The Quest for Fruition through Ngoma: The Political Aspects of Healing in Southern Africa (review)

Outside the pages of Current Anthropology or the more public dustups over Captain Cook or the Yanomami, it is often difficult to find sustained, accessible, productive (not to mention polite) conversations in anthropology on specific theoretical or ethnographic concerns. This volume offers a rare chance to follow several stages of the unfolding debates around spirit possession in southern Africa. After a brief history of the theory on this topic, the editors identify John Janzen's Ngoma (1992) as a watershed in the study of sprit possession and the inspiration for the responses and critiques collected in this volume. Janzen proposed that many examples of spirit possession in southern Africa that had previously been studied separately and only in their local context could be integrated under the regional rubric of ngoma, a diverse array of healing and ritual forms united by "the use of the drums and the working upon spirit relationships" (p. 4). Though the editors celebrate Janzen's innovation, they fault him for (among other things) privileging the therapeutic dimensions of ngoma over its political dimensions. The present volume seeks to redress this imbalance by probing more comprehensively "the exact limits of the Ngoma discourse Janzen intends to investigate, (p. 5)" and reintroducing "the political" through richly textured and careful ethnographies of ngoma. In a useful (and rare) move, the editors give Janzen the opportunity of submitting an afterword to respond to his admirer-critics.

The first three chapters are more "classical" case studies of ngoma in predominantly rural societies. In a chapter on wedding ngomas in Tanzania, Henny Blokland examines two contrasting styles (sacred/unifying and secular/competitive) in three major social contexts (kinship, kingship, and formal ngoma organizations and competitions). Arguing that Janzen (mis)identifies healing ngomas as the "core" form, she counters that no single dimension or species of ngoma can be considered original or derivative. Annette Drews's piece on female initiation rituals in eastern Zambia shows how ngomas become an arena for expressing, manipulating, and transforming another source of social conflict, gender relations; in particular, she probes the tensions between more traditional, local conceptions of gender equality and Christian notions of female subservience within family and social hierarchies. Ria Reis, in a chapter on Swazi healing, argues that Janzen's focus on the "doing of ngoma" (rituals that produce "wounded healers") rather than the "work of ngoma" (rituals that heal patients) is too restrictive. She proposes considering "Swazi healing" more holistically by examining ngoma as part of a broader set of discourses of suffering and recovery.

The next two chapters investigate ngoma in the context of societies that bridge hereditary forms of political organization and centralized, state-level forms of political power. Marja Spierenburg's contribution on postcolonial land reform and Mhondoro cults in Zimbabwe argues that cult leaders, far from establishing unquestioned values and maps for social relations, provide various social groups a platform where issues and conflicts are discussed and debated. Spierenburg maintains that the study of ngoma should concentrate on leaders' reactions to broader sociopolitical events and the interplay between leaders, government officials, and local residents. Matthew Schoffeleers' challenging piece on the regional Mbona cult in Malawi provides a fascinating account of the ways scapegoat kings can be interpreted as a different kind of wounded healer within the context of the ngoma discourse.

The two final chapters examine the intersection of ngoma and Christianity. Cor Jonker describes Zionist healing churches in urban Zambia and highlights the contrasts between three groups within the church: its male leadership, its urban, self-employed female members, and its recently rural, and often depressed female patients. He shows that the ideological "aim of the healing process [is to] mould the patient into her new role of obedient housewife in an urban situation" (p. 125). Rijk...