The sorcery discourse described by Harry West ( 2005, p. West’s work, in turn, follows Achille Mbembe’s ( 2001) insistence that an understanding of the development of African democracy requires that attention is paid to alternative “languages of power” that emerge from people’s daily lives. That there has been a reopening of the space of the occult by the church, and that this has involved a radical redefinition of the potent space of governance. Observation in his monograph on Mozambique Indeed, Africanists have long been keen to point out that the concept of political power in these regions is often difficult to disentangle from concepts of sorcery and witchcraft (Geschiere 1997).This notion also draws on Harry West’s ( 2005) In using this concept, we suggest that much of current politics, governance, and public debate is rooted in a world of invisible powers-of witches, spirits, and demons (see also Marshall 2009). This book is about such recent trends in what we might call They ask: who is really running the church who is really in charge of the nation who is really benefitting from business deals? When they pronounce the answers, they often identify “witchcraft” and “sorcery” as their targets. They go on crusades and engage in warfare against invisible demons that they believe corrupt public displays and agencies. , security, unity, prosperity, and development. On behalf of the nation, the city, or the neighborhood they make into tangible enemies those symbols that are deemed bad for health The cases of Muxima and the PNG parliament demonstrate the energy and determination with which Pentecostals target public spiritual sites that they associate with witchcraft and evil. The Unity Pole was meant “to usher in an era of morality and prosperityĪnd rebirthing the country as godly” (Silverman 2015, p. Zurenuoc sought to replace the “blasphemous” carvings in the Grand Hall of Parliament with what he called a “National Unity Pole,” which incorporated carvings of images from the Bible, the PNG constitution, and the word “unity” in each of the country’s 800 or so vernacular languages it also depicted an eternal flame, “symbolizing the light that comes from the Word of God” (Zurenuoc 2013). Zurenuoc ( 2013) claimed that the images represented “ancestral gods and spirits of idolatry, immorality and witchcraft.” Workers attacked the carvings with chainsaws in an effort to purge these “demons”įrom Parliament House. These had been intended to represent the country’s cultural diversity, but he referred to them as “ungodly images and idols” (Eves et al. In late 2013, the devout Christian Speaker of Parliament, Theodore Zurenuoc, tried to expunge a number of spirit carvings from Parliament House. (PNG), and this gained considerably wider media exposure. , it is also believed to be a powerful spiritual site at which several prophets (Christian and non-Christian) carry out their work and obtain their power, be it “good” or “bad” (see Blanes, this volume). Not only is Muxima a key pilgrimage site for the Catholic Church They had carried out their attack to mark their position in a larger spiritual battle. According to media reports, they wanted to destroy the statue because they had identified it as a potent symbol of witchcraft-fueled idolatry. The group belonged to a Pentecostal church known as the Prophetic Church of Judaic Bethlehem’s Ark. Before they could complete their mission, however, they were cornered and pinioned to the floor. In the middle of Sunday Mass, they proceeded to destroy the statue of Our Lady of Muxima. October 2013, a group of six men and one woman, armed with sticks and stones, invaded the church of Muxima-the most important Catholic pilgrimage site in Angola
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