Did African spirits hit back?

A member of ‘Prophetess’ Alice Lakwena’s defunct Holy Spirit Movement, Prof Isaac Ojok was not only a scholar, but had also been our minister of Education, yet he believed that after being ritually smeared with a herbal oil by Lakwena, his body would become bullet-proof!

At a distance, people ridiculed Ojok as outlandishly irrational. 

But every Sunday, nay, everyday, Ugandans of seemingly sound mind are in a queue somewhere, jostling to reach a pastor to smear them with oil to ensure that they get whatever they desire. 

A visa to the USA; a menial job in the Middle East; or simply to get rich; they earnestly believe in the magical power of the  ritual.

Engaging in the occult in a (fashionable/respectable) Christian framework, the pastor deceives himself and his clients that they are removed from the Ojok/Lakwena mindset, or from what they loosely generally call witchcraft. He even makes it a special mission to attack the witchdoctor, the dealer in African spirits.

He attacks him daily from the pulpit, and occasionally seeks to physically destroy his shrine/temple and related paraphernalia in a dramatic exhibition to show that Jesus, or the Holy Spirit is aggressive, fearless, and supremely powerful; that there is no other spirit or pantheon of spirits He cannot confront and defeat.

But by ceaselessly attacking witchdoctors and claiming to counter their power, the pastors are in effect marketing witchcraft as a source of power, only that it is second-grade power.

Now, just over a week ago, one Pastor Daniel Naheirwe left his Kampala base and went to Nakasongola to seize and destroy spirits (mayembe) that were reported to have been troubling Stephen Kansiime and Jesca Kyohairwe’s household in a complex tragic-comic storyline.

Don’t laugh; this is serious stuff; someone could die here.

Okay, the gloves were thrown off. The man-of-Jesus had his bare hands twisting the necks and bending the backs of the gang of wretched dark spirits. They exchanged blows. Their legs tangled.

'Death to the spirits,’ the pastor vowed, grabbing and shaking the horns of the biggest spirit.

This was no joke, the head spirit told his gang. They did not remember facing such a determined attack by a living human.

But then the head spirit suddenly produced a jaw bone from somewhere and swung it as a weapon.

‘Take that, if you are a man!’ the spirit jeered at the pastor. ‘If you forgot Holy Communion, it was your mistake. You should have partaken of the Eucharist to become invincible. I took my bowl of blood from a fatted sheep and ate a good chunk of the meat. I feel strong.’

It was a heavy blow with that jawbone. I warned you. Pastor Daniel Naheirwe got dizzy. 

His grip on the horns slackened until his hands dropped. His head dangling, the tangle of the legs loosened, he slumped on the ground and did not move again.

The death of Naheirwe is not fiction. In a serious country, the police and medical pathologists would explain how exactly Naheirwe got fixed. 

In Uganda, the resilience of African spirits is paying off. They must be hitting back. Pastors and witchdoctors will, therefore, continue conning gullible Ugandans that the power of the spirits, Holy or black, is at work, and will make any and all their fantasies real on command. 

The problem is that sometimes the price is too high.

Mr Alan Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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