by Thokozile Gurganious

Created on: September 20, 2010

African cultures of southern, central and eastern Africa all had the concept of God; although the colonialist claimed that they did not. In Ki-Swahili, God is “Mungu”, in Tswana, he is “Modimo”, in Zulu/Ndebele the almighty is “Unkulunkulu” or “Umlimo”, in iKalanga he is “Ndzimu”, and the Shona of Zimbabwe refer to him as “She”, the King. In all these cultures, there is only one God, and there can only be one God. I do believe that this one God that the African cultures refer to is the same God that Judaism and Christianity are talking about. The difference comes in the approach to worshipping this one and only God.

According to African religion, a person talks to “Ndzimu” through his dead ancestors, “the amadlozi” in the Ndebele language. When your relatives die, their spirits hover above, watching you at all times. They watch you because they want only good things to happen to you, and they also want you to do only good things in your life.  When you do good, they are happy with you, and they approach “Ndzimu” and plead to him to see your good deeds and treat you well and bless you. However, if a person is bad (let us say, a man who does not take good care of his children, ill-treats and beats up his wife, steals from his neighbors and the community (say, a corrupt politician), does not respect the elderly and the weak), the “amadlozi” become furious with this kind of person, and stop talking to God in good light about and for him. When this happens, bad things start happening to this person: he might get sick, lose his job, he might be involved in an accident or some other evil might befall him.  

A sign that the “amadlozi” have abandoned someone is when a succession of bad things happen to someone. A good example is one of my uncles-his child died, his wife ran away from him a month later, a few weeks after his wife left him he lost his job and soon after he lost his job, he was involved in an accident and had to be hospitalized for a long time, and while he was in hospital the roof of his house was blown off by a whirlwind.

When the bad things happen to this person, he starts calling upon his “amadlozi” to help him by asking for good things for him from “Ndzimu”, but his “amadlozi” at this time have abandoned him and he is all by himself in this world. He cannot talk directly to

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