, then, to make Africans appear inferior when they also symbolize their deities with stones, wood and such like?
Is it not time to strip discussions about African beliefs of the racism which tends to warp these discussions? Especially, as the Pope's apology demonstrates a realization of the apparent deliberateness to the Western attitude and also as it seems to acknowledge that Western attitudes are wrong?
Adu Kwabena-Essem is a freelance journalist, based in Accra, Ghana. This article is published in Djembe Magazine, no. 13, July 1995.
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