How Death is Understood Spiritually in Three Different African Communities
One of the most common missions of religion is to help the living feel more comfortable with death, and African traditional religions are no exception. In fact, we can use practices surrounding death to draw cultural conclusions about the fears and the corresponding assurances that African communities have. This essay will use in-depth studies of two different cultures from two different ethnic groups living in two different modern-day countries. These two cultures are the BaManianga, a Kongo group living just north of the Lower Congo as studied by Simon Bockie in Death and the Invisible Powers, and the Diola of Esulalu, Senegal as studied by Robert Baum in Shrines of the Slave Trade. In these two studies, the centrality of the community in this world is stressed, and these concepts are enforced both by accusations after untimely death and conceptions of the afterlife.
Death, and the witchcraft that so often is accused of accompanying it, are central to the religion of the BaManianga, according to Bockie. Witchcraft (known as kindoki, practiced by ndoki[*]), though a common part of life, is not the only cause of death; there is also just natural death of old age. God, known as Nzambi Mpungu Tulendo, created death to make man his partner. Therefore, since death as wished by God (natural death) is benevolent and restorative, people do not weep after a natural death. Diseases or accidents, though, are not considered to be this type of natural death. Instead, these things are evidence of unhappy spiritual beings or “human beings endowed with mysterious powers to do harm” (40). The direct scientific explanation for why a disease or freak accident occurs is not sufficient in these cases. The most common deeper reason for such events is invisible spirits, the BaManianga argue, but due to their very nature as invisible spirits, investigating them leads to incomplete results. If not the spirits, those nearby who are already suspected of being ndoki are then labeled as the most likely suspects; if they deny their role in the events, they’ll be forced to face a priest who will investigate their innocence. But just because some ndoki are thought to be life-destructive, that doesn’t mean they all are—the only thing they must have is an ability to exercise unusual powers. The good ndoki acts by “protecting” out in the open, during the day, while the bad ndoki acts by “eating” in the night, in secret. There is one theme elucidated by this description so far—family—and it is elucidated by the other texts as well. The concept of kindoki allows people not just to understand the variation in their community and prevents the total othering of the unique. One cannot always expect everything one’s neighbors will do, and the cultural institution of kindoki allows for this uncertainty to exist. Nonetheless, not all variation is thought to be of the same quality, and in this distinction, community is exalted. The fact that the good ndoki operate in broad daylight where everyone can see them stresses the value of looking out for each other and belonging to an active, vigilant community. One of the things that make bad ndoki bad is that they act in the night, without the oversight or permission of the community.
Beyond the causes of death, there is also the issue of what happens to people when they die. In the way that Bockie describes the Manianga afterlife, it is clear the community, and this world, are the most important concepts. When a good person dies in a Manianga community, they are thought to go to Mpemba, where the ancestors live. They do not have to worry about earthly problems like hunger or diseases. However, their main role is to advise the living, therefore still deeply concerned and involved with this world, not off enjoying themselves in their own truly separate world. This responsibility of advising may seem like a strange utopia to believe in, but it makes more sense when one remembers that those who hear their advice are their descendants. Manianga religion, as is common in African traditional religions, is obsessed with the local family and community, theorizing an afterlife full of helping one’s community and family thrive. But this afterlife isn’t open to everyone; rather this ideal afterlife is only open to those who have made obedient use of their ancestor advisors while living. One can observe how this afterlife theory leads to a kind of circular stability, focused in this world and in this community. The best afterlife is to be an ancestor giving orders, and the only way to earn that afterlife is to listen to those orders while alive.
Diola ideas surrounding death, as observed by Robert Baum, equally demonstrate ingrained themes of community and this world, enforced by accusations of non-communal behavior following untimely deaths (much like the bad ndoki who “eat” at night) and conceptions of the afterlife. Once again, not all deaths are perceived to be the result of foul play—when elders who are grandparents die, it is not considered worth mourning about, though their life is celebrated. After an unnatural death though, there is a ritual interrogation of the corpse to figure out what the core reason for the death is. One of the worst-case scenarios for this interrogation is that the deceased have been killed by a spirit shrine for “neglecting ritual obligations,” (57) requiring the family to have to right their deceased loved one’s wrong through other rituals. There are several dimensions of community duty in this. For one, the responsibility is on the community to figure out what happened to the deceased. Next, a common reason for the untimely death is rejection of ritual, which is a fundamentally community-based institution. Lastly, responsibility for committing this offense to your community falls to your family, proving that death in Esulalu is not purely an individual act.
Just like Bockie’s BaManianga though, the Diola accusations only make up the explanation of the death—they say nothing about the crucial afterlife for the recently deceased. And just like the BaManianga, the Diola imagine an ancestor world for the good, where one gets to help their own lineage and community through good advice. This obviously highlights the importance of community and family in Esulalu Diola religion, but there is another level of afterlife as well here. After the period as an ancestor (or phantom if they weren’t as good in their time on Earth), the person is reincarnated back into the world, demonstrating how focused on this world Diola religion, like Manianga religion, is.
Whether it be the accusations that follow an unexpected death or the afterlives of the good vs the bad, these two studies profoundly emphasize the centrality of family and community in this world in these two African conceptions of death. These community-stressing rituals are not merely philosophies percolating in the backs of some minds, but they must be acted upon, and when they aren’t, the strands of the community are thought to come apart. In the Acholi of Northern Uganda, death in war was thought to be honored and reconciled with, through the purification of a piece of the fallen (either literally a piece of their body, or a piece of cloth or jewelry). But during the civil war in Uganda, so many were murdered so quickly that the reconciliation purification ritual could not possibly catch up to all those killed. This is one of the examples of wrong that Alice Alma felt in her community when she began the Holy Spirit Movement. The Acholi are hundreds (even thousands) of miles from the BaManianga and the Diola, but the Acholi’s conceptions around the existential importance of death rituals illuminates the same conceptions found in the Diola and BaManianga. In the Diola and BaManianga, community and family must be made to be important, and this importance is enforced by better afterlife outcomes for those who honor their family and community while they lived and by negative accusations of non-communal acts.
[*] Witchcraft isn’t a perfect translation for kindoki, as Bockie points out. I, like Bockie, will just use kindoki to be more specific and accurate.