Chiefs, Prophets, and the Control of Magic in Natal and Zululand, 1910–76

When Isaiah Shembe arrived in the Mchunu chiefdom, he promised the chief that he could end drought, bring peace, and steward the Mchunu ancestors to heaven. Isaiah, who founded the Nazareth Baptist Church (NBC) in 1910, attracted many converts through such promises to manage and stave off misfortune and, by implication, to control magic. His ability to control these forces, he explained, derived from his association with the divine as well as obedience to the spiritual order that he proposed. Isaiah's successor and son, Johannes Galilee, assumed a similar role while leading the church from 1935 to 1976.

This paper employs evidence from magistrates' records, oral history interviews, and hagiographic accounts to explore relationships between the NBC's prophets and traditional leaders. Through case studies, I analyze the services that the Shembes offered as they established temples on chiefly land. Some of these services are in the realm of what scholars typically label magical (as in the case of those offered to the Mchunu chief), while others had seemingly more verifiable results (for example, building fences and furrows). I suggest that chiefs' responses to these services can tell us a great deal about efforts to shore up their authority amid the sweeping changes of the twentieth century.

Many scholars have described a crisis of legitimacy during this period among chiefs who were incorporated into the state. This paper adds dimensions to this discussion by exploring how prophets such as the Shembes entered—and changed the terms of—ongoing debates about the basis of chiefly authority. It also suggests the salience of new means of controlling magic, means influenced by Africans' interpretations of the Bible and Christianity. In sum, this paper sheds greater light on the relationship between religion and the emergence of the segregationist and later the apartheid state.