Invisible Agents by Gordon David M.;

Author:Gordon, David M.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2012-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Lumpa-UNIP war demonstrates the interventions of spirits into extraordinary affairs. If, as Carl von Clausewitz put it, “war is a continuation of politics by other means,” spirits were everywhere in this violent play for power. The Lumpa and the UNIP fought precisely because church members and political activists recognized the power of the spirits. UNIP activists insisted on the illimitable sovereignty of a party, UNIP, supported by God; Lenshina’s followers insisted that Lenshina, not UNIP and Kaunda, was God’s intermediary. Lumpa adherents would not recognize UNIP before they prayed to God, and those who prevented them from praying were sinners and witches. For the nationalists, anyone contaminated with an association with colonialism was a Judas; they had to be cleansed, just like a witch. As violence increased, so did death, unpredictability, and spiritual agency. To some, spirits enhanced fighting prowess and offered physical protection against bullets; to nearly all, spiritual beliefs proved the righteousness of their struggle. Both UNIP and Lumpa were fighting for a revolution, and if they succeeded, a new heaven on earth awaited. After victory, the nationalists imagined that they had become the representatives of God’s will; after defeat, the Lumpa believed that their suffering, like Christ’s, signaled the strength of their faith.

The Lumpa-UNIP war of 1964 helped to redefine the relationship between the invisible and the visible worlds. With independence, the millenarian popular programs of both Christian and nationalist movements receded, and the urban-based teachers, with their program of moral reform, proposed to guide the masses to an earthly salvation. The nationalist elite tried to establish new boundaries that separated political power from the power of the spirits. They proposed a new slogan, “Lesa ku mulu, Kaunda panshi” (God in heaven, Kaunda on earth). Kaunda had taken over as the ancestor of Zambia, and God was only in control of an afterlife. While the new state elite claimed to be an alternative both to Lenshina and to the excesses of popular nationalism, whenever a political foe appeared, the state and party structures could appeal to this history of millenarian nationalism and mobilize the violence necessary to maintain authority. But the emotional investment of Zambians in the nationalist vision could not be easily contained in the turmoil of a new nation, with its divisions, economic fragility, and unrequited expectations. Fervor did not remain contained by this vision; nor did evil disappear because Kaunda proclaimed it so. With the unmet expectations of independence, people once again turned to personal struggles against the influence of evil.

The Lubemba Plateau—the home of the Crocodile Clan, a number of the Zambian political elites, the Roman Catholic White Father missions, and the Livingstonia Church of Scotland—lost its importance in postcolonial Zambia. The mission of Ilondola survived, sponsored by the Catholic Church, and became a well-known language training institute. But the Presbyterian Lubwa Mission began a period of decline, so that even the old graves of the heroes of Lubwa, Paul B. Mushindo and David and Helen Kaunda, fell into disrepair. Over the

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