The inconsistency in local peoples beliefs always strikes me, in fact it pains me. I’ve come across many God-fearing Christians who go to church regularly, who would look at you scornfully upon hearing that you are atheist or agnostic, who at the same time truly believe in witchcraft and somehow believe ancestors still pay an active role in their lives. It’s even more painful that the more authentic African beliefs have a veil over them, not something people openly want to speak about and is practiced behind closed doors.

Its all good and well to have a single belief whatever it may be, but when there is an emulsion of different and more importantly conflicting beliefs it causes a lot of confusion within the individual and this is how you end up with a community of judgmental yet hypocritical, confused yet adamant in their beliefs, angry or very passive, apathetic people.

In light of xenophobic attacks in South Africa, I started asking myself how many of these attackers go to church on Sunday? How many pray to a God but at the same time go out and hurt their brothers and sisters? One finds in the same note that the attackers are afraid of foreigners because they believe they practice witchcraft, they are dangerous and have mysterious ways and stories about them such as Indians have worms inside of them that they transfer during sexual intercourse, Zimbabweans in South Africa are actually ghosts and if you return to their homes in their country you will find that they passed on a long time ago and the fact that many of our neighbours come into the country and go into the business of traditional healing or witch-craft doesn’t help the situation.

Seems like we are burying more and more people in our society, and we hold the funeral services in churches before going to our local cemetery to bury them. The whole event is a mixture of different practice and beliefs such as people in the family aren’t allowed to have sex for 2 weeks or so during and after the funeral period. The widow or widower has to dress in a certain way , or shave their head in some cultures as they mourn, and the mourning period lasts months. If the procedure isn’t followed, many people believe the result is death, some even believe HIV and AIDS are a manifestation of what happens when proper procedure isn’t followed. I cannot count the number of instances where people speculated that the deceased was killed by so and so using witchcraft and that if he or she had paid more attention to their ancestors they might have been protected.

I heard a case of a mother whose son was arrested falsely for theft. While he was in jail, his mother consulted her mother in law who is a witch-doctor who told her that her son would be released and she shouldn’t worry. Before the arrest however the mother went to her church for prayer and assistance. At the same time she firmly believes that her sons ancestors are looking out for him and that’s why he eventually got out. If the son hadn’t been released then the mother would accept that as the will of all the forces in her life, a kind of apathy is it not?