Woman finds charms, six blind snakes on doorstep

The Herald 10 September 1993

A VILLAGE in Nyanga has sought the services of an Anglican clergyman highly regarded as an exorcist after a woman found several charms including a calabash containing six blind snakes, on her doorstep shortly after midnight last Saturday.

Headman Nyakwangwa of Nyatate village, some 130km north of Mutare, immediately sent for the archdeacon of St Mary’s Magdalene Mission, Reverend Livingstone Nerwande, after Alice Mutingwa reported the bizarre objects.

These also included a thick mass of human hair and a long needle, a traditional symbol of “man-made” lightning as well as multi-coloured beads.

The archdeacon, who termed his task an all-out war against those who peddle in evil spells, on Wednesday morning destroyed the charms during his weekly faith healing and exorcism sessions in the mission church.

During the session, an assortment of supernatural implements brought voluntarily by their owners were displayed before a gathering of close to 100 people, prior to meeting their fate in an incinerator.

The 51-year old clergyman did not have psychic abilities nor did he conduct witch-hunts. He simply used divine powers to perform his duties and that the “tonnes and tonnes of charms” destroyed at the mission over the last three years had been brought voluntarily.

lessons for today

◆ Issues of witchcraft have been there for ages, and communities have been fighting this vice, especially in Africa.

◆ The involvement of church leaders, priests and prophets has also brought in another dimension of dealing with this issue.

◆ Some still prefer the use of traditional healers known as Tsikamutandas to help cleanse their communities, however, the law doesn’t allow forced participation into these ceremonies.

◆ Public practices for the suppression of witchcraft are periodically performed throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

◆ Across the African continent, there is a pervasive outlook characterised by material and non-material, the natural and the supernatural, the seen and the unseen, the visible and the invisible. The invisible world is sad to be populated with entities, which Africans believe are capable of doing either good and evil.

◆ The so-called modern development in Africa, which some argue should have caused witch beliefs to disappear, has not succeeded in addressing the insecurities people have in their daily lives which spun witch beliefs in the first place.