Acknowledgments

Research for this article was supported by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad program and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. Earlier versions were presented in seminars in the Department of History at Kenyon College and the African Studies Centre at Cambridge University. I would like to thank the audiences on those occasions for their helpful comments. I would also like to thank the people who have, over the past several years, and in various forms, read versions of this piece: Ellen Contini-Morava, Eleanor Culley, Jeffrey Feldman, Richard Handler, Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton, Isabel Mukonyora, Rebecca Nash, Amy Ninetto, Roy Wagner, Harry West, and Terence Ranger and two anonymous reviewers for CSSH. Finally, let me extend my sincere appreciation to the apostolics in Zimbabwe who spoke with me about Johane Masowe's early days; while most of this paper is based on archival material, their thoughts form an integral part of the analysis. That analysis, of course, is my own.

In 1932 a young man called Shoniwa Masedza was working for a cobbler near Salisbury, the capital of Southern Rhodesia. Masedza had come from his home in Makoni, near the border with Portuguese East Africa, in the late 1920s. He had held a number of odd jobs in and around the capital: driving wagons, working as a “garden boy,” apprenticing with a carpenter. Just after starting with the shoemaker, some time around May 1932, Shoniwa fell ill, suffering from “severe pains in the head.” He lost his speech for four months and was “unable to walk about.” During his sickness he studied the Bible “continuously.” He dreamt that he had died, and in the dream he heard a voice saying he was now Johane Masowe—Africa's “John the Baptist.” Upon recovering, Johane went to a nearby hill called Marimba. He stayed there for forty days, praying to God “day and night” without sleep. He survived on wild honey. Johane was told by a voice (which he believed to be the Voice of God) that he had been “sent from Heaven to carry out religious work among the natives.” He was told also that Africans must burn their witchcraft medicines, and must not commit adultery or rape. After these experiences, Johane no longer suffered from pains in the head.¹

This narrative of events was related by Shoniwa/Johane to an officer in the Criminal Investigation Department of the British South Africa Police on 1 November 1932. The officer who recorded Shoniwa's testament was interested above all in whether Johane's activities were of a politically subversive nature. The Southern Rhodesian government had an ongoing concern that Africans like this, whom they called “pseudo-religious” or “separatist” figures, might disrupt the political order. In the statement, Johane also said that while he hoped in the future to gain acceptance from the Roman Catholic Church, he was, at the time, not connected with “any other Society but my own.” The Chief Native Commissioner, C. L. Carbutt, wrote to the Premier of Native Affairs the following day that this man, “Shoniwa alias Johane,” seemed “quiet and respectful,” but should nevertheless be watched closely since he would no doubt “succumb to the temptation of indulging in inflammatory addresses in order to maintain his notoriety.”²

Over the next two years Johane was arrested on at least three occasions, for each of which he served time in prison. He was referred to as everything from an itinerant preacher who did “nothing pernicious” to a “dangerous” charlatan who might threaten the “stability of the state.”³

Uncertainty and doubt are common themes in religious narratives. There are numerous examples in the New Testament that underscore their centrality in the Christian religious imagination: Thomas (Jn. 20: 24–28), Peter (Mt. 14: 31), and Jesus (Mt. 27: 46), for instance, each underwent moments of doubt. Augustine's Confessions is perhaps the most elaborate exploration of these themes in the Christian canon. “This much is certain, Lord,” Augustine wrote, “that I am laboring over it, laboring over myself, and I have become for myself a land hard to till and of heavy sweat” (1997 [c. 397]: 212 [Book X 16, 25]). Religion is meant to be hard work. For Augustine, a good Christian is not comfortable and complacent in her beliefs, but curious and critical: “People go to admire lofty mountains, and huge breakers at sea, and crashing waterfalls, and vast stretches of ocean, and the dance of the stars, but they leave themselves behind out of sight” (Augustine 1997:206 [Book X 8, 15]). The Confessions is not written to reflect Augustine's life as a seamless narrative; it is full of ruptures that provide the legitimating shape of that narrative. Augustine's conversion is presented as a series of moments in which uncertainty and doubt played a central role in his process of coming to know God. And it was, indeed, a process. Becoming Christian had “driven him to anxious self-examination”; Augustine “had not allowed himself to be lulled into certainty about what he was really like” (Brown 1967:163, 179).

Augustine's case is of course well known. And yet it is surprising how infrequently scholars in the social sciences treat uncertainty in the religious subject (Christian or otherwise). By uncertainty, I do not mean “radical challenges to the proposition that life is comprehensible” (Geertz 1973:100). This kind of uncertainty has been well studied and while still subject to debate it is not what I pursue here. Uncertainty in the religious subject is something else altogether: It signals the doubts, misgivings, hesitations, and confusions that accompany life under any “sacred canopy” (Berger 1967). Uncertainty in this second sense relates to “an internally persuasive discourse . . . that is assimilated by the individual and expressed from within” (Lambek 1995:259). It asks us to consider not simply what someone knows, but when. If one prevalent image of the religious enthusiast is comfort and complacency in the Truth, then alongside this we need to consider moments when the “internal discourse” is either unpersuasive or inarticulate. Fabian (1991a; 1991b) calls these moments “narratives of negativity,” prompted by his recognition that “inquiry into self-questioning and self-denial among religious enthusiasts is seldom undertaken” (1991b:118; see also Lambek 1995). In this paper I argue that moments of religious transformation are often expressed as narratives of negativity, which is to say moments in which uncertainty and doubt are central to the constitution of religious subjectivity.⁵

Fabian admits there are exceptions to his rule. In the history of anthropology he points to Victor Turner's work on liminality and anti-structure (Turner 1967; 1969) as having “kept in touch” with “negativity” (Fabian 1991a:67n.). Turner called liminality a “fruitful darkness” (1967:110). More recently two studies of Christian fundamentalism in the United States each develop discussions of concepts that might be said to parallel Turner's, and that can be defined by the kind of negativity of interest to Fabian.

According to Susan Harding, for the fundamentalist the experience of being “convicted by the Holy Spirit” carries with it something like a fruitful darkness. “Coming under conviction” is a term used by Christian fundamentalists to explain how the Holy Spirit forces someone to confront his or her sins, accept Christ, and be born again. Coming under conviction is a first step towards conversion in the language ideology of Christian fundamentalism. Harding defines fundamentalist conversion as “a process of acquiring a specific religious language or dialect” (2000:34). The experience of conviction is the moment one first starts to use—or inhabit—that language. It is not the sign of certainty, of a newfound faith, but rather of an engagement that may or may not lead to conversion. Harding provides us with a personal example. After a long and tiring interview with the Reverend Melvin Campbell at the Jordan Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, Harding climbs into her car and heads back to her motel. On the way, she is nearly rammed at an intersection when another car comes out of nowhere. She asks herself in that split second: “What is God trying to tell me?” (2000:33). Reflecting on her reaction after the fact, she concludes, “It was my voice but not my language. I had been inhabited by the fundamentalist Baptist tongue I was investigating” (2000:33). Harding had come under conviction, a “direct experience of the divine” that threw her into “a liminal state” (2000:38), somewhere in-between belief and disbelief. Susan Harding was not born again. Her conviction by the Holy Spirit did not become an internally persuasive discourse. But her argument about the power of a religious conviction exposes the contingencies and uncertainties of religious subjectivity. Harding's story is a narrative of negativity that grows out of her relationships with people who struggle to close the gap between conviction and conversion.

Vincent Crapanzano's work on fundamentalism also highlights the “evangelizing dimension” (2000:103) of convictions. In an interesting parallel with Harding's fieldwork experience, Crapanzano also admits personal unease after he was witnessed to, a “semantic vertigo” brought on by the “dead certainty” of the fundamentalist's truth that allowed him “to appreciate the long drives between . . . appointments in Los Angeles” because they gave him time to “reorient” himself (2000:332). So far as we know, however, Crapanzano was not almost killed in a car crash. He was, in any case, not convicted, and the most productive discussions of certainty and uncertainty in his book are to be found in the sections on “sanctification.”

For the fundamentalist, sanctification is what comes after conviction; it is above all a process: “a spiritual maturing, a becoming holy, a discipline under the guidance of the Holy Spirit” (Crapanzano 2000:120). Like the “state of confusion” (Harding 2000:38) that accompanies conviction, sanctification is a process defined by a tension between certainty and uncertainty. On the one hand, the fact that someone has been born-again, that she is sanctifying herself, is the sign of salvation. On the other, sanctification is never complete. It “continues until death” and can be lost if one does not live according to “continual Bible study, prayer, and the application of biblical precept to one's life” (Crapanzano 2000:86, 121). As Ted Winter, a pastor in the Grace Brethren Church, said to Crapanzano: “‘ believe we have certainty, but I can't pretend I'm always certain. There's a living tension in faith, and apparently this tension, this uncertainty, is ultimately good for us, because it is this faith that pleases God'” (in 2000:104). Doctrinally the root of this uncertainty—this necessary separation from God—stems from the Fall of Man, from humankind's sinful nature (Crapanzano 2000:91, 165). In terms of contributing to the analytical purchase of a narrative of negativity, Crapanzano's work on sanctification raises two points. First, even when a subject comes to inhabit a religious language there is always a disconnect between that language and the subject. Second, and importantly for our discussion here, the religious subject can act with certainty and still not understand what that certainty entails. The fruitful darkness in this sense can be likened to having a conviction but not knowing how to act on it. “I'm ready to make a commitment,” said Paul Conway, another of Crapanzano's interlocutors. “I don't know what all this includes . . . but I'm ready to make a commitment” (in Crapanzano 2000:110).

I want to use these discussions of conviction and sanctification as heuristic tools in the analysis of Shoniwa-Johane's religious transformation. This is not to suggest an equivalence between American literalists and Makoni visionaries, but rather to underscore how the dynamics of uncertainty can play a constitutive role in the patterning of religious subjectivity. In conjunction with the foregoing discussions, the colonial record and the several discourses produced by Johane's followers can be made legible as a narrative of negativity. The narrative “moment” in this case lasted about two years, from 1932 to 1934. The early career of Johane Masowe was marked by uncertainty in several ways. He was an African visionary trying to make sense of his visions in the context of a complicated political and social climate. He was learning to use, if never fully inhabit, a new religious language. At the same time, he was trying to master it toward the end of legitimating his authority and “Society.” Johane positioned himself strategically in relation to the state, the mission churches, chiefs, other apostolic figureheads, and even his own “followers.” This was not a simple task, and it was not always clear to Johane, much less those around him, how it should best be done.

***

To tell story of Johane I need to begin with a brief sketch of the two main churches that lay claim to his name, because they play an important part in situating the narrative. The first is the Gospel of God Church, registered in 1947 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, initially as the Apostolic Sabbath Church of God. This group is also called the “Basketmaker Church” because for many years its members wove and sold baskets in the local markets of South Africa, Rhodesia, and Zambia (see Dillon-Malone 1978). Johane Masowe led the Gospel of God Church until his death in 1973. Shortly after, it split into two main factions—one now based in Lusaka; the other in Gandanzara (the childhood home of Shoniwa/Johane, in Zimbabwe's Makoni District). While neither church relies on basket-making today, each is still committed to a message of economic self-sufficiency that Johane began to preach in the mid-1930s. The second of Johane's groups, and the one with which I have carried out the most extensive fieldwork, is the Masowe weChishanu Church. This group was inspired by Johane's earliest ministrations in Mashonaland and was guided for many years by one of Johane's most influential followers, a man called Emmanuel Mudyiwa from the Chiweshe Reserve. Mudyiwa also plays an important role in the story to follow. WeChishanu is the Shona-language term for “Friday,” and is the day on which these groups meet to pray. The Basketmaker groups, on the other hand, keep Saturday as the Sabbath. Colloquially these groups are known as “Friday” and “Saturday” Masowe, respectively. I estimate that in 1999, when I last conducted fieldwork, there were over 100,000 Zimbabweans who recognized themselves as Friday Masowe apostolics. Since the churches have memberships in South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, and Kenya, the overall figure of Johane Masowe apostolics is probably much larger.

There are a number of differences in the social organization of the Friday and Saturday Masowe, but I will focus on one that is crucial for the scope of this paper. In the mid-1930s Johane's followers became sharply divided over the issue of scriptural authority. Indeed, the Bible's role exercised Johane to a considerable degree. Like other African prophets, Johane was aware and wary of the Book's power. In the same police statement in which he claims to have studied the Bible continuously he is also said to have demanded—as we shall discuss—that Africans burn the Bible. The Bible's importance became a point of disagreement between Johane's followers, a symbol of both the limits and possibilities inherent in a “religion of the book.” It played a crucial role in the story of his religious transformation by providing tension in his narrative of negativity. Eventually, disagreements over what should be done with the Bible led those around him to a parting of ways, and in time this parting gave rise to the distinction between Friday and Saturday apostolics. With the Bible in the background, then, we can consider examples of the uncertainties that wracked Shoniwa/Johane in the first two years of his spirit-led activism.

“A Garden Watered from Above:” Missionary Experiments in Makoni District

The Bible played a central role in defining the terms of the colonial encounter in southern Africa. Throughout much of the colonial world it generated a paradox. On the one hand it was the “insignia of colonial authority” (Bhabha 1994:108). State and mission bodies used the written word to subjugate the colonial subject. On the other hand the Bible was “in its very essence liberation,” as the Catholic theologian Jean-Marc Éla (1994:145) put it, highlighting that literacy and the book empowered that same colonial subject in unexpected ways.⁶

Shoniwa spent his youth in this so-called garden, but most of it was on the outskirts. Gandanzara was an AMEC stronghold but Shoniwa's parents were Anglicans. In the statement he gave to the police in 1932, Shoniwa said that he received some schooling from the Anglicans at St. Faith's Mission, not far from his kraal. Being Anglican in Gandanzara was a difficult matter. Ranger (1981:21–24; 1991:125) has shown how rivalries and squabbles between the missions spilled over into dynamics between the people of Makoni. At the outbreak of World War I, for instance, the congregation of St. Augustine's even felt compelled to march on the German Trappists at Triashill (Ranger 1999:176–77). Dillon-Malone also suggests, “the presence of such division in white Christianity must have left a strong impression in [Shoniwa's] mind” (1978:13). All indications, then, “seem to place the [Masedza] family far outside the ranks of the [AMEC] cattle-owning, plough-purchasing clusters who were ‘the foundation of progress' in the Gandanzara area” (Ranger 1981:27). The picture of Christianity Johane saw as a child suggested a fractious and unstable nature.

Makoni (like the rest of Southern Rhodesia) hit hard times during the world market depression of the early 1930s. The missionaries and first generation of African converts, however, seemed more concerned with the lackluster response to mission on the part of the youth than with any economic downturn. Christianity in Makoni was becoming routinized.⁸

Gains made by missionaries toward their vision of showing the “richness” of Christian life through literacy and education had unintended consequences. It took the “spirit” out of the faith that motivated the earliest converts within the established churches. As one African Anglican lamented, “We were taught to read the Bible [in mission churches], but we ourselves never did what the people in the Bible used to do” (in Ranger 1999:180). Johane Masowe's early questioning of the Bible might be understood with this dynamic in mind. Apostolic prophets put emphasis on the spirit and experience, on doing what the people in the Bible used to do, rather than simply reading about it in a book (see Engelke 2004a).

Shoniwa left Makoni around 1928. In the three years that he held odd jobs around Salisbury it is not clear what else Johane was doing with his time, although we have some hints from the archival record and oral historical accounts. It seems he became friendly with a Roman Catholic priest. Recall that in the November 1932 statement to the police Shoniwa says he hoped to secure approval for his work from the Catholic Church.⁹

Shoniwa also found an interest in colonial labor politics. He admits in his November 1932 statement to attending rallies of the Industrial and Commercial Worker's Union (ICU) led by Charles Mzingeli, the young organizing secretary in Salisbury whose influence in labor politics stretched over the next several decades (Parry 1999). Much of 1929 and the beginning of 1930 were “months of special ferment in urban and industrial politics” (Ranger 1970:153). In Bulawayo there was a strike by the white workers on the railway that made the colonial administration particularly nervous about ICU activities. Shoniwa attended the ICU's rallies in Salisbury. The message he heard at those meetings addressed a “call for unity, the disillusionment with the failure of the white man to live up to his ‘civilizing' professions, the demand for higher wages” (Ranger 1970:156). Many of the ICU's main concerns later found voices of support among Johane's Basketmaker congregations, who adopted an explicitly anti-colonial approach to wage labor through their stress on economic self-sufficiency (see Dillon-Malone 1978).

We cannot treat the early biography of Shoniwa Masedza with finality. But these discussions give some context to Shoniwa's youth. They are suggestive also of ideas that shaped his later teachings. Shoniwa had some degree of exposure to both mainline mission and pentecostal Christianity between Makoni and Salisbury, and many of the ideas that were to define his “Society” can be traced to these experiences. But these exposures were in flux in the couple of years after his calling at Marimba; a number of ideas were in the air, but their constellation had yet to be determined. At any given time Shoniwa was wrestling with a number of issues: colonial racism, missionary paternalism, denominational factionalism, the influences of literacy, generational tensions, class antagonism, and a world market depression (Ranger 1981, 1999). Each contributed to the vocabulary that would later mark Johane's religious language.

The Coming of Johane

Shoniwa declared in his statement to the police on 1 November 1932 that during the winter months of his sickness he studied the Bible “continuously.” But his reception of the Bible quickly becomes a puzzling issue. Because the details of Masowe's statement are so important, I will return to and quote at length from it here. When Johane came down from his forty days on Marimba hill, he went to a nearby kraal:

This document is kept in the National Archives of Zimbabwe. And as Nicholas Dirks argues, archives are never “free of context, argument, [or] ideology” (2002:48). Johane's statement is presented from the perspective of the colonial government. In reading it we must be concerned not only with what Johane says, but why. We must take into account that the document is a transcription of an oral statement probably given in chiManyika (the dialect of Shona Johane grew up speaking) and translated into English. It was also likely posed as a series of questions to which he gave answers—not, as it appears, as a lengthy statement.¹¹

Dillon-Malone argues “the picture which emerges from [Johane's statement] is that of a profound religious experience expressed in terms of traditional and biblical imagery and resulting in a firm personal conviction of a call from God to perform a special work among Africans” (1978:13). Indeed, Johane's illness, dreams, and visions are reminiscent of the process a spirit medium must endure to assume power, his multi-layered allusions to biblical figures (Moses and Jesus in addition to John the Baptist) are quite clear, and his bold political assertions are conveniently contradictory (as often suits the purposes of political and religious leaders). But to say that Johane's personal conviction was firm is only part of the story. On the one hand he was indeed certain of his mission. He uses the language of certainty to proclaim his identity: I really do believe that I have been sent from heaven to carry out religious work among the natives. Over the following two years, he spent time in three jails and suffered numerous threats from the colonial authorities, missionaries, white farmers, and Manyika and Zezuru kraalheads and chiefs on account of his professions. It is reasonable to assume that he would not have subjected himself to such abuses and dangers were he not firmly convicted. On the other hand, just how he should articulate his message was not always clear. It is in this sense that his transformation was marked by uncertainty. Like Paul Conway, the fundamentalist in Crapanzano's book, Johane was “ready to make a commitment” but he “did not know what all this includes.” To better understand the firmness of his conviction, we need to focus on what was at stake in these moments of not knowing what it might include.

I have already drawn parallels among Augustine, American fundamentalists, and Shoniwa-Johane to highlight the benefits of a comparative anthropology of Christianity. But there are other aspects of anthropological comparison that touch more directly on the nature of Shoniwa's case, and which suggest its relevance to the anthropology of religion more generally. Indeed, uncertainty on the part of people possessed by spirits—holy or otherwise—is common in Zimbabwe, as throughout much of Africa. Here, I would like to take some space to describe the early days of a spirit medium with whom I worked in Zimbabwe. In many respects she is the opposite of a Christian prophet like Shoniwa-Johane; most prophets, at least, would make a concerted effort to distance themselves from her “traditional” practices. But in assuming their respective positions prophets and mediums share two concerns: first, a reluctance to accept the spirit; and second, anxiety over how to handle the responsibilities (such as healing or salvation) that might come with such a role. For all of the otherworldly help they receive, and for all of the new powers at their disposal, religious figures are still human. They are prone to mistakes. They are not always sure what they should be doing, much less how.

***

Weegirl was a woman in her mid-forties who lived in an affluent suburb of Harare. She was an active member of the Roman Catholic Church. Her husband was a successful businessman. Weegirl called herself a spirit medium. Her ancestral spirits brought with them a number of mashave (foreign spirits) called njuzu (mermaids), widely considered in Zimbabwe to be excellent healers. Weegirl had built up a reputation over a decade as a skilled healer on this account. She had many influential visitors.

Weegirl told me that she did not want to become a spirit medium: “I tried my level best to resist it. It ruined my life. The spirits, especially [my] ambuya [Shona: ‘grandmother'], wanted me to stop going to the Catholic Church, but I refused. Eventually we struck a deal, but I am no longer as active in the parish as I once was. And do you know that I have no social life anymore? How can I go out and get my hair done if there is someone waiting here at my house for help?” Figuring out how to hold her consultations was also a problem: “When I first started, I started with consulting in my house. But then when I was alone, I was coughing all the time. I could not stop coughing! It was terrible, you know? I did not know why this was happening. After some time—many months—I got my sekuru [Shona: ‘grandfather'] to say to me, “Why don't you build a round hut.” So, I built this hut behind my house. I put on a thatched roof, just like you see kumusha [in the villages] and the spirits liked that. They were very happy, especially my ambuya. Ah, they were good to me after that.” For Weegirl, mediumship was cast as an imposition, and was particularly frustrating because no one—or no thing—told her how to go about it. Weegirl had to negotiate her spiritual life and her social life with the demands of ambuya. The result was a compromise hammered out over time through trial and error.

The agency of a spiritual figure and the impositions of a spirit must be recognized as distinct. Often, such a pair is like a team whose members neglect or fail to communicate with one another. These distinctions have been discussed in case studies on possession in Zimbabwe (Reynolds 1996) and elsewhere in Africa (Boddy 1988; Gibbal 1994; Lambek 1993). “Effective, articulate, confident, authoritative, socially resonant, and responsible . . . possession is,” as Lambek puts it, “something to be achieved” (1993:323).

Shoniwa's transformation follows a similar pattern to that described above. According to an account kept by the Gospel of God Church (the main Saturday church), Shoniwa wrestled over these issues with Christ:

Johane's hesitation and the delicacy of the situation are clearly marked in this Gospel of God text. WeChishanu accounts I collected express similar concerns. The idea of Shoniwa being able to “speak” with “the power of John the Baptist” is a crucial concept. It is central to understanding that Johane Masowe—“John the Baptist of Africa”—was always both a man from the Makoni District and a spirit sent from God to save the African peoples. As with Weegirl, we can see the tension between human agency and spiritual imposition. Like the Reverend Campbell, even, who told Harding (2000:44) he was not sure he could live up to God's expectations of him as a preacher, Shoniwa doubted his ability to speak as Johane. This is, of course, a persuasive move in any act of witnessing (see Harding 2000:34–38); the reluctance to accept authority is often what makes one more authoritative, as it underscores its seeming inevitability.

Crapanzano might suggest that this Gospel of God text touches on a more general aspect of Christian theology as it relates to the question of agency. Humans are, by their nature, prone to sin—to a “total depravity” (Crapanzano 2000:91) that would prevent them from carrying out important work, as Johane had been asked to do. But this total depravity is not always realized because humans have will. But a genuine “free will” in the Christian sense is defined by submission to God's Word. “Salvation,” then, “is at once an individual affair and something that requires total submission of an individual to God and His Word” (Crapanzano 2000:90).

In this light it is interesting to note that whether or not Johane would be successful is not evident in the Gospel of God text. It is not a triumphalist document. Prophets and the Holy Spirit are neither one in the same nor necessarily linked; their relationships do not depend—like those of Weegirl and other spirit mediums—on genealogical ties. Prophets are not always possessed, and when they are not possessed they are no different from other people and can (in theory) make no claims to an inherent authority. In the strict sense, then, Johane Masowe was not a human but a holy spirit sent by God who spoke through the body of Shoniwa Masedza. As humans, prophets are always learning, subject to their own desires, and forced constantly to negotiate their roles in a religious community with their relationships in the spirit world. Whether they master the language of the spirit—whether they find the “freedom that comes through obedience to God” (Crapanzano 2000:96)—is understood as an open-ended question.

The Man “Sent by God to Preach to the People”

Before Shoniwa gave his testimony to the police, officers gathered information on him from a number of people who witnessed his preaching in Hartley District during October 1932. As in his own statement, those of the men and women who first heard him preach do not suggest that Johane's “firm convictions” correlated with a stable narrative of thoughts and actions.¹²

Andrea (a man who spoke the Zezuru dialect of Shona): “John the Baptist” preached in the compound of Chipukutu farm. “He preached to the natives whilst I was there and said he had been sent to the natives by God to prepare them to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” The day after, Johane left the farm with a number of the workers and went to the kraal of Ndoro, where he remained for three days preaching “to large numbers of natives who had gathered round.” At Ndoro he told them “to adopt the religion of their forefathers, to drink plenty of Kaffir Beer and eat the meat blessed by our forefathers.” Johane also said Africans “should burn the religious books of the European as our forefathers did not have books.” Next, Johane proceeded to the Hunyani River. He preached every day “in the same strain” and told Andrea to take confessions from the people who had followed them there. Several people “confessed that they had stolen mealies from the lands, that they had been immoral with women, some that they were witchdoctors, and several unmarried girls said that they had had sexual intercourse with their sweethearts.” Johane told the people who confessed that their sins would be forgiven and that he would baptize them. “At times . . . I saw that ‘John the Baptist' preached from a Bible.” Johane said the Bible was a gift from a Roman Catholic father in Salisbury.

Msonza (male, another Zezuru speaker): Johane was preaching to people that “he had come from Heaven having been sent by God to preach to the people.” Johane had a book with him, but it was “closed.” For over two weeks at Hunyani Johane “continued to preach that he was ‘John the Baptist' and had been sent by God to preach.” Johane preached that Africans should “follow the religion of our forefathers.” Africans were told “not to follow the religion of the churches, as they were against our custom.” Johane claimed: “there was no truth in the Bible.”

Adzijirwe (a Zezuru woman): Johane said “he had come from Heaven and had been sent by God to preach to the people.” People confessed their “sins.” Johane “never preached about the White people.” No money was collected.

Msodzi (another woman): Johane “said he had come from heaven and had been sent by God to preach to the people.” Johane did not preach about white people. Johane “made no mention about the Bible,” but did have a book with him; however, “he did not say what it was, neither did he read from it.” Johane said he was not collecting money because he had been sent by God.

Kangoma (Andrea's brother): “I spoke to this native and asked him who he was . . . he told me that he was ‘John the Baptist' and had been sent from Heaven to preach to natives that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand.” Johane preached from a Bible. “I know that it was a Bible for I had seen it.”

What can we make of these statements? As with Johane's, we cannot assume that these men and women told the colonial authorities everything that happened at Hunyani, or, indeed, that they did not simply say what they imagined the police wanted to hear. The witnesses had their own interests to look after, whether or not they were drawn to the message Johane preached. About the only consistency is the claim that Johane said he had come from heaven / had been sent to the natives by God / had been sent from heaven. The phrasing is so consistent as to suggest that: (1) Johane did, in fact, repeatedly say such a thing; or perhaps (2) the official responsible for transcribing and translating the statements created the regularities. The key words are “God” and “heaven.” Had he wanted to present himself as a spirit medium, Johane would not have said he was sent by God. While there is a remote “high God” (Mwari) in Shona cosmology (Murphree 1969:48–50; see also Bourdillon 1987), his listeners would have expected claims of possession by a mhondoro, or other powerful “tribal spirit” (see Lan 1985:31–39), as was the case with Weegirl. The word “heaven,” which has no conceptual equivalent in Shona (the translation is denga, which means ‘sky'), further disambiguates his claim. This is a Christian-language message.

But the other claims point to discrepancies and contradictions. Was he preaching from a Bible? Was he telling people to burn the Bible? Was it both? Did he baptize? Was he drinking “Kaffir Beer,” and toward what end? These might be explained in terms of the various witnesses' desires to, once again, safeguard their own positions vis-à-vis the state and/or Johane. But following the argument I have been developing thus far, I would like to suggest that perhaps Johane did say all of these things. As a man who claimed to have been transformed by a religious experience Johane was—like Augustine, like Paul Conway, like Weegirl, and like countless other religious figures—finding his feet. There was no “Masowe cosmology” in October 1932, no worldview. Having just undergone his transformation, Johane was speaking about what he was only just coming to recognize as his “impurity and separation from God,” and perhaps the preaching was a way of dealing with the “sense that something has to be done about it” (Harding 2000:38). As we have already noted, Johane was familiar with a number of religious idioms, Christian and non-Christian, that might have contributed to his authority. But there is still something inchoate in Johane's message at Hunyani. If the charisma of prophetic leaders is an intersubjective construction (Csordas 1997), then what we have here is a hopeful charismatic fine-tuning of his rhetoric (of sin, of heaven, of the Bible, of himself) in a moment of uncertainty as to how he might best proceed.

On 24 October 1932, two Criminal Investigation Department detectives were sent to Johane's camp on the Hunyani River to survey the scenes out of which the above testimonies arose. The following day Johane was hauled in to Salisbury for questioning. Freedom of religious worship was guaranteed by law in Southern Rhodesia, but the question of Shoniwa's connection to Charles Mzengeli was a sensitive issue, and his criticisms of the Bible and Europeans were seen as evidence of a political agenda. And so, while the Chief Native Commissioner was impressed with Shoniwa's polite demeanor during the course of their interview together on 1 November, he decided the most prudent action would be to break up the Hunyani camp and send Shoniwa back to Gandanzara.

Johane did not stay home long. He was arrested twice in November for returning to his “headquarters” on the Hunyani River. After his second arrest he was sentenced to three months in jail, hard labor.¹³

Dillon-Malone (1978:18) suggests that after three months in jail Johane began to acquire martyr-status in the eyes of his interested listeners. This would certainly fit a Christian narrative. But the time in jail also turned out to be crucial for the elaboration and clarification of his message. If Johane had become a liminal persona after suffering from “severe pains in the head” back in May 1932, and if the preaching sessions at Hunyani capture the betwixt-and-between of his religious language, jail added another dimension to his position. Time in a cell was time to think: a “stage of reflection” (Turner 1967:105). Once out, Johane began to build on his initial message by moving more deliberately toward a model of apostolic or pentecostal faith, a faith modeled on what people in the Bible used to do. Many of the most visible elements of such a move were already in place at Hunyani, before his incarceration: the designation of “disciples,” the donning of white robes (which were understood to be proper biblical fashion in apostolic circles), emphasis on experience and the Holy Spirit, and the public confession of sins. These are recognized as important aspects of African apostolic Christianity (see, for example, Jules-Rosette 1975). But not until after his release, in March 1933, was it clear this was the direction in which Johane was taking his followers. For all of his apparently Christian language, the scenes at Hunyani from October 1932 betray unease with the content of his Christian message. If he was claiming to have been sent by God to preach to the people about the Kingdom of Heaven, he was also encouraging those around him to drink “kaffir” beer and burn the Bible, neither of which the European missionaries he meant to influence would have found very impressive. But jail helped shape and cement his convictions. We might say his conviction by the state strengthened his conviction by the Holy Spirit. Incarceration often has the effect of clarifying one's resolve. Nelson Mandela (1994) and Ngųgį wa Thiong'o (1981) make this point, having used their incarcerations as pivotal moments in the narratives of their personal and political development. In terms of Johane's emerging religious language, we need to consider “conviction” not only as a kind of religious experience but also as a means of clarifying his course of action and legitimating his authoritative position.

After his first jail sentence Johane's connections with pentecostal Christianity and the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) grew stronger. The central figure in this next chapter of the story is a white preacher from South Africa called Louis Ludewyk Kruger. Through a look at Johane's associations with this man, we can sharpen the picture of how Johane saw his Society emerging.

The Apostolic Faith Mission and Other White-Robed Africans

The AFM, registered in 1913 by non-denominational missionaries inspired by the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, flourished in South Africa from its base in Johannesburg. The AFM was not given over to the kind of institutional organization Southern Rhodesian authorities expected in a missionary body. Its ministers, as David Maxwell explains, preached as missionaries “seeking to testify to, and demonstrate the power of, the Holy Spirit” (1999b:249) without much regard, or interest, for institutional structures. The early AFM was characterized by a number of typical pentecostal traits: glossolalia, public confessions, and divine healing (1999b:246). In South Africa, it appealed both to Africans and Afrikaners, who suffered most from the development of mining industries in the Rand (Maxwell 1999b:247; van Onselen 1982). Its preachers had few qualms about “sheep stealing”: preying on other churches to win new followers (Maxwell 1999b:256). This irked other missionaries to no end; in one instance in 1933, the Church of England in Wedza wrote to the government complaining bitterly and in vivid terms that the AFM was luring some of its most loyal members away with unsavory tactics.¹⁶

Kruger came to Southern Rhodesia in 1930 to bolster the AFM's presence and reputation. Until that point the AFM there had met with less success than it had in South Africa. Throughout the 1920s there were never more than four (white) AFM families working in Southern Rhodesia at any given time (Maxwell 1999b:257). The colonial authorities and other mission churches were uncomfortable with the latitude this gave “native” preachers in the Mission. Africans invested with religious authority by the AFM often worked by themselves, lacking “European supervision.” Regardless, it is doubtful the state would have found much comfort in the management of the AFM's “native ranks” since the preachers, with their emphasis on speaking in tongues, ecstatic expressions, and disinterest in organization, did not fit the missionary mold.

“The AFM really let the side down. Its white representatives did not look like missionaries, act like missionaries or even sound like missionaries” (Maxwell 1999b:256). In many ways, they were stranger even than the African prophets like Johane Masowe; Africans, at least, were expected to be “overly emotional,” but whites ought to have been above such uncontrolled displays. “I trust that something can be done to stop these people from carrying on their pernicious Teachings,” wrote one missionary, “[as] their own leaders seem to have no control whatever over their followers, and there is no telling what it may mean for the future of the natives, if allowed to continue.”¹⁷

Johane probably met Kruger after his release from prison in March 1933. By that June he seems to have established a working relationship with the AFM in a number of districts. On 26 June 1933, in fact, Johane Masowe was made a “local preacher on trial” in the AFM by Kruger himself. Johane's preacher's certificate is in a file at Zimbabwe's National Archives. It is interesting not least as a suggestive piece of material evidence for his Christianity, documents having long served as a very specific sign of legitimacy and authority in (post)colonial Africa (Fabian 1991a; Summers 2002:147–75; West 2003). The certificate says Johane had the authority to “preach the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,” “pray for the sick with the laying on of Hands,” and “bury the dead” on behalf of the AFM.¹⁸

Perhaps not surprisingly, the colonial authorities made little distinction between the flowering of apostolic and pentecostal groups. Theology was not their forté (see Maxwell 1999b:262), and the apostolic fashion of wearing long, white robes gave them more reason not to think about it. Charles Bullock, the Assistant Chief Native Commissioner, wrote that in his estimation, in fact, all such movements were the same and should be treated “simultaneously.”¹⁹

Circular Minute Number 23 and the Turning Tide

On 30 November 1933, the Assistant Native Commissioner at Wedza complained that “Shoniwa, John the Baptist” was still under “insufficient supervision” by Kruger, and that Shoniwa and his followers had “managed to arrogate to themselves supernatural powers and do things in the name of God and religion which, to say the least, are not in conformity with the professed teachings of the sect to which they claim to belong.”²¹

In 1934 the tide turned against Johane. Even the Native Commissioners who until that point seemed patient with the presence of his followers (if not always with Johane himself) became more cautious. Partly, this was due to a rise in the number of complaints from farmers and missionaries whose works and lives were being disrupted by the often dramatic, and always noisy, apostolic meetings. A. J. Erikson, the Adjutant of the Salvation Army, wrote to the Native Commissioner at Goromonzi on 26 March 1934 complaining that the apostolics were “troubling people” by going “into a kind of hysterical trance” and that “their influence on a naturally emotional people may lead to grave consequences at a later date.”²²

For the farmer, order was expressed primarily through a concern with the disruption of work. The Salvation Army and other missionary bodies were concerned with their own church ranks. Johane represented a threat, as well, to the kraal heads and chiefs, as several of the remarks in the 1 November statement suggest. In a village gerontocracy, there was no place for such a young man (Johane was probably about twenty-years-old at the time). As one kraal head complained, “I wish emphatically for this ‘madness' to be forbidden.”²⁴

In government, the push against the apostolics was led by Charles Bullock. Until 1934 the problem Native Commissioners faced in dealing with prophets and preachers was, as I touched on briefly above, a legal one. Freedom of religious expression was guaranteed by law, so Native Commissioners needed to prove that religious movements were “political” in nature. By 1934 many began to correspond with the Attorney General about how best their own authority could be used to quell the concerns of the white settlers and missionaries affected by the new movements. By April 1934, Bullock was beginning to push the image of apostolics as a political threat with particular fervor. He wrote a memorandum arguing that the movements “may militate against the state—ultimately if not immediately” and that “what began with religious hysteria is now taking a political bias which is anti-European.” His suggestion in the fashion of indirect rule was to turn to the chiefs (legitimated by the colonial state to begin with), and to rely on “powers still lawfully inherent in the tribal system” and “connect this action with our statutory law, so that criminal sanctions can be legally enforced.”²⁶

When Circular Minute 23 was sent out, Johane was serving his third stint in jail: a two-month sentence in Rusape. Despite mounting opposition, he continued his work after release, often still in collaboration with the loosely defined AFM groupings. By June 1934, in fact, Johane had become such a visible influence in apostolic circles that the Commissioner of the British South Africa Police referred to the AFM as an “off-shoot of SHONIWA'S (John the Baptist's) faction.”²⁸

In late 1934 Johane made what was probably the most important proclamation of his early ministry, one that brings us back to one of the main themes in our narrative of negativity: the role of the Bible. Some time around the second anniversary of his appearance in Africa, Johane decided, with a measure of certainty, to accept the Bible as the Word of God. The decision was contentious and divided his followers. Out of this decision emerged the protean forms of the Friday and Saturday apostolics, two groups that have, over the past several decades, interpreted Johane Masowe's message in distinctly different terms.

Origin Stories

E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1965:16) has argued that anthropologists of religion should be wary of the search for origins. The Masowe apostolics would not share his concern, although from what I could tell they are not interested in the origins of their movements in order to produce authoritative, Durkheimian narratives. What struck me in my conversations with the elders was their recognition of Johane's initial indecisions and variances. Indeed, Johane's uncertainty was built into most of the “origin stories” I heard. It was accepted, even expected. As one figure in the Gospel of God Church told me, “Johane weChishanu is the true [church] because when [Johane] came he said pray only on Friday and don't use the Bible.” The Bishop in another Saturday church said the same. “But later,” he went on, “Johane asked all people to have Bibles . . . [so they] could understand the Gospel.” Elders in the Saturday churches were willing, then, to accept that Johane changed his position, and that he had made a mistake in calling for the Bible to be sent up in smoke. Elders in Friday congregations concur on the chronology but differ in their interpretation of why Johane took up the Book. According to them, Johane gave in to pressure from his parents, Jack and Effie Masedza, because they could not believe that a Christian leader would reject the written Word. To Anglicans from Gandanzara, particularly those of his parents' generation, it seemed unnatural. Still others have suggested to me that Johane knew he would face skepticism on his journeys from those who (like his parents) associated Christian salvation so closely with the Bible itself. The Friday elder Julius Sibanda, who worked with Emmanuel Mudyiwa in the 1940s, explained to me: “In the beginning, Johane told his people to worship on Fridays and not to read the Bible . . . But in 1934 he told his followers . . . “If you ever see me reading a Bible, do not follow me. Stay true to my original teachings. A time will come when I will be forced to read the Bible. The people down south [in South Africa] are educated, and they will not follow me unless I let them read that book. This will be fine as long as they follow my message, but you here [in Southern Rhodesia], you must keep my true teachings.”

There may well have been this pragmatic motivation behind Johane's decision. But it is likely that Johane's decision to embrace the Bible grew out of his close work with pentecostals. (This is a development that might not have germinated in the same way, for instance, had he continued the “friendship” with the Catholic priest he and his early followers mention.) While a diverse label, pentecostalism is characterized, like fundamentalism, by an emphasis on the Bible as “a compendium of answers for all significant questions” (Wacker 2001:71). What is more, according to Grant Wacker (2001:21–23) one of the defining traits of pentecostalism is certitude. Within pentecostal and fundamentalist churches the Bible has often provided the material and spiritual bedrock of that certitude.²⁹

It is not my intention, however, to resolve the differences between Johane's followers. What interests me more is how, in each account, uncertainty and the development of positions over time through a kind of trial and error are central to the narrative. Whether it was embraced out of piety or pragmatism, the Bible became a focal point in the articulation of Johane's vision, and a filter through which we can understand the theme of uncertainty as I have outlined it in this essay. Thinking back to the colonial administration's perception of the pentecostals and apostolics, there is a parallel with what several of the Masowe elders say. The government saw these figures and their followers as disorderly and confused. Some of the most prominent members in Johane's churches might agree with the characterization, at least to a point. The difference is in the attitude towards order and confusion. For colonialists, order was always a pre-eminent concern—despite that, according to Anthony Appiah, “the colonizers were never as fully in control as our elders allowed them to appear” (1992:7). Rather than excising the difficult strands from the narratives of their authority, Masowe elders make it clear that Johane's uncertainties, indecisions, and changes in opinion were nothing, in themselves, to be concerned about. Indeed within religious narratives often “the sense of a constant generation of doubts and qualms about actions, words, and motions is a route to and source of power and authority” (Harding 2000:103–4). In other words, uncertainty can be used to mark a religious figure's position of power. Inasmuch as it relates to the internal discourse of the religious subject—the extent to which the process of sanctification or transformation is realized—uncertainty relates also to this-worldly authority. The authority is generated out of similitude and difference in narratives of transformation: the subject is human, and therefore prone to mistakes, but is also something more.

The tension over textual authority came to a head with Emmanuel Mudyiwa. He was, we should recall, a man who served jail time alongside Johane. He had proven his commitment, and emerged as the key proponent of the Friday message to reject the Bible after Johane's decision to take up the Bible and worship on Saturdays. Amon Nengomasha, one-time General Secretary of the Gospel of God Church, said in a 1977 interview:

Emmanuel and Johane's parting of ways took place in November 1934.³¹

Conclusion

Goromonzi's Native Commissioner was not entirely wrong. Since the mid-1930s apostolic groups inspired by Johane Masowe have split on a number of occasions, almost always because of what the apostolics I know referred to as “the question of leadership.” In his reflections on the American Civil War, Oliver Wendell Holmes is said to have come to the following conclusion: “certitude leads to violence” (Menand 2001:61). The schism between Masowe's followers functions as a similar, if less bloody, index of the fixing of belief. It was November 1934, over two years after his initial transformation, that Johane began to act on his certainty, turning declaratives into operatives. He now set guidelines for the growth of his Society and realization of his mission. By no means does this suggest his ideas were set in stone. The churches Masowe founded (or inspired) with his Saturday-message have undergone numerous changes over the years. But with this decision about the Bible he was beginning to make “particular claims about reality and one's relationship to it” (Harding 2000:58). That reality was increasingly framed in Christian terms. Johane's split with Emmanuel is the moment his transformation was carried through.

Johane Masowe returned to Gandanzara in 1935. With his Saturday followers he began to build on an image of the self-sufficient religious community. The Saturday apostolics withdrew as far as they could from the colonial economy, establishing their own church fields to support themselves. They did not send their children to government or mission schools and rejected the use of Western medicine. But neither did they try to disrupt those around them. Johane remained in Makoni until 1938. In that year, the government conducted a centralization survey of the communal areas, prohibiting groups other than families from holding farming land. The Saturday Church lost its substantial holding of church fields. “It was this break-up of the communal lands,” Ranger has argued, “which precipitated Masowe and his followers into their extraordinary pilgrimage” (1981:33). From 1938 until his death in 1973, Johane lived in Port Elizabeth, Lusaka, and Nairobi at various “headquarters.” It was not until 1947, in Port Elizabeth, that he registered a church with the government officials. The Friday Masowe have yet to register with anyone, and in all these years they have had next to no contact with their Saturday cousins, much less their inspirational figurehead.

By folding discussions of Augustine and late-modern fundamentalists in the United States into a paper about Johane Masowe I do not mean to suggest that all would share the same understanding of religious transformation. Indeed, even if we focus on the work of Harding and Crapanzano, it is clear that not all fundamentalists define or experience conviction and sanctification in the same way. Ted Winter, the pastor of the Grace Brethren Church I mentioned at the outset of this paper, was, Crapanzano (2000:99) tells us, self-reflexive and ready to discuss his faith, but most of Crapanzano's informants “were so certain of their values . . . that they could not understand why anyone with different values would be angered by their incapacity, their unwillingness, to engage in dialogue or debate” (2000:325). Harding calls this a “poetics of faith,” by which she means that fundamentalist practices of interpretation are based on the firm conviction of “the absolute truth of the Bible” (2000:88).

It is often this certainty, pace Augustine's commitment to self-examination, which is used to characterize Christianity. This is partly why I have chosen to focus on fundamentalists in the main comparison, because more than most Christians they indeed stress “the certainty of their theology” (Crapanzano 2000:23). But certitude, we learn from them, is possible only through the recognition of its absence. Through a process like sanctification, for example, fundamentalists live the exception to their rule. It “mediates a paradox in Protestant theology” which is described by Luther as “‘at once just and sinful'” (Crapanzano 2000:126). This dynamic defines Christian narratives of transformation. They depend upon uncertainty as the motivation to live as a Christian ought, and to create a space in which authority can be constituted. The narratives are marked by “gaps, excesses, and indeterminacies which the faith-ful must ceaselessly close, suppress, and fix in the name of God” (Harding 2000:86). But they are never finally fixed.

Johane Masowe learned how to organize and express his religious mission as he went along. His transformation did not endow him with a special knowledge. He had to learn and craft it. The government, missionaries, farmers, kraal heads, labor union leaders, white pentecostals, rival visionaries, dedicated followers, and no doubt some curious onlookers provided him with a complex and sometimes contradictory sounding board. And so while convinced of his mission, and familiar with the vocabulary upon which he might draw, it took him some time to articulate each. Ted Winter used the phrase “become what I am” (in Crapanzano 2000:103) to characterize his understanding of conver-sion as a living tension. This phrase, found in the theology of Rudolf Bultmann (1956:182), captures the dynamic between certainty and uncertainty I have tried to document in the religious transformation of Johane Masowe. When he came down the Marimba hill in 1932, Shoniwa Masedza was Johane Masowe, but he still had to become what he was. His early days were marked by uncertainty in this living-tension sense. Johane's transformation is a narrative of negativity. It highlights the slippage between ontology and epistemology for the Christian subject that provides a space for both self-examination and religious legitimization.