HTS Religion & Society Series

Volume 14

SPEAKING OF SATAN
IN ZAMBIA
Making cultural and personal sense
of narratives about Satanism

Johanneke Kroesbergen-Kamps
 HTS Religion & Society Series
Volume 14

SPEAKING OF SATAN
IN ZAMBIA
Making cultural and personal sense
of narratives about Satanism
Published by AOSIS Books, an imprint of AOSIS Publishing.

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How to cite this work: Kroesbergen-Kamps, J 2022, Speaking of Satan in Zambia: Making cultural and personal
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 HTS Religion & Society Series
Volume 14

SPEAKING OF SATAN
IN ZAMBIA
Making cultural and personal sense
of narratives about Satanism

Johanneke Kroesbergen-Kamps
Religious Studies domain editorial board at AOSIS

Commissioning Editor: Scholarly Books

Andries G. van Aarde, MA, DD, PhD, D Litt, South Africa

Board members
Warren Carter, LaDonna Kramer Meinders Professor of the New Testament, Phillips Theological
Seminary, United States of America
Evangelia G. Dafni, Faculty of Theology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Lisanne D’Andrea-Winslow, Professor of Department of Biology and Biochemistry and
Department of Biblical and Theological Studies, University of Northwestern, United States of
America
Christian Danz, Dekan der Evangelisch-Theologischen Fakultät der Universität Wien and
Ordentlicher Universitätsprofessor für Systematische Theologie und Religionswissenschaft,
University of Vienna, Austria
David D. Grafton, Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations, Duncan Black
Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Hartford International
University for Religion and Peace, United States of America
Sigríður Guðmarsdóttir, Professor of Department of Theology and Religion, School of Humanities,
University of Iceland, Iceland; Centre for Mission and Global Studies, Faculty of Theology, Diakonia
and Leadership Studies, VID Specialised University, Norway
Jeanne Hoeft, Dean of Students and Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Pastoral Care,
Saint Paul School of Theology, United States of America
Nancy Howell, Professor of Department of Philosophy of Religion, Faculty of Theology and
Religion, Saint Paul School of Theology, Kansas City, United States of America
Llewellyn Howes, Professor of Department of Greek and Latin Studies, University of Johannesburg,
South Africa
Fundiswa A. Kobo, Professor of Department of Christian Spirituality, Church History and
Missiology, University of South Africa, South Africa
William R.G. Loader, Emeritus Professor, Murdoch University, Australia
Jean-Claude Loba-Mkole, Department of Hebrew, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Free
State, South Africa
Piotr Roszak, Professor of Department of Christian Philosophy, Faculty of Theology, Nicolaus
Copernicus University, Poland
Marcel Sarot, Emeritus Professor of Fundamental Theology, Tilburg School of Catholic Theology,
Tilburg University, the Netherlands
David Sim, Department Biblical and Early Christian Studies, Catholic University of Australia,
Australia
Corneliu C. Simut, Professor of Biblical Theology (New Testament), Faculty of Humanities and
Social Sciences, Aurel Vlaicu University, Romania

Peer-review declaration
The publisher (AOSIS) endorses the South African ‘National Scholarly Book Publishers
Forum Best Practice for Peer Review of Scholarly Books’. The manuscript underwent
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editor(s) or author(s) responded adequately to such recommendations. The reviewers
commented positively on the scholarly merits of the manuscript and recommended
that the book be published.
Research justification
In this book, I argue that narratives about Satanism, which have become
popular in the Christian context of Zambia from the 1990s onwards, make
cultural sense because of their links to traditional African notions as well as
contemporary Christian theologies. These narratives also resonate with unease
regarding the cultural change, which is connected by Zambians to modernity.
Narratives about Satanism further make personal sense to their narrators, the
pastors who provide a platform for them and their audiences.
These arguments contribute to the academic study of religion in Africa, in
particular of African Christianity and of witchcraft-related phenomena, as
well as to the global study of discourses on Satanism and other conspiracy
theories. All of these disciplines are related to the topic of Satanism in Zambia,
but the phenomenon itself has not been discussed at length, which makes the
existing academic literature incomplete and inadequate. My comprehensive
focus on the case of narratives about Satanism in Zambia offers new insights
and enhances current theoretical reflection.
The research presented in this book is original, carried out by myself during
fieldwork spanning from 2012 to 2017 in Zambia and literature study in the
years after that. Methodologically, the research is based on participant
observation in churches in which testimonies of ex-Satanists were presented,
as well as participation in the Fingers of Thomas, a Roman Catholic group that
investigates rumours about Satanism. Furthermore, it is based on interviews
with pastors and students of theology active in the deliverance ministry from
Pentecostal as well as mainline churches and also on interviews with people
who have had experiences of Satanism. Finally, the research is based on an
analysis of collected testimonies of ex-Satanists as they were presented in
these interviews, in churches, on radio programmes, in newspapers and other
sources.
I have carried out my research in Zambia in order to obtain a PhD degree
in 2018 at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. This book is a more
than 50% substantial reworking of the original PhD dissertation. In particular,
it contains new literature on and analysis of African traditions, the history
of the devil in (missionary) Christianity, modernity and change in African
societies and the mediation of supernatural presences. I declare that I have not
plagiarised any part of this work. The target audience consists of academics.
The book was written by a scholar for specialists in the field of African
studies from the perspective of religious studies and cultural anthropology.
The argumentation in the book is adequately substantiated by interactional
dialogue and references to the most recent scholarly literature in the field.
Johanneke Kroesbergen-Kamps, Department of Science of Religion and
Missiology, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Pretoria, Pretoria,
South Africa.
Contents
Abbreviations and acronyms and tables appearing
in the text and notes xi
List of abbreviations and acronyms xi
Table list xi
Biographical note xiii
Acknowledgements xv

Chapter 1: Satanism in Zambia 1

Background 1
The discourse of Satanism in the Zambian context 3
The history of Satanism in Zambia 5
Testimonies about Satanism 7
Rumours and gossip about Satanism 12
The Fingers of Thomas 13
Satanism in academic scholarship 14
Satanism and anti-Satanism 15
Collective narratives about evil others 17
Characteristics of the narrative 19
Evil Others and society 22
Satanism and reality 25
Outline of the book 28

Chapter 2: Satanism and the African worldview 33

Introduction 33
General characteristics of an African worldview 36
A holistic worldview 36
The spirit world 38
Satanists and the spirit world 43
Witchcraft 44
Witchcraft beliefs in Africa 45
Witchcraft and Satanism 47
‘New’ narratives about illicit accumulation 49
The occult in studies about Africa 49
Zombies, vampires and ritual murder 52
Illicit accumulation in African worldviews 55
Conclusion 59

vii
Contents

Chapter 3: Satan comes to Africa 61

Introduction 61
Satan and his demons in Western Christianity 62
Satan in Christian theology until the 20th century 63
Satan in 20th-century Pentecostal and evangelical Christianity 66
Satan comes to Africa 70
The devil and the classical mission churches 71
The rise of Pentecostal churches in Africa 73
The devil in African Pentecostal churches 76
Satanism and Christianity in Zambia 80
Christianity in Zambia 80
Case study: A deliverance service in Lusaka 83
Narratives about Satanism and the influence of transnational
African churches 88
Conclusion 92

Chapter 4: Dreams of modernity turning into nightmares of Satanism 95

Introduction 95
The dangers of the urban world 100
Urban imaginaries 101
Spaces of evil 102
Satanic professions 104
The dangers of the spoils of modernity 111
Tainted products and their effects 112
Main categories of satanic products 114
Satanic products as modern products 117
Changes in society and narratives about Satanism: Anonymity
and the family 119
Urban anonymity 120
Tensions surrounding family and kinship: The extended family 123
Tensions surrounding family and kinship: The nuclear family 126
The moral consequences of becoming modern 128
Redistribution and illicit accumulation 129
The inversion of norms concerning the hierarchical
society in testimonies of Satanism 132
Shifting positions of youth and women 138
Conclusion 142

Chapter 5: Rewriting the life story after the diagnosis of Satanism 147
Introduction 147
Satanism as affliction 150
Case study: Eve’s affliction 152

viii
 Contents

Christian faith healing 155

Case study: Pastor Jere prays for Monica 156
Diagnosis: Satanism 161
Case study: Bishop Phiri and his nephew Bright 161
Abnormal behaviour linked to Satanism 162
Accepting the diagnosis of Satanism 166
Rewriting the life story 167
Self and personhood in an African context 168
Narratives of Satanism as life stories 171
Case study: Tsitsi’s new life story 174
Credibility, coherence and meaningfulness in life stories 177
Conclusion 180

Chapter 6: Mediating the divine and the demonic 183

Introduction 183
Scripting the testimony 184
Narratives of ex-Satanists and the religious genre of testimony 185
Case study: Laura and the story that did not become
a testimony 188
The pastor and the production of a testimony 190
Script and jargon in testimonies of Zambian ex-Satanists 192
Ex-Satanists and their testimonies 194
Performing testimony 194
The performance of testimonies as confirmation of
group membership 195
The performance of testimonies as a way to acquire status
or freedom 196
The role of the pastor in the production of a testimony 198
Case study: The pastor and David’s testimony 200
The appeal of testimonies for pastors 205
Case study: The evidence of Sister X’s story 206
The importance of testimonies as proof in a
competitive environment 208
Testimonies and the audience 209
The genesis of religious presence 210
A space to play with ambiguous experiences 211
Learning to see the world in a different way 213
Conclusion 214

ix
Contents

Chapter 7: ‘These things are real!’ Satanism and epistemic anxiety 217
Introduction 217
The reality of Satanism 219
Epistemic anxiety 224

References 229
Index 245

x
Abbreviations and acronyms
and tables appearing in the
text and notes
List of abbreviations and acronyms
AIC African Independent Churches
ATRs African traditional religions
CK Calvin Klein
DRC Democratic Republic of Congo
FENZA Faith and Encounter Centre Zambia
JMU Justo Mwale University
PF Patriotic Front
RCZ Reformed Church in Zambia
SIM subscriber identification module
STI sexually transmitted illness
UCKG Universal Church of the Kingdom of God
UCZ United Church of Zambia
UK United Kingdom
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
UPND United Party for National Development
USA United States of America
ZCC Zion Christian Church

Table list
Table 1.1: Overview of the most extensive testimonies. 10

xi
Biographical note
Johanneke Kroesbergen-Kamps
Department of Science of Religion and Missiology,
Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Pretoria,
Pretoria, South Africa
Email: johannekekroesbergen@gmail.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2186-1593

Johanneke Kroesbergen-Kamps is an anthropologist of religion with an

interest in beliefs about forces of evil as well as the development or religious
identities and the use of photography as an ethnographic method. She studied
religious studies at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (the Netherlands),
specialising in new religious movements and spirituality.
From 2011 to 2017, she introduced theology students at Justo Mwale
University in Lusaka, Zambia, to an anthropological and sociological
perspective on religion, as well as familiarising them with study techniques
and research methods. During this time, she studied narratives about Satanism
in Zambia, on which she has published several research articles in scientific
journals and edited volumes. Through this research, she obtained her PhD
degree at Utrecht University with Prof. Dr Birgit Meyer in 2018.
In 2020 and 2021, Johanneke Kroesbergen-Kamps was a postdoctoral
research fellow at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, investigating how
Zambian pastors in the Reformed Church in Zambia gave meaning to the
worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. She published academic articles on this topic
as well as on the concept of nature in Africa, urban imaginaries and conspiracy
theories in Africa. She is currently a research associate at the University of
Pretoria and works as a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam (the
Netherlands). She teaches in the fields of religious studies, anthropology of
religion and human rights.

xiii
Acknowledgements
‘… and we have just one world, but we live in different ones …’ – (Dire Straits 1985)

As the British rock band Dire Straits notes in their classic anti-war song
Brothers in Arms, there is one world, and yet we seem to live in different
worlds. In the past years, I have been grappling with this notion. In 2011, my
husband and I moved to Zambia to start teaching at Justo Mwale University
(JMU). Compared to the Netherlands, Zambia is a different world, with new
rules for interactions, a different dress code and particular ideas about what
behaviour is expected from a married woman. With time, I discovered more
differences between my world and the world of my students and colleagues.
And yet, part of my job has been communicating about the lives of Zambian
Christians to their brothers and sisters in the Netherlands as part of one
worldwide church. One world and different worlds, both at the same time. My
husband and I reflected on this duality in a book that was published in Dutch,
Alles Anders, Alles Hetzelfde, which translated means something like
Everything Different, Everything the Same.
One particular example of something different was the phenomenon of
Satanism that we encountered soon after we arrived in Zambia. This current
book is an attempt to understand the different world of Zambian ex-Satanists
and their audiences. This world is largely unheard of outside of Africa, but I
think that a non-Zambian public can understand it and even see similarities
with elements of their own world. A central adage of anthropology has been
to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. In this book, I try to do
the former for a Western audience, while I hope to challenge a Zambian
audience with the latter. Satanism in Zambia is not quite the exotic alternate
world that it may seem at first glance, but at the same time, those who are
well-versed in its discourse may still be able to learn something new about it.
In 2018, I defended my PhD thesis on the topic of Satanism in Zambia at
Utrecht University in the Netherlands. In the years after that, I kept returning
to the topic, finding more and better interpretations and explanations of the
phenomenon. This book is a result of my ongoing involvement. It is an
expanded and rewritten version of my original dissertation. Chapter 1 of this
book, which introduces the phenomenon of Satanism and how it has been
studied in academia, contains elements of the Introduction and Chapter 1 of
my dissertation. Chapter 2 of my dissertation has become two vastly expanded
and improved chapters in this book on the place of Satanism in an African
worldview and on the Christian background of the idea of Satan and Satanism.
Chapter 4 of this book, on the modern context of narratives about Satanism,
is likewise a substantially revised version of Chapters 5 and 6 in my dissertation.

xv
Acknowledgements

Chapter 5 in this book, about the role of Satanism in the life story of the ex-
Satanist, is an updated version of Chapter 3 in my dissertation. Chapter 6,
about the context of performed testimonies, contains parts of Chapter 4 of
my dissertation, as well as new reflections about what testimonies mean for
an audience.
Many guides have helped me to become familiar with the world of ex-
Satanists and their audiences. I thank the ex-Satanists who found the courage
to be open about their experiences. I have spoken to many pastors and
intercessors in Pentecostal ministries as well as the Reformed Church in
Zambia about the phenomenon of Satanism. For reasons of their anonymity
as well as that of the ex-Satanists I have met through them, I cannot mention
their names or the churches where we met, but I am forever grateful for their
guidance and help.
The Fingers of Thomas, a Lusaka-based Roman Catholic group investigating
the phenomenon of Satanism in Zambia, became a family far away from home.
Father Bernhard Udelhoven has become a dear friend and has graced me with
his extensive knowledge about Satanism, witchcraft and possession in Zambia.
Thank you so much for your company.
Justo Mwale University provided a nurturing environment for this research.
I learned a lot from the conversations with staff members and students. Some
students even found testimonies for me to use in my research. One of them,
Tabitha Moyo, acted as my research assistant, and I am thankful for her
contributions.
In addition to these guides into the world of Satanism in Zambia, I have a
debt of gratitude to my academic friends and colleagues. First of all, I am
grateful for the help and continuing support of my supervisor, Birgit Meyer.
Her questions and comments were always stimulating and helped me to
improve my work. I also thank the University of Pretoria and especially Jaco
Beyers and Andries G. van Aarde for making this publication possible. I am
also grateful for the kind comments of the reviewers of this manuscript.
Finally, I thank Hermen, who always believes in what I do and whose
companionship and critical discussions are invaluable. Thanks for taking this
journey with me!

xvi
Chapter 1

Satanism in Zambia

Background
It is 02:00 in a provincial town in Zambia. 1 The residents are sleeping, and all
is dark. Far away, there is the sound of some stray dogs barking. But at the
church, the lights are on and the sound of a public announcement system
resounds in the quiet night. Inside, people are singing and praying, and pastors
and evangelists take their turns preaching from the pulpit. All-night prayer
meetings like this are popular in Zambia, especially among the youth.
Suddenly a girl – she cannot be more than 12-years-old – gets up and starts
walking towards the doors of the church. ‘Where are you going at this time of
the night?’ someone asks. The girl seems upset. ‘I can’t continue this kind of
life,’ she replies. What does she mean? In church, she is known as an active
Christian, full of faith. More questions are asked, but the girl collapses. The
visiting pastor is called. He kneels beside her and orders the devil to let her go.
The girl regains consciousness and starts to tell a stunning story. ‘I am a
Satanist, sent here to this all-night prayer to bring confusion,’ she confesses:

1. I thank Rev. Abbishai Mponda Phiri – who was among the attendants of the overnight prayer – for sharing this
account with me. I have rephrased his words without altering the meaning.

How to cite: Kroesbergen-Kamps, J 2022, ‘Satanism in Zambia’, in Speaking of Satan in Zambia: Making
cultural and personal sense of narratives about Satanism, in HTS Religion & Society Series, vol. 14, AOSIS
Books, Cape Town, pp. 1–32. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2022.BK373.01

1
Satanism in Zambia

‘I have been tormenting the resident minister, making him fail to pray and making
his sermons dull so that his listeners will not become born again, and those who
have demons will not be delivered.’ (Mponda Phiri pers. comm., 2015)

A crowd of eager listeners forms around the girl. ‘Remember the big accident
on the road from Ndola to Kitwe?’ she continues. ‘It was me who caused it.’
The audience gasps. Several onlookers lost relatives in this accident. Some
start to cry. The girl goes on:
‘The devil promised me that if I manage to kill 1 000 people, I will become a queen
under the Indian Ocean. And in the physical world, I will be a famous singer, like
Nicki Minaj or Wiz Khalifa. Or I will get married to the president of any nation of my
choice.’ (Mponda Phiri pers. comm., 2015)

The visiting pastor starts praying for her again, trying to break the influence
of the devil over her. It takes hours, but at 05:00, the pastor declares her
delivered and the girl repents for her past as a Satanist. She is now, once more,
a good Christian.
For me, coming from the very secularised Netherlands, such happenings in
Zambia were bewildering. How can people believe a girl who says she has
caused an accident while she was not even near the place where it happened?
How is it possible that this girl believes this about herself? How can people
take stories about Satanism seriously? So seriously even that sometimes riots
erupt and services at schools and hospitals are disrupted? Why do ministers
give space to these stories in their religious services? It is this bewilderment
that was the first inspiration for this book.
Occurrences like the confession of the girl at a prayer meeting are not new
in African churches. As Donal Cruise O’Brien (2000:520) wrote in a review
article, ‘thought and talk about the devil seem to be on the increase in Africa’.
Several scholars have written about confessions of Satanism. Birgit Meyer
describes the confession of a man who can ‘“convert” goods to Satan’s realm’
as well as make people fall off their bikes (1999:200), and she also mentions
similar stories visualised in movies and reported on in newspapers (1995).
Comaroff and Comaroff (1999:286) describe how two repentant ex-Satanists
share their stories on a local television network. Many scholars have referred
to one of the first widely published confessions, namely that of the Nigerian
Emmanuel Eni, who wrote a pamphlet about his experiences called Delivered
from the Powers of Darkness ([1987] 1996) (see, e.g. Gifford 2008; Meyer 1995,
1998a; Shaw 2007; Sunday 2011). Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar (2004:49–51)
mention a similar pamphlet written by the Congolese Evangelist Mukendi, in
which he writes about an underground world where diabolical objects are
manufactured and misfortune is plotted.
In most academic publications, Satanism is mentioned in passing as one of
the examples of what is going on in contemporary African churches and Africa
in general. Often, in these publications, it is unclear whether Satanism is

2
 Chapter 1

conceptually different from a range of rejected practices within Christianity,

such as witchcraft and holding on to traditional practices. This book seeks to
help close that gap by focusing attention on this phenomenon that is relevant
in the lives of many African Christians through an in-depth exploration of
interviews, testimonies and newspaper reports. What makes Satanism such a
popular topic in Zambia, and where does all this speaking of Satan originate
from? These questions have not yet been comprehensively addressed in the
academic literature.2 In this chapter, I will introduce the Zambian context and
the phenomenon of Satanism in Zambia, followed by a discussion of how this
type of Satanism differs from the religious Satanism that is known in the West.

The discourse of Satanism in the Zambian

context
Zambia is a landlocked country situated in southern Africa, with an estimated
population of around 22 million (CIA World Fact Book 2022). It is the size
of – on a European scale – Poland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and
Luxembourg together. From 1911, the territory was known as Northern
Rhodesia; it took the name Zambia upon independence from British colonial
rule in 1964. Economically, Zambia is heavily reliant on its natural resources,
especially copper. The worldwide decline in copper prices that started in the
1970s proved to be a severe challenge.
Until 1991, Zambia was a single-party state ruled by President Kenneth
Kaunda. In 1990, the opposition against the ruling party grew stronger,
inspired by food shortages and general economic decline. In 1991, Zambia
became a multiparty democracy, and after peaceful elections, a new
political party came into power. Government-led economic reforms and an
increase in the price of copper have boosted economic growth since the
1990s. For a decade, from 2004 to 2014, Zambia was one of the world’s
fastest-growing economies (CIA World Fact Book 2022). However, only a
limited segment of the population, located in urban areas, benefited from
this growth. Poverty is still widespread, with 57.5% of the population living
under the international poverty line of $1.90 per person per day, a situation
that is worse in rural areas (The World Bank 2020). After 2014, between

2. There are two lesser-known authors who have written on Satanism in Zambia. Bernhard Udelhoven, a social
scientist and missionary for the Missionaries of Africa (White Fathers), has published extensively on Satanism
in Zambia, mostly from a pastoral perspective. His book Unseen worlds: Dealing with spirits, witchcraft and
Satanism (2021) encourages those who work in the church to take local understandings of evil seriously, without
letting these understandings take over theology and pastoral practice in a neo-Pentecostal way. I will refer to
Udelhoven’s publications throughout the book because his long-term involvement with everything related to
Satanism makes him invaluably knowledgeable on this subject. The second author, Joseph Hachintu, wrote his
PhD thesis in religious studies on the prevalence of Satanism in Zambia’s Kabwe district (2013). Hachintu tries
to establish how many real Satanists there are in Kabwe. While that is an interesting question, it is also quite
limited and carries with it some methodological difficulties, as we shall see.

3
Satanism in Zambia

slumping copper prices and power shortages, the economy again came
under intense pressure (IMF 2016).
The population of Zambia is ethnically diverse. Over 70 different languages
or dialects are spoken by distinct ethnic groups. In urban areas, the diversity
of language is transcended by the use of a lingua franca: the main language
for the capital, Lusaka, is Chinyanja, and Chibemba is spoken in the industrial
Copperbelt. English is the official language, used predominantly in newspapers
and as one of the media of instruction in schools.
Ethnic groups in Zambia have been studied by several renowned
anthropologists – for example, Audrey Richards, Max Gluckman and Victor
Turner – mainly from the Manchester School and working through the Rhodes-
Livingstone Institute. In their ethnographies, they mainly focused on a specific
ethnic group: Gluckman wrote about the Barotse (1955), Richards about the
Bemba ([1956] 1982b), Elizabeth Colson about the Tonga (1962) and Max
Marwick about the Chewa (1965).3 They discussed the social organisation of
these groups as well as their religious beliefs, which fall under the umbrella of
African traditional religions (ATRs). In a later chapter, I will discuss to what
extent these beliefs are related to contemporary narratives about Satanism.
Meanwhile, other anthropologists in Zambia, such as Arnold Epstein, did
pioneering work in urban anthropology (cf. Englund 2013:670).4 In more
recent years, anthropologists in Zambia have investigated aspects of life in
ethnically diverse urban areas (see e.g. Ferguson 1999; Hansen 2000; Haynes
2017a; Mildnerová 2015), and others have emphasised the diversity within
rural ethnic identities (e.g. Kirsch 2014). Stories, experiences and events
connected to Satanism most often occur in urban areas and are not related to
a specific ethnic background.
Satanism is, however, strongly related to Christianity in Zambia, as we will
see later in this book in more detail. The girl at the beginning of this introduction
confessed her affiliation as a Satanist during an overnight prayer. Many
narratives about Satanism originate in such Christian settings. The Pew
Research Center reported that, in 2010, 97.6% of the Zambian population was
Christian (2015:244).5 While 75.3% of Christians are Protestant, Roman Catholic
believers form the largest single denomination (20.2%) (Central Statistical
Office 2012:19). Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists are significant

3. For a concise overview of anthropological and historical research in Zambia see Harri Englund’s article
‘Zambia at 50: The rediscovery of liberalism’ (2013).

4. For a discussion of urban anthropology on the Copperbelt in Zambia, see James Ferguson’s Expectations of
modernity: Myths and meaning of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt (1999).

5. Statistics on religion in Zambia vary. The CIA World Factbook (2022) gives the same numbers as the Pew
Research Center, which originate from the 2010 census, while Paul Gifford in 1998 gave an estimate of ‘75%
Christian, 1% Muslim and 24% traditional believers’ (1998:183). Gifford, unfortunately, does not give a source on
these data.

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Christian minorities (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life 2010:153). In Zambia,
ATRs are hardly seen as a viable alternative kind of religious belonging. In the
past decades, there has been a marked shift towards neo-Pentecostal
Christianity in Zambia, epitomised by the 1991 declaration of the republic’s
second president, Frederick Chiluba, that Zambia is a Christian nation
(Phiri 2003).

The history of Satanism in Zambia

It was in this context of a growing but uncertain economy and a shift towards
neo-Pentecostal theology that stories about Satanism started to spread.
Satanism in Africa refers to a complex of ideas about the threat of evil, harm,
misfortune and unfair success. It is part of an imaginary of evil, and this
imaginary presents an opportunity to study the transformations in Zambian
society (cf. De Boeck & Plissart 2004:157).
The concept of imaginary refers to the way individuals and societies in a
certain place and time see and understand the world. It does not refer to
something that exists only in the imagination, something unreal or illusory, as
some dictionaries state. The imaginary is what gives things and practices
their value and meaning. As Andrew Strathern and Pamela Steward write
(2006:6–7), ‘people’s thoughts about the world often run far beyond its
obvious empirical manifestations’. The contents of this ‘beyond’ come from
people’s imaginaries. If we hesitate to walk underneath a ladder, it is because
we share the cultural convention that doing so brings about bad luck. The
world we know is constructed in our minds through the ideas, beliefs,
experiences, stories and images that we hear and share with others (Meyer
2015:14–16). Satanism belongs to a Zambian imaginary of how the world
works and what can befall one in this world.
But what is this imaginary of Satanism? In this book, I will use the definition
that I coined in my dissertation on this topic (Kamps 2018):
Satanism in Zambia refers to a supposed organization, commanded by Satan,
dedicated to bringing evil and harm, especially to Christians. Ex-Satanists claim
and/or experience a previous allegiance to this organization. (p. 41)

Satanism is a relatively new phenomenon in the African context, although

there are some precursors in American literature, which I will discuss in a later
chapter. Early testimonies like Emmanuel Eni’s Delivered from the Powers of
Darkness from 1987 started to appear in the 1980s. Eni describes how he grew
up in poverty as an orphan. A former school friend, who was by that time
living in Lagos, Nigeria, introduces him to an ‘occult’ society that promises to
make him rich. He makes covenants and is initiated through rituals involving
secret altars and human blood, which allows him to travel to a hidden world
under the sea, filled with riches and under the dominion of a queen.

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Satanism in Zambia

This ‘Queen of the Coast’ commands him to sacrifice relatives and fulfil other
assignments. Soon it becomes clear that Eni is serving an even higher lord,
namely Lucifer himself.
As Satan’s agent, he takes pride in destroying the lives of innocent people,
especially Christians. However, he runs into trouble when he meets a prayerful
Christian who can counter his powers. It takes a long time, but in the end, Eni
is delivered and starts his new life as a born-again Christian, ready to spread
the gospel and warn others of the powers of darkness. Delivered from the
Powers of Darkness became a popular published testimony and can nowadays
be downloaded from several websites. Around the same time that Eni wrote
his testimony, Evangelist Mukendi, an ex-Satanist from Zaire (now the
Democratic Republic of Congo), gave his testimony in churches across central
Africa. It was published as Snatched from Satan’s claws by a Kenyan publisher
in 1991 (Koech 2002).
These early examples of testimonies about Satanism found their way to
Zambia through the religious channels of international ministries. One Zambian
pastor remembers that the first time he heard about Satanism was when
Evangelist Mukendi came to tell his story in Zambia in the 1980s. In Zambia,
the number of rumours and stories about Satanism started to grow in the
1990s. The testimony of a group of girls from the Copperbelt Province was the
first to receive attention from the press in 1997 (Zambia News Online 1997).
They confessed that, before they were delivered by a Pentecostal pastor, they
had been initiated into Satanism (Udelhoven 2008a:1). It did not take long
before testimonies, rumours and accusations became abundant in churches
and newspapers.
The most famous Zambian testimony is a privately published tract by
Gideon Mulenga Kabila, probably written around 2005. Gideon Kabila writes
about his initiation into Satanism and witchcraft by his mother. He gives
extensive descriptions of another world, Satan’s kingdom. This world is full of
factories and universities, where human sacrifices are transformed into
consumer goods like clothes and food, and agents of the devil are trained and
sent on assignments. Kabila is sent to cause accidents, deaths in hospitals and
to disturb church services. Like Emmanuel Eni, in the end, he rejects Satan
and becomes a born-again Christian. Kabila was well-known not only for his
published testimony but also for his performance at overnight prayers, where
he shared his testimony. Kabila passed away in 2017.
Kabila’s testimony is not the only account of Satanism in contemporary
Zambia, but testimonies are the most important source of information about
Satanism in Zambia. In testimonies, people who claim to have been Satanists
describe what they did and saw when they were still Satanists, and they also
explain how they were delivered and became born-again Christians.
Testimonies about Satanism are usually shared in a Christian setting, during a

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church service, an all-night prayer meeting or in the Christian media.

Testimonies can be anything from a few sentences long to narratives that take
several hours or pages to share. Because they are sometimes very extensive,
testimonies form the most detailed type of narrative about Satanism.
Pamphlets, audio recordings and videos containing testimonies can be bought
in churches, purchased in the market or shared with friends. This makes
testimonies a widespread source, and details from testimonies seep into other
types of narratives as well. However, not every experience of Satanism
becomes a testimony. Pastors, Pentecostal as well as mainline, know of many
more cases of people struggling with dreams and experiences they understand
as satanic.
In contemporary Zambia, one is confronted with the threat of Satan and
Satanism everywhere: in schools, hospitals, marketplaces, on the streets and
even in churches. Satanism is portrayed as an organisation of evil in which
people can be initiated knowingly and unknowingly, willingly and unwillingly.
This organisation is believed to operate from an underwater or underground
world, which can be accessed in the night through dreams. Once initiated, the
Satanists are assigned to cause chaos and sacrifice people. Satanists
supposedly sacrifice people through road accidents, fatal diseases like AIDS
and unexplained deaths in hospitals. They may also sell you seemingly innocent
products that cause harm to health, relationships and business success. For a
Satanist, being successful in sacrificing people brings alleged rewards like
money, success in business, a house or a car and advancement in the ranks
of evil.

Testimonies about Satanism

I started this chapter with a brief vignette of a girl confessing to being a
Satanist at an overnight prayer. Many confessions or testimonies of Satanism
are much more extensive than the few sentences uttered by the girl. To get a
feeling of what is understood as Satanism in Zambia, it is helpful to have a
closer look at a slightly longer testimony.6 In 2013, Grace confessed that she
was once a Satanist. Her testimony is one of the many narratives about
Satanism shared in contemporary Zambia. Grace is a young woman, perhaps
22 years old. Her father died when she was very young, and in her youth, she
lived alternately with her mother in a provincial town and with relatives in
the Zambian capital, Lusaka. Like many young adults in Zambia, Grace does
not have a job, and things sometimes ‘get rough’ – meaning that it is hard for
her to make ends meet. But Grace looks stylish when I meet her, with a black
skirt, a red blouse and matching red earrings. Although her mother does not

6. This testimony was first published in my dissertation (Kamps 2018:32–34).

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Satanism in Zambia

like her speaking about it, for fear of public opinion, Grace agrees to tell me
her story:
‘I went to live in Lusaka, and when I was there, I had really changed. I became rude
to other people. I was not who I used to be. While I was there, I had a dream that I
was at a party with friends. They offered me a drink, and I took it. When I drank it, I
realised that it was blood. I knew then that I had joined Satanism. After I became a
Satanist, they told me I had to kill someone. I tried to kill my aunt, the sister of my
mum, but I failed. So instead, I took her child by sending a sickness. At night, they
showed me a mirror with the image of the person I wanted to kill. I would stab that
image. The next day, after eating, the child started vomiting through the nose. She
was taken to hospital, but she died.

‘After that, I advanced in rank. I received control over Eastern Province as a queen. I
used to rule over people who have small businesses here, and we would sell satanic
products there and at the supermarket. For example, we used foetuses and put
them in the half-chicken that is sold there. For the fish, we used babies’ hands, and
the rice was maggots from the brain of a dead person. We put blood in drinks like
Coke. When people would drink it, they would become possessed by demons. We
also used symbols in clothing, for example, CK [i.e. the fashion brand Calvin Klein].
In the underworld, there are monitors, and everyone who wears these clothes can
be observed, so we could tell who is strong in faith and who is weak. In church,
we used to send ghost members who would steal the message that the minister is
preaching so that the church members cannot remember it, and we used to make
people fall asleep.

‘We used to meet at a graveyard, where we would arrive in many cars. Some of
these cars were not even cars but coffins or hyenas. If I saw the other Satanists
during the day, in the physical, we couldn’t talk. We also caused many accidents.
We would stand in the middle of the road so that people would try to evade us. A
drum nearby would collect the blood of the injured and dead.

‘After some time, I had killed my aunt and her sister, and there were no more family
members left to kill. So I took a boyfriend so that I would become pregnant. When
the baby was born, I sacrificed that. Then they told me I had to kill my mother. But
I failed because she was very prayerful. That was in 2011. Then I was sent to church
where a Nigerian pastor was preaching. I was sent there to disturb the service,
but I fell and became unconscious. It was late in the afternoon before I regained
consciousness. I had 150 demons when I was delivered. Still, sometimes I feel
that cars are following me because they are angry that I am delivered now.’ (#43,
interview with Grace, 08 July 2013)

The details of what Grace told me are horrifying: killing family members, using
foetuses and maggots to prepare groceries, becoming pregnant just to
sacrifice the baby and so on. And yet, these details are not uncommon in
testimonies about Satanism. It is obvious that testimonies build upon each
other. Echoes of Gideon Kabila’s published testimony are apparent in many

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later Zambian testimonies. Grace’s remark that the fashion brand CK is

somehow related to Satanism is unique to Zambian testimonies and can be
traced to Gideon Kabila, who says that CK is an abbreviation for Christian
Killer and is used as a symbol on clothes manufactured in the evil underworld
kingdom.
Grace’s narrative is still relatively short, but it follows the same format
as longer testimonies, and it contains the types of imagery that all such
testimonies share. This imagery is known from popular African movies and is
used in sermons as well. The narrative format of the testimonies of ex-Satanists
resembles that of a conversion story: it speaks of an evil past, a turning point and
a newfound Christian life. In Grace’s testimony, her evil past as a Satanist includes
being responsible for the death and misfortune of relatives, innocent shoppers
and victims of car accidents. Her deliverance is the turning point that leads her
to a life in which she tries to help others avoid similar experiences.
In most of the Zambian testimonies, ex-Satanists narrate visiting an
underwater or underground world. In some testimonies, the descriptions of
this world are extensive, describing roads, factories and universities. Often a
queen named Bella or Cinderella reigns over this alternate world. Most ex-
Satanists have an experience of initiation that gives them access to this world.
This initiation is seldom a voluntary choice. It often happens unconsciously or
unintentionally by taking offered food or drink or by wearing certain clothes.
Others say they are initiated by family members. As Satanists, they claim to be
responsible for misfortunes like illness, accidents and poverty. They also say
they diminish the Christian faith by inducing moral vices like prostitution and
cheating and by seducing Christians to show behaviour that is not fitting for
strong faith, like sleeping in church or failing to pray and tithe. Drinking or
stealing blood is a trope that returns in almost every testimony. To obtain
blood, Satanists have to sacrifice family members and strangers. For these
actions, they are awarded titles and material rewards. In Grace’s testimony,
relatively short as it is, most of these common motifs and images are evident.
Between 2012 and 2017, I collected almost 50 testimonies from ex-Satanists.
Some are very short, some in the form of hours of audio material. All of these
testimonies have contributed to the analyses found in this book. Twelve of
these testimonies were very extensive and will be used throughout the book.
In the following table, I introduce the storyline of each of these testimonies
briefly, both to give a more detailed impression of these narratives about
Satanism and as an introduction to the names that will come back time and
time again in the book. Two of the ex-Satanists published their testimony
under their own names. The other names are pseudonyms.

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Satanism in Zambia

TABLE 1.1: Overview of the most extensive testimonies.

Names Overview
Gideon Mulenga Gideon is initiated by his mother. After suffering rejection at school, his mother tells
Kabila (published him that he belongs to another world. In his sleep, he goes to a place where he makes a
testimony, see covenant with the devil. After this, Gideon receives a black gown and a knife and is told
Kabila n.d. and to use the knife for sacrifices. His mother teaches him how to kill, and Gideon advances
How I was set free in rank. After sacrificing 80 people, Gideon becomes the junior assistant to the master
from Voodoo and for the Eastern, Central and Southern regions. He also receives an education in the
witchcraft 2007) underworld. His testimony describes the workings of the underworld in extreme detail.

The day after he dreams about Christ, Gideon is assigned to disrupt a religious
conference, but when he drops his papers, his degree from the Voodoo School of
Witchcraft is picked up by a pastor. He gets thrown out and the police are looking for
him. Churches start to pray for Gideon and he starts to long for Jesus. It takes a long
time before his deliverance is complete. During this process, he and the pastors who
pray for him are attacked by evil forces.
Memory Tembo Memory is initiated by a friend at school who borrowed a skirt from her. In the night, she
finds herself in the ocean, where she becomes a Satanist. Memory receives five powers
(#2, Memory (causing accidents, not entering a church, resisting, short temper and hiding) and
Tembo’s published causes much harm using them. After that, she receives jewellery to increase her beauty
testimony, 2010) and to initiate others. She advances in rank and travels to other places. She sacrifices
people and receives money for it. She also becomes a director in the department of the
hair industry.

Eventually, Memory is ordered to sacrifice her mother, but she cannot do it. Memory
calls her mother, telling her that she wants to go to a different school because she
has been initiated into Satanism here, and if she stays she will sacrifice her mother.
Her mother gives her money to come home, where people start to pray for her. Other
Satanists fight to get her back and pastors fail to deliver her completely until a prayer
group from the Seventh-day Adventist church succeeds.
Grace Grace has a boyfriend whose family are Satanists and dreams about taking a drink that
initiates her. She sacrifices her niece and becomes the queen of the Eastern Province
(#43, interview and ruler over businesses there. She is also assigned to sleep with men, using her gifts
with Grace, 08 of beauty, special walk and irregular periods.
July 2013)
Grace is ordered to sacrifice her mother, but she cannot because her mother is prayerful
and Grace feels pity for her. She goes to a church with a Nigerian pastor to disturb the
service, but she fails and falls unconscious. Grace is delivered of 150 demons. Now she
tries to warn, help and encourage others.
Ruth Ruth is initiated by her sister, whom she did not know but who it turns out goes to the
same school. She finds a note which says, ‘Who will you sacrifice?’ and cannot get rid
(#42, interview of it. She refuses to sacrifice anyone, but she gets into a promiscuous lifestyle. She
with Ruth, 08 July receives boots that can teleport her to different places.
2013)
Ruth’s deceased sister warns her not to become like her in a dream. She starts to pray
and burns her clothes. It takes multiple pastors to deliver her of 216 demons. Ruth now
feels free and clean. She can sleep normally again and experience love for other people.
Chileshe Chileshe’s involvement with Satanism starts when she bumps into a girl at school. After
that, she starts dreaming about going to the graveyard and drinking blood. Instead of
(#39, interview undergoing deliverance, Chileshe is introduced to the Fingers of Thomas. The meetings
with Chileshe, 06 encourage her and make her realise that life is important and that she can help others.
November 2013)
Tsitsi One day, her mother takes Tsitsi to a stream to wash. She warns her not to get into the
water, but Tsitsi jumps in the river anyway. This river is connected to spiritual beings,
(#10a-f, testimony and Tsitsi sees it as her initiation. Tsitsi has dreams that she delivers babies. During
in church and on deliverance, she realises that this is Satanism and that she had a higher rank than the
television, 8-26 Queen of the Coast. Now she sees that her brothers and sister are unsuccessful in life
February 2015) because of her, and she takes responsibility for deaths and accidents.

Tsitsi has a lot of physical problems too and looks for deliverance for 15 years, searching
out every new pastor in town. Finally, a pastor manages to deliver her. He becomes her
husband.
Table 1.1 continues on the next page→

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TABLE 1.1 (cont.): Overview of the most extensive testimonies.

Names Overview
Charles Charles’ father is a Satanist, and because he is close to his father, the father tries to
sacrifice him. This fails. After his father’s death, the father leaves him a stick that has
(#29a-c, Charles’s powers. With his father’s stick, Charles grows confrontational, bullying boys at school
recorded who bother him.
testimony, 2013)
Charles is invited to a prayer meeting and resolves to cause confusion there, but he
feels out of place and unwelcome and does not manage to do anything. Pastors pray
for Charles, and he stays with them for two weeks. All the time, he sees his father telling
him not to listen to the pastors. Eventually, he tells one of the pastors, and pastors
that are even more powerful are invited to pray for him. In the end, he is delivered and
becomes born again.
David David is a businessman who wants more success. He asks a friend how he became rich,
and they go on a journey together. During this journey, they enter an underwater world
(#31a-j, David’s where David is initiated. David is ordered to sacrifice his mother or his father. He has
recorded bad feelings surrounding his father and sacrifices him. After that, he receives money to
testimony, 2013) improve his business and it becomes a success. He marries but is ordered to sacrifice
his wife. He starts another business providing wedding supplies and disturbs many
marriages that way.

David marries again and is ordered again to sacrifice his wife. This time he refuses and
starts to look for deliverance. Because he does not want to sacrifice his wife, he finds a
pastor who delivers him.
Eve Eve has strange dreams about eating human flesh but only realises this is Satanism
when she undergoes deliverance. Later, she says that her mother was probably already
(#37a-c, Eve’s initiated. Eve is convinced she has special powers that enable her to control people. Her
recorded task is to cast spells of lust, causing Christian men to sleep around, though not with her
testimony, 2013) because she is already married to the devil in the underworld.

Eve realises that she is a Satanist when people start praying for her. They pray for her
because her behaviour is odd: she likes to be by herself and is too quiet. Her deliverance
takes time and multiple pastors. Now, she feels free and at peace. She loves herself and
loves working for God.
Naomi Naomi is initiated at school through the food she receives. She sacrifices her friends
and becomes a specialist in causing accidents with a set of buttons she receives in the
(#41a-e, Naomi’s underworld. As a reward, she receives the promise of wealth and is called a princess.
recorded
testimony, 2011 Naomi is ordered to sacrifice her mother and sister, whom she loves very much. She
and 2012) cannot do it. For this, she is tortured in the underworld and things get difficult in the
physical world. Pastors also start to pray for her, and they burn her clothes. Naomi is
delivered of 272 demons.
Mphatso Mphatso’s grandmother takes him to a satanic church in Lilongwe (Malawi) and under
the ocean. Mphatso sacrifices his father, mother and older sister and receives bags of
(#44i, Mphatso’s money and a position as a director of companies in the underworld in return.
recorded
testimony, 2013) Mphatso is ordered to sacrifice his younger sister, but he cannot because he loves
her. He turns mad after this. Pentecostal pastors pray for him, but Mphatso keeps
hearing the voices of his parents and grandmother. Finally, he travels to Zambia to find
deliverance. Mphatso says that now he is free and happy and ready to start working for
the Lord.

A great majority of those who give their testimonies are adolescents, between
15- and 25-years-old, and most of them are girls. Only two of the testimonies
I have collected (including David’s in Table 1.1) are from adult men who describe
becoming involved with Satanism as adults. Tsitsi is an adult woman in her 30s
when she starts sharing her testimony, but she mainly describes things that
happened in her youth.

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Satanism in Zambia

Rumours and gossip about Satanism

Like testimonies, which are presented as first-hand experiences, rumours and
gossip about Satanism abound in Zambia. Rumours are second-hand accounts,
shared as something that happened somewhere, maybe to a friend of a friend.
Rumours are short and do not have a clear, chronologically constructed plot.
A rumour can be one sentence long, something like, ‘Have you heard that this
is the house that Satanists are using?’ Rumours are shared between friends in
person or online, in private and public groups. They are known in a wide, often
transnational geographical area. Like rumours, gossip generally consists of
short accounts without a clear storyline. Unlike rumours, gossip refers to
people known to those who are sharing it. Gossip is often malicious and can
be analysed in terms of interpersonal conflict. ‘Have you heard that our teacher
is a Satanist?’ is an example of gossip. The idea of an organisation of evil
Satanists out to harm people also seems similar to conspiracy theories about
nefarious groups.
The many rumours and stories about Satanism caused a moral panic in
Zambia, which peaked around 2007. By this time, many new cases of Satanism
were discovered on a regular basis. Some schools, especially boarding schools,
experienced panics that caused concern amongst parents, teachers and
pupils, sometimes leading to the suspension of classes and the dismissal of
teachers (Udelhoven 2008a). Since the first decade of the 21st century, the
intensity of the panic has abated, but pastors who are known for their
involvement with these cases still find new incidences of Satanism.
Surprisingly, rumours about Satanism are often connected to adults rather
than adolescents. Politicians, pastors and businessmen are often thought to
have a connection to Satanism because Satanism is thought to make one
wealthy and help to acquire status. Sporadically, accusations of involvement
in Satanism made against new churches or local businessmen lead to violence
(cf. Kroesbergen-Kamps 2014). For example, riots erupted in 2013 in the
provincial town of Katete after a schoolgirl was found murdered. The mob
quickly decided that an ethnic Indian businessman had sacrificed her in a
satanic ritual, and rumours spread that the businessman was found with a
cooler box holding her body parts. Angry villagers threw stones and looted
shops in the town’s business district. Although most rumours do not lead to
violence, they can still disturb everyday life. A growing body of academic
literature describes the unwillingness of Zambians to take part in medical
trials because they fear that their blood will be used in rituals and that they
will be initiated into Satanism by participating (see e.g. Geisler & Pool 2006;
Kingori et al. 2010; Peeters Grietens et al. 2014; Schumaker & Bond 2008).
Testimonies, rumours and gossip may all become input for the media.
Zambian newspapers publish extracts from testimonies and report about
rumours and gossip if these concern famous persons or if they cause riots or

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other unrest. In recent years, rumours about Satanism reported in the media
have often been directed at politicians and government officials. Since a
Member of Parliament in 2011 during a church service confessed to having
been a Satanist – he was sacked shortly after that – stories about satanic
politicians became quite common in the media. Both the then ruling party, the
Patriotic Front (PF), and the most vocal opposition leader, Hakainde Hichilema
from the United Party for National Development (UPND), have been associated
with Satanism in the press by adherents of the opposing party, especially
during the political struggles for power after President Michael Sata’s death
in 2014.

The Fingers of Thomas

The narratives about Satanism in testimonies, rumours and gossip have led to
concerns in many churches. Some churches are eager to give a platform for
ex-Satanists to share their story, but others have been more hesitant. In 2007,
the Roman Catholic Faith and Encounter Centre Zambia (FENZA in short)
decided to establish a think tank to make investigations into the phenomenon
of Satanism. Bernhard Udelhoven describes the development of this group
(2008b). Priests, sisters and pastoral workers met to discuss this phenomenon.
This think tank was soon joined by a group of youths from Lusaka’s Regiment
Parish, who had started to investigate the phenomenon when some of their
friends had experiences with Satanism. When the youths and the clergy came
together at a seminar, they decided to discuss and follow up on cases together.
The group called itself the Fingers of Thomas, referring to the biblical story of
the disciple Thomas who felt the need to touch the wounds of Christ when he
appeared to him and the other disciples after his resurrection. Like the
doubting Thomas, the Fingers want to find out for themselves if the stories
they hear about Satanism are true or not and how they should be handled
(Udelhoven 2008b).
The Fingers of Thomas collected many narratives about Satanism and
developed, under the guidance of Bernhard Udelhoven, a pastoral approach
to the issue (Udelhoven 2010a). Many Zambian Christians are afraid that they
or their children may be affected by Satanism. These fears are enforced by the
attention given to testimonies in certain churches and on radio and television
programs. Christians expect the church to respond to their fears with spiritual
help and liberation. The Fingers of Thomas are not part of the charismatic
movement in the Catholic Church and wanted an approach that did not focus
on the forces of the devil while not denying the experiences of Satanism that
they encountered either. They see Satanism (as well as possession and
witchcraft) as a cry for help that needs to be addressed pastorally.
In Unseen worlds: Dealing with spirits, witchcraft, and Satanism, Udelhoven
(2021) extensively describes the approach of the Fingers of Thomas. A shorter

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document, ‘A ten-step pastoral approach to Satanism in Zambia’ (2010a), can

be found on the FENZA website. The approach of the Fingers of Thomas is to
take people’s experiences seriously (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2018). They listen to
their stories without interpreting or judging them. Prayer forms an important
part of the pastoral approach of Udelhoven and the Fingers. Udelhoven
realises that some people may need dramatic forms of prayer like those
provided by the charismatic priests, but he emphasises that other, more
restrained ways of bringing fears before God are appropriate as well (2010a:4).
In their practice, the Fingers of Thomas make a distinction between the
inner world and the outer world (Udelhoven 2010a, 2021:147–167). The outer
world is the world that everyone can see and touch. Experiences of Satanism
may go hand in hand with problems in the outer world, such as problems at
home or school. When dealing with cases of Satanism, these problems should
be addressed, for example, by helping youths to get back to school. The
Fingers of Thomas also highlight the importance of working on relationships
within the family and community. Experiences of Satanism often coincide with
strained relationships, and the Fingers advise family therapy to deal with these
issues. The inner world, on the other hand, is a world of dreams and personal
experiences that others cannot share. Many experiences of Satanism occur in
this inner world. This inner world can be addressed through prayer but also
through other means of strengthening the Christian faith. Faith in God and
God’s goodness helps to overcome fears of other powers. For the Fingers of
Thomas, the inner and the outer world are both real, but each needs to be
addressed in its own way. Every year, the Fingers of Thomas give several
workshops about their approach at Catholic parishes in both rural and urban
areas and at educational institutions.
In my research, the Fingers of Thomas were an important source of
narratives about Satanism. I joined their weekly meetings to discuss new cases
and went with them to a workshop. Where the approach of the Fingers is
pastoral, centred on helping those who have experiences of Satanism, my
approach to the phenomenon of Satanism is more academic. I want to
understand what makes people receptive to narratives about Satanism rather
than help them with their fears of Satanism and anxious experiences of Satan’s
power in their lives.

Satanism in academic scholarship

There are academic studies that mention Satanism in Africa, but placing this
Satanism within the global context of the study of Satanism is practically
unheard of. Vice versa, within the upcoming field of the academic study of
Satanism, Africa is not a topic that is given much, if any, attention. In this
study, I fill these gaps by taking the academic study of Satanism as my starting
point and important frame of reference.

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This section starts with the distinction between Satanism and anti-Satanism
made in the academic literature, which will then be applied to the narratives
about Satanism in Zambia. Anti-Satanism forms a part of the wider genre of
collective narratives about evil Others. The history of this genre, its
characteristics and the relationship of these narratives to society will
subsequently be introduced. If Satanism in Zambia is interpreted as a narrative
about evil Others, what does that mean for the truth claims embedded in such
narratives? This question is central in the final part of this section.

Satanism and anti-Satanism

Satanism is and has long been a contested term. Since the early 2000s,
scholars working in the field of Satanism studies have tried to find a proper
way to use the term Satanism. In his social history of Satanism, Massimo
Introvigne (2016) defines it as follows:
Satanism is (1) the worship of the character identified with the name of Satan or
Lucifer in the Bible, (2) by organized groups with at least a minimal organization
and hierarchy, and (3) through ritual or liturgical practices. (p. 3)

This definition encompasses various forms of Satanism as an alternative

religious or ideological movement, such as the well-known Church of Satan
founded by Anton LaVey in the 1960s. Often, these religious Satanists
emphasise individual freedom, hedonism and a non-conformist lifestyle.
The Satanism of these religious and ideological groups has little relation to
the Christian image of the devil. In the history of Christianity, various groups
have been labelled as devil worshipers, like the Cathars, a religious community
that did not follow an orthodox interpretation of Christianity, and the witches
who were persecuted in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. These groups
did not see themselves as Satanists but were labelled as such from the
Christian perspective of their persecutors.
To distinguish accusations of Satanism from Satanism as a religion or
ideology, most academic writers make a distinction in different terms between
Satanism according to those groups and individuals who see themselves as
Satanists and Satanism as it is seen by outsiders. Satanism, used as a label by
outsiders, is referred to as the ‘discourse on the satanic’ (Dyrendal, Lewis &
Petersen 2016:3) or as ‘discourses about Satanism’ (Harvey 2009:27). These
discourses attribute Satanism to individuals or groups (Van Luijk 2016:13),
portraying them as subversive or dangerous Others (Petersen 2011:16–18) and
demonising them (Dyrendal et al. 2016:3). Often the discourse on the satanic
claims to discern the true and not immediately obvious nature of the groups
labelled as satanic (Van Luijk 2016:2). When a Christian preacher in a sermon
refers to certain people as ‘satanic’ or even ‘Satanists’, this is often an example
of the discourse on the satanic. This discourse is generally negative in its tone

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Satanism in Zambia

and evaluation of Satanism and can therefore also be called ‘anti-Satanism’

(Introvigne 2016:11–17).
On the other hand, the ideas of groups and individuals who see themselves
as Satanists are referred to as ‘satanic discourse’ and seen as providing a
positive, non-Christian identity (Dyrendal et al. 2016:3). Satanic discourse
includes what is labelled as contemporary religious Satanism (Petersen 2016)
and other forms of self-identified (Harvey 2009:27) or self-declared (Petersen
2011:73–74) Satanism.
Discourse on the satanic and satanic discourse or, in other words, anti-
Satanism and Satanism, are in constant reciprocity. According to Introvigne
(2016:12–17), Satanist movements emerge from an occult subculture and are
subsequently rejected and demonised by the dominant religion and
culture. This rejection becomes so exaggerated that it loses credibility, thereby
creating space for new Satanist movements. In this way, the social history of
Satanism swings like a pendulum from Satanism to anti-Satanism.
The Dutch historian of religion Ruben van Luijk has a slightly different
perspective on this reciprocity, giving primacy to anti-Satanism instead of
Satanism (2016:62). According to Van Luijk, the idea of Satanism has its roots
in the imaginary of Satan, the Christian devil. Long before there were any self-
proclaimed Satanist groups, Christians identified certain individuals or groups
as playing on the devil’s team. Therefore, in Van Luijk’s words, ‘the concept of
Satanism predated the practice of venerating Satan itself’ (2016:61; [emphasis
in original]). This concept of Satanism, or this anti-Satanist discourse, did
inspire later groups to practice religious Satanism, according to Van Luijk.
Making the distinction between Satanism and anti-Satanism, or satanic
discourse and discourse on the satanic, is very useful as these two are confused
in some discussions of Satanism in Africa. In his dissertation on the prevalence
of Satanism in the Kabwe district, for example, Joseph Hachintu lists the
following keywords (2013:vi): ‘Black magic; Church of Satan; demonology;
devil worship; […] modern Satanism; occult religion; ritual murder; […] Satanic
Bible; satanic scare; Satanism; serial killer’. From this combination of keywords
and their treatment in Hachintu’s work, it is clear that no distinction is made
between the discourse on the satanic and satanic discourse. Keywords like
black magic, occult religion, ritual murder and serial killer are examples of
ascriptions to groups and individuals, while the Church of Satan, Modern
Satanism and the Satanic Bible form a part of the satanic discourse. Such an
outright confusion of perspectives should be avoided.
Should Satanism in Zambia be classified as satanic discourse or discourse
on the satanic? Ex-Satanists do identify themselves as Satanists, albeit in the
past. So should they be labelled as Satanists because they self-identify as
such or as anti-Satanists because the point of their testimony is showing how

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they were delivered from the devil’s hold? What is described in stories about
Satanism in Zambia is far from the forms of religious Satanism known in
Europe and the United States of America (USA). Testimonies like Grace’s show
no similarities to the practices and doctrines of groups like the Church of
Satan. Although Grace feels dedicated to Satan, it is not clear from her
testimony whether this is of her own volition and whether her relation to Satan
can be described as worship. The Satanism that Grace describes in her
testimony happens through dreams, and there is no evidence of an organised
group of Satanists beyond this spiritual world. The fact that testimonies are
predominantly given in Christian churches points to a discourse on the satanic,
a form of anti-Satanism. Furthermore, Satanism in Zambian experiences is
never a positive and affirming religious choice. Rather, the testimonies give a
negative evaluation of Satanism, portraying it as dangerous and subversive.
Even though the ex-Satanists self-identify as Satanists, their testimonies are
of an anti-Satanist nature.7
There exists a long tradition of anti-Satanist narratives, which has been
studied extensively by historians, sociologists and anthropologists. As this
narrative perspective on anti-Satanism will be an important framework for
analysing the stories about Satanism in Zambia, I will introduce this perspective
here in more detail.

Collective narratives about evil others

There are many collective narratives, like the stories about Satanism, that are
about an evil force, often personified as a specific individual or group, which
affects the world and causes problems. Collective narratives are narratives
that are shared by groups of people. Narratives about Satanism are an example
of such collective narratives. They are shared as testimonies, rumours, legends
and conspiracy theories, and they spread through the radio trottoir, literally
‘pavement radio’, the rumour mills that abound in African cities (Ellis 1989:321).
The genre of narratives about a group of people who are, often in secret,
harming society and its values is very old. In his seminal work Europe’s Inner
Demons, historian Norman Cohn (1976) traces a strikingly similar story
throughout Europe’s history. The story claims that there is a group of people
who secretly come together for debauched rituals that include sexual
perversion, human sacrifice and the heretical worship of a deviant god.

7. One could also say that during the process of deliverance, when a person had become aware of their
allegiance to Satan, their experience should rightfully be called Satanism, even though it is a different kind of
Satanism than is known in the West. However, for me, the Christian context of this experience is predominant.
Since there already is so much confusion around the label Satanism, I think it is important to state clearly that
the type of Satanism in Zambia that I discuss here forms part of an anti-Satanist discourse.

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Satanism in Zambia

The first group to be connected to this narrative were the Christians of the
early church in the first and second centuries CE. Cohn cites a Christian source
that describes the pagan opinion about Christianity (1976:1). The Christians
were believed to worship a god with the face of a donkey. New initiates had to
stab a child covered in dough, who was then feasted upon. At these feasts,
orgies would take place in which fathers and daughters, sisters and brothers
and mothers and sons would have intercourse. All of these acts happened in
secret, and the pagan commenter notes (in Cohn 1976:1), ‘precisely the secrecy
of this evil religion proves that all these things, or practically all, are true’.
A secret, evil religion that practices abominable rituals and threatens the
wider society: this is a motif that recurs over and over again in rumours and
narratives in Western society. When Christianity eventually became an
accepted religion, medieval Christians started spreading the same story about
other groups, like Jewish people or heretics such as the Cathars. The most
enduring subjects of this narrative, however, were witches. Cohn describes
how folkloric beliefs about the existence of people with special powers who
could use these to harm were combined with more elitist theological notions
of devil worship. Like the Christians, Jewish people and heretics before them,
witches were accused of incestuous orgies, infanticide and cannibalism. The
combination of rural fears with the bureaucratic organisation of the church
formed the fertile ground for the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries.
But even after the witch craze had died down, the narrative of an evil
organisation did not disappear. In his social history of Satanism, Massimo
Introvigne (2016) describes how the changes in society after the French
Revolution were sometimes ascribed to a secret cabal of Satanists. In the
colonies that later would become the United States, the idea that the
indigenous inhabitants of North America worshiped Satan and possibly
sacrificed children was widespread (Walker 2013:26–32). Early in the 19th
century, Catholics were a favourite subject of the narrative of an evil
organisation. Books like Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures (1836) portrayed
nunneries as brothels where nuns participated in orgies and killed any offspring
that might ensue from these activities (Walker 2013:32).
More well-known and far-reaching are the accusations of Satanism against
Freemasons in Europe at the end of the 19th century. Introvigne (2016:158–226)
describes how in La Diable au 19e Siècle, an exposé that was published in
monthly installments, the author, later revealed to be Leo Taxil, presents
himself as an eyewitness of a satanic conspiracy within European Freemasonry.
Taxil recounts shocking rituals in which Satan is worshiped and gives almost
pornographic descriptions of the orgies that coincide with these rituals in
Freemasonry.
In the 20th century, similar accounts of an evil organisation that not only
threatens to harm or overthrow society as we know it but also participates in

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rituals that involve sexual perversities, cannibalism and infanticide were

related to different groups. Testimonies of Satanism started to spring up in the
USA in the 1970s. The biggest impact was made by the so-called ‘Satanic
panic’ or ‘Satanism scare’ of the 1980s and 1990s, in which an important
element was the organised ritual abuse of children in childcare and preschools,
an idea that was combined with the notion of a satanic conspiracy. As
contemporary narratives show – for example, the Pizzagate conspiracy, in
which Hillary Clinton, amongst others, is thought to be part of a satanic
organisation that ritually abuses children – the fear of the evil Other still
lives on.
The broad strokes of the narrative are well-known in contemporary society.
One does not have to be a survivor of satanic abuse to be able to describe
what happens during a satanic ritual. In his book on the American fascination
with the devil, W. Scott Poole writes (2009):
Beliefs about the devil for the average American might come from sources as
diverse as serious theological works, stories related by a Pentecostal grandmother,
a viewing of The Exorcist, a stray passage heard from the Bible, or some well- and
oft-told urban legend. (p. 5)

Especially Hollywood movies act as an important source of information about

the activities of the evil organisation, for example, in productions like The
Exorcist (1977), The Omen (1976) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968).

Characteristics of the narrative

In this brief and incomplete overview, narratives that involve organisations of
evil Others are striking both in their similarities and their diversity. Many
authors have noted the similarities between these historical narratives.
Norman Cohn calls it a collective fantasy with a deeper meaning (1976:ix, 12).
The word fantasy, however, implies that what is imagined is impossible or
improbable, whereas to the people who share these narratives, the existence
of the evil group is not at all improbable. Bill Ellis suggests using the term
‘mythology’ for global narratives accepted on faith (2000:5). More specifically
centred on the narrative of an evil group, David Frankfurter prefers the
concept of a myth of evil conspiracy, using the word myth to denote a master
narrative rather than a false belief (2006:5). Phillips Stevens, Jr speaks about
demonology or an ‘ideology of evil, an elaborate body of belief about an evil
force that is inexorably undermining society’s most cherished values and
institutions’ (1991:21). As already mentioned in the introduction, I use the
phrase ‘collective narratives about evil Others’ to refer to this body of beliefs
and narratives.
Whatever we call this overarching narrative, it has some recurring
characteristics over the centuries, a pattern that is continued throughout
these narratives. Frankfurter (2006) sums up:

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Satanism in Zambia

[S]omething’ about abducted and abused or sacrificed children, ‘something’ about

a secret counter-religion bent on corruption and atrocity, ‘something’ about people
whose inclinations and habits show them to be not quite people. (p. 5)

The same characteristics are mentioned again and again: the secret
organisation is out to harm the values of society, and its nefariousness is
nowhere clearer than in the descriptions of the rituals ascribed to this
organisation, which entails the worship of a deviant god (since the Middle
Ages generally depicted as Satan), human sacrifice, often of children,
cannibalism and sexual acts that are not condoned by society.
A striking feature of these collective narratives about evil forces is that they
tend to make use of inversion to show the otherness of the evil described in
the narrative (see e.g. Bromley 1991:58; Clark 1997:9; Frankfurter 2006:129–167).
The narratives create the image of an Other who is an inversion of everything that
we value as good and appropriate. From an analytical perspective, all these
different Others are portrayed similarly: as inverted versions of the standards
of our society. For these Others, everything is upside-down. For example, it is
not a loving God who reigns, but the lord of evil, Satan. The rituals his followers
perform are debased mirror images of common acts of worship. These Others
do not look after children, but instead kill them, eating their flesh and drinking
their blood.
Stories about Satanism show a similar kind of inversion. In Gideon Mulenga
Kabila’s video testimony, this is quite clear. He says (How I was set free from
Voodoo and witchcraft 2007):
A Satanist is a person who worships Satan. Like Christianity means Christ-like,
Satanism is a person who is like Satan. How can a person be like Satan? A person
is like Satan when he begins to do things that Satan does: telling lies, gossiping,
serial killers that kill people, adultery – a lot of sins that are happening. All those
sins, when a person is doing that, he is representing Satan. He is helping Satan to
do his assignment. (n.p.)

The Satanist, according to Gideon Mulenga Kabila, is an upside-down Christian,

who does everything that a good Christian should not do. Instead of loving
and worshipping God, the Satanist loves the devil. Instead of being filled with
the Holy Spirit, the Satanist is filled with demons. Elsewhere, Gideon Mulenga
Kabila (n.d.:37) writes that he was equipped with 10 000 demons, and others
also mention being possessed by large numbers of demons. Stephen Ellis and
Gerrie ter Haar (2004:52) also note this inversion of reality in stories about
Satanism when they write, ‘the invisible world is a mirror of the visible one, an
accurate reflection except that everything is the wrong way around’.
The Satanists not only embody this inverted role model, but they also try
to bring Christians to their side by causing contrary behaviour in them. Those
who are under the influence of Satanists will show a lack of seriousness
towards their faith. I will give some examples of this. ‘People, when they come

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at church, they’ll be not listening to what the preacher is teaching. They will
just be sharing stories where they are sitting at the back’, one ex-Satanist says
about the disturbance she caused in the church (#53c, Taiba’s recorded
testimony, 2013). Causing children to cry is a further cause of distraction.
Making church members fall asleep during the service is another thing that
several ex-Satanists claim to have caused. Even if the congregation is paying
attention, the words of the preacher may still not reach them. Grace, the ex-
Satanist introduced in this chapter, narrates how Satanists steal the message
of the preacher so that his audience will not hear it (#43, interview with Grace,
08 July 2013). Causing confusion in the church is another common task for
Satanists. In Zambia, confusion is a word with exceedingly negative
connotations that is generally used as a synonym for conflict or strife
(cf. Haynes 2015:282). In all of these ways, Satanists are making Christians less
Christian.
Another way in which Satanists try to worsen the behaviour of Christians is
by attacking their marriages and encouraging promiscuity. Sometimes this is
done by seducing Christian husbands, but more often by causing them to
desire other women. Ex-Satanist Naomi narrates: ‘I belonged to a group
[whose] assignment was to cast spells of lust […] so that men can be sleeping
around, not with me, but with other people’ (#41a, Naomi’s recorded interview,
2011). David, one of the few male ex-Satanists, says he became head of the
department of destroying marriages in the underworld by setting up a business
in wedding supplies. From wedding dresses and suits to rings and decorations,
everything in his business was connected to the devil and dangerous for
whoever used it. For example, the wedding rings:
Those rings, once you put them on, you will find that they will change your
behaviour. You start behaving badly, which both of them won’t like. ‘I hate the way
my husband behaves; I hate the way […]’ Just because of that same ring. They will
put on a spell, a spirit of that you just start behaving badly. (#31b, David’s recorded
testimony, 2013)

The opposite of a Christian, loving marriage here is a promiscuous life

combined with the disappearance of love within the marriage. By changing
the behaviour of their victims, satanic products like wedding rings cause the
inversion of Zambian Christians.
As inverted stories about evil Others, Zambian narratives about Satanism
fit into a long tradition of similar narratives. For some, the similarities between
these narratives are evidence that this evil organisation must exist and is very
old and powerful. They speak about transgenerational satanic cults forming a
tightly organised, international underground that may have existed over a
long time (cf. Petersen 2005:441). However, in this history of narratives about
organisations of evil Others, it is clear that it is not just one group or organisation
that is accused. The accused range from Christians, Jewish people, witches
and Catholics to Freemasons. This is not the history of one group that has

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existed for centuries, working on their nefarious goals and practices. Rather, it
is the history of one narrative with certain shared characteristics, which is
attached to one group and then to another. Where such narratives appear, we
should not only focus on the truth of the matter but, first and foremost, look
for their meaning and function (cf. Verrips 1991:20).
To give an analogy, if children from several generations are afraid of a
bogeyman, this is not evidence that this bogeyman exists. It is evidence of the
fact that children are prone to be afraid of things that go bump in the night. In
a similar vein, the recurrence of a story about devil worship, cannibalism,
infanticide and sexual perversities does not mean that an organisation that
practises these things truly exists. There must be other ways to explain the
popularity of such a narrative. What are the bumps in the night that the
narrators of such stories are afraid of?

Evil Others and society

Scholars have given several interpretations of the meanings of collective
narratives about evil Others, some of a more psychological nature and some
more focused on the context of the society. An important approach is the role
of the Other in the formation of identities. Narratives about an evil organisation
have at their core the image of an Other. The Other is just that: not us and not
like us. The Other in these narratives is an inversion of everything that we
value as good and proper. How a particular society defines this Other depends
on how they define themselves and how they see their identity. One could say
that every society needs the Other to affirm its own identity. I will explain
this process.
Imagine a society, community or group of people. We will call them group
A. Group A has certain ideas, values and beliefs about what is proper. They
have established what the right behaviour is, what is the right way to dress,
what one can and cannot eat, how to perform religious rituals, etc. Protecting
life and taking care of children are widely, maybe even universally, shared
values. Rules about what to eat or how to dress, about proper sexual conduct
and about how to believe may vary from one group to another. Our group A
also knows that other groups exist. One of these groups is group B. From the
perspective of group A, group B is everything that they are not. Group A
knows what is right, and group B is all wrong. Instead of protecting life, they
murder without care. Instead of caring for children, they harm them. They may
indeed eat them. Their sexual acts are perversities. Instead of honouring God,
they worship the devil. To group A, group B is inhumane, probably even inhuman.
Pairs of groups A and B are frequently found in history. For the Romans in
the first and second centuries CE, the Christians were a group B. For Christians
in the Middle Ages, heretics and witches formed group Bs. For early Protestant

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colonists in North America, both the indigenous population of the land and
Roman Catholics were examples of the evil group B. In contemporary Western
society, an underground network of child-abusing Satanists is an example of
group B.
Any group can be group A, and any group can become group B in the
minds of others. As the Other exists mainly in the minds of group A, as an
image of inversion of that society’s standards, group B does not have to be an
existing group. Some of the groups identified as the Other did exist, like
Christians, Jews or Roman Catholics, but their way of life is so distorted in
their casting as the Other that it has become unrecognisable. The actual
existence of other groups, like witches and the satanic conspiracy, is doubted.
Imagining a clearly defined outgroup, a group that is different from one’s
own because of its religion, ethnicity or social position, may reinforce the
identity and cohesion of a community (Koschorke 2012:243). The definitions
of the community and the Other – group A and group B – are dependent on
each other. Narratives about an evil Other bolster the identity of a group by
making clear what the boundaries are between us and them, good and evil.
Sketching a coherent picture of the Other reinforces the norms of the
community itself (cf. Steward & Strathern 2004:37). Having a common enemy,
furthermore, strengthens the ties within the community (cf. Campion-Vincent
2005:103).
Narratives about evil Others enhance the sense of common identity within
the group in which these narratives are shared. Historians, anthropologists
and sociologists have noted that these narratives often gain in popularity if
the identity of a group is under threat. During times when people feel there is
something wrong in society, that things are changing too fast, that they are
frustrated with institutions and authority figures, the narratives about a
conspiracy of evil Others start to gain traction.
This is a point of overlap between these stories about evil others,
conspiracy theories and rumours in general. Rumours have been called
‘improvised news’ (Shibutani 1966). Often, rumours start after an event that
disturbs the daily routine or something that may have far-reaching
consequences. When such an event happens, there is a growing demand for
news about the event. The more important, disturbing or consequential the
event is perceived to be, the greater the demand for news concerning the
event (Shibutani in Turner 1993:46, 80). If this demand for news exceeds
the supply, rumours are bound to arise. In this situation where people want
news but they do not receive it, they turn to each other to come up with
theories about the event and about how to respond to it (Fine & Ellis 2010:7).
In the absence of news, people improvise their own – and this is what we call
rumour. In this process of improvisation, shared beliefs such as the images of
outgroups are drawn upon.

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Satanism in Zambia

If in the development of rumours, there is often a specific local event that acts
as a catalyst, such an event is harder to pinpoint in the development of
conspiracy theories and narratives of evil Others. Conspiracy theories deal
with large-scale socio-political developments (Byford 2011:21), such as rapid
social changes that make people question existing power structures and
norms of conduct (Van Prooijen & Douglas 2017:324). Conspiracy theories
explain these developments and thereby reduce their complexity. This has the
effect of containing the uncertainty that changes in society generate and
translating unspecified anxieties into focused fears (Franks, Bangerter & Bauer
2013:1). One could say that the development of conspiracy theories is a coping
mechanism to deal with societal change (p. 2). Narratives about evil Others
have a lot in common with conspiracy theories, and scholars have explained
the rise of these narratives in a similar way. According to Phillips Stevens Jr.
(1991), these narratives:
[I]nvariably develop in times of intense, prolonged social anxiety, times when a
significant proportion of people who share cultural values have come to feel that
they are being let down or ignored by the social or governmental institutions that
they have always supported and in which they have placed their trust. Something is
seriously wrong in society, and they are feeling increasingly helpless. (p. 21)

When people feel that things are bad in society, stories about evil Others start
to spring up.
According to some, these stories might bring some solace. In these
narratives, the undefined anxiety that permeates society gets a name and
often a face as well. This process has been called the ‘Rumpelstiltskin principle’
(Ellis 2000:xvii). Like the imp Rumpelstiltskin in the well-known fairy tale, a
situation is disarmed when it is named and given a place in the web of stories
that underlies our view of the world.
Others have argued that in collective narratives about evil forces, people
are reminded of the norms of their society, and in this way, these norms are
strengthened (cf. Clark 1997:27). By presenting audiences with a counter-
narrative that presents a group that is everything that their society is not,
these audiences are prompted to recall their values and once more
embrace them.
A final theory on the relation between narratives about evil Others and
society holds that imaging the inversions may also offer audiences a safe
place to imagine and experience suppressed desires and feelings. Repressed
desires and impulses can be experienced safely by hearing the narrative of
someone who has embodied the evil Other, for example, through the testimony
of an apostate or ex-member of this purported group (cf. Frankfurter
2006:136). According to David Frankfurter (2006):
[R]epresentations of inversion […] provide opportunities to fantasise transgressive
delights (or ‘worst possible behaviour’) in a form that is safely relegated to a realm

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of evil: ‘It is not me who has these thoughts; it is the demons who put in my mind
what they do habitually’ or ‘it is the witches or Satanists who I saw really doing such
things.’ (p. 158)

It seems that each time deserves its own story. Sometimes Hollywood
bombards us with superheroes and, at other times, serial killers, aliens or a
vision of a post-apocalyptic future. A similar thing happens with the stories
that people tell each other, in rumours, legends or conspiracy theories.
Different times have different recurring plots. As I have argued, these narratives
develop as a response to certain social circumstances. The plots of these
stories resonate with the lived experience of their audiences. In this study, I
investigate the lived experiences of Zambians that resonate with narratives
about Satanism.

Satanism and reality

Collective narratives about evil forces like rumours, legends and conspiracy
theories share some characteristics. Rumours are short, generalised
statements, whereas legends are more detailed narrative accounts of events,
and conspiracy theories focus on a hidden plot behind the events, but they all
are narratives that people share. In most cases, these collective narratives
entail truth claims, meaning that they claim that certain events did happen or
were caused by a certain phenomenon. The truth claims of rumours, legends
and conspiracy theories are equally highly debated. They are ‘stories believed
to be true’ (Ellis 2003:xiii) rather than true stories.
In recent years, however, the focus has shifted from debunking these
narratives to finding out what their meaning is in the settings in which they are
shared. In an overview of the developments in the field of folklore studies
since the 1970s, folklorist Bill Ellis, for example, describes how the interest
changed from stories believed to be traditional and possibly even backwards,
to the process of storytelling and its relevance (2003:xiii–xv). A similar
development can be recognised in the study of conspiracy theories. For some,
a central element of conspiracy theories is that they are spread because of
crippled epistemology (Sustein & Vermeule 2009:211–212). But there is also a
tendency to word this more cautiously, for example, by speaking of the ‘special
knowledge’ of conspiracy theories (Asprem, Robertson & Dyrendal 2018:26–27)
or ‘stigmatized knowledge’ (Barkun 2003:26–27), meaning that their truth
claims are not necessarily wrong but marginalised by established institutions
of knowledge.
In African narratives about witches, vampires, Satanists and similar figures,
the question of whether these stories are true is hardly ever asked. Until the
1970s, it was clear to anthropologists that narratives about witches could not
be true. Evans-Pritchard (1937:63), for example, writes, ‘witches, as the Azande
conceive them, clearly cannot exist’, and Max Marwick (1952:216) labels the

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Satanism in Zambia

belief in witchcraft as ‘structurally related, standardized delusions’. Beyond

the study of anthropology, stories about witches and other evil agents were
disregarded. As Luise White (2000) states in her book about vampire beliefs
in Eastern Africa:
To European officials, these stories were proof of African superstition […] It was yet
another groundless African belief, the details of which were not worth the recall of
officials and observers. (p. 14)

At the end of the 20th century, the interest in these stories grew again amongst
anthropologists working in Africa. The new position was that witches may or
may not be real, but for the study of witchcraft, this does not matter. In a
collection of anthropological and philosophical reflections on witchcraft in
Africa, George Clement Bond and Diane M. Ciekawy (2001:6) write, ‘whether
witches do or do not exist is unimportant, the relevant issue is that people
believe that they do’. As, according to this position, it does not matter whether
witches truly exist, the issue of reality is still rarely discussed in the contemporary
anthropological literature on witchcraft and similar phenomena. The narratives
and accusations related to these phenomena are taken as interesting topics
for research in themselves, irrespective of whether they refer to an external
reality or not. Stories like the stories about Satanism in Zambia are shared
because they are seen to be relevant and address a social problem that
urgently needs attention (cf. Ellis 2003:xiii–xiv).
Does that mean that Satanism in Zambia is no more than a mirage? In the
literature on Satanism, a third form of Satanism is mentioned, namely folk
Satanism. Loosely organised groups of criminals or adolescents take ideas
about Satanism that are present in society and enact them. The result is ‘a
version of Satanism reduced to some hardly recognisable elements of it’
(Introvigne 2016:8). Examples are criminal organisations, like 19th-century
highway robbers in Sweden and a 20th-century criminal gang in Matamoros,
Mexico, who find inspiration for their criminal activities in Satan’s evil, and
groups of rebellious youths who identify with the counter-cultural appeal of
devil worship. Both have in the past been associated with actual murders. In
folk Satanism, anti-Satanist narratives are embodied by real people.
A similar thing may happen in Zambia. Although organised religious
Satanism seems to be absent in Zambia (Udelhoven 2017a), the ideas about
Satanism that are spread in anti-Satanist testimonies and other narratives
may give some individuals the idea to develop Satanism as a religious practice.
People do seem to be interested in joining a Satanist group. The Fingers of
Thomas, a Roman Catholic group that investigates accounts of Satanism in
Zambia, writes (Udelhoven 2017a):
We know of a few individuals in Zambia who dedicated themselves openly to Satan,
some through the websites of satanic churches on the Internet and others through
handwritten letters that family members eventually found. Some approached the
Fingers of Thomas for advice how to join Satanism. (n.p.)

26
 Chapter 1

A contributing factor is that in Zambia, Satanists are believed to sacrifice

people and receive riches or power in return. Those who want to become
Satanists are probably looking for wealth and status.
In many countries in southern Africa, murder victims are found with some
of their body parts – genitals, eyes, ears, heart, tongue – missing. These killings
are known as ritual murders because the missing body parts are presumably
used for medicines that are believed to make someone successful in business
or politics. In the first quarter of 2016, eight victims of alleged ritual killings
were found in Lusaka alone. But are the perpetrators of these crimes Satanists?
Probably not. Criminals intent on earning money through trading in human
body parts are not necessarily Satanists. But as many people believe that
sacrifice is a way to acquire wealth and power, and as Zambia is a poverty-
stricken country, it is conceivable that there are people who resolve that
becoming a Satanist and committing murder is a way to achieve their goal.
While there may be Satanists of this kind in Zambia, I have only met and
heard about Satanists like Grace and the girl at the overnight prayer, who give
their testimonies when they no longer feel devoted to Satan – a group that I
have labelled as anti-Satanists. However, there is a gap in the treatment of
anti-Satanism in the academic literature. Anti-Satanism is described as a
polemic device that is consciously utilised by a dominant group to discredit
others. In this context, fake testimonies and fabricated stories are used as a
means to vilify the alleged Satanist groups. Famous examples are the
publications of Leo Taxil in the 19th century and the testimonies of Mark
Warnke in the 1970s. Both were later proved to be intentionally forged. ‘Yet,’
according to Introvigne (2016:12), ‘false information often generates true
consequences’. He gives examples of people who ended up in jail and about
the influence of the anti-Satanist discourse on politics and religion. For
Introvigne, these real consequences are based on fraudulent narratives.
Some testimonies about Satanism in Zambia are later uncovered as
fraudulent as well. Some ex-Satanists repeat almost verbatim what other ex-
Satanists have published in their testimonies. But my conversations with self-
proclaimed ex-Satanists have led me to reject the claim that testimonies are
always intentionally providing false information. Grace was the first ex-Satanist
that I interviewed, and she was not at all what I expected. I probably expected
an ex-Satanist to be talkative, to be a person with a story to tell. Perhaps not
proud of what had happened, but at least proud of what they had become as
born-again Christians.
To meet Grace, my research assistant and I went to a small provincial town
in Zambia. My research assistant knew there were a lot of stories about
Satanism going around in that town, and she knew people who were active in
bringing Satanists back to Christianity. Grace was willing to come and meet us
to share her story. Except that ‘willing’ may not be the right word. It took us a

27
Satanism in Zambia

morning of calling and driving around to finally meet the young woman in a
church building. There she sat: silent, reluctant to meet my gaze. Grace spoke
hesitantly, in an unemotional tone, about her attempts to kill her relatives. This
was not a girl with a sensational story to tell. Rather, she wanted to get the
whole thing behind her and move on. She only accepted to be interviewed
because she knew and trusted my research assistant. I noticed the same
attitude in later interviews with other ex-Satanists. Without exception, this
was a difficult topic for them to speak about. They spoke reluctantly, fidgeting
uneasily in their chairs. After meeting these ex-Satanists, I became convinced
that they were not frauds who intentionally made up a story to bring discredit
to a certain group. While Zambian narratives about Satanism are part of an
anti-Satanist discourse on the satanic, this book will show that this discourse
is more complex than the literature on narratives about evil Others makes it
out to be.
Even though I have argued that narratives about Satanism are not
necessarily made up or fraudulent, this does not mean that my discussion of
these narratives supports the metaphysical truth claims these narratives make.
My academic discussion of Satanism in Zambia is written from the secular
perspective of religious studies or anthropology of religion. This means that I
will, except for this section in the first chapter and another section in the final
chapter of the book, not discuss the reality of the phenomenon of Satanism,
nor will I give helpful advice to those who deal with issues of Satanism. This is
a work of description, interpretation and explanation rather than a defence of
either the reality or the fictitious character of Satanism. Whatever the
ontological status of Satanism may be, it is real in the minds of many Zambians
and in its consequences, and this is what I will focus on.

Outline of the book

There is an English proverb saying, ‘speak of the devil, and he appears’. It is
certainly the case that many people are speaking about Satan and his human
agents, the Satanists, in contemporary Zambia. People speak of things that
matter to them, things they are invested in, as I have argued in the previous
section. A remarkable discourse like that on Satanism probably reflects strong
investments. So what struggles are addressed by speaking of Satanism, both
in society and personal life?
To a wider public, stories about Satanism can be entertaining, with a thrilling
hint of danger. They can be understood as evidence of the power of God to
conquer evil or as a cautionary tale about the consequences of selfish
behaviour. For ex-Satanists themselves, experiences of their allegiance with
Satan form part of their life story and are a way to make sense of who they are
in this world. These two levels – that of society and that of people who
recognise something of Satanism in their personal life – stand in a dialectic

28
 Chapter 1

relationship to each other. Without the notions present in wider society,

individuals would not be likely to interpret their own experiences as Satanism.
At the same time, the stories of individual ex-Satanists play an important role
in fueling all this speaking of Satan in Zambia, and these individual stories may
help a wider public to come to terms with their circumstances. The book
focuses on society first and then on Satanism and personal life.
What does the currently popular discourse of Satanism tell us about
Zambian society? For a Westerner, stories about Satanism such as Grace’s
testimony sound improbable. In Zambia, however, these stories are taken very
seriously. This is not because Zambians are more superstitious or less rational
than people in Western Europe or the USA. The West has its share of
improbable stories that are spread and believed – one need only think of the
recent attention given to ‘fake news’.
In their study of American urban legends, folklorist Bill Ellis and sociologist
Gary Fine (2010) note that rumours and other improbable narratives are not
shared because people necessarily believe they are true, in a strict sense, but
because they are plausible:
If we believe that a story or assertion makes intuitive and cultural sense, given how
we conceive of our world, we are likely to accept the rumour as at least potentially
true. (p. 5; [emphasis in original])

Ellis and Fine write about American legends, but the same is true for African
narratives. There are other reasons why stories about Satanism have become
so popular, especially in churches, and I will turn to those reasons in later
chapters, but Chapters 2 and 3 aim to show how stories about Satanism make
‘cultural sense’. In other words, taking, with Geertz (1973), culture as a ‘web of
significance’, these chapters show how narratives about Satanism are
connected to other local and shared meaningful rumours, stories, traditions,
practices and beliefs. It is these connections with other stories that make
stories about and experiences of Satanism plausible.
One major web of stories in which the narratives of Satanism find their
place is connected to an African worldview and traditional notions of
witchcraft, possession and especially of illicit accumulation. Chapter 2
investigates the relations between Satanism in Zambia and this traditional
worldview. Like witches, Satanists spiritually harm others. Ex-Satanists often
claim that they were able to do this harm because they were possessed. The
clearest similarities between narratives about Satanism and traditional
narratives can be found in ideas surrounding legitimate and illicit ways to
acquire extraordinary power. According to the African perspective, one needs
the support of the spirit world to acquire success. Traditionally, the professions
of the chief, diviner and trader were especially rumoured to participate in
rituals to acquire extraordinary powers. Narratives about Satanism and other
new forms of witchcraft seem to tie into this notion.

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Satanism in Zambia

However, Satanism is not only related to traditional African concepts. More

than anything, stories about Satanism in Zambia are part of Christian discourse.
Christian theology forms, after African ideas about witchcraft and illicit
accumulation, the second web of stories in which narratives about Satanism
make sense. From the early days of missionary activity, traditional notions
have been reinterpreted from a Christian perspective by Western missionaries
as well as African Christians themselves. Chapter 3 follows this process of
reinterpretation, giving attention to influences from overseas as well as new
formations from popular Nigerian pastors.
Like many African countries, Zambia is experiencing rapid growth of
independent neo-Pentecostal churches. In some ways, these churches connect
better to traditional African patterns of thought than the classical mission
churches. One of the ways in which they do so is by offering ways to deal with
external sources of evil. Two strands are particularly important in the
conception of the discourse of Satanism in Zambia, namely the spiritual
warfare theology that was developed in the third wave of Pentecostalism that
originates in the USA and the development of those ideas by African
Pentecostal pastors, often from Nigeria. In this theology, there is an ongoing
struggle between good and evil – or, more specifically, God and Satan.
Testimonies of ex-Satanists have been read in this context from the earliest
instances of, for example, Emmanuel Eni and Evangelist Mukendi.
Narratives about Satanism in Zambia are linked to both traditional African
notions and international Christian theology. These links with widely known
webs of stories make narratives about Satanism plausible. The popularity of
narratives about Satanism at this moment can, however, not just be explained
by these ties. Changes in society that are in Zambia often described as the
coming of ‘modernity’ have had a big impact on the way people, especially in
cities, live together. These changes are welcomed to some extent, but they
also give rise to specific tensions. Following the theory that stories about evil
Others reflect anxieties about changes in society, Chapter 4 discusses how
the discourse of Satanism is related to these changes.
From the onset, I am careful not to imply that narratives about Satanism
are metaphors for change in society. Narratives say something about the
society in which they are told, but they are rarely meant as allegories. Stories
show the circumstances in which their narrators live. Elements from ordinary
day-to-day life form the backdrop of the story a person shares. Stories are
also shaped by conceptual frameworks, or in other words, by how their
narrators assume the world operates (cf. Fine & Ellis 2010:175), which is related
to conceptual frameworks discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. Narratives
coincidentally show things about the society in which they are told. But when
certain stories are popular, this also means that they resonate with specific
circumstances and anxieties. In Chapter 4, I will not investigate the random

30
 Chapter 1

circumstances of everyday life that are reflected in narratives about Satanism

(that people speak, eat, sleep, go to school, have families, etc.), but specifically,
those that speak to contemporary challenges in society. I will argue that
narratives about Satanism show how new tensions have arisen concerning to
what extent one should adopt modernity.
Chapters 2, 3 and 4 form the first part of the book. These chapters give
insights into how narratives about Satanism are plausible in the eyes of a
wider public and offer different contexts in which these stories are given
meaning: as an explanation of the distribution of wealth and power from a
traditional perspective, as religious narratives about a struggle between good
and evil and as reflecting a concern surrounding the values of modernity. This
perspective from society on the narratives seems quite distant, especially if
compared to the experiences of those who call themselves Satanists. So what
makes people adopt the discourse of Satanism in Zambia to say something
about their personal life? This is the topic of the second part of the book.
Ex-Satanists themselves adopt the discourse of Satanism in the most
intimate way. They not only see Satanism as a plausibility. Rather, for them, it
is something they have experienced themselves. For ex-Satanists, Satanism is
not merely a story but a personal experience that becomes a part of their
identity. Chapter 5 traces the process in which an individual comes to receive
and accept the diagnosis of Satanism and how this is reworked in one’s life
story. To understand the experience of ex-Satanists, affliction is a better
frame than conversion. Ex-Satanists are not believers who have undergone
subsequent conversions, first to Satanism and afterwards to Christianity.
Rather, they feel that something is wrong in their lives; they feel afflicted by
the forces of evil that have assimilated them. As the diagnosis of Satanism
becomes part of their life story, some ex-Satanists can give positive meaning
to this affliction. Understanding Satanism as an affliction and as a part of one’s
life story helps to stay in touch with the lived experiences of Zambians who
feel affected by Satanism. Satanism helps people, in particular adolescents, to
frame and deal with both disturbing personal experiences and with moral
expectations from society.
Experiences of Satanism often remain personal narratives. But for some,
their testimony becomes a public record of this experience. Chapter 6
discusses how testimonies are produced and who is involved in their
performance, namely the ex-Satanists themselves, pastors who offer them a
platform and the audience. Pastors are an important category of those who
opt into the discourse of Satanism in Zambia. In churches that follow spiritual
warfare theology, narratives about Satanism are often brought up in sermons
of the preacher as well as in testimonies of ex-Satanists. Pastors not only give
a platform to the presentation of testimonies, but they are often also closely
involved in detecting Satanism and in the formation of a testimony. Chapter 6

31
Satanism in Zambia

argues that pastors, often referred to as men of God in Zambia, profit a great
deal from the performance of testimonies in church services. These testimonies
act as proof of their theology, and at the same time, they give evidence of the
power of the pastor to fight in the spiritual war between God and Satan. For
the audience of a testimony, the narrative makes the presence of God and
Satan real and provides a space to play with ambiguous experiences, as well
as providing a tool to learn to see the world differently.
Narratives about Satanism have a relatively short history in Zambia – the
first instances are from the 1990s, and the narratives started to become
widespread in the 2000s. Satanism in Africa as a whole and specifically in
Zambia should be studied as a phenomenon that has some similarities to anti-
Satanist discourses in the West, and it should not be confused with the
contemporary religious Satanism of groups like the Church of Satan. The
discourse of Satanism in Zambia is closely related to both traditional ideas
about witchcraft and similar phenomena and the development of Christianity
in Africa, in particular, the neo-Pentecostal theologies of spiritual warfare.
Furthermore, the sudden rise in the occurrence of narratives about Satanism
is a sign of changes and anxieties in Zambian society. In this study, I will discuss
these narratives both concerning the wider society and as a personal
experience. Together, these chapters give a comprehensive insight into the
meaning of the discourse of Satanism in Zambia.

32
Chapter 2

Satanism and the African

worldview

Introduction
In 2012, two women disappeared from the small mining town of Chambishi on
the Zambian Copperbelt. They were later found dead in what one news site
called ‘mysterious circumstances’.8 What exactly those mysterious
circumstances were was not mentioned. At the burial of one of the women,
emotions ran high. In an African context, an important question after a sudden
and unexpected death is often: who was responsible? In Chambishi, the
residents decided that they knew exactly who was responsible, namely a local
businessman. Two days of rioting followed. After the second day, the
newspaper Lusaka Times reported (Lusaka Times 2012):
A cloud of uncertainty continues to hang over Chambishi Town on the Copperbelt
after irate residents went on rampage for the second time in two days, this time
setting ablaze a market in Zambia Compound as part of the continued protest
against alleged acts of Satanism by some local businesspersons. The rampaging
residents, who on Friday left a trail of destruction when they rioted in the mining
township where they set on fire a number of shops and burnt to death four people
whom they suspected of involvement in ritual killings, on Saturday night mobilised
again and destroyed more property. (n.p.)

8. See https://www.zambiawatchdog.com/riots-break-out-in-chambishi/.

How to cite: Kroesbergen-Kamps, J 2022, ‘Satanism and the African worldview’, in Speaking of Satan in
Zambia: Making cultural and personal sense of narratives about Satanism, in HTS Religion & Society Series,
vol. 14, AOSIS Books, Cape Town, pp. 33–59. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2022.BK373.02

33
Satanism and the African worldview

In the riots, a shop owner, his nephew, an attendant of his shop and another
shop owner were burnt to death. The rioting residents also targeted mining
installations and government property. According to one commenter on the
Lusaka Times website, within a month, ten people had been killed by these
businessmen, all with their hearts and private parts removed.9
The happenings in Chambishi were by no means the only riots sparked in
Zambia by rumours of satanic killings. Between 2012 and 2016, riots took
place in Chambishi (2012), Katete (2013), Ndola (2014), Shiwang’andu (2015),
Luanshya (2015), Chingola (2015), Chipata (2015) and Mkushi (2015, 2016).
Most of these provincial towns are commercial and industrial hubs within a
largely rural area. In all of these cases, the riots erupted after the disappearance
and often subsequent death, mostly of a local child. The underlying belief is
that these children were murdered for their body parts, which are ritually used
to attract wealth and power. In current Zambia, this practice is commonly
labelled as Satanism.
Stories about Satanism make cultural sense in Zambia because they are
connected to webs of stories that already exist in the Zambian imagination.
According to the American psychologist Jerome Bruner, people understand
the world not just through scientific hypotheses, experiential facts and
evidence but also through a more narrative mode sustained by stories,
intentions and plots (Bruner 1986). This narrative mode constitutes the cultural
reality in which people live: which roles are deemed acceptable, which plots
are seen as plausible and which actors are allowed to influence us.
A businessman who sacrifices a child to become more successful is, in the
Zambian imagination, a plausible plot.
Bruner’s concept of cultural reality is close to the notion of the imaginary.
An imaginary is a common understanding, an a priori assumption that is rarely
rationally questioned and enables us to ‘carry out the collective practices that
make up our social life’ (Taylor 2002:106). Imaginaries are shared by members
of society; everybody ‘has’ it. Imaginaries are both collective and personal.
They are shared, transmitted in institutions, through social interactions or
media, and at the same time, an imaginary is a personal assemblage, reflecting
the complexity and differentiation of society. According to Cornelius
Castoriadis (1987), it is the shared imaginaries that determine what is
considered real:
‘Reality’ is socially instituted, not only as reality in general, but as a specific reality,
as the reality of this particular society. In this way the fecunding of a woman by a
spirit is do-able – and hence real – for certain societies and undo-able, hence unreal,
in our own. (p. 263)

9. See https://www.lusakatimes.com/2012/09/03/tension-grips-chambishi-antisatanism-riots/ (comments section).

34
 Chapter 2

The stories that are told in society invite us to consider reality in a certain way.
If people in a certain society speak about spirits that can impregnate a woman,
this becomes a plausible plot. In another society, where people do not talk
about this, it is unthinkable. In this way, stories bring our world into existence
(cf. Koschorke 2012:40).
Over time, imaginaries change, and in that process, the material world
acquires new meaning. As Charles Taylor (2002, 2004, 2007) has argued, in
Europe, modernity has brought a profound change in the social imaginary.
New developments, spread by contact between people and cultures, can be
introduced or give earlier practices a new sense. For example, before the
1980s, Satanism was unknown in Zambia. Since then, through international
contacts, it has become a meaningful notion. But its success, as I will argue in
this chapter, depended on a close connection to an imaginary that already
existed.
In this chapter, I will investigate the specifically African imaginaries that
make Satanism in Zambia a plausible plot. Firstly, I will briefly touch on aspects
of an African worldview, and then I will focus on traditional notions of
possession and witchcraft. In the final part of the chapter, I will turn to so-
called new forms of witchcraft or the occult in Africa and their relation to illicit
accumulation.
One may ask how relevant it is to speak about traditional African worldviews.
Christianity and Islam have been present on the African continent for many
centuries and both have been growing rapidly in the 20th and 21st centuries.
In official statistics, the percentages of adherents to ATRs have become very
low, especially in southern Africa. According to data collated by the Pew
Research Center (2015:244), only 0.3% of Zambians follow an ATR. Despite a
celebration of ATRs across the continent in the 1960s when they symbolised
the African identity of the newly independent countries, today ATRs have
almost disappeared from many African countries. Christianity and Islam, as
well as elites with a more secular worldview, speak ill of ATRs, calling them
either demonic or backwards and superstitious (Olupona 2014:105–106).
However, ATRs and the African worldviews they encompass have not lost
their relevance. Ideas about a spirit world still form an important interpretative
framework to understand misfortune and bad luck. According to Gerrie ter
Haar (2009):
African notions of the spirit world and its operations; notions of evil, which include,
for example, witchcraft beliefs; ideas concerning illness and healing; and notions of
progress and prosperity all affect Christian thought and practices in Africa. (p. 25)

Although many Africans are now Christians or Muslims, they experience their
religion through an African lens, and their holistic worldview remains the
same. In the following sections, I discuss the holistic worldview in which the
spirit world plays such an important role.

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Satanism and the African worldview

General characteristics of an African

worldview
Speaking about an African worldview or ATRs implies that there is such a
thing as a unified system of thought that is shared by the whole African
continent. The multitude of ethnicities and languages on the continent and
the diverse histories of African people make this assumption unlikely. Some,
like the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, have argued that one
should not speak of an African cultural unity. ‘Whatever Africans share,’ he
writes, ‘we do not have a common traditional culture, common languages, a
common religious or conceptual vocabulary […] we do not even belong to a
common race’ (cited in Grinker, Lubkemann & Steiner 2010:12). In Zambia
alone, there are nearly 70 different ethnicities, each with its language or
dialect, rituals and belief systems.
While I acknowledge that speaking about ‘the African worldview’
oversimplifies complex realities, within the great diversity, there is some
cultural unity, especially when one does not take the continent as a whole but
looks at a smaller unit of comparison, like sub-Saharan Africa or southern
Africa. In my description of the cultural notions in which narratives about
Satanism are embedded, I will use sources from Zambia and neighbouring
countries in southern Africa, but I will also use classical reference works that
describe an African worldview as a whole, like the works of Laurenti Magesa
(1997) and Jacob Olupona (2014).

A holistic worldview
An important characteristic of African worldviews is the existence of a spirit
world, which will be discussed in the next section. Before I go into the spirit
world and its inhabitants, another caveat needs to be made. In Western ears,
the concept of a spirit world has religious connotations, and African worldviews
could easily be interpreted as religious worldviews. In this section, I will discuss
some problems related to that idea and argue that a characteristic of African
worldviews is that they are holistic, without a clear boundary between the
secular and the religious.
The category of religion emerged in Western thought out of a specific
historical context of exposure to religious pluralism (Chidester 1996:xiii). Not
only has religious studies a complex history in Europe, and not only is the
subject matter of this discipline extremely hard to define, to make matters
worse the history of the study of religion is entangled in colonial politics. This
has consequences for the perspective on religion in Africa. The Western
concept of religion does not always match non-Western practices. From
Western Christian perspective, it is clear that the essence of religion is
separated from the essence of other spheres of life, like science, health care,

36
 Chapter 2

economics or politics. Religion is a domain on its own. Another peculiarity of

religion as seen from a Western angle is the focus on doctrines and theology.
In their contact with other cultures and religions, belief became the primary
element, the essence of religion that Europeans would look for. As the
Canadian professor of comparative religion Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1991)
noted in 1962:
So characteristic has it been that unsuspecting Westerners have […] been liable to
ask about a religious group other than their own, ‘What do they believe?’ as though
this were the primary question, and certainly were a legitimate one. (p. 180)

Western, Christian, maybe even specifically Protestant, thought sees ‘belief’

or ‘believing’ as a major element of what religion is.
The Western angle on religion, which sees it as a separate domain and
focuses on doctrine and theology, is problematic when one tries to export it
to other parts of the world. In non-Western religious traditions, believing the
right things may not be nearly as important as it is in the Western Christian
tradition. Focusing on beliefs may also lead to a skewed perspective on
religion. Religious leaders and elite believers may be able to explicitly verbalise
their religious beliefs, but commoners often are not. Furthermore, a focus on
belief does not take into account local and regional differences within
traditions. Lastly, the division of life into different spheres, like religion, politics,
economics and science, is a modern Western construct influenced by the
history of the Reformation and the Enlightenment in Europe. In Muslim
societies, the separation of politics and religion, for example, is not traditionally
apparent.
The problems caused by seeing religion from an angle that is bound to the
Western Christian context are painfully clear in the history of the study of
religion in Africa. One’s angle of study informs what counts as religion and
what does not. Several early observers of African traditions reported that
Africans had no religion, as the following quote from the historian of Christian
missions Brian Stanley (2005) shows:
[The majority of early missionaries held the view that] traditional beliefs and rites
were unable to supply ‘any religious help or consolation’. Other respondents were
in little doubt that the absence of such spiritual consolation meant that Africans,
quite simply, had no religion. […] The Rev. Godfrey Callaway from Griqualand East
[… stated] that ‘there cannot be said to be any definite non-Christian religions
in this particular part of South Africa’. Callaway stressed that ‘whatever belief in
a supreme God the heathen people may give assent to in conversation, there is
practically no sense of practical obligation due to such belief’. Charles Johnson,
Archdeacon of Zululand, similarly insisted that ‘among the Zulus and Basutos there
is nothing which could be called, strictly speaking, a religious system. […] There are
no doctrines or forms of religious observance which are helpful or consolatory to
the Zulu mind.’ (p. 175)

The missionaries quoted in this text were looking for religion as they knew and
defined it: a separate sphere of life characterised by certain beliefs or doctrines

37
Satanism and the African worldview

and practices of worship that can inspire certain feelings, for example, of
consolation. They did not find this religion.
African scholars of religion have taken a position opposite to the stance of
the early Western observers. In the 1950s and 1960s, African scholars of
religion started to study African traditions. Their view was that Africans had
been religious all along, even ‘incurably’ or ‘notoriously’ so. Religion in Africa
is not a separate domain; rather, it permeates every aspect of African life,
including economics and politics. In a famous quote, the eminent scholar of
African religions John Mbiti (1990) writes:
Wherever the African is, there is his religion: he carries it to the fields where he is
sowing seeds or harvesting a new crop; he takes it with him to the beer party or to
attend a funeral ceremony; and if he is educated, he takes religion with him to the
examination room at school or in the university; if he is a politician, he takes it to
the House of Parliament. (p. 2)

For Mbiti, every human being is religious by nature. Therefore, Africans are
religious by definition. In his books, African religions and philosophy (1969)
and Concepts of God in Africa (1970), Mbiti describes the contours of African
religiosity. However, his views are criticised by both Western and African
scholars. Stating that everything an African does is religious is as untenable
in the end as stating that there is no religion in Africa.
Without falling into these extremes, African worldviews are more holistic
than Western perspectives on the world. The Greek word holos means all,
whole or entire. In English, holism refers to a focus on the whole instead of a
division into parts. African worldviews are holistic because religion is not
understood as a separate entity. According to the scholar of indigenous
African religions Jacob Olupona, religion in Africa cannot be ‘quarantined in
its own sphere’ as religion in the West is. In African societies, religion is not a
distinct sphere. Every aspect of daily life is related to religious concerns. This
has effects on African concerns about, for example, politics, as we will see in
this chapter, but also health, as I will argue in Chapter 5.

The spirit world

African worldviews are holistic also in their emphasis that the spirit world
forms an integral part of reality. It is not just that religion is not a distinct
sphere, cordoned off from other aspects of life, but there is also less of a
boundary between the world of religious entities and the physical world of
human beings. For a Westerner coming to Africa, this idea is unfamiliar.
Western thought, since the Enlightenment, has been shaped by a dualism that
divides the cosmos into two realities: the supernatural world of God and other
spiritual forces and the natural material world of humans, animals, plants and
matter. In the past centuries, in Western Europe, the boundaries between
these two realities have become more and more impenetrable. This means

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that humans have few direct experiences of the supernatural world in their
daily lives and also that God and the spiritual forces are not expected to
intervene directly in the natural world.
The African spirit world has several different inhabitants, of which God or
the gods, ancestors and spirits are the most important categories. These
spiritual forces exist in a relationship with human beings, forming one
community, although spiritual beings are not believed to exist in the same way
as friends and neighbours. As Hermen Kroesbergen (2019:92) argues, when
the people in a room or a village are counted, spirits are not included in this
count. The quality of human life in this world is associated with the relationships
within the community, including the relationships with the spirit world. If illness,
poverty or other calamities strike, the cause is sought in a moral disorder in
this network of relationships (Magesa 1997:81). Where in the West calamities
are often related to mere misfortune or bad luck, in Africa such events have a
spiritual significance. When negative events cannot be explained, controlled
or predicted, the spirit world offers a way to respond to the contingencies of
life (cf. Kroesbergen 2019:21–78). Health, well-being and abundance are
amongst the concerns that are experienced as related to the spirit world. For
this reason, African worldviews have been characterised as anthropocentric
or this-worldly.
The following section gives an overview of the inhabitants of the spirit
world and the rituals that tie the living community to the spirit world. As we
will see in later chapters, all of these elements of an African worldview are
relevant for an understanding of narratives about Satanism in Zambia.
An important category of inhabitants of the spirit world in the context of
this study is the spirits. Spirits can be ancestral, the spirits of revered elders of
the living. Ancestors can punish as well as bestow blessings on their
descendants. They take care of their living relatives in the details of everyday
life (Van Breugel 2001:38). In general, the benevolence of the ancestors is
assured by appeasement through sacrifices. To neglect this duty means to
invoke the wrath of the ancestors. Ancestors are further offended by the moral
digressions of the living. In this sense, they function as the ‘watch-dogs of the
moral behaviour of the individual, the family, the clan and the entire society
with which they are associated’ (Magesa 1997:48).
Another category of inhabitants of the spirit world is nonancestral spirits.
Some of these are spirits of the dead who have not become ancestors, such
as children who passed away before their initiation or people who have not
been buried appropriately, or nonhuman spirits, often associated with features
of the landscape (Magesa 1997:53). These spirits may be troublesome and
cause bad health, or they may be related to other misfortunes. In African
worldviews, none of the categories of inhabitants of the spirit world are
inherently evil, unlike the figure of Satan in Christianity.

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In Zambia, important types of nonancestral spirits are the chiwanda

(in Chinyanja) or cibanda (in Chibemba) and the mashawe (in Chinyanja) or
ngulu (in Chibemba) spirits. Chiwanda or cibanda are treacherous spirits
related to dead people who do not belong to a person’s lineage. The ghost of
a dead person can become a beloved ancestor for their relatives while
becoming a harmful spirit to those who do not belong to the family, such as
the spouse of the deceased (Udelhoven 2021:73, 274–275). This is why Zambian
traditions often prescribe rituals to cleanse the spouse after their partner has
died. Chiwanda or cibanda spirits may also in other ways be outside of the
community. Their death may have placed them outside the community, as is
the case if a person dies under unknown circumstances and goes unburied,
such as in a natural disaster or a war. They may also have placed themselves
outside of the community by committing murder or other severe crimes.
Chiwanda or cibanda spirits are unpredictable. They possess people outside
of their lineage, without any apparent reason, and this possession brings
misfortune and illness. A chiwanda or cibanda is always looking for a host to
possess. Innocent persons can pick up such a spirit by being in the wrong
place, especially at the graveyard.
Mashawe or ngulu spirits are generally nonhuman and associated with local
landmarks such as a river or a hill. Some mashawe or ngulu spirits are human
but connected to foreign peoples. They can manifest themselves in the forms
of wild animals, such as lions, snakes or baboons. Mashawe or ngulu spirits
may be associated with a lineage. If a deceased relative was possessed by
these spirits, they may be inherited through the line of the father or the mother.
Also, some mashawe or ngulu spirits are said to be the spirits of legendary
figures from the past, such as chiefs, prominent healers or famous warriors
and hunters. Certain dreams, such as dreaming of flying, swimming underwater
or being bitten by a snake, lion, monkey or dog, are the first sign of a mashawe
or ngulu possession (Mildnerová 2015:162). The Tumbuka vimbuza and the
Tonga basangu and masabe spirits seem to fall in this same category.
Cases of spirit possession are and were common in Zambia. In the 1970s,
the Roman Catholic archbishop of Lusaka, Emmanuel Milingo, started to hold
public healing sessions, which were visited especially by those who believed
that their afflictions were caused by spirits. After reading the letters that were
sent to Milingo in those years, Ter Haar and Ellis (1988:197) conclude that ‘the
letters to Milingo leave little doubt that many Zambians, of all social classes,
consider spirit possession to be a frequent cause of illness, misfortune and
social discord’. Bernhard Udelhoven mentions that it was also common for
spiritual afflictions to disrupt life at school. Mainly in boarding schools for
girls, possession by mashawe or ngulu spirits spread epidemically and could
paralyse the school system (Udelhoven 2021:369–370).
Another category of the nonhuman spirit is the marine spirit. Water spirits
are well-known in the African religious landscape. They may inhabit rivers or

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lakes and can be ceremonially addressed to provide favours or food (cf. Frank
1995). Probably the most famous marine spirit, particularly in West Africa, is
Mami Wata. Mami Wata means mother of water. She is a relatively new deity
who has attracted many followers in the 20th century (Kamps 2018:74). She is
portrayed as a woman with a light complexion, holding a mirror and combing
her long, flowing hair. She often has a snake around her middle and a fishtail
instead of legs, and she is also known as the Queen of the Coast. Followers of
the Mami Wata cult come from Senegal in West Africa to Tanzania in the East
(Drewal 1988), although it is not well-known in Zambia. The altars of Mami
Wata followers often include ‘European’ items such as cutlery, Western foods,
children’s toys and cosmetics (Wendl 2001:273–274). Her devotees can travel
spiritually to Mami Wata’s realm beneath the sea using a mirror and find
themselves desirable consumer goods like televisions. Mami Wata can give
her followers money, power and success if they become her lovers. This means
that it is prohibited for them to have children or sexual relationships with a
human partner.
The connection between humans and the spirit world is seen most clearly
in the rituals that accompany the life cycle. Many African traditions have rites
of passage that mark the passing from one status to another, for example, the
naming of a child, initiation into adulthood at puberty, marriage and burial.
These rituals enforce the ties within the community, those between humans as
well as those with the spirit world.
Having children is, in African worldviews, one of the most important tasks
of a human. The birth of a healthy child is proof of health, of good standing
with the ancestors; it is a duty towards society. The naming of the child is a
meaningful moment. A child’s name may refer to the circumstances during
the time of its birth. Some names recall hard times, like the Zambian name
Mabvuto, which means trouble or problems. Other names refer to desirable
events or qualities; names like Faith, Charity, Blessing and their vernacular
equivalents are examples. Some children are named after an ancestor. It is
expected that with the name, the child will inherit the ancestor’s character or
personality (Magesa 1997:91; Udelhoven 2021:242–243). This makes the choice
of the ancestral name important. Often a religious specialist such as a diviner
helps the parents choose the right name.
Between birth and puberty, a child is introduced to the traditions of the
community. The most important time of instruction is that of the initiation at
puberty. At the beginning of the initiation ceremony, the boys or girls are
secluded from the rest of the community. During this period, instructors teach
them about the duties, responsibilities and rights that come with being an
adult member of the community. After the period of seclusion, the initiated
are integrated into the community again as mature members, approved by
the ancestors. This means that they are now ready to get married and
contribute to the community. In Zambia, initiation rituals for girls seem to be

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more common than for boys, although there are significant differences
between the different ethnic communities. In many African traditions, secret
societies play an important role in the preservation of knowledge, customs
and traditions, for example, the Nyau in the Chewa culture of Zambia’s Eastern
Province. Chewa boys are initiated into the Nyau between the ages of 10 and
14 years old.
The rituals of initiation, marriage and procreation generally form an
important part of the lessons. Marriage is also a significant event because it
entails the coming together of different clans or communities. This means that
marriage is not just an agreement between two people, but it has a wider
significance in the context of the community. The ancestors can become
present again in the children of a married couple. Without children, this
ancestral communion is not possible. This is one of the reasons that barrenness
and impotence are experienced with fear and shame in many African societies.
Marriage is meant to ensure the preservation of life through sexual
intercourse. In African worldviews, sexual intercourse is surrounded by
prescriptions and taboos aiming to control the generative powers. In southern
Africa, many taboos concerning sexuality are related to the conceptualisation
of hot and cold. Sexual taboos are meant to make sure that the harmful
hotness of sexually active adults is contained (cf. Mildnerová 2015:54–62).
Death and burial form the final stages of the life cycle. Death is rarely
regarded as something natural, and the emotions flaring up in the face of
bereavement can easily disrupt a community. Attending the funeral is seen as
an obligation, and people become suspicious of those who avoid a burial.
When there is no funeral, however, the graveyard is feared as a place of harmful
spiritual beings. Together, the rituals connected to the life cycle emphasise the
importance of the community of the living as well as the deceased ancestors.
That the spirit world and the physical world together form a community
does not mean that anyone can access this spirit world. There are certain
specialists who can interact with the spirit world. Witches are one category,
using spiritual forces to harm. Others are diviners and traditional healers
(ng’angas in Chinyanja), whose connection to the spirit world makes them
able to discern the problems of their clients and give them cures or protections.
Ng’angas often have a special relation to a mashawe or ngulu spirit. After an
initial period of illness, a person possessed by these spirits may reach an
understanding with them and become a channel for their powers when
needed. The possessed medium often uses singing and dancing to the rhythm
of drums (ngoma) and sometimes special medicines to grant the spirits access
(Thornton 2017). In this way, mashawe or ngulu spirits can ‘make a person
upon whom they befell sick, but could also become a valuable resource for
the community by bestowing extraordinary abilities of healing, prophecy or
divination’ (Udelhoven 2021:58–59).

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There is no clear boundary between destructive witchcraft and protective or

curative magic; they shade into each other (Mildnerová 2015:180). Healers
draw on the same power as witches – they have to, in order to be able to
counteract the harm that witches may bring. The difference between the two
mainly lies in their social acceptance. Whereas witchcraft is rejected and
conceptualised as something hidden, done in the dark, the practices that
bring protection are approved and practised openly (Steinforth 2009:180).

Satanists and the spirit world

Many of the connections between the narratives about Satanism and an
African view of the spirit world will be discussed extensively in later chapters,
but here I will give a brief overview of some pertinent aspects. Testimonies of
adolescent Satanists, who often confess that they were not aware of being
initiated into Satanism at the time and thus were not aware of the harm they
were causing, are similar to possession. Like someone possessed by a spirit,
the adolescent Satanist is not in control of their actions. Also, many Satanists
report dreams that would traditionally be interpreted as related to possession
by mashawe or ngulu spirits. Several testimonies mention that the narrator
had to be delivered of scores of spirits or demons that possessed them. In the
next chapter, we will go deeper into the transformation of African worldviews
by Pentecostal Christianity that led to spirits being seen as evil demons.
Experiences of Satanism often spread in schools, like the mashawe or ngulu
possessions described by Udelhoven.
The rituals of the life cycle discussed show some important elements of
African life. The well-being of the community is central to an African worldview.
If the community thrives, individuals within the community will profit. Satanists
are, like witches, agents who place themselves outside of the community,
acting in a way that contributes only to their personal good. As will be
discussed in Chapter 4, many of the actions of Satanists can be seen as an
inversion of the traditional African sense of community, with its clear hierarchy
and social roles. In African societies, children were traditionally seen as an
asset. As will be discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, today the perception of the
child is shifting. Changes in society have led to the feeling that children are a
burden or even a danger, and many ex-Satanists grew up in households in
which they felt treated as rather less than an asset.
In testimonies about Satanism, initiation is often an important element of
the narrative. In traditional African life, initiations are an important element
of the life cycle as well. However, I am not sure whether the two are related.
In testimonies, the English word initiation is always used, while in discussing
traditional initiation rituals people use the vernacular terms, such as chisungu
in Chibemba or chinamwali in Chichewa. I can therefore not say with certainty

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that speaking about initiation into Satanism reminds audiences of traditional

initiation practices.
From this general introduction to an African worldview, we now turn to an
important aspect of this worldview that has a clear relation to narratives about
Satanism, namely witchcraft.

Witchcraft
Witchcraft is, of course, an English word which is used as a translation for
several African vernacular words. In translations, it is always open for discussion
whether a word from a different language and culture carries the same
meaning. Concerning the translation of witchcraft, there are two main
problems: firstly, that there are meanings inherent to the English word that are
absent in the vernacular; secondly, that there are meanings inherent to the
vernacular words lost in the translation to the English word ‘witchcraft’. When
the word ‘witchcraft’ is used, different audiences have different associations
with it.
Regarding the first problem, witchcraft has a long history in Europe and is
in this context defined as (Valente 2006):
[T ]he human exercise of supernatural powers for antisocial, evil purposes. […] Over
time, the idea of witchcraft has started to include the idea of a diabolical pact or at
least an appeal to the intervention of demons. (p. 1174)

Two main notions in this definition are that witchcraft is utterly evil and that it
is connected to demons or the devil. Using the word witchcraft in an African
context means that these two notions get transplanted into that context as
well. This is problematic because the devil and his demons are historically not
known in African traditions, and because in Africa witchcraft used to be an
ambiguous term – witchcraft could be used for protective as well as harmful
purposes.
The second problem is that using one English word for a manifold of
traditional terms glosses over local variations. According to some African
traditions, witchcraft is inherited. Others say it is acquired. For some, witchcraft
is a physical condition residing in a specific fluid in the belly. Yet others see it
as an invisible, spiritual force. The ideas about what is translated with this one
word, witchcraft, are by no means uniform.
As there are all these problems with the use of the word witchcraft, should
it be used at all? Most anthropologists and scholars of religion see witchcraft
as a problematic term, but in general, it is retained. It is difficult to avoid
the term because it is not only used by scholars as an etic term but on the
ground as well. In contemporary urban areas in Africa, people are mixing
different languages, and the English word witchcraft is used even while

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speaking in the vernacular. Witchcraft as an etic term is problematic, but it

proliferates as an emic term and can therefore not be completely avoided.
I use the term witchcraft here instead of a local vernacular as the discourse
of Satanism is not limited to one tribe or ethnicity, and it can draw on several
similar concepts of witchcraft. In fact, in the testimonies, the word witchcraft
is used rather than a local vernacular. Even when the testimony is narrated in
Chinyanja, the local language that is commonly spoken in Lusaka, the English
word witchcraft is used rather than the vernacular ufiti.

Witchcraft beliefs in Africa

Though there are misgivings about the uniformity of witchcraft notions in
Africa, there seems to be a common core. In the New Encyclopedia of Africa,
Peter Geschiere (2008a) describes this core as follows:
A basic theme is that misfortune – and often also spectacular success – are
attributed to hidden human agency. Witches and sorcerers are believed to use
secret forces to hurt other people or to enforce their own success. Witchcraft and
sorcery are therefore closely related to jealousy, inequality, and the illicit search for
power. (pp. 220–221)

The traditional distinction between witchcraft and sorcery, made by Evans-

Pritchard in his study of the Azande, is that witchcraft is an innate quality of a
person. A witch can harm people even without being aware of it. Sorcery, on
the other hand, involves techniques in which material objects are used ritually
to achieve a set goal. This distinction may be clear amongst the Azande, but
it is not in many other African settings, and therefore Geschiere includes
sorcery in his definition of witchcraft.
The basic theme of witchcraft – misfortune – refers to afflictions, problems
and anything wrong or bad in one’s life or society as a whole. Some afflictions
and problems can be explained by natural causes, others through moral
transgressions or problems in relations with the ancestors. If these explanations
fail to satisfy, witchcraft is called upon.10 In his study of Bantu witchcraft
beliefs, Haule (1969) gives examples of what witches may achieve: they cause
fertility problems in women by cancelling pregnancies or hindering a successful
birth; they cause diseases and death; they cause agricultural problems like
drought or crop failures; and they cause difficulties in marriage. The belief that
witches cause misfortune is shared by a significant proportion of the African
population. The Malawian Welfare Monitoring Survey, for example, found that
76% of the interviewed households said they knew that there were witches

10. In an interesting exposition, Hermen Kroesbergen (2019) argues that witchcraft should not be interpreted
as stating a cause for misfortune, but as the grammar in which uncertainty about causes and a lack of control is
expressed. When someone says ‘the failure of my crops is witchcraft’, he is not expressing a hypothesis regarding
the cause of his crop failure but stating that the failure of his crops is beyond his control and explanation.

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active in their community, and this percentage was surprisingly even higher in
urban than in rural areas (National Statistical Office 2008:107–108).
To inflict harm on their victims, witches use several techniques. They may
send evil spirits or familiars to do harm; they control the forces of nature,
especially lightning, or use ‘medicines’ that may contain poison (Crawford
1967:125). The belief that witches eat people is widespread and often described
(cf. Crawford 1967; Haule 1969; Van Breugel 2001). In some African traditions,
this eating is believed to be a spiritual act in that it is the life force of the victim
that is eaten. In other traditions, eating is taken literally to mean the
consumption of human flesh. In southern Africa, witches are said to meet at
the burial ground, where they eat the flesh of recently buried corpses. They
may use supernatural means of transport to go about their business. According
to the participants in a Malawian study, witches fly at night using a broom or
a woven basket (Chilamampunga & Thindwa 2012:35). According to Crawford,
the Shona in Zimbabwe believe that a witch uses an animal like a hyena, owl
or crocodile as a familiar and steed to travel to nocturnal meetings. All over
southern Africa, the lilomba or ilomba is a witch’s familiar that has the shape
of a snake but with a human head. It is believed that this familiar feeds on the
blood of its victims and helps the witch to become rich (Kroesbergen-Kamps
2018:242).
In different parts of Africa, different categories of people may be accused
of witchcraft. Men and women, rich and poor, old or young: all may turn out to
be witches. In some African countries, such as Malawi and the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC), accusations of children are increasing. In Kinshasa,
the capital of the DRC, children accused of witchcraft are often forced to live
on the street when their families refuse to take care of them after a witchcraft
accusation (De Boeck 2008:500). In Zambia, elderly people are the main
recipients of mob violence after a witchcraft accusation (Office of International
Religious Freedom 2019).
Being accused of witchcraft can have severe consequences (Chilamampunga &
Thindwa 2012:61–68). Often, those accused of witchcraft are beaten, which
sometimes results in death. Their houses or property may be destroyed, and their
access to work may be limited. Witches are feared and hated, and those who
are accused are often ignored or isolated, even if they are not physically harmed.
In recent years, the situation of the accused has become a focal point for human
rights organisations as well as academic research (Ashforth 2015; cf. Kroesbergen-
Kamps 2020a).
In precolonial Africa, witchcraft was officially punished as a crime. To
ascertain whether an accused person was a witch, they had to go through a
test known as the mwavi or poison ordeal. A guilty witch was believed to die
of the poison they were given, while an innocent person would just vomit it
out. In 1900, the British colonial regime in Rhodesia outlawed this technique.

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Witchfinders replaced the poisonous substance with a nonpoisonous

concoction called mchape, which served to detect and cure witches. Later, in
the 1930s, the witchcraft-eradication movement that swept through Malawi,
Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and the DRC took its name from that concoction
(Gordon 2012:61–63). Groups of witchfinders (mucapi) would travel from
village to village at the request of local chiefs to identify witches and cleanse
them through the mchape (Udelhoven 2021:77). Witches are believed to keep
their medicines in a vessel, for example, the hollow horn of an animal. During
witch-finding campaigns, the discovery of such a horn is often used as
evidence against the alleged witch (Richards [1935] 1982a). Even though
acting as a witchfinder is prohibited by law in Zambia, this practice
continues today.

Witchcraft and Satanism

Stories about Satanism show clear similarities to these beliefs about witchcraft.
Like witches, Satanists cause misfortune. Grace, for example, confesses to
causing sickness in her niece and also says that Satanists are responsible for
barrenness and problems in marriage. To avoid attacks using poison, pregnant
women in particular are warned against eating market food (Steinforth
2009:47). This danger of store-bought food in opposition to home-cooked
food is also emphasised in most testimonies. Like witches, in almost every
testimony, Satanists are said to eat human flesh and drink blood. Corpses are
even used to produce foodstuffs found in every supermarket, thereby making
every innocent customer complicit in the satanic activity. Where the corpses
come from, or whether they, for example, were recently buried and dug up
again, is generally not mentioned. Satanists are sometimes said to meet at the
graveyard, travelling in extraordinary ways. This motif is present in Grace’s
testimony in the introduction, where she says: ‘We used to meet at the
graveyard, where we would arrive in many cars. Some of these cars were not
even cars but coffins or hyenas’. In other testimonies, the motif of meeting at
the graveyard is missing.
The similarities between witchcraft and Satanism suggest that Satanism
has its roots in older witchcraft beliefs. However, there are differences as well.
Narratives of Satanism are generally set in an urban context, whereas the
village forms the natural setting for witchcraft. Satanists most often speak
about living in towns or cities. Misfortunes that are specific to village life, like
the agricultural problems described by Haule, are absent in the testimonies of
ex-Satanists. In testimonies, Satanists generally do not use medicines to inflict
harm, although businessmen accused of being Satanists are thought to use
body parts in rituals to become rich.
Some authors have focused on the relationship between the supposed
witch and their victim. According to Marwick, witchcraft works within the

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family, more specifically in the matrilineage (1952). Isak Niehaus expands the
circle in which witchcraft is thought to be effective to other close social
relations, like those between neighbours (2001:84). Peter Geschiere (2013)
argues that notions of witchcraft are anchored in the experience of intimacy.
Often, Satanists make their victims in these intimate circles as well. In the
testimonies, there is no clear preference for matrilineal relatives. Mostly, the
relatives that ex-Satanists claim to have sacrificed are close relatives, often
members of the same household: parents, brothers and sisters and their
children. Many Satanists, however, exceed this circle of intimacy in their
actions. The consumers of the tainted products that are claimed to be made
in the underworld are random people, as are the victims of traffic accidents
that ex-Satanists claim to have caused. It seems that victims tend to be either
close relatives or random strangers. In the Zambian testimonies, neighbours
are rarely mentioned as victims of Satanists.
Like witchcraft, Satanism is associated with the old as well as the young
and with men as well as women. Those who confess that they have been
involved in Satanism are generally young – mostly adolescent girls. I have not
heard of any case in which a confession of Satanism in a church by an
adolescent girl has led to violence, although ex-Satanists may experience
negative effects in their social environment after the confession. According to
Udelhoven (2020:166), narratives about Satanism are interpreted as belonging
to the spiritual realm instead of the physical. Therefore, confessing adolescent
Satanists are punished neither by official prosecution nor by mob justice.
The story is completely different when it comes to accusations and rumours
about Satanism levelled against adults. Accusations against businessmen
often lead to violence and damage to property. The elderly, who are the main
targets for accusations of witchcraft in Zambia, are not connected to Satanism
in the popular imagination.
In the testimonies themselves, Satanism is seen as distinct but closely
related to witchcraft. While in other African countries, alleged witches give
testimonies very similar to the testimonies presented here, the Zambian ex-
Satanists never refer to themselves as witches. However, some are initiated
into Satanism through their relatives. These (older) relatives are referred to as
witches rather than Satanists. For example, when Gideon Mulenga Kabila,
Zambia’s most famous ex-Satanist, narrates how he was initiated into Satanism,
he begins his story with his mother, who was a witch (How I was set free from
Voodoo and witchcraft 2007). When his mother arranges for Gideon to be
initiated, he becomes a Satanist rather than a witch. According to the
testimonies, witchcraft is older and less advanced than Satanism. Comaroff
and Comaroff (1999:292) note a similar sentiment when they quote an ex-
Satanist who claims that ‘Satanism is high-octane witchcraft’.
Looking at the testimonies of Satanism, there are some clear similarities
between notions of witchcraft and Satanism, although both words seem to

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have their distinct fields of application. In the last century, new narratives
connected to witchcraft have come up all over Africa, especially about elites
using witchcraft rather than the marginalised. In his definition of witchcraft,
Geschiere already states that misfortune, as well as spectacular success, are
attributed to witchcraft. If you are a victim of an unexplained affliction or a
crop failure that your neighbour was spared from, witchcraft is likely to be
mentioned. But if you are especially successful, wealthy and powerful, people
are also likely to think, ‘this must be witchcraft’. In another publication,
Geschiere (2001:227) calls this ambivalence within the concept of witchcraft
‘its Janus-faced character’. Although Satanism in Zambia, like witchcraft, is
related to misfortunes, the accusations of Satanism in particular are related to
the rich and powerful. To understand these accusations better, we have to
focus not on a broad concept of witchcraft but on the ideas within the
witchcraft spectrum that connect magical practices to the acquisition of
wealth and power. This will be the topic of the next section.

‘New’ narratives about illicit accumulation

In recent years, witchcraft has been lumped together with a range of other
phenomena. There has been a long scholarly discussion about the distinction
between witchcraft and sorcery that, for example, Evans-Pritchard makes in
his Witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande (1937). According to
him, witches do their harm as a result of innate ability, while sorcerers know
techniques and substances that can harm. But there are many more agents
that do not precisely fall within the categories of either witch or sorcerer that
can cause mystical harm, a number that only increases under conditions where
people from different ethnic backgrounds live together (Turner 1964:318).
In this section, I will discuss these new narratives that seem connected to
witchcraft and are often focused on the illicit accumulation of wealth. Before
doing that, however, I will first explain why I think that the term ‘the occult’,
which is often used concerning these narratives, does not offer a helpful frame
of reference.

The occult in studies about Africa

Starting from the late 1980s, several anthropologists have introduced the label
‘the occult’ when writing about the system of ideas and agents related to
mystical harm. Before this time, the occult was not used to refer to African
phenomena. For example, Evans-Pritchard uses the word only once in
Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande (1937), in an exposé about
the differences between European and Zande ideas about witchcraft. ‘To us,
witchcraft is something which haunted and disgusted our credulous
forefathers’, he writes (Evans-Pritchard 1937:19) and continues, ‘[b]ut the
Zande expects to come across witchcraft at any time of the day or night. […]

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He is not terrified at the presence of an occult enemy’. The occult, associated

with eeriness, belongs to the European, not the Zande perspective. Other
classical anthropologists writing about Africa also do not use the term occult.
As I have argued elsewhere, the first to specifically employ the term ‘occult’
were a group of scholars writing about Cameroon. Fisiy, Geschiere, Rowlands
and Warnier all make use of the term in various collaborated articles
(Kroesbergen-Kamps 2020a:861). These authors prefer the label occult
because it is more ambiguous than either witchcraft or sorcery, meaning that
phenomena that do not neatly fit into these categories but are related to them
can be discussed as well (Rowlands & Warnier 1988:131, footnote). In their
famous article on ‘Occult Economies’, Comaroff and Comaroff (1999) use the
term to include not only witchcraft but also other phenomena like zombies,
Satanism and ritual murder (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2020a:861).
Another reason to speak about the occult, rather than about witchcraft or
sorcery, is that the term has less specifically negative Western connotations.
As Fisiy and Geschiere (1990) write:
There is good reason to question whether terms like ‘sorcery’, ‘witchcraft’, or the
French ‘sorcellerie’ are good translations of the African terms. In many instances
these Western terms have highly pejorative overtones which do not do justice
to the African terms. Often, a more neutral translation like ‘occult forces’ is to be
preferred. (p. 136, footnote)

While I agree that the term witchcraft is problematic, I wonder whether

speaking about occult forces is a solution. There are three issues at stake here:
is it proper to discuss a range of ideas about mystical harm as one phenomenon?
Should Satanism in Zambia be included in this phenomenon? And is ‘the
occult’ the right label for this phenomenon?
With regard to the first question, Terence Ranger (2007) makes a distinction
between ‘splitters’ and ‘lumpers’. The former discuss phenomena within their
own right as products of unique historical circumstances (Kroesbergen-
Kamps 2020a:862), while the latter attempt to make statements from a more
general perspective. Ranger chooses sides with the splitters, arguing that
context and history are of utmost importance in understanding a phenomenon.
Several scholars point out the confusion that can be the result of lumping
together disparate phenomena. Murray and Sanders (2005), who have studied
ritual murder in colonial Lesotho, for example, take a strong stance against
discussing witchcraft and medicine murder as if they refer to the same thing,
as Comaroff and Comaroff do. Ritual murder, in their view, is a crime that can
be prosecuted on the grounds of empirical evidence: a person was murdered,
and police can use physical clues to find the perpetrator. Witchcraft, on the
other hand, refers to mystical harm caused through invisible means which are
impossible to prove. The lumpers have advocates too, such as Birgit Meyer
(2009), who states that making more general observations about developments

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in society is a necessary part of much academic research, especially if

comparisons are involved.
In this book, the topic is quite specific: Satanism in Zambia, rather than a
general overview of occult phenomena within the whole of sub-Saharan
Africa. It is therefore more of a splitting than a lumping work. However, I will
use authors who are not writing specifically about Satanism in Zambia because
the narratives that they discuss are similar. Stories about phone numbers that
can initiate one or of dangerous gifts (cf. Bonhomme 2012) are reminiscent of
the testimonies of Satanism that I have introduced here, as are ideas about
zombies, spiritual husbands, firemen who steal blood, mermaids who may
reward their followers with riches, et cetera. What these ideas have in common
is that they are often related to misfortune, acquiring money or status and
anxiety regarding interpersonal relations. A comparison between these
different narratives and notions can be very informative because it may point
to similar processes that occur in different societies.
Another thing that all of these ideas have in common is that they point at
hidden forces or beings that are not recognised in, or at least not approved by,
both science and mainstream religions like Christianity. The hiddenness of
these forces makes ‘occult’, which means hidden, a logical term. Unfortunately,
things are more complicated. In its history, the term occult has been used as a
wastebasket category for whatever did not fit into officially sanctioned science
or religion (cf. Hanegraaff 2012). This means that a normative judgement is
inherent in the use of the word occult. Calling something occult is saying: this
is not proper religion; this is not scientific. Within the academic field of Western
esotericism, the occult is not used as a general label because of this lack of
neutrality of the term.
Given these objections, the use of the label occult in African studies since
the 1980s as an allegedly neutral term is unfortunate. The things that are
called occult in African studies – spirits, zombies, witches, penis-snatchers,
et cetera – are negatively valued from the perspective of both science and
mainline religion. In science, these occult things are regularly treated with
scorn as superstitions or illusions, and in mainline religion, they are rejected, if
not denied, as will be argued in more detail in the next chapter. One could
argue that the value judgement present in the term occult is a remnant of a
colonial past that judges African concepts according to Western standards.
Therefore, in this book, I will speak about contemporary ideas about
witchcraft and related phenomena rather than about occult phenomena.
These phenomena form a fruitful context for a study about Satanism in Zambia
because they (although they all have their contexts and peculiarities) often
show thematic similarities and seem to arise in similar social circumstances. In
the following section, I will give a few examples of these phenomena as they
are discussed in the academic literature.

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Satanism and the African worldview

Zombies, vampires and ritual murder

In their article on occult economies, Comaroff and Comaroff (1999:285–286,
289–290) mention zombies as an example of the new forms of witchcraft that
abound in postcolonial South Africa. Zombie is a term popularised in a
Caribbean context but with roots in central Africa (Niehaus 2005:192). In
South Africa, the term was used by a commission that investigated witchcraft
and ritual killings in the Northern Province. This commission defined the word
as follows (Ralushai et al. 1996):
ZOMBI [sic]/SETLOTLWANE (N.SOTHO)/XIDADJANI (TSONGA)/MA-TUKWANE
(VENDA)

A zombie is a person who is believed to have died, but because of the power of
a witch, he is resurrected, but he works for the person who has turned him into a
zombi. To make it impossible for him to communicate with other people, the front
part of his tongue is cut off so that he cannot speak. It is believed that he works at
night only. It is also believed that by the power of witchcraft, he can leave his rural
area and work in an urban area, often far from home. Whenever he meets people
he knows, he vanishes. (p. 5)

Not all zombies are dead, however. Some people who wake up tired in the
morning attribute their exhaustion to a nocturnal existence as a labourer for a
zombie master (Comaroff & Comaroff 1999:289). Stories about zombie-like
creatures are known in different parts of Africa, such as Cameroon (Geschiere
1997; Geschiere & Nyamnjoh 1998) and Malawi (Steinforth 2008, 2009),
besides South Africa.
The zombie is created to provide cheap labour to its creator. Where witches
were believed to eat their victims, the zombie is captured but not consumed
(Geschiere & Nyamnjoh 1998:74). In some areas, like the victims of witchcraft
attacks, the zombie is a relative of its creator (Steinforth 2009:184). In South
Africa, this kinship connection does not seem to be necessary (Comaroff &
Comaroff 1999:289). In Malawi, it is the spirit of a person that is captured by
the creator of the zombie. This spirit works for the benefit of its captor.
Steinforth (2009) describes the tasks that such a spirit may perform as follows:
A businessman owning a maize-mill would use the personality spirit of a relative
to safeguard high engine performance, leaving the invisible, immaterial [spirit]
to pull the driving belt on. If the [captor] works as a freight carrier or a minibus
entrepreneur, a captured spirit would be used to ensure good engine performance
or high reliability of the vehicles, and a grocery shop owner could use the [spirit] to
act as an invisible marketing manager, impalpably pushing potential customers into
the shop when they could have bought next door just as well. (p. 184)

In the meantime, the person whose spirit was stolen either dies or is left with
a severe mental disorder (Steinforth 2009:184). This link between zombification
and mental disorders seems absent in South Africa.
In all cases, the captured spirit of a person is used for the private benefit of its
captor. In Cameroon, the nouveau riche are suspected of having come by their

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wealth through zombie labour (Geschiere 1997:139). Comaroff and Comaroff

(1999:290) link the narratives about zombies to the experience of the new
neoliberal economy in South Africa, in which wealth is accumulated in an obscured
manner. Isak Niehaus, also writing about the South African situation, adjusts this
perspective. In the accusations of zombification that he has collected during his
fieldwork in Bushbuckridge between 1990 and 2005, the accused were not at all
the elite who profit from neoliberal economic success. Rather, accusations were
lodged against those who were most impoverished, people of whom neighbours
wondered how they were able to get by without any visible source of income or
support network (Niehaus 2005:200–202).
The experience of Satanism, according to the testimonies of ex-Satanists,
is also one of unexpected and unwanted capture by a force from outside.
Satanists labour for the kingdom of Satan, sometimes without even being
aware of it. The connection between narratives about Satanism and these new
witchcraft-like stories is even clearer in the figure of the vampire.
Like the zombie, in Europe and the USA, the vampire is a figure of literature
and books, of entertainment. In Africa, the label vampire is known as well. In
Gabon, the term vampire started to be used in the 1950s to speak about a
connection between eating and acquiring power (Bernault 2019:183). Luise
White uses the term vampire to discuss a genre of stories about employees
working for Europeans who steal the blood of Africans to be rewarded with
money (White 2000:10). In East and Central Africa, different groups were
associated with this idea, such as firemen, police officers and managers of
mines. In Northern Rhodesia, in what is now Zambia, game rangers were the
employees of the colonial government who were first linked to stealing blood.
The word for a game ranger, banyama, combines the Bemba prefix ba-,
meaning ‘people of’ with the Swahili and Chinyanja word for meat and wild
animals, nyama. By 1931, the word for the ‘people of the game’ or game rangers
had become a synonym for people who steal blood in general (White 2000:12).
According to White, human blood did not have the significance it acquired
in the narratives about banyama and other vampires in precolonial times
(2000:14). The confrontation with Western medical practices and Christian
narratives about the Eucharist increased the significance of blood in the
African imagination. This new obsession with blood is duplicated in narratives
about Satanists, who are also believed to drink and steal blood.
Bernhard Udelhoven (2021) describes narratives about banyama that
caused a panic on the Zambian Copperbelt in the 1940s. He writes (Udelhoven
2021):
During the 1940s, the Copperbelt was seized by fears about fashion articles and
cosmetics that were said to be mystically charged to initiate their users, without
their knowledge, into the sinister trade with the banyama. The banyama were also
said to be canning African victims as ‘corned beef’, to be consumed by unsuspecting
customers. (p. 408)

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Satanism and the African worldview

The idea that people can become allied to an unseen force without knowing it
themselves is very similar to the unconscious initiation that many ex-Satanists
have experienced. Stories about processed foods that contain human body
parts are also well-known in the discourse of Satanism today.
A final narrative that gained traction in the 20th century and is mentioned
by Comaroff and Comaroff (1999) as well is that of killing for body parts, also
known as ritual murder. This phenomenon was investigated by the South
African Commission of Inquiry into Witchcraft Violence and Ritual Murders in
the Northern Province too. According to the commission (Ralushai et al.
1996:20), ‘people are killed ritually for financial gain and to bring luck. In cases
of rulers, ritual killing is done for the purpose of power and authority’. The
body parts of the people who are killed are used in charms (called muti or
medicine in the South African context). An eye, for example, is believed to
grant farsightedness, blood gives vitality and genital organs are connected to
fertility (Ralushai et al. 1996:21).
The use of human body parts in traditional medicine is known throughout
Africa. Florence Bernault (2019:197) describes the belief in Gabon that rich
people use the flesh of innocent victims to make charms that prompt the
spirit world to award them with wealth and power. In Malawi (Steinforth 2008),
Botswana (Burke 2000) and Lesotho (Murray & Sanders 2005), similar
phenomena have been described. In East Africa, persons with albinism are
especially in danger of becoming victims of murder for their body parts, which
are believed to work as a lucky charm (for an extensive review of the literature
on the murder of albinos in East Africa, see Reimer-Kirkham et al. 2019).
Murray and Sanders (2005) describe the occurrence of medicine or muti
murders in Lesotho between 1895 and 1966, based on the judicial archives as
well as newspaper records. Medicines, according to the Basotho, could be
used in situations in which success was urgently needed but felt to be beyond
control (Murray & Sanders 2005:53). The most powerful medicines are
prepared by ritual specialists (doctors), and because humans are the most
powerful creatures, medicines containing human ingredients are the ultimate
source of power. This practice had a long history, but in the 1940s, the incidence
of murder for the acquisition of body parts to be used in medicine multiplied.
Partly, this was because more murders were recognised or reported as such,
but even when that is factored in, there seems to be an increase. This increase
in ritual killings in the 20th century has been noted by several scholars (see
also Niehaus 2000; Turrell 2001).
Stories about ritual killings are also similar to the discourse of Satanism in
Zambia. Satanists are believed to sacrifice people to become rich, like the
perpetrators of ritual killings. In her comparative study of witchcraft and
Satanism, Jean La Fontaine (2016:45–58) discusses the label ‘ritual killing’ at
length. She distinguishes three actions that may be referred to as ritual killing:

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human sacrifice, killing for body parts and ritual murder. The first, human
sacrifice, is a public, religiously sanctioned ritual which took place in many
different societies, although it is no longer practised today. Because the ritual
was sanctioned, it was legitimised. Although human sacrifice involves taking
the life of another human being it should not be called murder, because
murder implies illegitimate killing, which human sacrifice was not.
The second, killing for body parts that are used in ‘medicines’ to enhance
health, wealth or success in life, is what we have labelled here as ritual killing.
According to La Fontaine, in contrast to human sacrifice, killing for body parts
does not deserve the adjective ‘ritual’ because the act has no religious meaning
and is done in secret for individual ends, rather than publicly and for the
benefit of the community (2016:51; see also Bonhomme 2016:23).
Lastly, ritual murder involves an underground organisation devoted to the
killing of human beings as an act of worship or to acquire illicit spiritual powers.
The idea of ritual murder is part and parcel of the narrative about evil Others,
which was described in Chapter 1. Through colonialism, this myth of ritual
murder with its European roots has reached Africa, where independent or
material evidence of such crimes cannot be found either (La Fontaine 2016:55).
The 20th and 21st-century narratives about murders that I have described
here are part of the second category, that of killing for body parts. The
narratives about Satanism, however, belong to the third category, that of an
imaginary ritual murder that has no actual existence in the material world.
There is an important difference between stories about witches, zombies,
vampires and Satanists on the one hand and killing for body parts on the
other. In the case of the medicine murder, a crime is committed that can be
proven in court, whereas this is not the case with witchcraft, zombies, vampires
and Satanists (cf. Murray & Sanders 2005:295).
Despite their differences, all of these new stories about harm using spiritual
means or harm for spiritual purposes have in common that they are centred
around ideas about wealth and power and how to acquire it. Zombies work for
the gain of their creator, vampires steal blood for money and body parts are
harvested to become rich. These stories have their roots not just in the belief
in witchcraft but also in African notions of the distribution of wealth and
authority. In the following section, we will take a closer look at those notions.

Illicit accumulation in African worldviews

How are narratives about zombies, vampires and ritual murders related to an
African worldview? All of these stories are related to questions about legitimate
and illegitimate power and wealth (see also Kroesbergen-Kamps 2020c). An
important principle of life in African thought was and is equivalence. Robert
Thornton (2017:138) defines this principle as ‘the value that all members of the

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community are, in principle, equivalent as human beings and as brothers and

sisters’. If a person has more than another, some kind of support from the
spirit world is needed. This support can be legitimate, but some people seek
to enrich themselves through spiritual means that harm others. This support
is vital for any form of success in the material world. In an article about religion
and the secular, Birgit Meyer uses a Ghanaian case to show that from an
African point of view, the spiritual and the physical are completely entangled
and cannot be seen as distinct spheres. Rather, invisible forces are ‘powers
that generate power. Talk about spirits offers a statement about what “powers”
the world’ (Meyer 2012a:107). When speaking about power, one automatically
speaks about the spirit world as well.
In Malawi, those who occupy a senior position in society are known as
kukhwima, which means ripened, fortified or empowered (Van Dijk 1998:165).
Kukhwima is also the name for the practices that allow one to reach this
position. Positioned in a grey area between protective magic and harmful
witchcraft (Steinforth 2009:180–181), kukhwima is not endorsed but accepted
as a fact of life for those who have attained status, power or wealth. Specialists
in the spirit world, such as ng’angas, are sought out by those who want to
acquire kukhwima. The specialist will give this client instructions that need to
be executed. These instructions may include the acquisition of certain material
substances needed to make protective amulets, such as specific roots or
pieces of snakeskin (Van Dijk 1992:167). For really powerful magic, more far-
reaching measures are needed. Examples are committing incest with a close
family member such as a sister or mother or using ritual means to cause their
death or a severe mental disorder (Steinforth 2013:145). In Malawi, ideas about
kukhwima are relevant both in narratives about zombies and murder for
body parts.
Wim van Binsbergen (1981), in his classic study about religious change in
western Zambia, writes that there are specific people who are associated with
these practices:
It is highly significant that medicine prepared out of human remains, so central in
impersonal sorcery, is considered to be essential for the attainment and maintaining
of precisely the few elevated statuses existing in the society of central-western
Zambia: the hunter, the doctor (nganga), the commercial entrepreneur, and
especially the chief. (p. 142)

In an overview of muti murder in Natal, Turrell (2001:23) mentions the chief,

the healer and the businessman as three categories of people who need the
extraordinary power acquired through the taking of human life.
In the past, it seems that the major beneficiaries of this kind of ritual were
those who held positions of special skill and authority and, in particular, the
chief. Like the diviner or healer, the chief acts as an intermediary between

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the spirit world and the physical world through his embodiment of the mystical
powers of the ancestors (Kaunda 2018:4–5). Though different precolonial
African societies had different political systems, there are some commonalities
in chieftaincies. Chiefs are the leaders of local communities, and they play an
important role in the distribution of assets (Swindler 2010:159). These assets
can be visible and physical; for example, chiefs manage the use of land and
organise cooperative action. The chief is also connected to assets that are
more spiritual, such as the coming of the rains and the flow of blessings from
the ancestors to the community in general (Watson 1958:168). Finally, the
chief has the spiritual power to protect his community from the threat of
witchcraft and other spiritual dangers.
Through the chief, good things trickle down from the spiritual world to the
larger community. But the chief can only have this position if he has some
control over spiritual forces. Ann Swindler (2010) writes, for example, about
chiefs in Malawi:
A chief who does not accumulate control over material and spiritual resources
becomes less ‘sacred’, less prestigious, and thus less able to provide collective
goods for his community, both in the material and spiritual realms. (p. 164)

Today in Malawi, chiefs and headmen are still, like the traditional healers,
providers of the instructions and rituals for how to become kukhwima, because
they are taught these practices during their initiation (Steinforth 2009:186).
In Gabon, the distribution of power by powerful people was described in
terms of eating (Bernault 2019:171). Those in power would absorb different
kinds of wealth, such as goods, people and alliances, and regurgitate them
again to redistribute the wealth for the benefit of the community. To be able
to do this, the powerful men used the witchcraft substance in their bellies. To
nourish this substance, the powerful men were also known to retain assets
and destroy people’s lives. In southern Africa, the idea of a witchcraft fluid in
the belly is absent, but the ambivalent view of those in power is similar.
The association of chiefs with causing deaths to acquire their power tainted
their position somewhat. According to Wim van Binsbergen (1976):
Chieftainship took on a connotation of sorcery which the chief could not shake
off even if he went so far as to attempt to monopolize the right to identify and
prosecute sorcerers (e.g. by means of the poison ordeal). (p. 80)

A Tswana proverb quoted by Ørnulf Gulbrandsen (2002:223) shows a similar

sentiment: ‘A king is like a knife; he might cut his sharpener’. In this case, the
commoners are the sharpeners who may get hurt. How often such rituals used
to happen is unclear. According to some, human lives were taken only in times
of great challenges towards the chiefly power or in times of severe drought, a
sign that something had gone seriously wrong (Turrell 2001:22, 38).
This practice seems not to have been rejected as sharply as other types of

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witchcraft, and there are even some who argue that it was accepted. Wiebe
de Jong (2015) writes:
Since the well-being of the entire community was in the chief’s hands, it was
important to strengthen him. Ritual murders, consequently, were desired, meaningful
and everyone knew that once in a while they had to be committed in order to keep
or restore harmony in the community. (p. 13)

Ritual murders performed for the chief were seen, according to De Jong, as
legitimate human sacrifices for the good of the community and not for the
individual gain of the chief.
During the colonial age, things changed. The governments took up the role
of the chief in the colonial administration, making it a salaried position. This
made it an even more coveted office. In many parts of Africa, becoming a
chief is not a simple hereditary matter. Chieftaincies are often linked to a
specific clan or lineage, but birth is not the only or even the main criterion
(Kroesbergen-Kamps 2020b:187). To become the next chief, some extra merit
or support is needed. In colonial times the struggle for chiefly power became
more intense, and with that came a growing number of deaths used to obtain
spiritual support. There is evidence for this in the records of the colonial courts.
Murray and Sanders (2005) investigated the occurrence of medicine murder
in colonial Lesotho and concluded that this mainly happened in the context of
rivalries about positions of traditional authority. Turrell (2001) argues the
same for the beginning of the 20th century in Natal in South Africa.
At the same time, the practices that attract wealth and power in return for
some kind of compensation also became available to a larger public. The
traditional healers who provided muti containing human body parts started to
work for people outside the chiefly hierarchy – people who were striving for
personal gain instead of the collective good (Gulbrandsen 2002:225–226).
From the 1920s onwards, ambitious commoners employed specialists who
used human materials to attract spiritual power, wealth and other kinds of
success (De Jong 2015:15; Turrell 2001:38). A human skull buried in the
foundations of a building was believed to ensure the success of the business
conducted there, and shop owners would incorporate human hands into the
construction of their doorways, which would beckon prospective patrons in
(Vincent 2008:44). In these cases, the only one who gains from the death of
a human being is the individual ambitious commoner. No longer did the death
work to sustain the collective good of the larger community. Where sacrifice
may have been accepted in cases where it was used for the common good,
success acquired through murder for individual gain was perceived as
illegitimate. Isak Niehaus (2000:41) writes that from the 1960s, ‘all forms of
sacrifice […] became illicit’.
Illicit or not, the practices whereby the life of a human is taken to become
rich or powerful still occur. Murdered bodies are found with missing body

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parts, although there is no statistic on how often this happens. In Malawi, the
belief is that whoever uses kukhwima rituals will go mad if they fail to perform
the instructions set by the ritual specialist. In mental institutions, the prevalence
of this kind of madness has grown tremendously in recent years (cf. Steinforth
2017). The narratives about zombies and vampires discussed in the previous
section fit in this same framework, as means of illicit accumulation for personal
gain. Similarly, narratives about Satanism in Zambia, and specifically the
rumours that lead to riots involving businessmen, need to be understood as a
part of this image of the distribution of power and wealth.

Conclusion
Stories about Satanism are closely related to other rumours and narratives,
traditions, practices and beliefs. Some of these imaginaries have a long history.
Zambian narratives about Satanism make sense within an African, holistic
worldview in which the spirit world is entangled with the physical world. They
also echo witchcraft beliefs described by early anthropologists researching in
Zambia and neighbouring countries.
Traditions and convictions are not unchanging entities, fixed in the past.
Rather, they are fluid and adaptive, as can be seen from the more recent
stories about witchcraft-like phenomena such as zombies, vampires and ritual
murder. These newer phenomena also show similarities to the narratives about
Satanism in Zambia, especially the accusations of Satanism that sometimes
lead to violence in Zambian towns. In this chapter, I have discussed the
Malawian notion of kukhwima and other similar southern African ideas of
taking a human life in exchange for power or wealth. This practice seems to
have been a known, yet uncommon, occurrence in precolonial times, and
during that time it was possibly even socially acceptable for the few elevated
statuses that existed. In colonial times, the rituals prescribed for this practice
opened up for ambitious commoners who used them for their individual gain.
In the course of this change, the practice became widely rejected.
Concerns about illicit accumulation show a cultural unease with social
stratification. Those who have more or are in another way elevated above the
general population are supposed to have done something antisocial to get to
their position. In previous times, this may have been accepted as a sacrifice for
the good of the collective, but now, becoming rich or powerful is seen as only
benefitting the individual. In Chapter 4, I will delve deeper into what this
means for the discourse of Satanism in Zambia.
Before that, however, we need to look at the history of Satan in Christianity
and on the African continent. I will do that in the next chapter.

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Chapter 3

Satan comes to Africa

Introduction
On a Sunday afternoon in one of Zambia’s many locally instituted neo-
Pentecostal churches, a man is called forward to give his testimony. This is not
an uncommon sight. Many of these churches have an ‘ordinary’ service in the
morning, with praise and worship and a sermon, and a special deliverance
service later in the afternoon or on one of the weekdays. In such a
deliverance service, the focus is on what God can do. There is usually room for
testimonies in which members of the congregation share how God has helped
them, and often the pastor will call people who suffer from specific afflictions
to the front of the church so that they can be prayed for by the pastor and his
helpers.
On this Sunday, the man who comes forward confesses that he was a
Satanist. He explains that he wanted to have more success in his business.
Four of his children died in September – possibly over the course of a couple
of years – and the father says that he was responsible for their deaths. The
pastor invites the whole congregation to stretch their arms towards the front
of the church where he and the father are standing and pray for this father.
The pastor starts a prayer that the father has to repeat word for word:
‘Lord Jesus, today I repent of witchcraft and Satanism. I repent for the death of four
children. May their blood be cleansed from my hands. Today, I break every curse.’
(#149, participant observation, 14 June 2015)

How to cite: Kroesbergen-Kamps, J 2022, ‘Satan comes to Africa’, in Speaking of Satan in Zambia: Making
cultural and personal sense of narratives about Satanism, in HTS Religion & Society Series, vol. 14, AOSIS
Books, Cape Town, pp. 61–93. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2022.BK373.03

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The prayer proceeds haltingly, as the father does not really speak English and
quite obviously does not know or understand every word he has to repeat.
‘Every altar, every witchdoctor, I renounce them. Let every evil altar break. The
graveyard I went to, I disconnect. Let the life of Christ […]’ Here the prayer
stops: the father cannot say ‘Christ’.
This is a meaningful moment, and the pastor asks the whole congregation
to pray for the father to loosen his bonds with the devil. After a few moments,
the father can continue:
‘Let the life of Christ set me free. I renounce Satan. I refuse you. Heal my life. Heal
my family. Heal my wife. Father, set me free. Heal me. I bless my children. May all be
well with them.’ (#149, participant observation, 14 June 2015)

The pastor continues praying for the father, saying God will deliver him today
and declaring him whole.
In the previous chapter, we encountered narratives about illicit accumulation
as an African web of stories in which the narratives about Satanism fit. What
people are accused of when people speak about Satanism is related to older
ideas about using human materials in rituals to become rich or acquire status.
The father in the neo-Pentecostal church seems to have done something
similar. He was a businessman but lacked success. Now, four of his children are
dead – sacrificed, as he says. The pastor helps him to pray against this
witchcraft, against the rituals in the graveyard and against the altars that were
built for his success. But witchcraft is not the only term that is used. The
pastor calls what the father has done Satanism, and it is Satan that he has to
renounce. How did this traditional practice, which had several vernacular
names in southern Africa, come to be known as Satanism? This is the topic I
will address in this chapter.
To do this, I will first discuss the development of the figure of Satan in
Christianity. Then I will give an overview of the contemporary Christian
tradition that puts the greatest focus on Satan, namely Pentecostalism and
particularly its spiritual warfare theology. Finally, I will discuss how the image
of the devil was introduced in Africa and how it developed here, with special
attention to the Zambian context.

Satan and his demons in Western Christianity

In Christian circles, I have regularly heard simplified presentations about the
devil, in the order of, ‘the Bible speaks about the devil, so we know he is real’.
Unfortunately, things are not that straightforward. The devil, or Satan, is a
figure with a history that has changed over the centuries and under influence
of different cultures. I will therefore start this section with an overview of
thinking about Satan in Western Christianity.

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Satan in Christian theology until the 20th century

Today, the Hebrew word Satan is used as the name of a person. In the oldest
texts of the Old Testament, however, it is more like the description of a certain
role or function, namely that of the accuser. Like the name of any other job, it
gets a definite article. For example, in the story about Balaam and his ass (Nm
22:22–35), the Satan is a celestial being sent by God to fulfil a specific mission.
In the book of Job, Satan is also mentioned, seemingly fulfilling a particular
role within a judicial context. Here, he is still a subordinate of God.
Over time, as we look at how Satan is described in the Bible, Satan develops
from a helper and subordinate into the enemy of God and all goodness in the
world (Almond 2014:17). 1 Chronicles 21:1, probably written around 100 BC, is
the first instance where the definite article is omitted, and Satan becomes a
personal name for the enemy of God. In the Greek version of the Old Testament,
the Septuagint, Satan is translated as diabolos, slanderer, which is translated
as the devil in English (Almond 2014:23). In the New Testament, the words
Satan and devil are used interchangeably to refer to the enemy of God, who
rules the kingdom of darkness that opposes the kingdom of God (Almond
2014:24).
What is missing in the biblical accounts of Satan are the popular stories
about his fall from the heavens or the connection between Satan and the
serpent in the Garden of Eden (Almond 2014:33). According to Philip Almond’s
history of the devil (2014), these ideas evolved in the second century AD.
According to the dominant story that became current at that time, Satan had
been created before the world or mankind as the chief of the angels (Almond
2014:47). He, however, rebelled against God and was, with some others,
expelled from heaven. As, according to this narrative, the devil already existed
when Adam and Eve were created, it was possible to insert him into the story
of the fall as well. As Almond (2014) writes:
The devil, having been identified with the serpent (or having literally entered into it)
now became ultimately responsible for the fall of man, the expulsion of Adam and
Eve from the garden, and the alienation of man from God through his disobedience.
(p. 47)

Only from the second century onwards, when the backstory of Satan had
been formed, did this become the preferred reading of the story of creation
and the fall.
Satan was the leader of the group of angels that had rebelled against God.
In theology, these other fallen angels were conceptualised as demons. The
meaning of the Greek word daimon, from which the English demon stems and
which is used in the gospels, is closer to the understanding of spirits in African
traditions than to the concept of an evil spirit that we currently know. Daimons,
in Greek culture, could be good as well as bad and served as intermediaries

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between humans and the gods. In Christian theology, the word demon became
the name for subordinates of the devil. Demons were thought to be able to
tempt and assault Christian believers. At first, only a few demons were named,
mainly those who appear in the Bible, such as Beelzebub and Leviathan. Over
time, however, the number of demons grew to include pagan gods and other
named spirits.
The idea that demons can possess human bodies and seize control of their
faculties also developed over time, although it never became an article of
Christian faith. The Nicene Creed is silent on demonic possession, as are the
catechisms that proliferated after the invention of the printing press. According
to the scholastic tradition inspired by the works of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274),
demons were incorporeal beings able to possess human beings in great
numbers. From the middle of the 13th century, there was a surge of interest in
the devil and his demons (Almond 2014:70), and Christian writers started to
compile comprehensive lists of named demons. They identified demons
connected to days and hours, to the weather, to sexual sins or psychological
and emotional weaknesses (Frankfurter 2006:27, 29).
At the same time, the devil became connected to magic, witchcraft, and
heresy. Before Christianity, both the Romans and the Germanic people knew
stories about evil women, able to fly or transform themselves into an owl, who
killed and ate their victims. The common people suspected these witches of
harming them by occult means by causing droughts, blight, sickness or death
of livestock. When the interest in the devil and his demons increased during
the period of the Renaissance, church scholars developed a different concept
of witchcraft. In that period, the idea took hold that people, especially heretics,
could make a pact with the devil. Witchcraft began to be seen by theologians
and church officials as not merely harmful but a threat against Christianity.
According to the historian Norman Cohn (1976:230), witches were believed to
worship Satan in Sabbaths, which included sexual orgies and feasting on the
flesh of babies.
Commoners and scholars urged each other on in the persecution of witches,
which reached its height in the late 16th century. Jeffrey Burton Russell
(1984:301), another historian of belief in the devil, writes that the witch craze
‘revealed the most terrible danger of belief in the devil: the willingness to
assume that those whom one distrusts or fears are servants of Satan and
fitting targets of destructive hatred’. Russell interprets the witch hunt in the
16th and 17th centuries as one of the first instances where belief in the devil
became intermingled with the belief in the existence of a harmful organisation
devoted to Satan. The narratives about this organisation have been reviewed
in Chapter 1 of this book.
During the time of the witch hunts, the focus on demons and their works
increased in Christian theology, also because of a focus on apocalyptic thought.

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Apocalypse refers to the description of the final judgement in the end times,
given in the book of Revelation. This time will be a final battle between good
and evil, God and Satan, and the world will be drenched in sin. Many people
living in the 15th and 16th centuries saw signs of the apocalypse, according to
Levack (2013:66). The economic circumstances were bad, wars broke out in
Europe and there was the religious conflict that led to the Reformation and the
founding of many break-away churches. During this time, demonic possession
was seen as another sign of the coming apocalypse in both Catholic and
Protestant churches.
Both religious thought and political, economic and social unrest made an
eschatological interpretation of possession probable in the 16th century in
both the Roman Catholic Church and the new Protestant churches. However,
Protestants and Catholics did not completely agree on how to handle
possession. Levack (2013) describes the debate about possession and
exorcism that raged between Catholics and Protestants. Despite the absence
of clear biblical guidelines on how to expel demons, Catholics developed a
complex rite of exorcism. Protestants have generally been wary of this practice,
claiming that it lacked a scriptural warrant. Faced with a case of possession,
they referred to Christ’s words that demons can only be expelled by faith,
prayer and fasting (Mk 9:19; Mt 17:20) and denied the Catholic ritual as
unsanctioned magic. They also claimed that miracles had not been possible or
necessary since the apostolic age. This doctrine is known as the cessation of
miracles. Levack (2013:40) argues that the lack of rituals for an exorcism was
a problem, because ‘Protestants who encountered a case of possession […]
could not do very much about the situation’.
In the 16th century, belief in the devil was a given. It was, as Almond
(2014:196) writes, ‘as impossible not to believe in the devil as it was impossible
not to believe in God’. This changed in the following centuries, under the
influence of better economic circumstances and a change in worldview in the
period of the Enlightenment. For a time, instances of possession were
presented as evidence for the reality of the existence of demons and the devil.
Levack (2013:85–93) labels the public performance of exorcisms as
‘confessional propaganda’, meaning that it functions to proselytise amongst
nonbelievers as well as to give guidance to believers and confirm their
demonological ideas, defending them against competing, more secularised
religious ideas (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2018:248).
When the rational worldview of a world that is governed by natural laws
became commonplace, experiences that seemed to be outside that natural
order lost credibility, regardless of whether they were miraculous or demonic
(Kroesbergen & Kroesbergen-Kamps 2021). Within the Protestant church, the
idea that the possibility of miracles had ceased after the time of the Bible
gained ground. All events happening in the world now were deemed to only
have natural causes. Cases of witchcraft and possession became less and less

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frequent in Europe. God’s active intervention in the lives of believers was not
expected anymore, and the devil began to be seen as an internal force of
temptation rather than as the personification of evil. In this worldview, there
was no place for witches, demons and possession.
One response to the growing rationalisation and secularisation in the 19th
century was a romantic revaluation of previously rejected objects of religious
interest. This led to a new appreciation of pagan gods, which generated the
modern movements of paganism and witchcraft in the West (Hutton 1999).
It also engendered a new, appreciative interest in the figure of Satan, especially
in 19th-century literature (Van Luijk 2016:68–112). Finally, in 1966, the Church of
Satan was founded by Anton Szandor LaVey, one of the first and most well-
known public incarnations of modern religious Satanism, in which Satan is a
figure of worship and reverence. Besides these serious attempts to make
Satan the focal point of religion, popular culture also continued to flirt with
the figure of Satan in literature, music and film.
Another response against the rational worldview of mainline churches
came from the renewal movements in the 18th and 19th centuries, which
emphasised the direct experience of the divine. Out of these revivals, the
Pentecostal movement emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. From
the start, Pentecostals believed in demonic possession, and they practised
exorcism or deliverance to expel those demons. At first, however, Pentecostalism
was a movement on the fringes of Christianity. This changed in the 1960s
when Pentecostal ideas started to gain influence in mainline churches as well.
This not only made healing, deliverance and the gifts of the spirit acceptable
in a range of Protestant and Catholic congregations but also gave new
importance to the forces of evil in the world. In the next section, we will look
closer at the history of the devil in Pentecostal Christianity.

Satan in 20th-century Pentecostal and evangelical

Christianity
The beginning of the Pentecostal movement is often pinpointed very precisely
to the revival that happened at William Seymour’s church on Azusa Street in
Los Angeles, starting in 1906. But the roots of the Pentecostal movement go
back further than that, to the religious revivalism of the 19th century. In these
Protestant revivals, the emphasis was on emotions and sensations rather than
on the rationalism that had become prominent in many European churches
after the Enlightenment. American Evangelicalism, of which the Pentecostal
movement forms a part, at least in the USA context (Martin 2002:xvii, 2), was
formed during this time. Of central importance in the revivals was the emotional
encounter with God through the Holy Spirit (Anderson 2013a:11).
Scholars agree that Pentecostalism has grown quickly and spread globally
during the 20th century, although they do not all agree on the numbers.

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Today, there are between 300 and 700 million Pentecostals worldwide,
especially in the Global South (Wilkinson 2015:97). The higher number includes
Independent and Spirit churches in, for example, Africa. As we will see in the
next section, the African Independent Churches (AICs) have a history that
runs parallel to the history of the Pentecostal movement, but it is questionable
whether the two should be conflated. In any case, the growth of Pentecostalism
is remarkable and its influence on world Christianity is indisputable.
The history of Pentecostalism has been described as a succession of waves
or consecutive periods of growth, each with a particular theological focus. In
this brief introduction, I will use this classification, although I am aware that
speaking about a succession of waves can be misleading from a global
perspective, as outreaches from the different waves may reach a specific
place at the same time (Anderson 2010:23). What arrived in waves spaced 50
or 25 years apart in the USA may arrive within one year in an African town.
The first wave of Pentecostalism emphasises a personal relationship with
God as well as the gifts of the Spirit, especially speaking in tongues. The ability
to speak in tongues is seen as evidence of true faith. Churches based on this
first wave of Pentecostalism are known as the classical Pentecostal churches
(Anderson 2013a:6–7). These are present worldwide, including in Africa
(Anderson 2013b:114). African examples are the local churches within the
worldwide fellowship of the Assemblies of God, which started its ministry in
Africa in 1914 (Kalu 2008:42), or the Church of Pentecost, which was founded
in Ghana in 1937.
The charismatic renewal movement of the 1950s and 1960s represents the
second wave of Pentecostalism. Whereas the Pentecostals of the first wave
were mainly disenfranchised groups like the poor and African-Americans, this
wave was picked up by middle-class Christians within the mainline Protestant
churches and the Roman Catholic Church. Many charismatics did not leave
their churches for Pentecostal denominations during the charismatic renewal.
Theologically, the focus shifted from speaking in tongues as evidence for a
Spirit-filled faith to the use of other gifts of the Spirit, for example, healing and
prophecy. Under the influence of the charismatic renewal movement, prayers
for healing and deliverance became, if not mainstream, at least acceptable in
various churches. The charismatic renewal gave a boost to missionary activity
in mainline as well as Pentecostal churches. In Africa, the Deeper Life Bible
Church, founded in Nigeria in 1973, is an example of a denomination with roots
in second-wave Pentecostalism (Marshall 2009:69).
In the third wave of Pentecostalism, which developed in the 1970s and
1980s, the focus shifted to signs and wonders, spiritual warfare and prosperity.
Churches with their roots in this third wave are known as neo-Pentecostal
churches. In Africa, independent neo-Pentecostal churches have mushroomed.
Many of these are small congregations around one pastor; others, like the
Nigerian Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries or the (also Nigerian) Living

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Faith Church Worldwide (also known as Winners’ Chapel), are multinational

organisations.
The prosperity gospel, deliverance and spiritual warfare are elements of
neo-Pentecostal theology, which are relevant for the development of ideas
about Satan. I will introduce each of these concepts here.
Within neo-Pentecostalism, money, health and good fortune are seen as
divine (Bowler 2013:7). The good things a person can enjoy in this life are
blessings from God. This is in itself not a shocking statement, but prosperity
gospel adherents take a further step: as God wants his believers to prosper,
believers have a right to become prosperous and enjoy good health. Another
word for the prosperity gospel is the Word of Faith movement. If a believer
speaks the word, claiming the blessings from God, and he does this in good
faith, then he will receive it. A slightly pejorative label for the prosperity gospel
catches this attitude: ‘name it and claim it’.
Prosperity gospel can be seen as a response to a Protestant emphasis on
austerity and enjoyment deferred to the afterlife. A good Christian will reap
the fruits of his faith not in heaven, the prosperity gospel holds, but in this life.
This-worldly well-being in personal health and personal wealth acts as a
measure of faith (Bowler 2013:7). The prosperity gospel has its roots also in
19th- and 20th-century New Thought movements, which emphasised the
power of positive thinking. New Thought sees an intimate connection between
having the right beliefs and material prosperity and physical health (Hanegraaff
1996:484–490). The prosperity gospel adds to this that the right beliefs are
Christian beliefs about God. Like the other elements of neo-Pentecostal
theology, the prosperity gospel has mainly been a North American
development. Neo-Pentecostalism as a whole is therefore sometimes
characterised as an ‘American gospel’ (Brouwer, Gifford & Rose 1996).
Spiritual healing has been an important element of Pentecostal practice for
years, although its relevance came to the front in the charismatic renewal
movement of the 1950s and 1960s (Zimmerling 2001:147). From the beginning,
Pentecostals believed in demonic possession as a cause for physical and
mental problems, and they practised exorcism or deliverance to expel those
demons. This is in contrast to earlier evangelical theology, which held that a
Christian could be oppressed by demons but not possessed (cf. Hunt 1998). It
may be that openness to experience the Holy Spirit in their bodies had the
effect of stimulating the belief in the possibility of demonic possession as well.
At first, Pentecostalism was a movement on the fringes of Christianity. This
changed in the 1950s and 1960s when Pentecostal ideas started to gain
influence in mainline churches as well. All of a sudden, mainline Protestants
and Catholics began to experience both divine inspiration through speaking
in tongues and deliverance from demonic possession. The importance of this
aspect of Pentecostal ministry increased further in the 1970s and 1980s under
the influence of third-wave neo-Pentecostalism. According to Michael Cuneo

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(2001), who researched deliverance practices in American churches, exorcism

(now labelled as the deliverance ministry) transformed from a rare practice
into a common custom.
The focus on the deliverance from demons signified a shift in Pentecostal
theology. While at first it was believed that a true Christian could not be
possessed, now it was stated that even born-again Christians could at least be
affected by demonic forces (Cuneo 2001). Sometimes these demons were
conceptualised as personified vices like lust, anger or addiction (Cuneo 2001),
but at other times they were seen as actual spirits with an existence beyond
the material world or the psychological inner world of a person. If the promised
earthly prosperity did not materialise, this was blamed on the actions
of demons.
The deliverance ministry has received even greater importance in neo-
Pentecostal theology because of the latter’s emphasis on spiritual warfare.
Pentecostals see the supernatural in their daily life (Martin 2002:7). This seems
like a holistic view, but behind it lies a dualism that divides everything into
good and evil. In neo-Pentecostal cosmology, the whole of history is seen as
the stage for a war between the forces of God and Satan. Pentecostals believe
that God can intervene in the world and people’s lives in a miraculous way.
Spiritual warfare theology focuses on the flip side of this belief: the idea that
there is an almost equally powerful counterforce of darkness, which also
affects people’s lives. Spiritual warfare is the ongoing attempt to drive back
the forces of evil so that the kingdom of God can materialise in this world
(Hunt 1998). Spiritual warfare theology led to increasing attention to Satan
and his activities on Earth.
In the USA, testimonies of self-proclaimed ex-Satanists have been around
in Christian circles since the 1970s. Two prominent ex-Satanists of that time
were Michael Warnke and John Todd. Warnke narrates how he was introduced
into a cult, where he received the opportunity to specialise in an aspect of the
occult (Ellis 2000:185–195). His choice was Satanism. As Warnke progressed
through the levels of this cult, the rituals got more perverse, including sex, the
desecration of religious symbols and cannibalism. He received apartments,
drugs, money and cars for his involvement. John Todd’s apocalyptic testimony
conflates witchcraft and paganism with Freemasons and Illuminati (Ellis
2000:195–201). His main role in this movement was to promote rock music
that had the power to demonise adolescents through spells it contained. On a
larger scale, he predicted worldwide carnage as the Illuminati took control of
the world. Both Warnke and Todd were popular for a time, delivering their
testimonies in churches. They both published their experiences, and recordings
of their testimonies circulated through the Pentecostal milieu.
The preoccupation with Satanism in the USA and Europe came to a peak in
the 1980s and 1990s. The beginning of the 1980s saw the publication of
Michelle Remembers (1980), a sensational book based on recovered memories

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of abuse by an alleged satanic cult. A few years later, in 1983, accusations of

ritualistic child abuse were made against a preschool in California. The trial,
which ended without convictions in 1990, was covered widely in the media,
and similar allegations towards other childcare centres were made. In the
United Kingdom (UK), the Satanism scare caught on in 1988, when tabloids
started publishing about sexual abuse and child murder in ritual settings (La
Fontaine 1998:1). In both the USA and the UK, there were reports about a
powerful satanic organisation abducting and breeding children for use in their
rituals and orgies. During the 1990s, the panic around this organisation of evil
Others slowly evaporated in the West, although accusations of satanic child
abuse still emerge, for example, during the 2016 campaign for the US
presidential election, when Hillary Clinton was accused of presiding over a
satanic child trafficking ring in the basement of a pizza parlour. Material
evidence of ritual abuse by a satanic cult has always been extremely scarce.11
In the history of Western Christianity and culture at large, Satan has been a
figure of sustained interest. This brief overview of the history of Satan shows
that ideas about who Satan is and what he does have developed and changed
over time. Some of these ideas have found great acclaim within African
Christianity, as we will see in the next section.

Satan comes to Africa

African Christianity is a somewhat contested term. As a lecturer in Lusaka, I
heard complaints from my students that Europe had Christianity, the USA had
Christianity, and they had African Christianity. For these students, the label
‘African Christianity’ implied that their Christianity was somehow different and
possibly appreciated less than ‘normal’ Christianity. However, as the centre of
gravity within Christianity moves south, it seems that (in numbers, at least)
African Christianity may become the norm. According to Philip Jenkins (2007),
African Christians:
[A]re charismatic in the sense of being open to ideas of dreams, prophecies, and
visions; and they are deeply committed to ideas of healing. They are, in that sense,
more supernaturally oriented. (p. 114)

11. This is, to some extent, a question of definition. For example, in his social history of Satanism, Massimo
Introvigne distinguishes ‘folk Satanism’ from Satanism sensu stricto. According to Introvigne (2016:8–9), folk
Satanism can be connected to a number of murders, but because it lacks formal organisation and a clear
ideology, it should not be counted as ‘real’ Satanism. Within the Italian ‘real’ Satanist group called the Beasts of
Satan, murders were committed on metaphysical grounds, as human sacrifices to the devil, but this motivation
was combined with a conflict over money (Introvigne 2016:545–549). The victims were members of the group,
not outsiders. The examples of crimes committed by folk or real Satanists show that in isolated cases, a
connection between Satanism and abuse or even murder can be made. There is, however, no evidence of the
sustained, organised, ritual abuse supposed by Christian and secular anti-Satanists.

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How did African Christianity develop this charismatic flavour? And what is the
role of the devil in this configuration of Christian theology? These will be the
main questions to answer in this section.
As we have seen in the previous chapter, in African traditional beliefs, there
are harmful spirits and supernatural harm that may be caused by human
agents like witches, but there is no concept similar to the Christian devil. In
traditional folk tales, for example, good and evil were often personified in the
same character, the trickster figure who could bestow blessings one moment
and wreak havoc the next (cf. Pype 2015a:368). Spirits and even witches were
not necessarily seen as forces of pure evil. This changed when missionary
Christianity was introduced in Africa. As paradoxical as it may sound, Satan is
a Christian. With missionary Christianity, Africans were introduced to the
concept of pure evil, personified as the devil. I will describe the influence of
this idea on Christianity in Africa, starting with the classical mission churches
and then moving on to Pentecostal perspectives.

The devil and the classical mission churches

In Translating the Devil, Birgit Meyer (1999) describes the mission history of
the Ewe, a people living in southeast Ghana and southern Togo. When the
missionaries arrived in their territory in 1847, they found a community with
long-established religious traditions. The Christian missionaries rejected the
traditional Ewe gods and spirits and saw these pagan spiritual beings as
agents of the devil.
The Ewe, like many African societies, did not have an established concept
of the devil. The first translators decided to use the Ewe word for witch or
sorcerer as a translation of the concept of the devil (Meyer 1992). Elsewhere,
other missionaries made similar decisions that identified the Christian devil
with local concepts of evil. Biblical scholar Musa Dube (1999), for example,
analyses the translation of the biblical word ‘demon’ in the Setswana translation
of the Bible. The translators chose the word for an ancestor, thereby literally
demonising spirits that in traditional thinking could offer protection and give
blessings as well as cause misfortune if they were displeased.
These translations of the devil meant that the spirit world was recast in
absolute terms: spirits were either good, a designation reserved only for the
Holy Spirit, or evil. According to Meyer (1999:100), the Ewe were unsatisfied
with their traditional religion, and they now associated it with the devil and
rejected everything to do with it. This equation of traditional gods and spirits
with the Christian devil appealed to the Ewe, who were ready to follow a
stronger god who could provide more blessings and better protection. In this
way, the religious figures of the Ewe traditional religion found their place in
Christian cosmology, albeit in a demonised form.

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The expectations of the Ewe and the theology of the missionaries, however,
were not evenly matched. The Ewe were converted by Pietist missionaries
from Germany. Pietism is a movement within Protestant Christianity that
places a great emphasis on both a pure inner life and a strict and sober way
of life. The Pietist worldview can be illustrated through the famous image of
the broad and the narrow path. The image shows a hilly landscape with a wide
street that leads past a carnival, a theatre and a public house towards robbery,
war and an erupting volcano; the other is a narrow path, winding its way past
a church and a monastery towards the mountains, where lions need to be
fought. Only those who follow the narrow path will be saved. Believers can
choose which path to follow: the broad path with its beguiling worldly
pleasures like gluttony, drinking, gambling and having sex that ends in hell, or
the steep and difficult narrow path without any entertainment or bodily
pleasures that leads to salvation. An eye in the sky symbolises that God can
look into every heart.
According to the Pietists, to be accepted by God, it is not enough to
perform certain rituals or to behave well (Meyer 1999:52–53). What matters is
one’s state of mind, which can only be ascertained by God. The image of the
broad and narrow path implies a dualistic conception of God and the devil.
A person is either on the way to salvation or on the way to hell; there is no
other option. In life, everything can be divided into belonging to God or
belonging to Satan. Animals such as black goats, cats and snakes belonged to
the devil, as did antisocial and immoral behaviours. Non-Christian religions
were also seen as part of the domain of Satan. The devil is even active in one’s
own heart, inspiring bad behaviour and unacceptable desires. This 19th-
century Pietist dualism was later replicated in Pentecostal theologies. For the
Pietist missionaries, the devil was primarily a voice of temptation, an inner
voice that leads people to do evil things (Meyer 1999). Every individual believer
was therefore expected to constantly evaluate their inner state and to
personally fight satanic impulses. The Pietist missionaries aiming to convert
the Ewe worked from this framework. Their goal was to get the Ewe on the
narrow path to salvation.
For the Christian Ewe, on the other hand, the devil and his helpers, like
spirits, demons and witches, were external forces that brought misfortune.
The natural state of a human being was to be good and do good. If bad things
happened, there must have been some kind of agency behind it: the ancestors
were unhappy, a harmful spirit had befallen one or a fellow human being may
have been using witchcraft against someone. Similarly, sin for the Ewe was
something that came from outside, something one’s heart had to endure
rather than something that needed to be fought (Meyer 1999:102). While the
missionaries may have agreed with the Ewe that the devil could tempt a
believer to sin, the missionaries would see the inner fight with those evil
impulses as the main task of a Christian.

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Missionaries had resources to help with this inner fight against sin and the
devil but not against the evil that came from outside. They did not have rituals
to protect the Ewe from the external evil they perceived, and their hostility
towards traditional spiritual specialists had driven these previous ritual
authorities underground (Udelhoven 2017b:86). This meant that the missionary
churches left their converts alone and unprotected in a world of evil spirits.
Over time, this perceived shortcoming of the mission churches has proven to
be a reason for ‘backsliding’ to traditional practices. The traditional ritual
authorities were indeed underground, but they had not ceased to exist. As
Bernhard Udelhoven states in his history of the devil in Catholic Zambia, no
church in Zambia was able to make traditional specialists like the ng’anga or
diviner redundant (Udelhoven 2017b:93). In times of crisis, these specialists
were sought out by many African Christians. For the Pietist missionaries, the
devil was at least a reality, albeit one that described inner impulses rather than
misfortunes caused by outside forces. But not all missionaries to Africa were
Pietists. After the 19th century, missionaries were more likely to be influenced
by Enlightenment scepticism towards notions of witchcraft and possessing
spirits. In the diaries of Catholic missionaries in Zambia from the 1950s
onwards, the devil is all but absent. According to Udelhoven (2017b):
Missionaries saw less and less of the devil in the spiritual forces that affected
people and more of a world of superstitious beliefs that needed to be eradicated
– not through engagement with such forces but through the provision of modern
education and health care. (p. 101)

The missionaries now believed in secular answers to the problems of African

Christians. Misfortunes like illness should be combatted by Western medicine
and crop failures through better education about agriculture. The spiritual
causes of such misfortunes that were perceived by Africans themselves were
disregarded.

The rise of Pentecostal churches in Africa

Under the influence of the mismatch between mainline Christianity and African
notions of spiritual causation of misfortune, many Africans sought other
options. In some cases, traditional and Christian rituals and beliefs co-existed,
with many people participating in both if the need so arose (Udelhoven
2017b:88). Others felt the need for an alternative kind of Christianity. African
Independent Churches started to spring up in Africa. These churches, also
known as African-initiated, African-instituted or African indigenous churches,
were initiated in Africa by often charismatic and prophetic (black) African
founders and more or less independent from foreign mission churches. The
first of these churches had a socio-political orientation, emphasising the value
of an African identity contrary to the paternalism and racism which was at
times present in the mission churches (Anderson 2015:56).

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The second group of AICs developed in Africa around the same time that
Pentecostalism gained momentum in the USA. These churches had a more
spiritual and religious focus than the first socio-political churches. In West
Africa, these churches are known as Spirit churches, like, for example, the
Aladura churches in Nigeria. In southern Africa, they are also known as the
Zionist churches, like the Zion Christian Church (ZCC) in South Africa
(Kroesbergen-Kamps 2019). In some cases, like that of the ZCC, these churches
were influenced by Pentecostal missionaries from the USA, but they were all
home-grown, independent churches led by Africans themselves.
African Independent Churches share with the early Pentecostal movement
an emphasis on God’s power to act in this world. The focus on healing is
important in all AICs. This healing has a holistic nature that encompasses
body, mind, spirit and even other aspects of life, such as having a job or
success in business and finding a spouse. The problems in all of these areas
are attributed to spiritual principles, and healing is a spiritual matter as well.
African Independent Churches incorporated traditional African practices and
cosmological notions in their rituals and theologies, and they are often
dismissed as syncretic by theologians from the classical mission churches (cf.
Adogame & Lazio 2007).
In the study of Christianity in Africa, until around 1990, scholars did not
strongly distinguish between these AICs and Pentecostal churches (Meyer
2004:452). Some scholars use the name AIC for all independent churches led
by Africans, whatever their theological focus is. Alan Anderson, for example,
labels any church that is founded in Africa, by Africans, for Africans as an AIC
(cf. Anderson 2018:43–44). At the same time, Anderson also uses the name
Pentecostalism for AICs as well as other types of Pentecostal churches (see,
e.g. Anderson 2015).
However, there are important differences between the Spirit church AICs
and the African Pentecostal movement. The AICs tend to incorporate
traditional cosmological and ritual elements in their practices much more
readily than Pentecostal churches do (Lindhardt 2015:4). The function of the
prophet who facilitates the healing of members of AICs is very close to the
traditional role of the diviner. As a diviner, the prophet can discern problems
within the spiritual world, such as an offended ancestor or an attack by evil
spirits, sorcerers or witches, and prescribes the necessary ritual actions and
medicines to restore well-being (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2019). Again, like the
diviner, the prophet can do so because they have a special relationship with
the spirit world, not only through the Holy Spirit but also through the spirits
of ancestors. For most Pentecostal churches, the way an AIC prophet acts is
far too close to traditional African religions and therefore generally rejected
and demonised. Therefore, while there are many similarities between AICs
and African Pentecostal churches, they do not perceive themselves as

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belonging to the same category. Satanism is an issue in Pentecostal-type

churches in Africa rather than in AICs.
Pentecostal churches arrived in Africa with missionaries from the USA.
Between 1906 and 1912 Pentecostal missionaries started operating, especially
in Liberia and South Africa (Kalu 2008:43). In the first half of the 20th century,
Pentecostal churches with missionary connections to the USA had been
established all over Africa (Anderson 2015:56; Lindhardt 2015:3). At first, the
impact of these churches was low (Lindhardt 2015:5). In the 1960s, when most
African countries gained independence, it was even expected that the role of
Christianity in Africa would decrease because it had been so intertwined with
colonialism (Gifford 1998:21).
But from 1960 onwards, when the Pentecostal movement in the USA and
Europe got a new impulse from the second wave of Pentecostalisation, new
waves of missionaries started to bring their message to Africa (Hackett
2003:62). Evangelists like Reinhard Bonnke, whose annual crusades to Africa
attracted millions of people across the continent, were very successful in
introducing a Pentecostal or evangelical message to the African audience
(Hackett 2003:62; cf. Gifford 1994). By the 1970s and 1980s, it was no longer
just missionaries from overseas like Bonnke or Derek Prince who spread the
Pentecostal message. The Nigerian Pentecostal pastor Benson Idahosa, for
example, started to organise similar crusades from 1978 onwards (Anderson
2006:122). Much more than the AICs, Pentecostal churches in Africa are an
international affair, with ties to Pentecostal ministries from the USA, Europe,
Brazil and South Korea.
In the 1980s, the popularity of the Pentecostal message in Africa grew
explosively and surpassed the older AICs, suggesting a new phase in the
appropriation of Christianity in Africa (Meyer 2004:448). From its humble
beginnings as a movement at the periphery of African Christianity,
Pentecostalism grew into an exceedingly vibrant face of Christianity in Africa
(Lindhardt 2015:1). While many Pentecostal churches in Africa originated from
the activities of foreign missionaries, from the 1980s onward many more
Pentecostal churches were founded by African pastors, although many still
share elective affinities with international preachers and organisations
(Lindhardt 2015:8). This openness to a global Pentecostal movement is
reflected in the names of these churches, which often incorporate the adjective
‘international’, regardless of whether they are part of an international
organisation.
In terms of the general overview of the history of Pentecostalism, the type
of Pentecostalism that finds the most success in Africa is of the neo-Pentecostal
variety. Central tenets in African Pentecostalism are the focus on spiritual
warfare and the prosperity gospel. The development of neo-Pentecostalism in
its African forms has been discussed by several scholars in recent years.

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For example, Ogbu Kalu (2008), Kwabena Asamuah-Gyadu (2013) and Alan
Anderson (2018) write about Pentecostalism in sub-Saharan Africa. Ruth
Marshall (2009) and Nimi Wariboko (2014) focus especially on Nigeria, but
their observations are relevant to a broader African context as well.
In Zambia, neo-Pentecostal churches are mushrooming (Cheyeka, Hinfelaar
& Udelhoven 2014). Many new neo-Pentecostal churches have been founded
in Zambia since 1991, and several mainline Protestant churches – for example,
the United Church of Zambia (UCZ) and the Reformed Church in Zambia
(RCZ) – have experienced break-aways taking a more Pentecostal direction
(Kangwa 2016; Soko 2010). Monographs on neo-Pentecostalism in Zambia are
rare, but important articles have been written on aspects of Pentecostal
religiosity by (for example) Adriaan van Klinken (2012, 2014), Naomi Haynes
(2012, 2015, 2017a, 2017b) and Chammah Kaunda (2018). Justo Mwale
University, an institution for the formation of pastors in the Reformed and
Presbyterian churches in southern Africa, has contributed to the academic
debate with two publications on the implications of the popularity of neo-
Pentecostalism for the older Reformed and Presbyterian mission churches
(ed. Kroesbergen 2014, 2016).
In neo-Pentecostal churches, healing is understood as a conquering of the
evil spiritual forces that withhold health and material blessings (cf. Gifford
1994:15), and as such, it is a natural part of spiritual warfare. This means that
in these types of African churches, there is ample attention given to the role
of the devil in the sufferings of humankind (cf. Jenkins 2006:100). In the next
section, we will turn to the devil in African Pentecostal Christianity.

The devil in African Pentecostal churches

As we have seen, there was a mismatch between the worldview of African
Christians and the mainline mission churches. The overwhelming success of
Pentecostalism in Africa is often attributed to its better fit with African ideas
about spiritual causation. Pentecostal churches believe in an active force of
evil that can affect human life, meaning that evil is conceptualised not as a
metaphor or something that needs to be fought in the human heart but as a
force from outside. This is a force that needs to be battled in spiritual warfare,
and Pentecostal deliverance and anointing services provide healing and
protection that cannot be found in mainline mission churches.
Early Pentecostal missionaries were astonished by the openness of non-
Western people to their message. In 1909, a missionary to China wrote in his
diary (cited in Case 2006):
One thing is a great help to us: the people believe and know that the devil is real,
not imagination (as so many in the home land would like to have it). (p. 139)

The notion of the devil had taken root in Africa as well, and the Pentecostal
message was able to connect this notion to local understandings of misfortune.

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Like the early Pietist missionaries to the Ewe that Meyer described, Pentecostal
missionaries associated the devil first and foremost with traditional religious
practices (Anderson 2006:120). African gods, spirits of ancestors, troublesome
spirits and witchcraft all became linked to Satan. For converts to Pentecostalism,
it became necessary to ‘make a complete break with the past’ and its beliefs
and practices (Meyer 1998b). The Ghanaian scholar Opoku Onyinah has
pointed out that this blending of religious notions under the label of Satan has
led to an obscuring of the differences between, for instance, witchcraft and
possession. He uses the label ‘witchdemonology’ to refer to these amalgamated
African notions of evil (Onyinah 2012:172). African neo-Pentecostal churches
are attentive to the fears of witchcraft and spirit possession amongst their
church members. Pastors in these churches claim the ability to discern who is
possessed or bewitched, or even who is a witch or a Satanist. In this way,
Pentecostal churches seem to have taken up the role of the older witch-finding
movements.
Where in the 1960s it was still possible to rejoice in and celebrate traditional
cultural and religious heritages, under the influence of the growing Pentecostal
movement, this became impossible (Hackett 2003:70). Filip de Boeck and
Sammy Baloji (2016) narrate how they visit a museum in contemporary
Kinshasa and note that there are no other visitors. The museum attendant
explains to them that (De Boeck & Baloji 2016):
[S]chool children, who used to visit the museum, no longer come because they
have all converted to charismatic Christianity, which, in its attempt to break with
autochthonous pasts, considers the museum’s collection of ancestral objects and
‘fetishes’ to be diabolical and satanic. (p. 10)

It is not only religious practices that are associated with the devil. By association,
the village of origin and even the extended family are also relegated to the
domain of Satan (De Boeck & Plissart 2004:197–198; Meyer 2004:457).
There is, however, a paradox in the Pentecostal rejection of the African
past. Because the religious notions of the African traditions are carried over
into a Pentecostal worldview, albeit as devils and demons, the religious past
lives on within African Pentecostalism. Breaking with the spirits of the past
has by no means made them disappear. On the contrary, they seem stronger
than ever (Meyer 2004:457). Paradoxically, breaking with the past actually
preserves the traditional African worldview (Robbins 2004:128). Witches,
traditional healers, ancestral spirits and African gods are seen as satanic, but
their existence is not questioned (Lindhardt 2015:164). What Pentecostal
Christianity does is offer a way to deal with these spiritual forces that are
believed to have a negative influence on people’s lives. As Fraser Macdonald
phrases it (2018:539), ‘Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians […] actually
have a serious need for the past’.
Through its closeness to traditional African worldviews, Pentecostal
Christianity can respond to the African problems of spiritual causation more

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than mainline churches do (Anderson 2006:133). In this, the figure of the devil
is the main point of convergence between Pentecostal theology and the
African experience of misfortune (Lindhardt 2015:13). Whether it is spirits or
witches who cause bad things to happen, according to the Pentecostal view,
the devil is behind it all. Pentecostalism, furthermore, offers ritual actions to
deal with the problem through personal prayer and acts of fasting or the
ministrations of an intercessor.
Ilana Van Wyk describes how one popular Brazilian Pentecostal church, the
Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), is attuned to the conception
of misfortune in a South African township (Van Wyk 2015:153–154). In Africa,
a holistic view of well-being is common, which includes health, finance,
employment and relationships. Unlike the mainline churches, a lack of well-
being is in the UCKG not related to moral failings in Christians but nefarious
forces that one can randomly pick up. In South African townships, if anything
was lacking in any of the domains associated with well-being, it would be
perceived as an attack of outside forces, like witches who blocked the blessings
coming from the ancestors. The UCKG has a similar concept of the causes for
lack of well-being, namely that demons blocked the flow of blessings from
God. The two conceptions, African and Pentecostal, are close enough to each
other to shade into one another, not just in the case of the UCKG in South
Africa but for Pentecostal churches all over the continent.
The ability of Pentecostal churches to respond to African problems does
not, however, mean that the African worldview has remained unchanged. The
scale at which the forces that cause misfortune operate has dramatically
increased now that they are taken up into a global framework (Rio, MacCarthy
& Blanes 2017:12). Where, for instance, witches were traditionally supposed to
operate within the confines of troubled kinship relationships or other close-
knit networks, the association of witches with the devil gives their actions a
different meaning. Mending relationships with the extended family, with one’s
neighbour or with the ancestors may have been the proper action when one
suffered from misfortune in the past, but these local solutions do not work
when the enemy is Satan (cf. Eriksen & Rio 2017:202). The universal demonic
vocabulary of Pentecostalism changes how misfortune makes sense. This
widening of the scope has had the effect that the danger of witchcraft and
other spiritual forces has lost its bearing in the local context and has become
a threat that may come from anywhere (De Boeck & Plissart 2004:203).
Whereas on the one hand, the new global force of evil may increase
anxieties and spiritual insecurity (Ashforth 2005) because misfortune has
become an omnipresent danger, scholars point out that the rituals against evil
provided by Pentecostal churches, on the other hand, offer a sense of control
and empowerment. Those who are committed to spiritual warfare are not
weak victims but prayer warriors in God’s army, able to throw Satan out

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(Brouwer et al. 1996:181). The empowerment of individuals may also act as a

way out of stifling hierarchies. As a prayer warrior, a young Pentecostal
Christian has access to an authority that stands in marked contrast to the
subordinate position many young people have in a traditional African setting
(Lindhardt 2015:16).
But there is a danger, too, in perceiving all misfortune as caused by spiritual
forces. It may distract from other, more practical causes of problems, like poor
leadership, corruption and socio-economic processes (Deacon & Lynch
2013:117). If poverty is caused by witches and evil spirits that can be cast out,
investing in education and good policies is unnecessary (cf. Ngong 2012). If, as
the girl at the overnight prayer with whom I started this book claims, Satanists
cause road accidents and prayer helps to fight off Satanists, there is no need
to improve the roads and make sure that they are safe. During the COVID-19
pandemic, a focus on spiritual causes has led some African Christians to seek
spiritual help and disregard measures to stop the spread of the virus, such as
masking, social distancing and even getting vaccinated (cf. Kroesbergen-
Kamps 2020b).
Another way in which the Pentecostal message is close to an African
worldview is in its emphasis on this-worldly blessings. Because well-being is
conceptualised holistically in African notions, including not only physical and
mental health but success in other areas of life as well, problems in these areas
are related to spiritual actions as well. In the words of Ellis and Ter Haar,
challenges from economics to epidemics are considered in a spirit idiom (Ellis
& Ter Haar 2004:92). Pentecostalism, and especially the popular prosperity
gospel, offers a theology that fits with the spirit idiom that makes sense of
fortune and misfortune in this world. According to the prosperity gospel, as
we have seen in the previous section, wealth is interpreted as a reward for a
strong Christian faith. A lack of wealth and other aspects of well-being can be
caused by either a backsliding in faith or by the actions of demons and other
evil spiritual forces. Similar to the traditional African worldview, Pentecostalism
offers a spiritual explanation for success and failure in material things
(cf. Deacon & Lynch 2013:110–111).
The prosperity gospel, combined with the ideas surrounding illicit
accumulation, offers a way to think about the morality of wealth (Lindhardt
2015:182). On the one hand, wealth is evaluated positively as a sign of God’s
blessing. But wealth can also be acquired in an ungodly way through witchcraft-
related practices. Wealth is therefore seen as ‘an ambiguous sign of morality
that can be obtained through God’s beneficence or through demonic means’
(Deacon & Lynch 2013:111). Besides wealth in general, consumer goods are
also viewed ambiguously. Capitalism and consumption are a sign of faith on
the one hand, but as we will see in the next chapter, consumer goods can also
be perceived as associated with the devil. Neither is good or evil by its very
nature but only by association with either God or Satan (Meyer 2010a:118).

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As we have seen, the emphasis on the devil in Pentecostal churches has

brought its theology close to the lived worlds of African Christians. The South
African historian of African Christianity Alan Anderson (2006:133) stated, ‘[w]
e should not therefore be surprised if the result is widespread conversion to
Pentecostalism’, and this is exactly what has been happening in Africa. With
the increasing attention to spiritual warfare theology in global Pentecostalism
came a surge in new Pentecostal churches in Africa. Pentecostalism provides
answers to African problems and gives a sense of empowerment to its
adherents. On the other hand, the globalisation of local concepts has given
evil an indefinite quality, which may increase a sense of spiritual insecurity.
Also, seeing the devil as a cause for all problems may lead to an obscuring of
wrongs caused by worldly injustices and malpractices.

Satanism and Christianity in Zambia

As we have seen, neo-Pentecostalism has taken hold in African Christianity
and, with it, the idea of the devil. How has this impacted Christianity in Zambia
and the narratives about Satanism that are now popular? To answer this
question, I will start with a description of Christianity in Zambia and then turn
to the narratives about Satanism, which are not only related to an ‘American
gospel’ of prosperity and spiritual warfare but specific developments in
African Christianity as well.

Christianity in Zambia
Missionary activity started relatively late in Zambia, probably because it is a
landlocked country in the heart of southern Africa, which made it hard to
access. In the 1880s, the London Missionary Society set up mission stations in
the north of Zambia, near the current border with Tanzania. Also coming from
the north were Catholic missionaries from the Society of the Missionaries of
Africa (or White Fathers) in the 1890s and missionaries from the Presbyterian
Church of Scotland in the 1900s. From the southeast, inroads were made by
the South African Dutch Reformed Church in the 1890s and the Anglican
church in the 1910s. The Catholic, Presbyterian, Reformed and Anglican
churches are still the most important missionary churches in Zambia (Sakupapa
2016). Besides these classical mission churches, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and
Seventh-day Adventists also gained a strong presence in Zambia.
In his discussion of the devil of the Catholic Church, more especially
referring to the White Fathers, Udelhoven (2021) qualifies the notion that for
the missionaries, everything pagan was evil. Although the White Fathers
prayed every evening for the deliverance of Africa from Satan’s hold, their
perspective of Satan seems to have been more of a rhetorical nature:
everything that was outside of the church, in Europe or Africa, was deemed
satanic. For the White Fathers, ‘the process of studying the language and

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local culture brought to many missionaries an appreciation and love for the
traditional wisdom’ (Udelhoven 2021:63). In general, Catholic missionaries
have been more appreciative of traditional culture and religion than others. In
her study of the Reformed mission in Zambia, Verstraelen-Gilhuis (1982)
mentions more or less successful attempts to eradicate traditional dances and
initiations. Even for the White Fathers, involvement with the spirit world was
not a part of the cherished traditional wisdom. The White Fathers saw the
belief in spirits as superstitious imagination and preferred not to talk about
the spirit world. As in other parts of Africa, the silence of the missionary
churches on issues of spirits left open a space for spiritualist and Zionist AICs
and later for neo-Pentecostal churches, which did take the spirit world
seriously and could offer countermeasures against its threats.
In Zambia, the first AICs started to emerge in the 1950s. Alice Lenshina’s
Lumpa Church is probably the most well-known example of a Zambian AIC.
After receiving visions during an illness, Lenshina became the focal point of a
religious revival in northern Zambia. In the 1960s, her church got caught up in
politics, and in the transition to Zambia’s independence in 1964, the church
was forcefully repressed and banned. In contemporary Zambia, AICs are not a
prominent feature of the Christian life (Sakupapa 2016:760). Neo-Pentecostal
churches have been booming in Zambia since the 1980s. Many of these
churches were founded by local preachers. Neo-Pentecostal churches, as we
have seen, see traditional spirits as evil realities, and unlike traditional mission
churches, they do offer a solution to affliction by the forces of evil in the form
of deliverance or healing prayer.
In 2010, Bernhard Udelhoven investigated the changing face of Christianity
in Bauleni, one of Lusaka’s high-density areas. He found that in the 1970s,
there were eight different denominations active in Bauleni. In the 1980s, as the
population of the compound was increasing, the number of churches grew as
well. The first Pentecostal churches in Bauleni were founded in the 1980s.
Between 1900 and 2010, Bauleni saw, as Udelhoven (2010b:5) describes it, ‘a
Pentecostal explosion’. In January 2010 there were 82 different churches or
denominations active in Bauleni, which has an estimated population of 25 000.
Of these 82 churches, 53 can be classified as (neo-)Pentecostal. According to
Udelhoven (2010b:9–10), most of the members of the new churches were not
recruited from nonbelievers but from other Christian churches. This means
that pastors of new and old churches are competing with each other for
church members.
The popularity of the new neo-Pentecostal churches has also influenced
the mainline mission churches. Practices like anointing, deliverance and mass
prayer, in which people simultaneously pray out loud, which were common in
neo-Pentecostal churches, are currently practised in mainline churches like
the RCZ as well. Although these changes cause debate in churches and
sometimes lead to break-aways, the mainline mission churches as a whole are

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shifting more and more in the direction of the neo-Pentecostal churches. It

may therefore be said that ‘Pentecostalism has fast become the representative
face of Christianity in Zambia’ (Sakupapa 2016:761).
In 2010, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life published a report on faith
in sub-Saharan Africa. Zambia was one of the 19 countries contributing to the
data in this report. The results show some clear trends in the experience of
religion in Zambia. Ninety per cent of the Zambian respondents say that
religion is very important in their life (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
2010:3). Christianity is the majority religion in Zambia, with 98% of respondents
identifying as Christians in this research (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
2010:20). Of the 19 African countries, Zambia scores (together with Ethiopia
and Nigeria) the second-lowest on the presence of traditional African religious
practices. Only 11% agree with the statement that sacrifices to spirits or
ancestors can protect them from bad things happening (Pew Forum on
Religion & Public Life 2010:4). In comparison, in South Africa, 56% agree with
this, in Botswana 39% and in Mozambique 27%. In Zambia, even for those who
believe in the effectiveness of sacrifices to ancestors or spirits, ATRs are not
seen as a religious alternative to Christianity.
The Christianity that is prevalent in Zambia is a conservative or even
fundamentalist kind of Christianity. A characteristic of fundamentalism is the
advocacy for a strict, literal interpretation of scripture. Eighty-five per cent of
Zambian Christian respondents hold that the Bible is the literal word of God,
one of the highest percentages in sub-Saharan Africa (Pew Forum on Religion
& Public Life 2010:26). In Zambia, which was declared a Christian nation by
President Frederick Chiluba in 1991, 77% of Christians even favour making the
Bible the official law of the land (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life 2010:11).
More evidence for the importance of religion in Zambian life is that 85% of
Christians say they attend religious services regularly (Pew Forum on Religion
& Public Life 2010:27), and 77% pray at least once a day (2010:28).
The influence of Pentecostalism in the answers of Zambian respondents is
clear. Eighteen per cent of respondents identify as Pentecostal Christian,
whereas the mainline mission churches like Anglicans (4%) and Presbyterians
(2%) fall behind (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life 2010:23). A large
proportion of Zambian Christians (26% in this study) are Catholic. Within the
Catholic Church, the charismatic movement is Pentecostal. Thirty-four per
cent of Zambian Christians identify as charismatic (Pew Forum on Religion &
Public Life 2010:157), but in the report, it is not mentioned what percentage of
the Catholics say they are charismatic. Neo-Pentecostal Christianity is often
characterised by a belief in divine healing and deliverance. Of the Zambian
respondents, 50% said that they had witnessed a divine healing of an illness
or an injury (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life 2010:30), and 53% had
experienced or witnessed the devil or evil spirits being driven out of a person

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(Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life 2010:214). In comparison with other
sub-Saharan Christians, Zambians score relatively low on the question of
healing and high on the question about the deliverance of the devil or evil
spirits. Only in Ethiopia and Tanzania, countries that (like Zambia) scored low
on the practice of ATRs, a higher percentage had witnessed evil spirits being
driven out. It seems to me that these results fit with the demonisation of
traditional religions and practices. The spiritual and religious beings of previous
times have not disappeared, but they have retained a status as evil spirits.
Another characteristic of Pentecostal Christianity is speaking in tongues. In
most sub-Saharan countries discussed in the Pew report, about 20% or more
of Christians belonging to non-Pentecostal denominations declare that they
speak in tongues at least several times a year (Pew Forum on Religion & Public
Life 2010:31). Neo-Pentecostalism is closely associated with the so-called
prosperity gospel. According to this belief, health and wealth will come to
those with a strong belief. Often this belief is accompanied by the idea that
money given to the pastor or the church will come back to the giver in the
form of riches or other blessings. In Zambia, 68% of Christians believe that
God will grant wealth and good health to those who have enough faith (Pew
Forum on Religion & Public Life 2010:31). The high percentages of Christians
who agree with these statements show that different Christian denominations
are influenced by Pentecostalisation.

Case study: A deliverance service in Lusaka

We started this chapter with a testimony of a man who confessed that he had
been a Satanist. As a businessman, he possibly had been involved in rituals to
ensure success and wealth. As we have seen in the previous chapter, such
rituals for personal gain are rejected in contemporary African worldviews. In
this chapter, it has become clear that any ritual that is associated with
traditional African practices is interpreted as satanic from a neo-Pentecostal
worldview.
The service in which this testimony was presented is a good example of
neo-Pentecostal faith in action. So far, we have dwelt mainly on theologies
and ideas, but Pentecostalism is a faith in which emotions and bodily
expressions are important as well. I will use my fieldnotes from this service on
a Sunday afternoon in Lusaka to turn the attention to this aspect of lived
Christianity in Zambia, as well as connect what happens in the service to the
notions discussed in this chapter.
On this Sunday afternoon, a small crowd gathers in one of the halls of an
upmarket hotel for a church service. While many mainline churches have had
years to invest in church buildings, the newer, neo-Pentecostal churches often
are highly mobile, searching for quarters that fit their audiences from year

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to year. A church may start in the living room of a pastor, then move to the
empty classrooms of a school in the neighbourhood. Having the means to rent
a space in an expensive hotel shows that this church is relatively successful,
even though it is a young church founded only four years prior.
The congregation comes together this afternoon for a deliverance service.
On Sunday mornings, a traditional service is conducted, but in the afternoon
a more direct encounter with spiritual forces is on the program. Like an
ordinary service, the deliverance service starts with worship and a sermon.
After that, there is space for testimonies, and then people are called to the
front to be prayed over. People come to deliverance services to find a solution
for their problems. The timing of the service makes it easy for members of
other churches to visit the morning service in their own (often mainline)
church and then go to the deliverance service of a Pentecostal-type church to
find healing. In this way, Christians combine the church in which they grew up
with the Pentecostal faith that is more open to providing healing for their
spiritual afflictions. The theology of this church is neo-Pentecostal, with an
emphasis on the gifts of the Spirit, teachings of the prosperity gospel and
ideas about the cosmic struggle between good and evil.
The deliverance service starts at 14:00 with time for worship. The praise
team is singing, accompanied by keyboard and drums, while the hall slowly
fills up. At this church, worship is an international affair. My husband and I are
the only white people in the audience, but there are flags of other countries,
including Zimbabwe, South Africa and the USA, displayed behind the podium
where the choir stands. Some of the worship songs are in various Zambian
vernaculars, but most are well-known English songs. A favourite is ‘Alpha and
Omega’:
‘We give you all the glory/We worship you, our Lord/You are worthy to be praised/
You are the Alpha and Omega/We worship you, our Lord/You are worthy to be
praised.’ (#150, participant observation, 2015)

This worship song was first recorded by Israel & New Breed, whose lead singer,
Israel Houghton, is also the worship leader in Lakewood Church, a
nondenominational megachurch located in Houston, Texas, pastored by the
famous televangelist Joel Osteen. This Lusaka church may be an independent
African church, but it is part of a wider, international Pentecostal movement.
During prayer, the choir leader and others in the congregation speak in
tongues from time to time. I can see the pastor and founder of the church in
the first row, kneeling in prayer. A woman with a professional camera seizes
the moment and takes a picture. After a while, the pastor comes up on the
stage, takes the microphone from the choir leader, and leads the congregation
in another song. Then the music softens as the pastor leads the congregation
in prayer. He urges the listeners to take this moment to enjoy the presence of
God, forget about everything else and focus on the Lord. Around me, I hear

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people whispering prayers. The pastor says, ‘take this moment to sun-bathe in
his presence. Don’t mention your problems now. Just feel his presence. He is
your lover. For now, just love him.’ Some members of the praise team kneel,
but most of the congregation stands up. ‘There is a stillness now. Something
is happening. When there is a stillness like this, it means that burdens are
lifted’, the pastor says. The prayer blends into a song, as the pastor sings,
‘there is a stillness in the atmosphere. Come, lay your burden, he is here’, a
song by the famous American gospel singer Karen Clark.
Worship is a combination of singing songs of praise and praying out loud,
accompanied by the musicians. It is a characteristic of both Pentecostal and
evangelical churches to emphasise communal worship through song and
prayer (Zimmerling 2001:209–210). The beginning of this service is similar to
Tanya Luhrmann’s (2012a) description of the American evangelical experience.
Worship is about an intimate, intensely personal relationship with God and
Jesus. This relationship can be described in terms associated with romance, as
we hear from the pastor when he describes God as a lover. It is also a
relationship that is experienced in the body, as the audience whispers, speaks
in tongues, stands, kneels, raises hands – whatever feels the best way to
embody this relationship with God.
The church service soon shifts focus from worship to receiving prosperity.
As we have seen, according to the prosperity gospel, Christians are entitled to
material and this-worldly blessings. On this afternoon, the pastor starts to
quicken the pace of the service while the music continues in the background.
The reflective atmosphere of prayer and worship is broken as the service
moves on. ‘Somebody shout to the Lord!’ the pastor orders, and the
congregation cheers. ‘Celebrate your miracle today, before it comes. Celebrate
your marriage! Celebrate your engagement! Celebrate your car! Celebrate
your home!’ The congregation responds with enthusiastic amens to the
pastor’s words. ‘Maybe it looks crazy. Yet the Bible says God speaks, and
things that were not, they are there. Create something this afternoon!’ The
two girls sitting next to me, who had been observing the service without really
participating up until this point, take this moment to finally rise from their
seats. One of them seems to be crying.
Here, the pastor is encouraging the congregation to engage in so-called
‘positive confessions’, confident declarations of thus-far-unencountered
health and wealth. By speaking positively in this way, it is believed that what
is declared will come to pass. Speaking negatively, on the other hand, will
bring forth negative events. The congregation is encouraged to celebrate
their prosperity even before it has materialised; that is how certain their
entitlement to miracles is. In the contemporary world, the power of positive
thinking is often invoked, not only by neo-Pentecostal theologians but also by
writers in business spirituality and alternative medicine.

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After his prayer, the music stops and the pastor starts his sermon. The topic
this afternoon is the secrecy of evil inheritance. According to the pastor, some
people have a secret evil inheritance that causes them to be in poverty, disease
or have problems in relationships. Numbers 14 (King James Version) is
projected on a screen:
The Lord is longsuffering and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression,
and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children unto the third and fourth generation. (v. 14)

The pastor explains that if someone in your ancestry did something wrong, a
generational curse is laid over the family. ‘Some people say this doesn’t exist’,
he says, ‘but it’s right here in the Bible’. He continues explaining that God does
not look at a person’s past but at the future. He says:
‘You are not a prisoner of your past but a pioneer of your future! God relates to you
based on what you are destined to become. Shout, “I receive it!”’ (#150, participant
observation, 2015)

The congregation shouts. Even so, the pastor explains, do the actions of
grandparents affect people today. Divorce runs in some families; in others, it
is barrenness or polygamy, or almost everyone dies of AIDS.
This sermon combines ideas from several neo-Pentecostal preachers. That
a person can choose to be either a prisoner of their past or a pioneer of their
future is a view attributed to the author and motivational speaker Deepak
Chopra (1997:170). Another, slightly conflicting, notion is the ‘generational
curse’, the idea that involvement with magical practices is satanic and leaves
a psychic injury that can be inherited by children and grandchildren. This
notion was developed by Kurt E. Koch (1913–1987), a German Lutheran pastor
with a profound influence on American neo-Pentecostal theology. Koch’s
emphasis on the satanic makes him one of the forerunners of the ideology
behind the Satanism scare in the 1980s (Ellis 2000). The idea of the generational
curse finds wide acclaim in African neo-Pentecostal churches, where it
resonates with the traditional conviction that the ancestors can act in a
person’s life, bestowing blessings or harm, and also with the Christian notion
that these traditional spiritual forces are evil. It can also be used as an
explanation for poverty in Africa, claiming that the involvement in traditional
practices of (great-)grandparents who were not yet converted to Christianity
still curses their descendants with deprivation.
In his sermon, the pastor uses testimonies as cases to illustrate his point. In
Pentecostal and evangelical services, God becomes present not only in the
worship section of the service but also in personal statements that show what
God has done for a person (Zimmerling 2001:201). Through worship and
testimony, God’s presence and power are experienced. At this point, the
pastor calls the man to the front to give the testimony with which I started this
chapter. After the father has given his testimony of involvement in Satanism,

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the pastor prays for him. A part of the congregation is praying together with
the pastor, while another part is sitting back, maybe waiting for the altar call
and their chance for deliverance.
In his prayer for the father, the pastor is engaged in healing, in making
whole again what was broken. The cause of brokenness, whether this expresses
itself in physical problems, problems in relationships or even poverty, is the
interference of spiritual powers. Healing, in this neo-Pentecostal setting, is an
act of spiritual warfare, of fighting against demonic forces. The father was in
league with these forces of evil; he was a Satanist. But the demonic forces are
everywhere and may affect Christians as well as non-Christians. They are still
active right there in the service, as they prevent the father from saying
Christ’s name.
In the remainder of the service, members of the congregation are invited to
come to the front to be prayed over. The pastor first calls those to the front
who suffer from problems in their menstrual cycle and from mysterious
discharges that may be related to an illness. Women and men come to the
front, and the pastor, an assisting pastor and other deacons go from one to
the other, touching them briefly on the head or shoulder. The music starts
again, and the pastor sings his prayers. Then he says, ‘I see someone who has
a slight paralysis on the left side. Maybe it was a small stroke. If it is you, come
to the front’. A woman comes and the pastor prays for her. ‘I see a woman who
has been told there is a cervical incompetence. She even miscarried.’ After
some urging, two women come, and the pastor prays for them. Then he says:
‘I see a man with a problem with his testicles. I know this is a sensitive issue,
but please don’t be ashamed. Come to the front if I’m talking about you.’ (#150,
participant observation, 2015)

Three men come to the front.

These first altar calls are not related to topics touched by the pastor in this
service. What the pastor does here is an example of the role prophecy plays
in Pentecostal churches (Zimmerling 2001:165–176). The pastor, through his
connection with the Holy Spirit, claims to be able to discern which problems
should receive attention on this day. The notion of prophecy is of growing
importance in Zambia. Even in mainline churches, people talk about prophecy
and expect their pastors to give them prophecies (Kroesbergen-Kamps
2016:28). Many church leaders are called prophets and practise prophecy in
some form.
Although there are different opinions on what prophecy means, it is often
connected to the idea that God is actively involved in the world. He still speaks
to his chosen people, and miracles have not ceased to happen. Prophecy in
contemporary Zambia has roots in Christian theology as well as in traditional
practices (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2016:38–39). Like a traditional healer, a prophet

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can discern what is wrong with someone without hearing his complaints. The
pastor makes a final altar call:
‘Now, this is a difficult thing to say. I want to pray for those who think they may be
involved in blind Satanism, those who say that maybe these stories about Satanism
are about them.’ (#150, participant observation, 2015)

Young people, at least 30, including the girls sitting next to me, flock to the
front to be prayed over. A few of them, but not many, fall to the floor, where
they lie thrashing. This is called manifesting, after the demons that are manifest
in them. This final altar call is for those who may be involved in blind Satanism
is the most popular. A blind Satanist is not aware that he or she is initiated into
the ranks of evil, and they may inadvertently be causing harm to their friends
and relatives. The considerable response to this altar call shows that many,
mainly young people think this may be happening to them. After this, the
congregation dissolves; it is now after 17:00.
This description of a deliverance service in Lusaka gives an insight into the
workings of neo-Pentecostal Christianity in Africa. In this service, the
prominence of neo-Pentecostal healing and spiritual warfare theology is
obvious. It is an embodied faith in which the responses of the body are as
important or maybe even more important than the intellectual expositions of
the sermon’s theology. It is in this context that testimonies of Satanism happen.
Testimonies are presented in an environment where direct experience of both
the divine and the demonic is triggered. A positive, divine connection is
apparent when church members raise their hands in worship or speak in
tongues. This connection is believed to bring health and wealth to the believers.
On the other hand, the father who gives his testimony is a living example of a
negative, dangerous connection with the satanic, which fortunately can be
cut through the pastor’s prayers.
The service gives a taste of the place of testimonies in a church service and
of Satan in neo-Pentecostal theology. In the next section, we will investigate
the advent of narratives about Satanism a little deeper and see the influence
of not just American but specifically African theology on these narratives.

Narratives about Satanism and the influence of

transnational African churches
It is in the context of neo-Pentecostal Christianity that the first narratives
about Satanism spring up, first in West Africa and in the 1990s in Zambia as
well. According to some authors, these narratives are a spillover from the
Satanism scare that spread in the USA and the UK in the 1980s and 1990s
(Frankfurter 2006:3). The timing of the first African testimonies in the 1980s
fits with the Satanism scare, and news about accusations of Satanism could
very well have spread to Africa. However, the conclusion that narratives about

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Satanism in Africa are a direct effect of the Satanism scare is unlikely. Although
there are some surface similarities between the stories told in the Satanism
scare and the African testimonies of Satanism, mainly in that both speak about
a powerful organisation of Satanists, the differences are very obvious. The
African testimonies are placed in a religious, Christian setting, whereas the
Satanism scare was a relatively secular affair, with experts from secular
disciplines like psychologists and police officers instead of religious experts.
In the Satanism scare, the reports of satanic ritual abuse were set in day-care
centres, with evidence collected by therapists and child protection workers
instead of by pastors, as is the case in the African context. Ritual abuse of
children, a core motif in the Satanism scare, is absent in African testimonies.
Folklorists have noted that legends spread through channels or conduits of
people with shared beliefs and interests (Ellis 2000:10), but there is no clear,
direct conduit between the Satanism scare and the particular African churches
that stage testimonies.
If the Satanism scare is not the conduit that brought narratives about
Satanism to Africa, what is? Both phenomena likely have a common origin in
neo-Pentecostal theology. The Satanism scare and the African testimonies
probably have a shared root in the testimonies of ex-Satanists that started to
surface in the 1970s. Like the African testimonies of Satanism, these American
testimonies describe a worldwide, evil organisation where horrifying rituals
are practised and where participants can advance in rank. The early American
testimonies make sense in the neo-Pentecostal spiritual warfare theology, and
this same theology forms the basis of the testimonies of ex-Satanists in Africa.
Much of the spiritual warfare theology originates in the USA. However, we
live in a globalised world where preachers use television, radio and the Internet
to deliver their messages. What is popular in the USA does not stay there but
travels all over the world. In Africa, many neo-Pentecostal Christians perceive
themselves to be the target of attacks by demonic forces that need to be
overcome by spiritual warfare (Simojoki 2002). In African testimonies about
Satanism, the notion of spiritual warfare is often visible, although it is not
always explicitly addressed. For example, testimonies describe the tactics
used against Christians by the agents of evil. The enemy uses certain products
as spies to see which Christians are strong in faith (and therefore dangerous)
and which are weak and therefore easy to conquer. The Satanists also try to
weaken the forces of Christianity by preventing them from hearing the words
of their commander, the pastor.
Rather than being a direct spillover from the Satanism scare, narratives
about Satanism are likely to have reached Africa through the works and media
of neo-Pentecostal preachers. Together with the already present preoccupation
with the devil, this made a fertile ground for narratives about Satanism in
Africa. It would, however, be one-sided to lay all the agency with Western

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actors like missionaries and neo-Pentecostal preachers. African agents were

just as important in the development of the discourse surrounding Satanism.
In contemporary Africa, the neo-Pentecostal spiritual warfare theology has
been taken up by a host of African preachers who have access to the works of
American authors like John Wimber and Peter Wagner in local Christian
bookstores and through the Internet. These African preachers are not merely
recycling the theology of their Western counterparts. African neo-Pentecostal
Christianity is developing its own voice that travels through intra-African channels.
Nigeria is a nerve centre for this type of Christianity, with famous churches
like T.B. Joshua’s Synagogue Church of All Nations, David Oyedepo’s Living
Faith Church, which is internationally known as the Winners’ Chapel, Enoch
Adeboye’s Redeemed Church of God or Daniel Kolawole Olukoya’s Mountain
of Fire and Miracles Ministries.
One of the most popular TV channels in Zambia is probably Emmanuel TV,
a Christian television network founded by the neo-Pentecostal Nigerian pastor
T.B. Joshua. Nigerian pastors regularly speak at conferences and crusades in
other African countries, including Zambia (Burgess 2008:31). Some even
settle there and set up their own churches. Narratives about Satanism in Africa
started in Nigeria in the 1980s and came to Zambia in the 1990s. The particular
flavour of African neo-Pentecostalism to which the Nigerian pastors have
contributed includes, besides Satanism, a preoccupation with spiritual
husbands, marine spirits, unconscious initiation into evil and the importance
of dreams. In Zambia, all of these elements are present.
Many testimonies about Satanism speak about being married in the
underworld to a spiritual wife or husband.12 Having a spiritual husband or wife
is, however, not limited to those who have experienced Satanism. In Zambia, I
sometimes visited the Women’s Fellowship in a RCZ congregation in Lusaka.
When asked what their biggest spiritual challenge is today, the women
answered, ‘spiritual husbands and wives’. Having a spiritual husband or wife
typically causes men and women to remain single, or if they are already
married, it causes barrenness and other problems in this marriage. Other
problems in physical and mental health may also originate from having a
spiritual husband or wife. Spiritual husbands that trouble women are most
common, but spiritual wives occur as well. In traditional Zambian cosmology,
the relationship with spirits is sometimes described as a marriage. In types of
Christianity where all spirits are deemed inherently evil, these older notions of
interacting with the spirit world become threatening and harmful. In the
theology of spiritual warfare, spiritual husbands and wives are agents of the

12. In francophone Africa, the spiritual husband is known as ‘mari de nuit’, night-husband. This term is also used
in Zambia, next to the more common ‘spiritual husband’. See Tonda (2016) for a discussion of this phenomenon
in Gabon and Van de Kamp (2011) for Mozambique.

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devil, operating on a global scale. African spirits, Christian notions of evil and
neo-Pentecostal spiritual warfare theology come together in the image of the
spiritual husband.
As we have seen in the previous chapter, water spirits like Mami Wata have
become popular in West Africa. In neo-Pentecostal churches, these marine
spirits are strongly rejected and claimed to be agents of the devil (Meyer
1998a:765). Again, we see the process of demonising local, traditional spirits
at work. Marine spirits like Mami Wata have a prominent place in the testimonies
of ex-Satanists. The first well-known African testimony, Delivered from the
Powers of Darkness by Emmanuel Eni ([1987] 1996), describes how Eni
becomes a servant of the Queen of the Coast, with access to her marine
kingdom. The Queen of the Coast is not explicitly identified as Mami Wata, but
her attributes are very similar: the mermaid-like figure, the marine world full of
modern goods, the mirror, the snake and the prohibition of sexual relationships
in the physical world. In Zambian testimonies, the Queen of the Coast or
Queen of the Ocean is mentioned regularly. Although there are stories about
water spirits and entrances to an underground realm in central Africa (cf. Ellis
& Ter Haar 2004:52), it is unlikely that the image of a kingdom under the
ocean arises from local traditions in a landlocked country like Zambia.
I therefore see the mentioning of the Queen of the Coast in Zambian
testimonies as an influence of West African neo-Pentecostalism.
Another typical feature of Zambian neo-Pentecostalism that originates
with an African spiritual warfare theology is the idea that someone can be
initiated into Satanism unknowingly and unwillingly, which the pastor in the
deliverance sermon that I described called ‘blind Satanism’. Like the spiritual
husbands and wives, this belief has no clear precedent in non-African ideas
about Satanism. Famous American ex-Satanists like John Todd and Michael
Warnke made their own choice to become Satanists. Unconscious witchcraft
is a notion that has a long history in Africa. Evans-Pritchard, in his famous
study on witchcraft, magic and oracles amongst the Azande, defines witchcraft
as an innate ability to harm others through the psychic force of one’s conscious
or unconscious intentions. The idea that one can be a witch and harm others,
even unknowingly, is not unheard of in Zambia. The related notion of ‘blind’ or
‘unconscious’ witchcraft is known in African neo-Pentecostal circles (cf. Pype
2011:295). A blind witch meets his or her colleagues at night to plan attacks on
churches and Christians. These meetings take place in the spirit world and are
therefore only remembered as dreams or a feeling of tiredness in the morning.
The blind witch is not aware of her activities at night or of her responsibility
for the harm caused. It is only a small step from this blind witchcraft to
unconscious initiation into Satanism.
Whether someone is afraid to be a blind witch or Satanist or is troubled by
a spiritual husband or wife, dreams are important indicators that something is

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not right. Traditionally in Zambia, dreams are interpreted as messages from

the spirit world (Udelhoven 2013). Dreaming about food, eating and drinking
is, in contemporary Zambia, interpreted as something evil. Other significant
dreams that point to evil and Satanism are dreams about snakes, about getting
married and about nursing a baby. This interpretation of dreams is not typically
Zambian but can be traced, like the Queen of the Coast and the ideas about
blind witchcraft, to Nigerian neo-Pentecostal churches. In her discussion of
Nigerian Pentecostalism, Ruth Marshall describes manuals for dream
interpretation in which dreaming of water or eating is interpreted as a sign of
demonic activity (2009:150). The idea that there are dangers in dreaming
about eating food is found on several African Christian websites but rarely
outside of Africa.
Together, neo-Pentecostal theology and these specifically African Christian
notions form a web of stories in which the testimonies about Satanism make
sense. Contemporary Zambian Christianity builds upon the theology of early
missionaries in the rejection of all traditional spirits. It is also influenced by
later neo-Pentecostal theologies that emphasise a spiritual war between good
and evil, taking place on a worldwide scale as well as within the individual. On
the surface, ideas about Satanism in Zambia can be related to this Western
Christian tradition. To a greater extent, however, the Christian theology behind
the Zambian testimonies about Satanism is an African construction. Elements
like the Queen of the Coast, spiritual husbands and wives, blind witchcraft and
the negative evaluation of eating in dreams are found almost exclusively in
African testimonies. The connection to older practices of killing to become
rich or powerful that was discussed in the previous chapter is another African
element in the Christian discourse of Satanism.

Conclusion
In the introduction to this chapter, we saw a father who confessed to being a
Satanist because he had sacrificed his children to gain success in his business.
In the previous chapter, we have seen the traditional notions behind that idea.
But why was the father whose testimony I described in the introduction to this
chapter called a Satanist instead of a witch or a practitioner of kukhwima or
other local forms of rejected magic?
In this chapter, I have traced the figure of Satan in Western Christianity,
where he was conceptualised as the mortal enemy of God. This idea waxed
and waned, being important in the Renaissance and during the witch hunts,
losing some of its relevance after the Enlightenment and coming back in full
force with neo-Pentecostal spiritual warfare theology. In Africa, the devil
became associated with African religious traditions. One might say that these
traditions stayed alive because they were taken up in Christian cosmology.
Ancestors, spirits, gods, witches – they now all fight in the leagues of the devil,

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and involvement with these traditional religious figures is one of the things
that is conceptualised as Satanism.
I have shown in this chapter that Satanism in Zambia is not merely imported
from Western Christianity, nor is it purely a further development of Zambian
ideas and practices such as those discussed in the previous chapter. Zambian
neo-Pentecostal ideas about Satan are highly influenced by West African
theologians and preachers. It forms what Birgit Meyer (2015:195) calls a
‘constant recuperation and reworking of globally circulating ideas and images’.
Beliefs and rituals do not stay the same forever. In the embrace of a Christian
reinterpretation of the spirit world, local and transnational narratives and
traditions are transformed and become part of a global narrative. The global
narrative that serves as a framework for stories about Satanism is strongly
influenced by modern spiritual warfare theology. This theology with Western
roots has gained worldwide momentum since the 1980s. It is, however, not
necessarily a Western message. African Christians are not mere receptacles
for a foreign gospel; they add and adjust, for example, by giving traditional
African spirits a place in their theology, albeit in a demonised form.
In this and the previous chapter, I have tried to understand the discourse of
Satanism by referring to two sets of narratives that live in Zambian society.
African worldviews and Christianity are important contexts for understanding
narratives about Satanism. There are, however, elements in testimonies that
do not seem to be related to either of these contexts. Why is it, for example,
that so many testimonies speak about products made in the underworld? And
why is Satanism such an urban phenomenon? These are questions that I will
address in the next chapter, which explores the relationship between narratives
about Satanism and Zambian ideas about modernity.

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Dreams of modernity turning

into nightmares of Satanism

Introduction
My friends and students in Zambia knew that I was studying narratives about
Satanism and were on the lookout for more testimonies to add to my collection.
I received audio files with Naomi’s testimony both from one of my students
and from a friend in Lusaka. The friend even had two versions of her testimony:
an interview in which Naomi tells her story, guided by questions from the
interviewer, and a narration of the testimony in which only Naomi’s voice
is heard.
At the time of the testimony, Naomi is 17 years old. She describes what
happened to her between 2004 and 2007. Naomi narrates what she had to do
as a Satanist. First, demonic spirits that dwell in her change her character:
‘The first spirit: I was stubborn. I was like a lion. I used to fight. I never used to care;
a man or a woman – I used to beat. The second spirit was a spirit of prostitution.
I used to feel like wherever I am, I can have thousands and thousands of men. The
devil changed me into a very beautiful girl. I was admired by every man passing,
including women.’ (#41b, Naomi’s recorded testimony, 2012)

Then Naomi speaks about the underworld, Satan’s domain:

‘They taught me how to speak English, because I was somebody who never used to
speak English. They took me to the Atlantic Ocean. There I met my fellow youths.

How to cite: Kroesbergen-Kamps, J 2022, ‘Dreams of modernity turning into nightmares of Satanism’, in
Speaking of Satan in Zambia: Making cultural and personal sense of narratives about Satanism, in HTS Religion
& Society Series, vol. 14, AOSIS Books, Cape Town, pp. 95–145. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2022.BK373.04

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There were church elders, church deacons and pastors were found. Ministers and
presidents of this world were seen there.’ (#41b, Naomi’s recorded testimony, 2012)

In the underworld, satanic products are made:

‘There are foods that you can eat, and it will possess you. There are these what we
call half chickens. Those half chickens, it’s a baby, turned into a chicken. When you
are eating that chicken, the devil celebrates and says, ‘Yeah, this person is helping
us eat people.’ But for that, because you don’t know, God will always forgive you.
[…] There are sausages, whereby you people love to eat, Hungarian to be sure.
There is original Hungarian and there is human Hungarian. They grind an innocent
person and make this person a piece of meat or a sausage. There is jam. That jam,
it is blood, but not all of it. They make that jam sweeter than the real jam. […] That
soap you use; it’s changing your skin to a demon’s. That soap, it’s a baby’s nose.
And the whole tube of it that you use, that tube is the baby. Your own baby, who
passed away, days ago.’ (#41b, Naomi’s recorded testimony, 2012)

In the interview, Naomi speaks about the wigs and weaves that many African
women use:
‘Those same wigs, they will influence somebody to do something evil. That is why
mostly when a Christian puts on that, the devil counts that person as already one of
his.’ (#41a, Naomi’s recorded testimony, 2011)

This is a danger, especially for children:

‘Because that child, you have plaited her wigs […] She is growing up, remember.
And the way she is growing up, the more that you plait that child, she’ll be in time a
Satanist. You see? When she looks in the mirror, she doesn’t see herself. She sees a
demon, beautifully decorated, and she thinks that she looks like that. […] That child
will think, “Ah, these things look good on me”. The next time, they will come to you
and cry, “Mommy, plait my hair”. And the more she will be saying again and again,
and the more the demons will enter into that child. And that is where you will find
the child, if she was humble, she will become too stubborn. She was respecting the
daddy, but she changes immediately, doing such strange things that you say, “This
child [...] something wrong.” But you won’t discover what is wrong with the child.
But what is wrong is the wig that influences the child. One of the days, she will be
one of the demons.’ (#41a, Naomi’s recorded testimony, 2011)

In the previous chapters, I have discussed what makes stories about Satanism
plausible in Zambia. Their relation to traditional ideas about witchcraft and
illicit accumulation and their embeddedness in the Christian, neo-Pentecostal
frame of spiritual warfare makes it plausible that Satanists might exist, at least
to Zambian Christians with a Pentecostal slant. But stories about Satanism are
not only plausible, they are also popular narratives to share with friends and
neighbours, in church or at the marketplace, as my student and my friend
shared Naomi’s testimony with me. In this chapter, I will turn to the question
of what makes stories about Satanism not only plausible but also so popular
at this specific time in history. Why do people want to hear Naomi speak
about how Satanism can make one stubborn and aggressive and how innocent
consumer goods like processed foods and cosmetics can become an entry
into this satanic world?

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The general theory about narratives about evil Others that was introduced in
Chapter 1 forms an important context for these questions. As I have argued,
stories about Satanism are a form of narratives about evil Others, in which
ideas about society are inverted and projected upon a group that is seen as
wholly different. These narratives often arise in times of social upheaval and
cultural change. The specific inversions that are used in narratives can often
teach us something about the social practices, values and roles that are
experienced as under threat or vulnerable.
There are many examples of studies that explore the relationships between
stories that are popular at a given time and what they say about society. In The
global grapevine, Gary Alan Fine and Bill Ellis (2010) explore stories about
terrorism, immigration and trade, and they explain how these rumours and
legends resonate with the erosion of trust in an era of globalisation. Speaking
about Africa, Julien Bonhomme (2016) has written about the story of the sex
thief who steals genitalia with an innocent handshake, interpreting it as an
expression of, again, a growing mistrust influenced by urbanisation in Africa.
In their famous article on occult economies, Comaroff and Comaroff (1999)
explain how narratives about zombies illustrate the exploitation that is felt by
the poor population in a neoliberal system.
In the 1990s, a mode of interpretation became popular that related narratives
about witchcraft to the changes brought on by processes of modernisation.
This so-called ‘modernity of witchcraft approach’ developed in response to the
widespread expectation that witchcraft would die out when Africa became
more Westernised. This expectation did not materialise. On the contrary, it
seemed that people were starting to speak more about witchcraft, even in
places that one would expect to be touched most by the project of modernisation,
such as universities and parliaments. Peter Geschiere’s (1997) book The
modernity of witchcraft, together with Comaroff and Comaroff’s (1999) article
on occult economies, heralded a shift in perspective. Instead of disappearing
under the influence of modernity, witchcraft beliefs were now seen as
responding to the particular conditions of modernity developing in Africa.
The witchcraft and modernity approach has been criticised especially for
its use of the notion of modernity. As Sally Falk Moore (1999) notes, Jean and
John Comaroff do not dwell on how to define the concept in their article.
Several authors argue that, besides being broad and ill-defined, modernity is
a concept that originates with researchers rather than with informants in the
field (see Englund & Leach 2000:236). Maia Green and Simeon Mesaki
(2005:372), for example, state that ‘the modern as a category applied to social
practice is essentially a category applied by us analysts rather than by our
informants’.
The critics are right to say that modernity has often been used as a blanket
term and that an analysis that focuses on specific aspects of modernity is

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more fruitful. In current studies on witchcraft and related phenomena, these

are seen as a part of contemporary living in Africa. Often, these phenomena
‘operate in contexts affected by modernity, like the city, the market economy
and the process of coming-of-age’ (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2020a:865). Rather
than using the broad term modernity as an analytical category, contemporary
authors about witchcraft and related phenomena emphasise how local notions
of witchcraft are related to the ideas about kinship, power, equality and
personhood that live on the ground.
It would be a mistake to believe that ordinary Africans do not know the
word modernity or have no associations connected to that word. In Zambia,
the term modernity is associated with development and becoming more like
the West. As I have argued previously (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2014), Zambians
have an evolutionist understanding of modernity (cf. Hansen 1999:207).
Anthropologist James Ferguson (1999) describes this metanarrative of
modernity as follows:
Modernisation theory had become a local tongue, and sociological terminology
and folk classifications had become disconcertingly intermingled in informants’
intimate personal narratives. […] That which once presented itself as explicans was
beginning to make itself visible as explicandum. (p. 84)

Modernity has become an emic concept, a term used in the field as well as in
the works of academic scholars. But as an emic term, modernity has
associations that the term may not have in scholarly literature. In this chapter,
I will discuss how narratives about Satanism are related to an emic Zambian
perspective on modernity.
How are narratives about witchcraft, zombies, vampires or Satanists related
to modernity? In the witchcraft and modernity approach, the relation
sometimes seems to be allegorical. ‘Zombie production is thus an apt image
of the inflating occult economies of postcolonial Africa, of their ever more
brutal forms of extraction’, write Comaroff and Comaroff (1999:299). Luise
White (2000:34), in her study of vampire narratives, states, ‘I think bloodsucking
by public employees is a fairly obvious metaphor for state-sponsored
extractions’. When people speak about these evil others, the Comaroffs and
White seem to say they do so as metaphors for their experience of inequality
and unfair profit, a ‘metacommentary on the challenges of modernity’
(Moore & Sanders 2001:14).
Several scholars have criticised this allegorical conception of narratives
about evil Others like witches, zombies and vampires (see, e.g. Marshall
2009:28–30; Smith 2019:71). Adam Ashforth (2005:114) summarises the
criticism as follows: the idea that these narratives are allegorical ‘suffers from
the singular defect […] of treating statements that Africans clearly intend as
literal, or factual, as if they were meant to be metaphorical or figurative’.
People who share stories about evil Others are not poets who have the

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intention of using metaphors to express a deep sentiment or conviction. The

eagerness to interpret elements of a narrative that are hard to understand
with Western ears as symbols or metaphors betrays an inherent ethnocentricity.
For people who grow up in a society where witches and other agents of evil
are a part of reality, these characters do not need any reinterpretation. They
are just accepted at face value (cf. Kroesbergen-Kamps 2020a:870).
Perhaps an example can help to make this point clearer. If people start
building fences around their houses, an observer may say that this says
something about a perception of insecurity, the importance of the home as a
safe space, creating clear boundaries between private and public spaces, or a
lifestyle that is less oriented towards communal living and is more individualistic.
All of these things make interesting hypotheses for further research. But for
the people who built the fence around their house, the main reason is not to
make a point about private spaces and individualism but to keep criminals
out. Similarly, people in Zambia are afraid of witches, zombies and Satanists
because to them, they (like criminals for the one who builds a fence) are a real
threat. Tensions surrounding economic inequality are real too, but stories
about witches, zombies and Satanists cannot be reduced to these things. The
intention with which narratives are shared should be acknowledged so that
stories can be understood on their own terms as well.
I will give another example of a story that one of my former students
shared. He said:
‘There is a couple in my congregation. The husband, because of the current
economic climate, he went to see a certain man. This man, he told him that everyone
can become rich within 14 days, but that he would have to do something, sacrifice
someone, that is. The man was surprised, and he said that he would think about it.
He went home and thought about whom he might sacrifice. After some time, he
thought of his wife. Now, the father to the wife is a powerful witch. Somehow, he
heard about the husband’s plans to sacrifice his wife and he thought to himself,
“That is my daughter. I will lose her if she dies.” So he used his powers to take the
wife away. The wife, she just disappeared. As the minister, I was told, “One of your
members is missing”. So we prayed for her. Later, they found her in Malawi, where
she was kept in a room in a house. The people in that house said, “We know how
she came here and we have agreed to keep her”. You see, these things are really
happening.’ (#151, interview with Rev. Mwanza, 28 August 2016)

The main motifs in this story are familiar from Chapter 2: spiritual forces are
active in the world and can be accessed through spiritual experts and sacrifice.
The last sentence shows that the narrator intends his story to be taken as a
truth and not as an extended metaphor.
If it is not a metaphor or a symbolic comment, then what does this story
show about Zambian society? Firstly, it reveals day-to-day life: people are
married, possibly not without tensions; some fathers love and want to protect
their daughters; and life is difficult in the current economic climate. This is the
world Zambians are living in. Beyond that, what strikes me in the narrative is

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how the wife is absent. The story is about her, but she has no active role. Her
husband wants to sacrifice her to get rich; her father spirits her away; and
then she is kept in a house in Malawi. Men are the ones acting in this story and
the woman could just as well have been a possession, an object. If the
references to the woman are substituted with an object, such as a TV, the
story would still make sense. A man wanted to earn money. Someone told him
that to do that, he would have to make a sacrifice and give something up. The
man thought about his TV. His father heard about his plans and thought, ‘But
I have given him this TV. I can’t let this happen!’ So he took the TV away. Later
it was found in a room in a house in Malawi.
The story teaches me something about the place and worth of women in
the Zambian worldview. Now, the point of the story is not to say something
about women. My student is not symbolically trying to express or even criticise
social gender norms. But still: the narrative has a woman-shaped hole. It can
only be told in this way if the narrator has a certain worldview, a way of
experiencing the world. In this chapter, we will see narratives about Satanism
as stories that express lived realities, but not in a symbolic way.
As we have seen in Chapter 1, there exists a narrative tradition of narratives
about evil Others that is characterised by images of cannibalism, infanticide
and sexual perversity. These stories shed light on what is happening in the
society in which they are told more than they give us information about
the imputed group of evil Others. In this chapter, I will use both testimonies
and newspaper articles about Satanism to establish what we can learn about
changes in Zambian society from the narratives about Satanism.
To establish which changes are addressed in these narratives, I will start by
describing the main associations of the danger that is presented in testimonies.
In testimonies, the things that are deemed satanic are predominantly
associated with the urban world and the spoils of modernity, as I will argue.
Next, I will discuss some possible changes in society that relate to urbanisation
and modernity, namely anonymity and shifts in the relationships with the
extended family and within the nuclear family. These changes have been
widely discussed in academic scholarship, and they have some bearing on the
testimonies and accusations of Satanism but are still unsatisfactory. In the
final part of the chapter, I will introduce the change that resonates most with
the narratives about Satanism, namely a worry about the moral consequences
of becoming modern.

The dangers of the urban world

Narratives about Satanism describe a group of evil Others who threaten
Zambian society with their actions. In this chapter, I investigate where this
threat is perceived to come from. As I will argue in this section, the threat is
overwhelmingly related to the world of the city, not only in the spaces that are

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described as dangerous in the testimonies but also in the professions that are
associated with Satanism in accusations reported in the media. Before I turn
to the testimonies and accusations, I will introduce the place of the city in the
Zambian imagination.

Urban imaginaries
In 2020, almost 45% of the Zambian population lived in cities (Statista 2021).
Urbanisation in Zambia grew particularly quickly between 1960 and 1975,
when economic development related to mining led to employment
opportunities and the growth of urban centres on the Copperbelt. After a long
slump in the price of copper during the 1980s and 1990s, Lusaka established
itself as Zambia’s main urban centre. When people nowadays speak about
‘the city’, it is the capital of Lusaka that they are most likely thinking of. In 2010,
1.7 million people lived in Lusaka, more than three times as many as in Zambia’s
second-largest city, Kitwe (World Population Review 2021). Currently, the
population of Lusaka is estimated at 3 million (CIA World Factbook 2022).
To the residents of Lusaka, amenities and wealth are deceptively close by.
In advertisements and on huge billboards along the main roads, everyone can
see what money can buy. For many Africans who migrate to urban areas, the
city is a symbol of hope and a chance for a better life for themselves and their
families. In 2010, 42% of the population in Lusaka Province was born somewhere
else. Many of these migrants from within Zambia (38.7%) move from one
urban area to another, for example, from the Copperbelt to Lusaka. Migration
from rural to urban areas (30%) is very common as well (Central Statistical
Office 2013:12). Statistics of living conditions show that the circumstances in
the city, at least for some, are truly better. In urban areas, the average household
income is three times higher than in rural areas, and the proportion of the
population living beneath the poverty line in urban areas is 23.4% against
76.6% in rural areas (Central Statistical Office 2018:32). The prevalence of
underweight children under the age of five is the lowest in Lusaka Province,
and the proportion of the population that uses an improved drinking water
source is the highest (Central Statistical Office 2015a).
At first glance, the city seems a positively charged place, but a closer look
shows that life is not always easy in the city. In Lusaka, 70% of the population
lives in slums, often in insecure housing and with a lack of infrastructure and
basic services (UN Habitat 2007:18). In these slums, which in Lusaka are
called compounds, 90% of the population uses pit latrines, which are often
shared by multiple households (UN Habitat 2007:13). The compounds are
generally overcrowded and vulnerable to airborne diseases. Poor drainage
combined with a lack of waste collection services makes Lusaka’s compounds
vulnerable to contagious diseases like cholera, dysentery and typhoid as
well, especially in the rainy season. Combined with these problems, quality

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health care services are still unaffordable and thereby inaccessible for the
majority of Lusaka’s residents. The prospect of wealth may be visibly close
in the city, but it remains out of the grasp of many of its residents. For many
Zambians, life is a struggle to make ends meet, to find the money for school
fees, medical bills, funerals and other emergencies.
Statistics give an initial impression of urban life in Zambia. But such numbers
struggle to capture the lived experiences of ordinary residents of a city like
Lusaka. How do they make sense of their fortunes in the city? Which beliefs
help them in that project? The city is not just a specific place on the map; it is
also an idea, a meaningful imaginary space. In the Zambian image of the city,
it is a place of contrast between desires and anxieties, between expectations
and the real threats of everyday living. While numbers give us valuable
quantitative information about the city, it is the stories that people tell that
help us to understand how they imagine and conceptualise the world in which
they live.
Religious images play an important role in the way people make sense of
their environment. In the history of sociology, cities have often been associated
with modernisation and, by association, with secularisation. But urban Africa
is not a secular place (cf. Hancock & Srinivas 2008:620). As Robert Orsi (1999)
argues in his introduction to Gods of the City, the city is imbued with religious
meanings. Religious people ‘have remapped the city, superimposing their
coordinates of meaning on official cartographies’ (Orsi 1999:47). Neo-
Pentecostal Christianity in particular, with its emphasis on achieving prosperity
and spiritual warfare, thrives in African cities. According to the popular neo-
Pentecostal prosperity gospel, wealth is within reach of those whose faith is
strong enough. In the city, with its abundant advertising and the proximity of
riches, this message is feasible. If wealth does not materialise, this is blamed
on adverse spiritual powers like demons or other agents of Satan. In the
Pentecostal imagination, the city is a place where blessings can manifest
themselves but where the flow of blessings from God’s hands can also be
blocked by the forces of evil.
As we have seen in the previous chapter, neo-Pentecostal Christianity is
one of the webs of stories that help people to make sense of narratives about
Satanism. Let us now turn to those narratives and see what they have to say
about the city and its inhabitants.

Spaces of evil
Narratives about Satanism imply that the world we see around us is not the
only world. Most ex-Satanists describe experiences of visiting another realm,
generally referred to as ‘the underworld’ or ‘the kingdom of darkness’. Some
describe this world as under the ground, and they speak about tunnels and

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staircases leading down to get to this place. In many narratives, however, this
underworld is located not under firm ground but in the ocean. This is in line
with the first, West African, descriptions of this realm, such as Emmanuel Eni’s
testimony. That Zambia is a landlocked country without direct access to an
ocean does not seem to matter. One ex-Satanist, Felista, recounts her first
visit to this place, where she is accompanied by other Satanists (in Udelhoven
2021):
I was given some perfume to spray my body. I sprayed my body and then we
disappeared. I found myself near the ocean. […] They talked to me, saying, ‘Welcome
to our kingdom.’ Then I was told to step two steps forward. I walked in the water
and then I sank. I went inside the water. There, I found a world like Earth. (p. 380)

The world underwater is a dry world and is in many respects similar to the
normal world. It is also an urban world. As Naomi says when the interviewer
asks her what it is like under the sea, ‘I can say it is a place like Lusaka’. Like
Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia, the underworld has schools, universities,
industrial areas, hospitals, roads and houses. The underworld is equipped with
modern technologies that one may find in urban areas. Several testimonies
speak about monitors, big screens and tracing computers, from which the
inhabitants of the normal world are held under surveillance. There seem to be
no villages, huts or rural areas with mountains and bushland in the underworld
that is described in testimonies of Satanists.
Like the underworld, the descriptions of the ordinary world in the
testimonies of Satanism are urban as well. From the discussion about the
advent of the idea of Satan in Africa in the previous chapter, one might
expect that places related to African traditions are primarily deemed satanic
because they are related to a pre-Christian and demonised past. To some
extent, this is true. Rivers and graveyards, which are traditionally seen as
places with a strong connection to the spirit world (cf. Pype 2015b:80), are
mentioned in many testimonies as places where Satanists gather or where
they enter the underworld. Traditional healers and their medicines open a
connection to the satanic realm. As, for example, ex-Satanist Eve says, ‘That
witchdoctor you go to, that person, before he prophesies, he first consults
with the devil’ (#37a, Eve’s recorded testimony, 2013). These connections
are, however, mentioned only briefly, in passing. Surprisingly, the village is
not a location that is related to Satanism. Villages are mentioned only a few
times in testimonies. The real emphasis of testimonies about Satanism is not
on the traditional or the rural but on the marketplace and the supermarket,
the road, the hospitals and schools, the home and the church.
These satanic localities in the testimonies can hardly be avoided. One needs
to go to the marketplace or the supermarket, but the things bought there may
be produced in the underworld and, as we will see later in this chapter, they
may be a threat to your health and home. On the roads, accidents happen that

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are caused by Satanists who want to sacrifice innocent lives. A friend at school
may be a Satanist who is set on initiating you. Not even hospitals are safe, as
Gideon Mulenga Kabila explains (How I was set free from Voodoo and
witchcraft 2007):
I used to move from hospital to hospital. […] I could steal somebody’s face and
impersonate him. Going to the hospital, I became like the doctor. Then I would get a
syringe and go from bed to bed, injecting people. At the end of the day, 30 people
could die at the same time in the hospital. The doctors couldn’t even understand
why these people have died. They would say, ‘But the doctor was just here’, not
knowing that it was a [Satanist]. (n.p.)

Doctors may be Satanists, out to harm their patients. It seems that everything
that makes a city urban – the presence of facilities in the spheres of business,
education and health care, as well as its infrastructure – is tainted by the
presence of the devil.
Even the church is not safe. Several ex-Satanists describe attempts to
attack churches. In ‘true’ churches, they are burnt and have to flee. But,
according to the testimonies, many churches are not ‘true’, and these are
vulnerable to attacks from Satanists. There are many examples of this in the
testimonies. I quote Gideon Mulenga Kabila again (n.d.:25–26):
Some church buildings are meeting places for agents of the devil. Not all the church
buildings, but some, that is why they fail to pray for a long period of time and lack
the guidance of the Holy Spirit. […] These are some of the things that can help you
to identify whether your church is dedicated to the devil or not:
•• people dosing during the preaching of the word because of the demon of
heaviness;
•• absconding from church service before time;
•• failing to participate in church programs;
•• lack of concentration during worshipping and praising time;
•• failing to give when it is offering time.
When you see all these signals in your church then you must know that there is
much to be done. These church buildings are dedicated [to the devil] due to lack
of intercessors. The intercessors are the backbones of the church; a church without
intercessors is dead. (pp. 25–26)

Some churches have become – like hospitals, schools, shops and roads,
connected to the underworld.
Of course, churches, hospitals, schools, shops and roads exist in rural areas
as well. But in the Zambian imagination, they are specifically an urban thing.
The connection between Satanism and the city is even clearer when we look
at the professions that are commonly associated with Satanism.

Satanic professions
Not only urban spaces are connected to Satanism. Looking at 80 newspaper
articles that report accusations of Satanism, there are also certain urban

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professions associated with Satan’s powers. If accusations make the news, it

means they are somehow newsworthy, for example, if they lead to riots or if
they concern rumours about famous people such as politicians. Learning
about accusations from newspapers is limited. The media filter leads to
disproportionate attention towards the most dramatic cases and does not
indicate how often accusations are made (Bonhomme 2016:6). However, the
sample of accusations of Satanism from Zambian news outlets gives an idea
of the sectors of life, which are most commonly connected with Satanism,
namely politics, governmental organisations, religion, business and education.
In this section, I will discuss these sectors and give examples of the accusations
that are referred to in newspaper articles.
The sector that is mentioned most often in news articles is politics. In 28%
of the newspaper articles, accusations against politicians are mentioned.
In another publication (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2020c), I have described these
accusations against politicians in detail. To summarise, accusations against
politicians are generally not related to specific events. They are made
as political statements by fellow politicians or by newspapers related to
particular political parties. Both the ruling party, which during the time in
which the articles were collected was the PF, and the main opposition party,
UPND, are accused of involvement in Satanism. The leader of the UPND,
Hakainde Hichilema, who was elected in 2021 as the seventh president of
Zambia, is especially often linked to Satanism. Accusations of Satanism against
politicians seem to be related to political strife in times of elections. Especially
during that time, the media choose to publish or repeat accusations of human
sacrifice and involvement in Satanism against politicians. These accusations
fit well with the worldview described in Chapter 2, in which worldly success is
sometimes connected to illicit spiritual support.
Related to the accusations against politicians are the accusations against
governmental development organisations, which are mentioned in eight of
the 80 articles. These accusations are generally a rural phenomenon. Three of
the eight incidents are related to projects aimed at improving health care.
Others target registration projects, such as the registration of subscriber
identification module (SIM) cards and voter registration. Government funds
aimed at sustainable development, such as a social cash transfer for the poor,
a youth development fund and an e-voucher system for farmers are also
related to Satanism by concerned citizens.
In the case of the suspicions related to health care, people fear that they
will be harmed or that their blood will be used by Satanists. Several academic
articles about health care programs in Zambia refer to these fears (see
Geisler & Pool 2006; Peeters Grietens et al. 2014; Schumaker & Bond 2008).
In other newspaper articles, the fear is related to having your name or number
registered. This is interpreted as either an initiation into Satanism or as related
to the number of the Beast mentioned in Revelation. In the case of the mobile

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health care team, the rumours are related to the accusations towards politicians
discussed earlier. Southern Province, where this incident took place, is one of
the strongholds of the UPND. Mistrust of the PF government made the claim
that the PF would try to prevent them from voting in the 2016 general elections
plausible.
A third sector that is affected by accusations of Satanism is religion. Of the
80 articles, 18 deal with accusations against pastors and churches. Unlike the
accusations against government projects, these accusations against pastors
and churches are mainly an urban phenomenon, with examples in Lusaka and
the cities of the Copperbelt Province. There are three distinct configurations
of accusations visible in the articles: accusations made by the community in
which the church resides, accusations made by other pastors and accusations
made by church members.
If accusations of Satanism made by members of the community against a
pastor or a church in that community reach the media, it is often because
violence was involved. In 2011, violence erupted in Chongwe district, a rural
area just outside of Lusaka, against a religious group that had settled there.
Banda (2011) reports:
Angry villagers set ablaze houses in a compound alleged to be home for suspected
‘Satanists’ in Kanakantapa area in Chongwe district, an incident in which three
members of a named church at the heart of the controversy, were seriously injured.
The houses were allegedly set ablaze yesterday around 11:00 hours, following
allegations that the members of the religious group practised Satanism and were
terrorizing the villagers in the surrounding areas. (n.p.)

This group, known as Goshali, an acronym for ‘God shall live (forever)’, came
to live on a farm in Chongwe in the late 1990s (Banda 2011). During the national
census of 2000, it emerged that the members of the religious community did
not want to be counted. They did not have national registration cards and
refused medical treatment and vaccinations. Children of the community were
home-schooled. Tensions with the surrounding villagers intensified when the
Goshali distributed a list of 35 commands to the neighbouring households
and villages, expecting the wider community to adhere to them. According to
Emmanuel Banda (2011), a local expert, the list of rules was introduced
as follows:
Neighbours and friends living near the Goshali home, due to the Goshali’s
unstoppable greatness, you are ordered to obey these rules starting from the day
one receives them onwards. The Goshali wants to see decent neighbours who are
ethically principled according to these rules. (n.p.)

The rules contain moral guidelines for marriages, conflicts and home
management, and they forbid brewing beer, working in the fields at certain
times, witchcraft and Rastafarianism (amongst others). They also give strict
decrees about registering the names of surrounding residents and reporting
visitors to the Goshali community. A week later, a farmer was assaulted when

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he worked his field at a prohibited time. After this, the surrounding villagers
turned against the Goshali, accusing them of Satanism, attacking them and
burning their houses. After the riots, the members of the religious group were
forcibly relocated to the Southern Province, where they hailed from (Bureau
of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor 2012).
The accusations against a church in Zambia that elicited the most media
and scholarly attention were made against the UCKG in 1998 as well as in
2005. The UCKG is a neo-Pentecostal church of Brazilian origin that is
spreading rapidly in southern Africa. The accusations against this church fall
outside of the sample discussed here, which covers the period between 2011
and 2016. Unlike the articles in my sample, the accusations against the UCKG
were internationally reported, for example, by the BBC. In both 1998 and 2005,
the church was officially banned after allegations that the church was involved
in satanic practices, a ban that was later revoked (Hackett 2003:199). Similar
accusations have been made against this church in South Africa (Comaroff &
Comaroff 1999:291–292).
In some instances, pastors accuse each other of involvement in Satanism.
In 2016, Pastor Ian Chipuka of Christ of Fire Embassy Ministries in Lusaka
accused another Lusaka pastor, named Prophet Anointed Andrew (also known
as Seer 1), who seemed to be successful with his Christ Freedom Ministries.
According to Pastor Chipuka, Prophet Anointed Andrew told him to do some
rituals, which he later recognised to be satanic, if he wanted to be successful
with his church as well. The accusations of Satanism were the start of a series
of accusations of unpastoral conduct against Prophet Anointed Andrew.
Within two weeks, 12 women came forward saying that the prophet slept with
them and forced them to have abortions. A month later, he was arrested on
suspicion of defiling a 14-year-old girl. He was released, but later that year
Prophet Anointed Andrew was banned from Zambia by the Ministry of
Religious Affairs. In 2020, Anointed Andrew again made the news when he
recorded several video messages from his new residence in South Africa,
stating that in 2016 he had given powers to politicians that he now would
take back.
A final type of accusation against pastors comes from church members
themselves. A clear example is that of Bishop Haggai Mumba of Rehoboth
Naphtali Mkadesh church. In December 2014, church members wrote a letter
to the Registrar of Societies, the government body that oversees the
compulsory registration of religious associations, asking for the deregistration
of the church. There seems to have been a growing sense that the teachings
and practices of Bishop Mumba were not biblical and even satanic. Newspaper
Lusaka Voice (2013) summarised the accusations:
The former congregants accuse the 35-year-old prophet of instructing his members
to shave their private parts, armpits and heads and take the hair to a mountain

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near Mwana Mainda on the Kafue-Mazabuka road. Another accusation […] is that
members were told to contribute money and leave it on the mountain at Mwana
Mainda. Another claim is that members were told to buy rings and instructed to
wear them on the middle finger as Satanists do. (n.p.)

After these accusations, Bishop Mumba was banned from practising ministry.
After a few months, however, he was reinstated at the Rehoboth church.
The accusations from (former) church members point to the presence of
tensions and conflicts in the religious community, although the newspaper
articles do not give enough information to allow speculations about these
conflicts.
Another sector that is often associated with Satanism is business. Ten of
the 80 articles describe these accusations. Accusations against businessmen
are generally made by the community in which they live and often result in
violence, as we have seen in the description of the Chambishi riots in the
introduction to Chapter 2. Both rural and urban communities accuse
businessmen, although in rural areas the accused businessmen are commercial
farmers rather than shopkeepers.
In the riots that follow the accusations, finding facts and evidence is often
forgotten. In an incident in Katete in 2012, for example, a schoolgirl was found
murdered. Riots broke out against a businessman because the community
suspected him of murdering the girl and storing her breasts in a cooler box,
even though the police had by that time already apprehended four other
suspects. Furthermore, according to the police, the body of the murdered girl
showed signs of sexual assault but was otherwise intact. The perceived
relationship between murder and success in business is so strong that when
emotions run high, further evidence for an accusation is not necessary. In an
act of mob justice, shops are looted and destroyed, and in some cases, the
accused businessmen are killed.
Education is the final sector that is often related to Satanism, also with 10
out of the 80 articles in the sample. Here the accusation is generally not of
murder, harm or the search for power but initiation into Satanism. Teachers
are thought to make their pupils Satanists, thereby spreading the danger of
Satanism in Zambia. In 2014, in a school in Lusaka, the following events took
place (MuviTV 2014):
Chaotic scenes characterised Lusaka’s Chibelo Primary School following allegations
of Satanism at the institution. Ten Pupils are reported to have been initiated into
the practice without their knowledge after enticing them with sweets. Four of the
ten affected children were found in a stupor performing weird acts. The seemingly
perplexed pupils could not walk on their own but were aided by their parents. (n.p.)

Accusations such as this appear in the newspapers if pupils, parents or the

community use or threaten to use violence against the teachers or the school.
However, most concerns about Satanism in schools do not reach the news.

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Schools frequently have to deal with suspicions of involvement in Satanism

among pupils or toward teachers. Often these episodes involve pupils showing
physical symptoms, like the ‘stupor’ and ‘weird acts’ described in the case of
Chibelo Primary School.
In the academic literature, mainly written from a biomedical perspective,
similar episodes in schools are analysed as epidemics of mass hysteria. In
mass hysteria, a group of people from one school, village or church suddenly
develop identical symptoms for which there is no physical explanation
(Nakalawa et al. 2010:43). Episodes of mass hysteria in African schools are a
well-known phenomenon. In an overview of the literature, Demobly Kokota
(2011) mentions outbreaks in South Africa, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe,
Zambia and Uganda. Mass hysteria is closely related to local belief systems
like witchcraft, possession or Satanism and can be intensified by rumours and
gossip (Kokota 2011:76). Unfortunately, the academic literature that is written
from the biomedical perspective rarely investigates the contents of the belief
systems that give meaning to these episodes of mass hysteria in schools. As I
have mentioned in Chapter 2, before Satanism was an interpretative frame in
Zambia, such episodes were often related to spirit possession.
In sum, the sectors that are most associated with practices of Satanism are
politics and governmental development programs, religion, business and
education. Although the accusations in each sector and each case have their
particular characteristics, most are related to the idea that involvement in
Satanism brings power and wealth to perpetrators at the cost of death or
harm to victims. Involvement in Satanism is further related to strange religious
practices. Teachers are accused of bringing their pupils into Satanism, which
leaves them acting strangely.
Whereas in olden times chiefs, diviners or healers, traders and hunters were
associated with acquiring extraordinary powers through the sacrifice of
human life, as we have seen in Chapter 2, these practices currently are
associated with politicians, pastors, businessmen and, to a much lesser extent,
teachers. Under the influence of the Christian framework introduced in
Chapter 2, these practices are known as Satanism.
The classical and new categories related to taking lives to gain success are
related to each other. One could say that politicians occupy the same space
as the chiefs traditionally did, as leaders of the community, and that they thus
need the same extra support from spiritual powers. Pastors, especially those
in neo-Pentecostal churches, seem to have filled in the space traditionally
occupied by the diviner or healer. Like the traditional healer, a contemporary
prophet can discern what is wrong with you and manipulate the spiritual
forces so that you are healed. The teacher, too, may have stepped into the role
of the diviner and the chief as a provider of knowledge. The traders of old

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have become the businessmen of today. I do not see a profession that

correlates with the hunter of old, although the road to success in business
may be described as a hunt as well.
Even if the new professions show similarities to the old ones, there is more
going on than just an updating of the language. Chiefs still exist, but it is
telling that while chiefs are still believed to need the support of the spirit
world, they are never accused of Satanism. What is the difference between
chiefs on the one hand and politicians, businessmen, pastors and teachers on
the other? One important difference is that they belong to different moral
universes. I argue that chiefs and headmen belong to a rural world, while the
professions that are related to Satanism are all more linked to urban settings.
In this regard, Deborah Kaspin’s (1993) analysis of traditional Nyau dancers
in Malawi is insightful. According to Kaspin, chiefs and village headmen belong
to a rural universe of meaning associated with tribal identity. Within this
universe of meaning, there are traditional and legitimate rituals to access
spiritual powers. State officials, politicians, teachers and Christians, in general,
are defined as outsiders to this traditional milieu. Their universe of meaning is
urban, with its own pathways to spiritual power. In this urban universe of
meaning, which is associated with Christianity, traditional spiritual powers are
rejected but still perceived as real. Satanism is the name for the use of illicit
spiritual powers to gain personal success in the urban world (see also
Kroesbergen-Kamps 2020c:190).
In the case of accusations of Satanism, the link with the urban world is
obvious as well. Even those who are accused of Satanism in rural areas are
somehow associated with an urban universe of meaning. For those who live in
a rural area, politicians and government officials are outsiders associated with
a structure of power that exists parallel to village politics. Teachers are
government employees as well, educated in the city and then randomly placed
in schools by the Ministry of Education. Because they are new in the community,
because they are educated in town and because in many rural areas the
teacher is one of the few persons receiving a reliable salary, teachers are
viewed as people who belong to the urban world more than to the world of
the village. Finally, the relative wealth and the trade links with customers
beyond the village make the commercial farmer also an outsider to the rural
world. Accusations of pastors and churches are generally already an urban
phenomenon. Those who are accused are often pastors in churches of a neo-
Pentecostal type. Neo-Pentecostal churches, often with names ending in
‘International’, are known to offer their members access to a global urban
network of like-minded believers.
The professions that are associated with accusations of Satanism all belong
to an urban universe of meaning, which is constructed in contrast to the world
of the village. Even in this urban world, extraordinary success requires support

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from spiritual powers (cf. Kroesbergen-Kamps 2020b). According to Ruth

Marshall, politicians and businessmen were the first groups to be connected
to satanic ways of acquiring riches. She gives the example of Nigerian dictator
General Sani Abacha, who was rumoured to have amassed wealth and power
using ‘macabre juju shrines’ (Marshall 2009:167). About the newly rich
businessmen, Marshall (2009) writes:
These businessmen are popularly understood as having achieved their wealth not
only through criminal means (advance fee fraud, abuse of confidence, drug dealing,
fraudulent speculation, corruption of various sorts) but also through ritual human
sacrifice, macabre trafficking in human body parts, contacts with secret societies
and cults, and pacts with powerful witches and other diabolical spirits. (p. 185)

When churches became more like business ventures, the accusations of illicit
accumulation were aimed at pastors as well. The approved way to access
spiritual powers is through Christian rituals of prayer, fasting and offering.
Satanism is the name, obviously given from a Christian perspective, for illicit
ways of accessing spiritual powers. In the moral universe of Zambian urbanism,
Satanism signifies an illegitimate application of extraordinary powers to attain
a special status.
All of the accusations against politicians, businessmen and government
officials can be interpreted in this way, as can most of the accusations against
teachers and pastors or churches. Accused businessmen are thought to have
acquired their wealth and success in business by sacrificing innocent lives.
Like the businessmen in the quote from Marshall, politician Hakainde Hichilema
is thought to be a member of a secret society for him to have achieved his
wealth and political power. Even the miraculous powers of pastors may come
from an illicit, diabolical source. Exceptions are the riots against the Goshali
church in Chongwe and instances of mass hysteria in schools.
In both the places discussed in the testimonies and the accusations in
newspapers, Satanism is portrayed as an urban thing. The urban is
conceptualised as a place where people access illegitimate power at the cost
of human lives. Where the city for many people in Zambia is a place of hope,
in testimonies it is a place of threat. The places that are singled out as
particularly dangerous – the roads, shops, hospitals, schools and churches –
are connected to what modernity is supposed to be in the Zambian imagination.
This theme of modernity returns in the next section on the dangers of the
spoils of modernity.

The dangers of the spoils of modernity

In the Zambian imaginary of modernity, the life of the village and its traditions
is seen as backwards. When I discussed the concept of modernity with my
students at a university in Lusaka, Zambia, one of them said, ‘We have schools
now and don’t hold our traditional beliefs anymore. That is civilisation, isn’t it?’

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(Kroesbergen-Kamps 2014:98). Modernity is almost portrayed as a promised

land, a place somewhere down the road where health and wealth will be
abundant. Education, health care and infrastructure: these are important
aspects of modernity in Zambia. Life in the city, which has more schools, more
facilities for health care and better infrastructure, is the epitome of
modernisation in Zambia. The Zambian imaginary of modernity also includes
Christianity, which is contrasted with the traditional rituals of the rural village.
Christianity came to Zambia with the promise of development in the form of
the package deal referred to as the three Cs, Christianity, commerce and
civilisation. The church is as much a part of African modernity as the city.
A city is a place that not only has better facilities but also opens the
possibility of a life of modern consumption. One of the first things one notices
when hearing testimonies about Satanism in Africa is their focus on materiality,
specifically on products that one can buy. The excerpts from Naomi’s testimony
in the introduction give a flavour of this. In this section, I will explore the
meaning of the consumer goods mentioned in the testimonies and relate
them to modern life in the city.

Tainted products and their effects

The testimonies are full of references to food and drinks available in
supermarkets, clothes, rings, cosmetics, et cetera. As Naomi’s words in the
introduction to this chapter show, in the testimonies, these products are
connected to the devil. Some testimonies give long lists of dangerous products
and explain how they are manufactured. When Gideon Mulenga Kabila, for
example, describes the underworld where Satan reigns, he dwells extensively
on the factories in which the satanic products are made. In these factories, the
bodies of the people that are sacrificed by Satanists are used as the raw
materials for anything you may find in the supermarket. I will give only a brief
section of his elaborations on the different factories in this underworld. He
writes (Kabila n.d.):
The human ginnery separates human beings into different parts, and these parts
are the head, bones, skin, and every part that is found in the human body. These
parts are used in different industries for making products and clothes and even
vehicles. […] Nails are used to manufacture crisps. Lungs are used for manufacturing
tropical rubbers [a local name for flipflops] with dragons on them. Intestines are
used for making sausages made from human meat. They remove the brain which
they mix with a fluid found in the spinal cord to form toothpastes, and when they
dry the skulls in the automatic dryer, they make washing powder. They also drain
the fluid from the eyes to make mineral water, which tastes selfish. After babies are
sacrificed these babies are grinded, they take the grinded substance to another
industry within for making creams for ladies. (pp. 22–23)

These descriptions produce a shock of disgust. Everyday consumer goods

consist of human body parts, according to Gideon Mulenga Kabila’s testimony.

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Besides, these products are infectious, like a disease, and can cause all kinds
of trouble.
Not every testimony is as explicit about satanic products as Gideon Mulenga
Kabila is. In this section, I use 12 testimonies that mention these products,
most of which are introduced in Chapter 1. Later I will discuss the nature of the
products mentioned, but in this section, I will focus on which problems are
caused by the use of these products. In general, products from the underworld
may connect the buyer or receiver or their home to the underworld or even
initiate them unknowingly into Satanism. More specifically, the troubles caused
by these products can be divided into different categories. In order of
importance, the following categories are apparent in the testimonies: medical
problems, problems related to behaviour or character, problems in relationships,
possession by spirits or spiritual spouses and financial problems. I will briefly
introduce each category.
Medical problems, including both physical issues such as anaemia and
infertility and mental problems like madness, are mentioned in more than half
of the testimonies. For example, Naomi explains:
‘You buy a drink. You drink that drink. The more you drink, the more your blood
is drained. After a little time, they say, ‘That person has no blood. Where did your
blood go?’ The drinks you were using! […] Those drinks you are drinking, they have
drained all your blood.’ (#41b, Naomi’s recorded testimony, 2012)

These medical problems cannot be treated by ordinary doctors as they are

caused not in the physical but in the spiritual world.
Another common problem caused by satanic products is a behavioural
change. This is also mentioned by more than half of the 12 testimonies. Gideon
Mulenga Kabila writes (n.d):
I saw a certain woman with her two children getting into a shop of an Indian, where
they bought products. And all those products were perfect except tinned fish. When
they went home, they prepared it and ate. Then, after, they all became wicked, and
it started with children who went to their neighbour’s house, who was cooking okra.
These children started laughing at this woman, saying, ‘us, we have ate [sic] tinned
fish, and you are eating okra, you poor woman’. Then the woman became furious
and slapped those children and told them that, ‘after all, this is your first time to eat
tinned fish’. And these children left that house and went to their mother, crying that
their neighbour had slapped them because they ate tinned fish. And this woman
became furious also, insomuch that she even forgot about her spiritual life and
went to this neighbour, where their quarrels began, which led them to start fighting.
What was the cause? It was the tinned fish. Be careful with the things you buy; don’t
forget to pray for any food before cooking and eating. (p. 61)

Because they ate canned fish made in the underworld, the children taunt their
neighbour with their good fortune of having been able to eat this fish, and the
mother of the children gets into a fight with the neighbour as well, forgetting
her Christian values. Eating the satanic fish has brought their worst behaviour
to the surface.

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In the previous case, the relationship between neighbours was affected by

satanic products, but it is even more common that relationships between
husbands and wives suffer. This is mentioned in a third of the testimonies.
David, another ex-Satanist, explains how people sometimes give gifts that are
made in the underworld:
‘You will find that there are people who bring you pots, bring you stoves. They
will put spells in those, so you find that once you have been given a stove, a gift,
maybe a pot, whatever you are going to cook in that pot, it will be just giving you
a problem. Like when your husband doesn’t like your food. You cook the food, it
tastes bad, you find that he will even prefer eating from a restaurant. So those gifts,
they bring problems. Others, you find that they just bring arguments in the house.
Once you put that property in the home, it will be just bringing problems. You have
not discovered where the problem is coming from. You find out a small thing, you
argue. A small thing, you argue. Others end up even fighting. You find that people
fight, even kill each other.’ (#31b, David’s recorded testimony, 2013)

In this passage, a satanic pot will cause troubles in a relationship, causing the
husband to seek his food elsewhere or even causing serious fights.
Satanic products may also cause possession by demons, which is mentioned
by more than a third of the ex-Satanists. In Grace’s testimony in Chapter 1, she
says that they used to sell satanic bottles of Coke (#43, interview with Grace,
8 July 2013). Whoever drank them became possessed by demons. A final
consequence of satanic problems is financial hardship. A quarter of the ex-
Satanists mention this. For example, Mr X explains how satanic doctors in
hospitals make tainted products:
‘The doctors in the hospital would remove kidneys, livers and private parts. They
use these to make products like biscuits, crisps, et cetera. When a person eats
those, whatever they do fails until they submit to the power of God.’ (#4a, Mr X’s
recorded testimony, 2015)

If you consume satanic products, your business will never be successful, and
you are doomed to live a life of poverty.

Main categories of satanic products

Satanic products cause all kinds of problems, as we have seen in the previous
section. In this section, I will shift my focus from the problems to the products
that cause them. A closer look at the products that are deemed to be satanic
shows that these are not just any products. Satanic products can be divided
into a limited number of categories. The main one is that of products used for
(female) beautification: cosmetics, accessories, jewellery and hair products.
Almost all of the 12 testimonies mention this category. More than half also
mention clothes, food and drinks, and almost half mention cars as satanic
products.
A pastor who interviewed an ex-Satanist explains in one testimony why
hair extensions are so dangerous. The ex-Satanist had said that wigs and hair

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extensions are made from snakes that one of the underworld queens has
instead of hair. He says:
‘Women, I hope you can catch this here. We are talking about hair that was actually
not hair, but snakes. They were snakes cut into threads that look like hair. So when
you’ve got this kind of hair that you put on your head as a woman, number one, you
begin to lose your mind. You realise that you made decisions without understanding
and as a result did things that drove your husband crazy, and as we are talking, you
may be separated or you are divorced or things are not just right. There is no peace
at home, so to say. For other women, it leads them to begin to get attracted to
other men wrongfully. You may be married or you may be single, but ultimately,
they want you to commit fornication or adultery. All because of that hair.’ (#44i,
Mphatso’s recorded testimony, 2013)

In this passage, almost all of the problems that can be caused by satanic
products can be seen. The hair extensions or wigs cause mental problems,
problems in relationships and a negative change in one’s character.
Both beauty products and clothes change the wearer’s appearance, and it
seems this change has an effect that carries beyond the surface. It is not just
incidental behaviour that is affected by satanic products but one’s whole
character. Naomi emphasises this danger of products. She tells about shoes
that are made in the underworld:
‘Those shoes are dangerous. […] If you are a pastor and you have put on that shoe,
you will be boasting. Even stepping on the floor, you will be, “I am the king of the
world now.” […] Everyone is watching that shoe, and those shoes are to be good-
looking and attractive. When someone looks at your legs, he says, “This is a man of
God.” And you don’t know those shoes will be causing problems to you. They will
be entering through your slippers, the demons. In the end, he becomes somebody
blaspheming God, no respect for God. You think like God now is your cousin. You
turn him into your grandfather now, because of the shoes.’ (#41a, Naomi’s recorded
testimony, 2011)

On the surface, the satanic products look good. They make you look prosperous,
like a true man of God. But when you use these products, they will change
who you are, and instead of being a devout Christian, you will become someone
who has no respect for God. In the testimonies that mention cars, these are
sometimes also interpreted as something that makes the driver too proud.
Naomi especially targets black women who want to change their looks by
lightening their skin or straightening their hair. ‘God gave me this splash of
good hair’, she says. ‘What is the reason for putting another [sic] hair?’ she
asks. ‘God made you black and beautiful’, Naomi continues. But instead of
honouring that natural beauty, women use powders and creams to make their
skin lighter. ‘Why changing [sic] your skin? […] You are a black person. If you
use that tube, it will be changing God’s colour to a demonic colour’ (#41a,
Naomi’s recorded testimony, 2011)
Sometimes consuming satanic food and drink has these changing effects
too, like in the case of the family who had canned fish for dinner and got in a

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fight with the neighbour. But more often, having satanic food causes a different
change, namely an initiation into Satanism. As I have mentioned previously, it
is often food or clothes that are presented as a gift that have this effect. These
gifts are generally given by family members or friends. As Filip De Boeck
argues, narratives in which gifts become poisoned have been common in
African traditions for a long time. The witch applies her craft through gifts
within kinship networks (De Boeck & Plissart 2004:196). In the narratives of
Satanism, the Satanist seems to have taken the place of the witch. New in
these notions surrounding gifts in Africa is the idea that a gift can create a
debt obligation of which the receiver is initially unaware (De Boeck & Plissart
2004:203–204). The gift of the Satanist is not free or the start of a relationship
but entails an obligation to the devil, a compulsion to start working for his evil
kingdom and sacrifice others in his name. The value of the gift stands in no
relation to the obligations it entails. Like the use of cosmetics and clothes,
accepting the gift changes the receiver from the inside out.
Through all of these products, whether they are cosmetics, clothes or food,
owners and receivers are changed. Many ex-Satanists use striking images to
describe this change. ‘The devil took my heart of flesh’, an ex-Satanist tells
the Fingers of Thomas, a Lusaka-based group that investigates narratives
about Satanism (Udelhoven 2021:374). Another ex-Satanist tells them, ‘My
heart was locked with a hundred keys’ (Udelhoven 2021:380). Similarly,
Memory Tembo writes in her testimony that she became heartless (#2,
Memory Tembo’s published testimony, 2010). ‘My heart was like a stone’,
Naomi says about her days as a Satanist (#41a, Naomi’s recorded testimony,
2011). Gideon Mulenga Kabila (n.d.) describes a hospital in the underworld
where Satanists are given hearts of stone to enhance their effectiveness. Eve,
in a dream, sees how Satan removes her heart and gives her a different heart.
After that, she can speak with snakes (#37, Eve’s recorded testimony, 2013).
Tsitsi’s heart is changed as well. ‘My heart was changed with that of a mouse,
and my tongue with the tongue of a bat’, she says (#10c, Tsitsi’s testimony in
church, 08 February 2015).
In Zambian understandings, the heart is the seat of a person’s character
and of their way of being and acting (Udelhoven 2021:241). Losing one’s heart,
as the Satanists describe, is losing an important part of one’s identity. The
hearts of the Satanists are inaccessible, made of stone or animal parts.
Becoming a Satanist has not just changed them, it has made them lose their
humanity. As we have seen in Chapter 1, the Other is often described as not
quite human. In the testimonies, the Satanists embody that Other. But the
beginning of their descent into evil often lies in the products that many
Zambians covet. In the narratives about Satanism, these desired accoutrements
of modernity are not good but evil. What does this tell us about Zambian
society?

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Satanic products as modern products

As we have seen, instead of bringing joy and status, the products mentioned
in the testimonies bring suffering and change one’s identity. As I have argued
elsewhere (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2022), there is something special about the
products that are singled out in the testimonies as being satanic. Cosmetics,
accessories, clothes and processed foods are all products that have relatively
recently become available for a large public and are connected to the urban
world. I will explain how these categories of products are both recent and
related to the urban.
A first clue can be found in an article by Wim van Binsbergen about a
young woman, Mary, who leaves her rural hometown to start working in a city
in Botswana. Her friends and colleagues in the city teach her to use the
products that are available to her in the city’s markets. She had never used
creams, lotions and cosmetics, but her female friends give her an introduction
to their usefulness. According to Van Binsbergen (1999):
Her calloused hands and feet soften, […] she learns to use cheap body lotion after
every bath, comes to insist on the use of toilet paper and disposable menstrual
pads (instead of improvised thick wads of toilet paper grabbed at the factory
toilets), becomes expert at the names, prices and directions-for-use of hair-styling
products. (p. 189)

Except for toilet paper, all of the products mentioned by Van Binsbergen are
in the testimonies named as potentially dangerous satanic products. The
testimonies presuppose a working knowledge of these products. For example,
some of the queens in the underworld who are mentioned in several
testimonies, including Naomi’s, carry the names of specific types of weaves,
like Bella and Belinda. Becoming a modern, embodied urban subject is
something that has to be learned because it is new for those coming from
rural areas. It is also a path of change fraught with dangers, as the
testimonies warn.
There is something special about the clothing mentioned as the second
category of dangerous items in the testimonies as well. In the villages as well
as in the compounds of the city, many women wear chitenges, the traditional
printed cloths that can be worn as a skirt or as a carrier for a baby on the back.
The chitenge is a ubiquitous piece of women’s clothing in Zambia. Yet its
absence in the testimonies is striking. The clothing that is mentioned as
dangerous is not traditional Zambian clothing but off-the-rack consumer
fashion like skirts and Western-style suits.
The Zambian elite and middle-class may be able to buy these clothes
from the South African and British stores that can be found in the big malls
throughout Lusaka, but for most Zambians, these clothes come from the
second-hand clothing market, known locally as salaula. In her analysis of the

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use of salaula in Lusaka, Karen Tranberg Hansen (1999:216) states that ‘salaula
meets most of the clothing needs amongst roughly two-thirds of the
households’. These second-hand clothes are often donations from Western
countries, and their prints are often illegible to the wearers. As I have related
elsewhere (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2022), I once visited a youth camp in a rural
area of Zambia. The evangelist who was preaching to the youths was speaking
about Satanism. He asked the youths who had worn clothes with words they
did not understand to come forward to be prayed for as these clothes could
well have initiated them into Satanism. All of the youths came to the front for
prayers. The anxiety triggered by an unknown language is not unlike the
American urban legends and cautionary tales discussed by Fine and Ellis
(2010) about buying t-shirts or getting tattoos with Chinese or other non-
Roman characters that eventually are revealed to have a different meaning
than presumed.
The foods and drinks mentioned in the Zambian testimonies are also not
traditional types of food and beverages. Maize porridge, the staple food for
almost every Zambian I knew, is never mentioned in the testimonies.
Traditionally brewed beer like thobwa or chibuku is also not mentioned. The
dangerous foodstuffs in the testimonies are processed foods, with obscure
production processes and often imported from abroad, which can be bought
in the supermarkets and markets in town. Nowadays, these products are
present in rural areas as well, but in town, they are almost omnipresent.
All of the products mentioned in Zambian testimonies are relatively new on
the Zambian scene. The products are produced and processed abroad and
subsequently imported to the Zambian market. In its emic conceptualisation,
products like cosmetics, fashion and processed foods are associated with
modernity and development. But as was the case with the modern locations
mentioned in the testimonies, these modern products do not bring the bliss
that Zambians desire. Instead, they change their owners to the point of
possibly taking their humanity away.
Zambian cities, as we have seen in the previous sections, are presented in
the testimonies as threatening places. The enjoyment of what the city has to
offer in consumer goods also holds a threat. In all of these cases, the threat of
spiritual evil is related to expectations of development and modernity. The
city is perceived by many Zambians as a place for development, a chance for
a better future away from the hardship in the village. In the city, one can
embody modernity by driving a car, wearing the latest fashion and eating
store-bought foods.
The Pentecostal churches especially, with their emphasis on blessings of
prosperity to come in this life, encourage this desire to become modern. In
Zambian Christianity, the prosperity gospel has become influential not only in

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Pentecostal churches but also within the mainline mission churches like the
RCZ. Looking at the emphasis on material blessings preached in church, it is
no coincidence that Naomi describes a pastor who is wearing fancy shoes
that turn out to be satanic. Pastors are pressed to show evidence of their
good standing with God in their appearance by wearing the most expensive
and whitest suits, the shiniest shoes and driving the biggest cars. Only a pastor
who embodies this modern way of life is accepted as a true man of God.
Pastors, as well as congregants, will aim to look as smart as possible in church.
In an insightful ethnography of ‘postcolonial automobility’, Lindsey Green-
Simms (2017:195) describes how cars in West Africa are perceived as extensions
of the self. The use of consumer goods as tokens for one’s identity is a well-
known element of consumerism (Giddens 2009:188). But in Africa, the
boundary between the material world and a person’s identity may be perceived
as more porous. In traditional masked dances, like the ones of the Nyau in
Zambia and Malawi, the dancers embody the spirits whose masks they wear.
Wearing the mask is not just a symbol but has real consequences for one’s
identity. Like a pastor’s clothes, a car is an attribute of a modern African self.
You are what you drive, what you wear and what you eat. This idea of porous
boundaries between the self and the material world makes it easier to
understand why eating tinned fish or wearing hair extensions potentially has
consequences for one’s character and one’s heart as well.
In this first part of the chapter, I have argued that in testimonies and
accusations of Satanism, the danger comes from the city in an emic
understanding of modernity. Becoming modern, living in the city, taking up an
urban profession and consuming the new products that development has
made available: all of these are seen as dangerously connected to Satan and
his underworld. What is it about the city and about modern life that is so
threatening? Several scholars have tried to answer this question. In the next
section, I will discuss some of these answers.

Changes in society and narratives about

Satanism: Anonymity and the family
One theory is that urbanisation leads to an increase in the confrontation with
anonymity, with acts as a stressor and leads to stories that seem similar to
narratives about Satanism. Another is that there is a shift in the expectations
and responsibilities attributed to kinship networks. In Africa, the expectations
of help from members of the extended family are sometimes labelled as a
black tax. In the narratives about Satanism, family is also an important
category. So can these theories about changes in society explain why
testimonies and accusations about Satanism find so much acclaim in
contemporary Zambia?

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Urban anonymity
The threatening spaces in the city that are described in the testimonies –
roads, schools, hospitals, shops and churches – have one thing in common:
they are spaces in which strangers are encountered. The conceptual
relationship between urbanisation and anonymity is a classic of sociological
analysis. In the early 20th century, George Simmel already argued that living
near many unknown people in the city changes the forms of social interactions,
forcing people to take greater emotional distance from each other. In the city,
one could say, the dangerous Other may be your neighbour.
In an article on contemporary rumours and urban legends in West Africa,
Julien Bonhomme (2012) writes about penis snatching, killer phone calls and
dangerous gifts. The penis snatcher is a stranger who may steal one’s genitals
through a handshake. The killer phone calls refer to a rumour that taking a call
from a certain number may leave the receiver unconscious, ill or spiritually
harmed. The dangerous gifts in Bonhomme’s article are alms given by a
mysterious, wealthy benefactor to those in need, who afterwards die. The
common denominator in all of these narratives is anonymity. Face-to-face and
mediated interactions with strangers, a typical occurrence in an urban space,
are filled with dangers (Bonhomme 2012:226). Anxieties connected to these
ordinary situations blend with common African discourses of witchcraft and
related phenomena and give rise to new rumours and narratives. In these
narratives, the danger of spiritual harm is no longer restricted to intimate
relations, as it was with witchcraft. Instead, its scope has widened to include
the stranger as a source of spiritual danger.
How does Bonhomme’s analysis relate to narratives of Satanism in Zambia?
The city is prevalent in testimonies, as are specific locations in which many
strangers can be encountered. Some of the narratives surrounding Satanism
also point to the perceived dangers of anonymity described by Bonhomme.
For example, in June 2013, I received the following text message:
‘Never pick up a call from 0800 226655. They are using people for rituals from
today till August 17. They just want your voice. Send this message to people you
care about. Please do it and save a life. Am not joking.’ (Anonymous, text message,
2013)

Although Satanism is not explicitly mentioned in this text, in conversations

people do associate the message with unsolicited initiation and ritual
sacrifice by Satanists. The rumour about killer phone numbers was reported
in Nigeria as early as 2004 (Bonhomme 2012:208), and it quickly grew into
a transnational narrative. A very similar message to the one I received from
a Zambian contact in 2013 was spread in Nigeria in 2011. Bonhomme
interprets the rumour as an illustration of the perceived danger of anonymity
that is mediated through information technology.

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The narratives about deadly alms that Bonhomme also describes are mainly
prevalent in countries with a strong Muslim presence, where giving alms is
one of the religious duties. Zambia is an overwhelmingly Christian country,
so these specific rumours are not shared in Zambia. But in Zambian
testimonies of Satanism, initiation is often related to receiving gifts. Generally,
these gifts are given by someone who is known, like a friend or a teacher,
but sometimes the giver is unknown. In one testimony, an ex-Satanist warns,
‘be very careful with things that are given to you’. ‘You mean things that we
get from neighbours,’ the interviewer suggests. The ex-Satanist continues:
‘With neighbours, it’s okay, but not things you get on the road like children
sometimes get. Don’t take these things.’ The things that he is referring to are
mainly sweets and biscuits. Fears of satanic food are also prevalent in the
scares of Satanism that affect schools, and the fear of gifts from strangers,
especially when these are given to children, is also a common theme in
European and American panics surrounding child-molesters.
Bonhomme relates stories about deadly alms to a crisis surrounding gifts
in contemporary Africa. According to another classical sociological theory,
proposed by Marcel Mauss, the exchange of gifts between people and between
groups strengthens their relationships and builds solidarity. In contemporary
urban Africa, the circle in which gifts are given and reciprocated is narrowing.
In an extensive deliberation on the relation between gift-giving, witchcraft
and the influence of the new Pentecostal churches, Filip de Boeck argues that
gift cycles operated within networks based on kinship. He points out that
traditionally, this was a point of resemblance with witchcraft, which also
operated within the same kinship network. Witchcraft and gifts were also
related to the belief that witchcraft could be transmitted through gifts (De
Boeck & Plissart 2004:196).
In more recent times, however, the relationship between witchcraft and the
kinship network has become less clear. ‘Witchcraft is no longer something
from within’, as De Boeck (2004:203) notes. At the same time, kinship
networks have narrowed to include little more than the nuclear family. I will
give more attention to this point in the final part of this chapter. Also, the neo-
Pentecostal churches, in which it is common to give gifts to the pastor to
receive blessings of wealth and health, have redefined the nature of the gift
(De Boeck & Plissart 2004:198). Rather than being a free and spontaneous act
that oils the mechanics of kinship or intergroup relations, gift-giving has
become a calculated investment. A gift comes, more than ever, with strings
attached. In the narratives about Satanism, accepting a gift from a Satanist
creates an obligation, an initiation into Satanism that one may not be aware of
at first. The price of a biscuit taken from a stranger may well be your life.
The gift, which was supposed to strengthen social relations and redistribute
wealth, has become a danger, Bonhomme agrees with De Boeck. Bonhomme’s

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main emphasis is that the gifts in the rumours he describes come from
anonymous donors rather than from family members or other relations. The
final rumour Bonhomme analyses as related to urban anonymity is that of the
penis snatcher. The penis snatcher is a stranger who greets you in the common
African way, with a handshake. After the handshake, however, the private
parts of the receiver are gone, snatched by the stranger. This specific motif is
absent from Zambian testimonies of Satanism. But in one testimony, the
interviewer does warn against shaking hands with strangers because the ex-
Satanist giving the testimony confessed to sacrificing his parents with a
handshake. The interviewer says:
‘Hearing what he just said here, that if somebody, a stranger, comes and wants to
greet you […] Of course, I know it’s impolite not to greet back. But with the trends
of what is happening right now, what is going on in our time and age, you can’t
afford to greet anybody anyhow.’ (#44i, Mphatso’s recorded testimony, 2013)

In the testimonies, there are only a few places in which strangers are explicitly
identified as a threat. We have one statement about gifts from strangers, one
statement about handshakes from strangers and a rumour about phone calls
that are not mentioned in any testimony. When ex-Satanists speak about
markets, schools and hospitals, it is not directly connected to the danger of
strangers. In fact, in most testimonies, strangers play a role as innocent victims
of the Satanist rather than as a source of danger. To give a few examples,
Naomi says, ‘I can’t count how many I have killed because there just have been
so many’ (#41a, Naomi’s recorded testimony, 2011). Others claim to have
caused notable accidents with heavy death tolls in Zambia or beyond, such as
the plane crash that killed the Zambian national soccer team in 1993 or the
tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004.
The strangers in testimonies are somehow different from Bonhomme’s
anonymous strangers. For although the strangers in the rumours discussed by
Bonhomme are unknown, they are still relatively close. They are faces in the
street whose hands you might shake and who might get hold of your phone
number. Bonhomme (2012:215–216, 224) also argues that the rumours involve
specific groups of strangers, like certain ethnic groups or the people behind
big companies. On the other hand, strangers in the testimonies are a faceless
mass. The killing of these strangers does not involve a profound moral dilemma.
They exist only as numbers. The testimonies may reflect a general fear that
misfortune may strike at any time and from any direction, but looking at the
treatment of strangers in the testimonies, strangers and anonymity do not
constitute a major worry. The deaths of strangers in testimonies are collateral
damage that does not touch the heart of the narrative (Koschorke 2012:227)
or that of the audience. The connection that Bonhomme makes about
urbanisation and threatening anonymity is therefore not well represented in
the testimonies.

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Tensions surrounding family and kinship:

The extended family
The family plays an important role in testimonies. Family members are amongst
the most important categories of people mentioned in the testimonies. They
are particularly mentioned as intended victims, much more so than, for
example, friends, neighbours or church people. In African conceptions of
witchcraft, the family is often presented as a source of danger. According to
Peter Geschiere, modernity may have extended the scope of narratives about
witchcraft and related phenomena by introducing strangers and global
networks, but in the end, the danger leads back to the intimacy of the home.
In Witchcraft, intimacy, and trust, Geschiere (2013) begins his argument
with fears of Cameroonian evolués, meaning the people with an education and
a position outside of the village, to return to their village because of witchcraft
attacks out of jealousy for their success. In the 1970s, villagers complained
that these successful sons did not bring their wealth back to the village, while
the evolués themselves kept a safe distance from the village. Twenty years
later, the relations between villagers and urban relatives were still fraught with
suspicions of witchcraft, but this time it was the villagers who felt threatened
by the ‘new’ forms of witchcraft practised by the wealthy urbanites. As I have
argued in Chapter 2, rumours about illicit accumulation are a source of fear of
people who are wealthy, successful and have a connection to the city.
In the 1990s, when young Cameroonians started to define themselves as
global citizens, the scope of the witchcraft discourse also increased. This
broadening of the scope meant that the connection between witchcraft and
kinship became less strong or at least obscured. However, kinship did not
become absent as a force in narratives about witchcraft and related
phenomena. Even migrants to Europe feel the expectations of relatives and
fear witchcraft if they are not able to live up to them. For Geschiere (2013), the
baseline is this:
Despite growing distance, there seems to be a recurrent and somber refrain that
people ‘at home’ – even if this home has become an almost virtual one – have
dangerous powers and must therefore be respected. (p. 62)

Satanism is a new form of witchcraft that is not mentioned by Geschiere but

is similar to the West African narratives he describes. As with the types of
modern witchcraft described by Geschiere, there is an interesting tension
between an increase in scope and a recurring relevance of intimate relations.
The label Satanism itself already points to a more global scope than parochial
witchcraft. Satanism, as it is understood in the Zambian context, implies a
struggle between forces of good and evil that takes place on a global scale, as
we have seen in a previous chapter. The extended scope of narratives about

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Satanism can also be seen in the contexts in which accusations of Satanism

occur: professions related to the urban world are particularly suspect.
Geschiere notes that even though witchcraft now operates on a global
level, the danger is still located within the intimate relations of the family. In
narratives about Satanism, this is the case as well. The narrative of one ex-
Satanist, Taiba, is a good example of this phenomenon. Taiba recounts how
she and her friends tried to attack the prominent Nigerian pastor T.B. Joshua,
already an international target:
‘We sat, having a meeting. That’s when my grandmother said, “You should go and
attack T.B. Joshua, who has brought a lot of people in Christianity”. So the first
people who went [to attack him] were my friends whom I used to work with: Lady
Gaga, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Jay-Z.’ (#53c, Taiba’s recorded testimony, 2013)

The globally famous artists were allegedly, according to Taiba, her friends in
the underworld or even her subordinates – ‘They were like my secretaries’,
Taiba says later. But global as this may seem, at the top of the hierarchy in the
underworld stands not an international figure of evil but Taiba’s grandmother.
She is the one who tells them whom they have to attack. The global and the
intimate local intermingle, and of these two, the intimate receives the highest
standing.
This is obvious in other testimonies as well. While the sacrifices of strangers
and even friends are mentioned in passing – ‘I used to cause many accidents’,
as Naomi said (#41b, Naomi’s recorded interview, 2012) – killing relatives is
described much more extensively. The most elaborate episodes of sacrifice in
testimonies relate to the sacrifice of close relatives. This is often the case with
the first assignment as well as with the last failed assignment.
Filip de Boeck adds to Geschiere’s analysis by pointing out that the
emphasis on the nuclear family has grown ever more in the period that
Geschiere describes. This has led to a redefinition of what kinship is (De
Boeck & Plissart 2004:198–203). Nowadays, in many urban families, the core
kinship relation that should be honoured is the relationship within the nuclear
family. According to De Boeck, this makes mistrust amongst relatives who do
not belong to the intimate nuclear family even more likely, and with mistrust
often come suspicions of witchcraft.
The relationship with the extended kinship network is often experienced as
a stifling bond. According to Birgit Meyer (1998b), Pentecostal religiosity, in
which the worldview of the testimonies makes sense and which offers a
platform for many testimonies, strives to help Christians to ‘make a break with
the past’. This past is associated with the extended family, with the village and
with rejected cultural or religious traditions that tie a person to the satanic.
These ties need to be cut to become a free individual, independent of and
unaffected by family relations and able to progress (Meyer 1998b:338).

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The portrayal of the witch doctor or traditional healer and the village life in
the testimonies shows that the past is perceived as a toxic bond.
In the testimonies, Satanists literally sever ties with their families by
sacrificing family members, and this is what makes them wealthy. In another
article, Meyer (1995:247, 246) writes that narratives about Satanism ‘refer to
tensions surrounding financial matters within the family.’ and especially ‘the
assertion of individual interest above that of the family.’ In South Africa, the
obligations towards the extended family are commonly known as the ‘black
tax’ (cf. ed. Mhlongo 2019). In South Africa, black tax is the pressure that is felt
to ‘care financially for people in a broad family or kin network, while at the
same time trying to build sustainable wealth’ (Mangoma & Wilson-Prangley
2019:444). In a short essay, Dudu Busani-Dube (2019) describes the experience
of black tax:
Black tax is earning a big enough salary to buy your first car, but you can’t because
the bank loan you took to fix your parents’ dilapidated house landed you at the
credit bureau. […] Black tax is opting to go for a diploma when you qualify for a
degree, because a diploma takes only three years, and hopefully you’ll get a job
after that and take over paying your siblings’ school fees so that your mother can
maybe quit her job at that horrible family she is working for in the suburbs. […]
Black tax is being in Johannesburg and trying very hard to hide your struggles from
your family back in Mtubatuba, or Qonce, because you don’t want them to worry.
Black tax is your mother having to change the subject every time the neighbours
ask her why her paint is peeling and her geyser is broken when she has an employed
daughter. (pp. 20–21)

Maybe the obligations towards extended kinship networks were self-evident

at one time, but in today’s world, they are experienced as a stifling bond as
well. And from the perspective of the receiver, if a person chooses to spend
money on herself instead of the family, ‘her gain is the others’ loss’ (Ashforth
2005:32).
In the academic literature on narratives about witchcraft and Satanism, the
links with the extended family seem to be most under pressure. The extended
family represents an association with a non-Christian tradition and the claims
for support of members of the extended family put a strain on one’s income.
In the Zambian testimonies, however, most intended victims of the Satanists
come from the nuclear family (parents, siblings or children) rather than from
the extended family (aunts and uncles, nephews, nieces, cousins).
In the testimonies, the ex-Satanists report few qualms about sacrificing
members of the extended family. Those that are mentioned as intended
victims are, in almost every case, according to the narrative, really harmed.
This is different from the intended victims coming from the nuclear family. In
the testimonies, half of the intended victims who are members of the nuclear
family could not be harmed by the Satanists because of moral misgivings.

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Within the nuclear family, relationships matter. If the testimony refers to a

troubled relationship in the nuclear family, this family member is killed, while
a loved member of the nuclear family cannot be killed or harmed. Such a
failed assignment is an important feature of many testimonies. These emotional
deliberations that are relevant in the decision to sacrifice a close relative play
almost no role in the sacrifice of extended family members, friends, church
people or strangers. If the testimonies show something about the experience
of relations within the family, ties within the nuclear family should be part of
the interpretation and not just ties with the extended family.

Tensions surrounding family and kinship:

The nuclear family
The nuclear family, a household consisting of a father, mother and biological
children, was promoted in Zambia by missionaries. According to De Boeck,
the churches imposed a restricting redefinition of lineage and clan relations
(De Boeck & Plissart 2004:203). The extended family circles of clan and
lineage lost relevance under the influence of missionary emphasis on the
nuclear family. But missionaries were not the only group sponsoring the
nuclear families. In Zambia, welfare officials connected to the mining industry
had an important role as well, making housing and pensions available for a
husband, one wife and their children but not for extended family members
(Ferguson 1999:166–206).
Anthropologists expected that, with industrialisation and urbanisation, the
modern nuclear family would take hold in Zambian society. James Ferguson’s
(1999) book on the Zambian Copperbelt shows that these expectations were
not met. Throughout the 20th century, the nuclear family remained an ideal
rather than the actual norm, even though that ideal was shared by both
policymakers and ordinary Zambians.
Ferguson shows that many households supported relatives other than
biological children. He also argues that marriage in the Zambian context could
be interpreted fluidly and that marriages were often brittle and far from
sexually exclusive. Also, although the Zambian laws of inheritance give rights
to the nuclear family, the relatives of a deceased husband often do not adhere
to these laws. When a husband dies, his relatives are ready to dissolve the
household and leave with most of its possessions. In practice, the nuclear
family remains an ideal that is preached by churches, the government and the
media, but it is far from the lived reality of many Zambians.
Adam Ashforth (2005) notes the same thing for South Africans living in
Soweto and writes:
If the ‘nuclear’ type of family is the ideal, then about six in ten Sowetans live in
households with some sort of family configuration that they probably consider
suboptimal to some degree. (p. 213)

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Zambia is not very different. This is partly because of the influence of the
AIDS epidemic, which causes children to live in vulnerable households with
nontraditional heads of the household, such as grandparents or children.
According to statistics from the Zambia Demographic and Health Survey
2013–2014, 30% of households in urban Zambia contain children under the
age of 18 who are living with neither their mother nor their father present
(Central Statistical Office 2015b:23). In urban areas, only 45% of children live
with both parents (Central Statistical Office 2015b:25). It may be understandable
that in this situation, the 1960s image of the perfect nuclear family comes up
as an ideal.
The nuclear family may be an ideal, but it is an ideal that is inverted in the
testimonies. In the testimonies, children sacrifice their parents and siblings
to Satan instead of living together in harmony. Even though Satanists invert
the image of a loving and supportive family unit, a closer look at the
testimonies shows that the inversion is not complete. Members of the nuclear
family are often loved, and ties with them cannot be severed easily. In the
deliverance service described at the beginning of Chapter 3, this was an
important theme. The father, who had confessed to sacrificing several of his
children, was reunited with his other children a week later. His daughter,
speaking on behalf of the other children, told the church how the family
separated after the father joined a church that the others thought was
satanic. The children were on their own and the father was on his own. They
were living miserable lives. They became poor, and the children were forced
to get into early marriages to find security. Furthermore, the children feared
being sacrificed by their father. The father replied, ‘Don’t be scared. I’m born
again. I want us to live in harmony. Let us unite the way we used to live’. The
pastor thanked God that he had made it possible for the family to reunite
and emphasised that children belong to their parents. He said:
‘Do you know that the children, what they did, running away from their father, not
listening to their father, they were not fulfilling what scripture says, that you must
obey your parents? Whatever they do, they are still your parents.’ (#149, participant
observation, 14 June 2015)

This emphasis on the nuclear family is not uncommon in Pentecostal churches.

David Maxwell, writing about Pentecostals in Zimbabwe, states that the
energies of the churchgoers are refocused from communal rituals, for example,
to honour the ancestors of the clan to the nuclear family (Maxwell 1998:354).
Writing about South Africa, Maria Frahm-Arp shows that Pentecostal churches
support the model of the nuclear family, which has become a ‘symbol of
modernity and success in South Africa’ (Frahm-Arp 2010:212).
Another way in which the inversion of the nuclear family is not complete is
through the narrative of failed sacrifices. Gideon Mulenga Kabila sacrifices his
hated stepmother, but he is not able to harm his father. This is a recurring
theme in the testimonies. Unlike strangers, friends and members of the

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extended family, the closest family members are not easily killed or harmed.
The bonds within the nuclear family are stronger. It seems that the testimonies
of Satanism both resonate with the fraught realities of life in contemporary
Zambia, where people live in ‘suboptimal’ family configurations, and with the
hope that the love in the ideal nuclear family will conquer all.
All of the ways that relate narratives to society mentioned in this part of the
chapter – the brittleness of the nuclear family, the burden of the extended
family and the anonymity of the city – have some relation to the narratives
about Satanism, but there still seems to be something missing. In the following
section, I will present another frame of interpretation, namely that of the moral
consequences of becoming modern.

The moral consequences of becoming

modern
Narratives about Satanism are related to local understandings of the urban
and the modern. What is it about urbanisation and modernity that sparks the
anxieties that speak from these narratives? Anonymity and shifting relations
within kinship networks may have something to do with it, but a better frame,
as I will argue in this part of the chapter, is that of worries about a change in
morality.
In Chapter 1, I have presented narratives about evil Others as inverted
spectacles or negative copies of a society’s value system. In narratives about
Satanism, the figure of the Satanist is an inverted version of the standards of
Zambian society. What are those standards? How do Satanists invert them?
And what do these inversions tell us about tensions in Zambian society? Those
are the questions that I will deal with in this part of the chapter.
Dignity is a concept that is central to both African and Western ideals of
human rights and the good life. It is, in African as well as Western societies,
related to both what a person has and does. But what it is exactly that a
person needs to have and needs to do to be seen as a dignified human being
is changing in the interaction between more Western and more African ideas.
Getui (1992) describes the current situation as follows:
Due to contact with, influence of and domination of foreigners the religious,
economic and political doctrines that governed in traditional African societies
have been disrupted. Those doctrines at work in contemporary Africa are not easy
to define as they are neither African nor Western. This has led to a situation of
confusion and lack of identity meaning that many Africans may not be sure of who
they are and what they want. (p. 63)

Although the disruptions brought on by colonialism are obvious and may

well lead to confusion and tensions, there is a risk in portraying the ‘doctrines
that governed in traditional African societies’ as changeless institutions,

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unchanging before the disruptive appearance of Western ideas and powers.

African beliefs and practices have always been diverse and have never
existed in isolation. ‘African thought’ and ‘Western thought’ do not exist as
mutually exclusive, monolithic institutions. Rather, they describe tendencies
that can be constructed as opposites – but this constructed nature should
not be forgotten. The opposites are used not only by scholars but also by
ordinary Africans in an ongoing positioning of identities. Like modernity, the
West is a term that has important local associations. Wanting to belong to
the West or preferring an African identity are opposite poles used in the
process of claiming one’s position.
In urban Zambia, where most of the testimonies hail from, the diverse
population means it is also not appropriate to speak about norms related to
specific Zambian ethnicities, such as Bemba norms or Chewa norms. Still,
within this multi-ethnic Zambian society, there is a shared understanding of
what behaviour would traditionally be deemed proper. In this section, I will
present an overview of the traditional Zambian value system and show how
the testimonies are an inversion of that. I will do this in two parts: firstly, values
related to material well-being, and secondly, values related to the hierarchical
society.

Redistribution and illicit accumulation

As we have seen in Chapter 2, in the traditional African view, everything good
(including material things) comes from the spiritual world, from God and the
ancestors. Amongst human beings, material things are distributed or
redistributed according to their needs: ‘Each member of the community is
responsible for every other and is obligated to provide for the welfare of the
other’ (Moyo 1992:52). That, however, does not mean that there were no
differences in affluence in African traditional societies. Poor people, as well as
rich people, have always been present. Rather, it means that being rich is not
only a source of prestige but also comes with the responsibility to share with
the needy of the community. As Ambrose Moyo writes (1992:55), ‘the rich and
the poor were in such cases mutually dependent and related to each other
with dignity’. What brings dignity here is the use of wealth rather than its
possession.
This ideology of redistribution according to the needs of the community is
reflected in the notion of legitimate and illicit accumulation. As I have argued
in Chapter 2, those with extraordinary power, status or wealth need support
from the spiritual world. For that support, a sacrifice may be necessary. This
sacrifice is perceived as legitimate if the good that comes from it trickles
down to the community. Traditionally, this may have been a practice reserved
for chiefs in extraordinary circumstances and maybe a few others with elevated
statuses. Colonialism, however, gave others aspirations to break the ranks of

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equivalence as well and democratised this practice while also delegitimising it

(see also Kroesbergen-Kamps 2020c).
Against this background of legitimate and illicit accumulation, the
accusations against certain professions become understandable. Businessmen
especially have become suspected of putting the success of their businesses
before the well-being of others. Riots towards businesspeople in the
newspapers are always related to missing persons and especially missing
children. If a child goes missing or is found murdered, the first frame of
reference is that the child was a victim of a ritual to earn more success in
business. There is therefore a clear connection between the sphere of business
and this illicit accumulation, which from a Christian perspective is known as
Satanism.
But what about the other spheres that are connected to Satanism, like
politics and the government, religion and education? As we have seen in
Chapter 2, there is a well-known connection between spiritual forces and
political power. Both Nimi Wariboko (2014:278–297) and Stephen Ellis and
Gerrie ter Haar (1998:190) give many examples of politicians who are said to
have used invisible powers to become powerful. Politicians also often have
religious specialists in their entourage to help them retain these spiritual
powers. Making use of the advice of spiritual experts does, of course, not
necessarily mean harming human beings to become powerful. But in the
minds of many people, this connection is readily made. As Ellis and Ter Haar
(2004) write:
Rumours drawing on the idea that great power is exclusive, and that initiation into
elite networks requires ritual action that may involve blood sacrifice, lead people in
many countries to associate national elections, when power is open to competition,
with the abduction of children. (p. 80)

The idea that groups of powerful people share the secret of acquiring that
power makes associations that rely on secrecy especially suspect. Freemasons
and Rosicrucians, which are originally European groups that often draw their
members from the elite, have in Africa become synonymous with the secret
knowledge that can make you rich and powerful and involves human sacrifice.
This is an important motif in many West African movies, as well. For this
reason, the rumour that the Zambian politician Hakainde Hichilema is a
Freemason makes a serious dent in his reputation. But even without suspected
involvement in secret societies, politicians are believed to need blood to come
to or remain in power. Some Zambian newspapers do their best to activate
that frame in the minds of voters when they, for example, report on every road
accident as a sacrifice ordered by a political party.
As the government is often seen as the arm of the ruling political party, it
is not so strange that governmental development projects are associated with
rituals that require blood as well. Furthermore, the relationship between

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government employees and stealing blood has a long history in Zambia, as

well as in other East and Central African countries, as Luise White (2000)
shows in her study of these narratives.
Some of the accusations made against churches and pastors can better be
understood as a fear of the other, such as in the case of the Goshali church, or
as a demonisation of traditional practices, such as in the case of Bishop
Mumba. Other accusations, however, do fit with the notion of illicit accumulation.
Prophet Anointed Andrew, alias Seer 1, explicitly asserts that he can give
spiritual powers to others, like the traditional healers whom one would see to
acquire kukhwima in Malawi would. Nollywood movies such as Church Business
(2003) and Who Is the Chosen? (2014) apply this frame when they show how
pastors receive the power to do miracles from traditional spiritual experts or
devil-worshipping societies.
In the Zambian competitive environment for churches, pastors seem
prompted to perform ever more astonishing miracles. A few years ago, pastors
or prophets who were able to recount the phone numbers of random people
in their audience were the talk of the town in Lusaka. Nowadays, pastors are
said to turn water into petrol or be able to miraculously make money appear
in your wallet or bank account. The diviner or healer was already on Van
Binsbergen’s list, mentioned in Chapter 2, of professions that use human
remains in medicines to become powerful. The same suspicion follows the
pastor as the new diviner or healer.
Of all the spheres in which accusations of involvement in Satanism are
made, education fits the traditional framework the least. In a rural setting,
being a teacher means holding an elevated position, which can be cause for
suspicions of illicit accumulation. A teacher in a rural area is often the only one
in the community in formal employment with a dependable salary. The teacher,
like the businessman and the commercial farmer in the same rural setting,
seems to have discovered the secret to wealth that is withheld from ordinary
villagers. In one of the articles, this explanation is confirmed by a rural district
commissioner, who says in a statement that (Hatyoka 2014):
The PF government [has] increased teachers’ salaries. […] Nowadays teachers have
more money and they are able to access loans. But the community always think
that teachers are Satanists when they buy expensive cars. (n.p.)

Accusations of Satanism made against teachers do, however, not only occur
in rural areas, and in town, the difference in income between teachers and
others is much less pronounced. These accusations are not so easily explained
from the framework of illicit accumulation. In the case of accusations against
teachers, the first accusations are often made in testimonies of Satanism of
their pupils. These pupils mention the school as the place in which they have
been initiated into Satanism. There is an interesting difference between the
people who give testimonies of involvement in Satanism and those who are

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accused of it. The majority of the ex-Satanists who give their testimonies are
adolescents, mostly girls, for whom school is a daily context of life. In their
testimonies, they name teachers, politicians, businessmen, pastors and
musicians as fellow Satanists. Members of these other categories, however,
rarely come forward as ex-Satanists. Those who are accused of Satanism are
not the ones who claim to have been Satanists. For this reason, I think that the
accusations of teachers are, in many urban cases, collateral damage to the
testimonies of adolescents.
Accusations of Satanism show a cultural unease with social stratification.
Those who have more or are in another way elevated above the general
population are supposed to have done something antisocial to get to their
position. In previous times, this may have been accepted as a sacrifice for the
good of the collective, but now, becoming rich or powerful is seen as only
benefitting the individual. Even in the case of politicians, who could be said to
be the chiefs of the country, attaining power and status is viewed with
suspicion. After years of independence and halting development, people do
not believe that the power of politicians will mean those good things will
trickle down to them, as was allegedly the case with chiefs. Narratives about
Satanism show a tension surrounding values of accumulation and redistribution
that is unresolved in contemporary Zambian society. Further tension can be
seen in the norms surrounding stratification according to age and gender.

The inversion of norms concerning the hierarchical

society in testimonies of Satanism
The testimonies show the Satanists as inverting expected behaviours. Instead
of taking care of the community, the elevated professions of politicians,
businessmen, pastors and teachers use their gains for the betterment of
themselves only. The most visible inversions are embodied by the Satanists
themselves. Hierarchy is an important feature of Zambian society. Two
important markers of stratification in Zambia are gender (male or female) and
age (elder or child). The behaviour that is expected from Zambians depends
on their relative station in life regarding these characteristics.
Most narrators of testimonies are adolescent girls. The inversions that they
personify most prominently are those of norms connected with the child and
the woman. Traditionally, for a child, the right thing to do is to obey the elders,
which include not only the parents but also other older people in the
community (Nasimiyu-Wasike 1992:164). In contemporary Zambia, parents
and elders expect to be respected and treated with reverence. When visiting
a Zambian home, it is common for the children to come and kneel in respect
to greet the visitors. Also, children often act as extensions of their parents,
going on errands and doing household chores.

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Instead of being respectful youngsters, the Satanists in the testimonies are

stubborn and rude. One ex-Satanist describes his behaviour towards his
mother:
‘My mother was just coming back from work. She was so furious with me. I just told
her, “Mom, if you do anything stupid to me […]” I knew she was in the process of
going to hit me or do something, but I just took order [sic]. I was young, I was a boy,
but then I was able to threaten my mother. I just told her I would do something that
you’ve never seen before. It was at this particular time that I think my mother got
very much afraid.’ (#29a, Charles’s recorded interview, 2013)

Instead of giving his mother respect, this boy speaks out against his mother
and even gives her orders.
In traditional African societies, the distribution of power and knowledge
between the generations is unequal. The power of knowing what is hidden
gives elders authority over those who are younger or of a lower rank. According
to William Murphy (1980:193), ‘secrecy supports the elders’ political and
economic control of the youth’. Murphy’s research is on the Kpelle of Liberia
and Guinea, but the same can be said for secret societies like the Nyau in
Zambia and Malawi. Initiation for boys in a society like the Nyau, or girls in the
secrets of womanhood, is a first step on the way to adult existence. This
relationship between knowledge, power and adulthood is inverted in the
testimonies as well.
According to several testimonies, becoming a Satanist means acquiring
secret knowledge. Naomi recounts how every school she went to belonged to
the devil: ‘That is where they started explaining some things, but not all
secrets’. Gideon Mulenga Kabila (n.d.:14) also writes about acquiring secret
knowledge: ‘Before I was given any assignment, I was taken to the school of
demons where I was told to go and learn about the hidden things of this
world’. Knowledge belongs to the world of adults, and the emphasis on the
acquisition of knowledge and secrets in testimonies presented by adolescents
can be seen as an inversion of the innocent, unspoiled child.
Like children, women are expected to treat their elders and men in
general with reverence. This is one of the foremost lessons in the traditional
teachings for girls. For example, in the Bemba female initiation ritual,
chisungu, a girl is reminded of her position in the social structure and the
behaviours and attitudes related to that position. One of the songs learned
during chisungu is ‘the armpit is not higher than the shoulder’, meaning that
the social hierarchy is an unchanging fact of life. According to Jean La
Fontaine ([1956] 1982), in her introduction to Audrey Richards’ study of
chisungu, the song:
[R]epresents the ineluctable nature of such a hierarchy, condensing in a bodily
metaphor the subordination of women to men, and of both to inherited authority
and the seniority of experience that comes with age. (p. xviv)

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Ellis and Ter Haar (2004:51–52) see the underworld as an inversion of the
normal, physical world. The main inversion they note is that it is ‘organized
as in the visible world, except that those in charge are women’. Many
testimonies indeed mention queens, and this sounds like a position of
great power that is hard to reach for a Zambian woman in a culture
influenced by patriarchy. In the underworld, this title is rewarded to almost
every female Satanist. Many different female ex-Satanists report that they
were queens or at least princesses in the underworld. Upon closer
inspection, however, the queen is not the highest in rank. Take, for example,
the pamphlet written by Memory Tembo. After becoming a Satanist, she is
introduced to the queen:
‘A special meeting was called by the queen and I went to attend. During the meeting,
I was given a cup of blood and a piece of human meat. I drank and ate. That was
swearing to the queen that I will never serve anyone apart from the queen. That
was a sign that [I] am now a member of the ocean family.’ (#2, Memory Tembo’s
published testimony, 2010)

This queen seems to be a person of power, but she is not the highest in the
underworld. Satan is even more powerful. Memory describes how there is
even a waiting list to see Satan himself: ‘I was put among people who were
due to meet him. […] Every agent is privileged to see Satan once a year’. After
Memory makes sacrifices, she advances in rank and becomes a director in the
department of the hair industry. There, three or four queens supply their hair
to her. In sum: women in the underworld are called queens and princesses,
and some of these have a high position. They are, however, not the highest
power, and some queens are working for others. The designation ‘queen’ does
not mean that, as Ellis and Ter Haar hold, those in charge in the underworld
are women.
Instead of being docile followers, the female Satanists act aggressively and
acquire power for themselves. ‘I was a hero on my own’, one adolescent female
says. ‘I used to fight. I was not like, “I am just a woman.” I was like a wrestler. I
used to beat anyhow I feel’. A hero, a fighter, a wrestler: these are words
associated more with men and masculinity than with a girl on the brink of
womanhood. Other female ex-Satanists acquire powers and titles. From a
case of the Fingers of Thomas:
‘I was given 100 bodyguards to look after me, whom I could send wherever I wanted.
Other Satanists had to climb up the hierarchy by following orders and going out on
missions, but I was a queen from the very beginning.’ (#66, testimony recorded by
the Fingers of Thomas, n.d.)

Instead of being subordinate, these young women describe themselves as

standing at the top of the hierarchy. Others have to bow to them, even those
who are in power in the normal world. ‘They can be respected in the society,
but under the sea they are humbled. […] They are juniors to other people’, as
Naomi says (#41a, Naomi’s recorded testimony, 2011). In the testimonies, the

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inversion from subordinate and respectful to powerful and aggressive is the

most common of all the inversions discussed in this chapter.
For both men and women, sexuality in general and (more specifically) having
children belongs to the expected behaviour. Van Breugel writes in his study of
Chewa traditional life in Malawi and Zambia (2001) that sexuality is highly
regulated. There are rules for when to have and when not to have sexual
intercourse, and these rules are often related to events in the community, such
as a funeral or the inauguration of a new chief. Intercourse, from this perspective,
is not an act of pleasure limited to a couple but an act contributing to the welfare
of the community. Even in contemporary Zambia, the community bears some
responsibility for the sexuality of individual couples. In ritual teachings for women
on the brink of getting married, women from the family and the neighbourhood
show the young woman, in highly explicit dances, how to have sex.
As was already mentioned in Chapter 2, having children is one important
aim of sexuality that contributes to the community. As Nasimiyu-Wasike
(1992) states:
Child-bearing is a sacred duty that has to be carried out by all normal individuals
of the society. […] The woman’s status in the society depended on the number of
children she bore, and her entire life was centred on children. (p. 154)

Nowadays, a woman’s life may not be entirely centred on children, and it is

debatable whether this has ever been the case, but it is expected of a woman
to have children of her own.
Just as with all the norms discussed so far, the Satanists invert these rules
about sexuality, community and children. For female Satanists, sex does not
contribute to the community and brings destruction rather than life. Several
ex-Satanists describe being married in the underworld. This prevents them
from having a productive marriage in the normal world. As is described in one
of the testimonies collected by the Fingers of Thomas, ‘I was a wife of Satan.
The devil was jealous of any man who wanted me. That is why I could never
get married in the physical world’.
Sexuality for female Satanists is a source of power over men. Grace narrates:
‘In the underworld, they gave me three gifts. The first was beauty: every man who
saw me saw a beautiful girl. The second was my step: when I walked, men would
turn around and think I was beautiful. The third was an irregular period.’ (#43,
interview with Grace, 08 July 2013)

With these gifts, she can seduce men. ‘During the day, some men would want
me, but I said no. During the night, I would visit them in the spirit’ (#43,
interview with Grace, 08 July 2013).
These powers, however, bring destruction upon the men who fall for the
Satanists. Gideon Mulenga Kabila describes the tactics of female Satanists
and their consequences for men (n.d.):

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There is a school of advanced prostitution [in the underworld] and it trains prostitutes
that are in blood shedding how to kill men and make Christians backslide. They use
advanced tactics, and these are:
Blood draining tactic, involving the draining of blood from men using the snakes
that are inserted in the female vagina, after the man sleeps with the possessed
prostitute of the underworld.
X-trinal tactic: this is a tactic that is used by these advanced prostitutes to remove
the private parts of a man. […] When you have an affair with these girls, automatically
you will be initiated and at times these girls are told to sacrifice and they will not
sacrifice anyone except those who slept with them. […] Many have died because
of these girls; they make men to develop sores on their private parts for them not
to have affairs with another lady. […] They are also assigned to spread diseases
such as AIDS and sexually transmitted illnesses (STIs). [… Other girls] are trained
to break down marriages. Many people’s marriages have been broken because of
these girls and they can pretend to be humble to men so that they can convince
them, and if a man sleeps with one of these girls, he will automatically leave the
first wife. (p. 19)

Female Satanists are particularly dangerous. Their sexuality brings death and
disease instead of new life, and it harms rather than contributes to the
community. In all of these ways, the sexuality of female Satanists is an inversion
of the sexuality expected of a woman.
As we have seen, the behaviour of the Satanist is an inversion of the
expectations for a child and a woman. What about the normative role model
of the man? In recent years, several publications have drawn attention to
cultural expectations and constructions of masculinity in Africa. Certain norms
of masculinity, like aggression, dominance and having multiple sexual partners
are labelled as troubling or even toxic because of their contribution to the
spread of HIV and the oppression of women (cf. Muparamoto 2012). Other
norms are described as challenged, for example, because poverty and
unemployment pose challenges to the expectation that a man can provide for
his family (cf. Ewusha 2012). One general expectation of masculinity in Zambia
is the ability to produce. This ability can be taken in a few different senses: to
produce food or an income for the family, to produce children to sustain the
community and as basic virility. In Zambia, a man struggling with infertility or
impotence is said not to be able to produce.
As with the women in testimonies, the sexuality of Satanist men is inverted.
Instead of having productive sexuality, male Satanists are often ordered to
abstain from sex with their spouse. David, the ex-Satanist who was head of
the department of destroying marriages, married a woman. But, ‘the problem
was that sleeping with her was under instruction’, meaning that he was not
allowed to have intercourse with his wife. His interviewer recognises this:
‘There are couples right now that don’t understand why their husbands behave the
way they are behaving. Your husband wants not to have sex with you. I was talking
to a lady in Kitwe, and I’m praying for this lady. This lady, hear me, she has never

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had sex with her husband. Now, we are talking six years! And yet they are living
together. Six solid years! And I told her exactly these things you are telling: no, your
husband is up to something. Your husband is into something. If I were you: run away
from this marriage as quickly as possible.’ (#31b, David’s recorded testimony, 2013)

Similar conditions on intercourse are known from testimonies from other

African countries (see e.g. Meyer 1995). Other conditions for being a Satanist
mentioned in the testimonies are not being allowed to bathe, use a vehicle or
wear shoes. In testimonies of women, such conditions are less prominent.
Although the sexuality of male Satanists follows the pattern of inversions,
in other respects the testimonies of men are less obviously inverted. Men who
become Satanists, as we have read in the rumours from an earlier chapter,
often do so to become successful, powerful or wealthy. Success, power and
wealth are characteristics of the ideal African archetype of the ‘big man’. It
seems that not being able to live up to this high standard of masculinity leads
people to Satanism. Take, for example, David, who says:
‘I was dealing with hardware. The business was not going the way I was thinking, the
way it’s supposed to be going. So now I consulted my friend and said, “No, I’ve been
trying, and still, I’m stagnant on the same position”. Then my friend advised me and
said, “You know, business nowadays, you don’t just do business like you used to.
You need to find help somewhere”.’ (#31a, David’s recorded testimony, 2013)

David had thought that his hardware store would make him rich. However,
things did not work out in the way he had expected. But David’s friend explains
to him that nowadays this is a common problem. To become rich, one needs
special help, as we already have seen in a previous chapter. As Satanists,
according to the testimonies, these men can become wealthy and powerful.
David receives money to buy stock and is able not only to make his hardware
store a success but to set up new stores as well. After some time, he starts a
new business in wedding supplies. A Malawian ex-Satanist recounts how he
found ‘bags full of money’ in his room after his first sacrifice, in both Malawian
kwacha and US dollars (41i, Mphatso’s recorded testimony, 2013).
In the course of their involvement in Satanism, the men receive not only
money but titles as well. David becomes the head of the department of
destroying marriages, and the Malawian ex-Satanist gets in charge of several
companies in the underworld. For men, however, this is not an inversion of
expectations but rather an alternative, albeit unacceptable, way to live up to
the norm.
To sum up this discussion, the testimonies present the Satanist as an
inversion of the traditional value system, except perhaps for the case of the
man. Women and children in testimonies of ex-Satanists do exactly the
opposite of what is expected of them. Inversions are a main characteristic of
narratives about evil Others, and this inversion is most clearly seen in the
description of the behaviour of the Satanist.

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Shifting positions of youth and women

Narratives about evil Others, like the testimonies and rumours about Satanism,
show tensions in society. If the norms of society are inverted in the narratives
about Satanism, it may point to a vulnerability present in the way that these
norms are experienced in contemporary Zambia. We have already discussed
the tensions surrounding redistribution and illicit accumulation. In this section,
I will further discuss tensions related to living in a hierarchical society.
Should women and children be content with a subservient position and
with treating those with a higher position in the hierarchy with respect? This
question comes back in almost every testimony given by female ex-Satanists.
In the last 50 years, shifts have taken place in the hierarchical structure of
African societies. Institutions like the European Union present themselves as
champions of gender equality, which is exported to other parts of the world
(Woodward & Van Der Vleuten 2014:67–92). International organisations also
advocate for the implementation of children’s rights. This pressure is felt in
countries like Zambia, although it is not always appreciated. Whenever in my
classes the topic of gender-based violence would come up, a male student
would always be quick to point out that he had heard about a woman who
beat her husband instead of the other way around. Advocacy on children’s
rights, especially aimed at the abolishment of physical punishment, was
perceived by my students as neocolonial interference in cultural practices of
child-raising.
Nonetheless, things are changing. The gender gap in economic opportunities
and participation, in level of education, health care and survival and in political
empowerment is slowly declining in Zambia (World Economic Forum
2021:399). There are changes in the position of children as well. Many children
grow up in vulnerable households, affected by the HIV and AIDS epidemic. In
these households, children may occupy a structurally weak position themselves
if they are not the biological children of their caregivers (De Boeck & Plissart
2004:192). To that can be added the difficult economic situation in many
African countries. According to UNICEF, for example, in Zambia, 40.9% of
children have to deal with multiple deprivations, like lacking access to food,
schools, health care, clean water and sanitation, as well as adequate housing
(UNICEF 2021:151).
But there is another side to the position of children as well. Zambia is a very
young country, in which almost half of the population (48%) is younger than
14-years-old (UNICEF 2021:24). African children and young people are
prominently present in the public space, and they have become more
important in the past 25 years in several ways (De Boeck & Plissart 2004:182).
In different parts of Africa, children have been deployed in armed conflicts. As
child soldiers, they have tasted what it means to wield real and violent power.
Children also play a role in economic production. As young labourers, of their

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own volition, adolescents can acquire status through the money they earn.
Children are not merely a group that is at risk. Sometimes, they are perceived
as a risk themselves (De Boeck 2009). The adolescent Zambian Satanist and
the child witches of Malawi (cf. Chilamampunga & Thindwa 2012) and Kinshasa
are examples of children who are seen to pose a threat rather than being
victims of threatening circumstances.
The position of children and adolescents is particularly interesting as most
of the ex-Satanists are either adolescents or describe events set in their
childhood or adolescence, and the most far-reaching changes in society have
a bearing on their position. In several publications, Filip de Boeck has described
a crisis surrounding children in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC (De Boeck &
Plissart 2004, eds. Honwana & De Boeck 2008; De Boeck 2008, 2009).
Honwana and De Boeck (eds. 2005) write:
More than anyone else, [children and youths] are the ones who undergo, express,
and provide answers to the crisis of existing communitarian models, structures
of authority, gerontocracy, and gender relations. Children and youth are the focal
point of the many changes that characterise the contemporary African scene, afloat
between crisis and renewal. (p. 2)

Several factors cause shifts in the hierarchical structure of society and

especially the position of children.
One is a profound socio-economic shift that has resulted in the decrease of
male authority. In the classical hierarchical African society, the adult or even
elderly male holds the apex position of status and authority. He is the one who
has laboured and provided for his family and should be treated with the
utmost respect. The testimonies of male ex-Satanists show something about
how difficult that role has become in recent years. In contemporary Africa,
many male heads of households are unemployed and therefore unable to
provide for their families. As I have argued, male ex-Satanists describe their
first encounter with Satanism often as a tool to become successful in business.
This business success is more than an individual achievement. Being able to
provide for your family is part of what makes a man a man in Africa, and this
is dependent on economic success.
Younger men may be more successful and streetwise to make it in the
informal sector in urban Africa (De Boeck & Plissart 2004:190). It gives them
an edge over the adult male heads of households. Often, men feel the necessity
of seeking employment away from home. Migrant labour has been a feature of
life in Africa for the past 150 years, with many men finding work in the mines
in Zambia or South Africa and returning home on a cyclical basis. The place of
the absent men in the economy of the city is taken up by women and youths. As
their economic importance grows, so does the status of women and youths.
As the authority of older men declines, a rift between the generations develops.
According to De Boeck (De Boeck & Plissart 2004:193), ‘the (urban) young

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claim for themselves the right to singularise and realise themselves as

“authoritative elders,” and to use the syntax of gerontocracy before one’s
time, as it were’. A similar development is visible for girls and young women.
These shifts in the position of elderly male authority may have the effect that
youngsters, more than was previously common, are experienced as a threat.
Besides these socio-economic shifts, the growing importance of the nuclear
family and, related to that, the greater cultural acceptance of individualism
also changes the position of children and youths in society. Traditionally, the
extended kin network acted as a social safety net. As the discussion of the
‘black tax’ in a previous section shows, the claims of extended family members
are more and more felt as a strain. This influences the position of children as
well. Where it used to be self-evident that relatives would take care of the
children if they were orphaned or needed a place to stay that increased their
opportunities at school or on the labour market, this privilege of relatives has
started to become questioned. The redefinition of kinship networks makes the
position of nonbiological children in households even more precarious – as
several of the ex-Satanists have experienced in their biographies. Often,
children who occupy such a structurally weak position in a household are
more likely to be accused of witchcraft or Satanism, as we will see in more
detail in a later chapter.
The burden of vulnerable children is not merely an economic one.
Abandoning a child because of an accusation of witchcraft or Satanism means
that there is one less mouth to feed, but this is not the only element of these
accusations. Accusations of witchcraft, as De Boeck argues, happen not only
amongst the poorest families. Amongst the emerging middle classes, as well
as with the relatively better-off Africans living in the diaspora in Europe or the
United States, accusations of witchcraft against children can occur (De Boeck
2009:135). Besides economic factors, a more general change in culture is
important.
In contemporary African cities, increasingly, only members of the nuclear
family are entitled to the support that previously was rendered to the extended
family as a whole. This is an effect of the emphasis on the nuclear family by,
amongst others, churches, but it is also related to a more positive evaluation
of individualism in general. Extended families who take care of their own fit
well within a communal lifestyle in which, as the saying goes, ‘you need a
village to raise a child’. People sometimes bemoan that this ideal has
disappeared in Europe and the United States. In Africa, it is not self-evident
anymore either. In the academic literature, the rise of individualism at the
expense of a communal ideal has often been related to the influence of
Pentecostal churches. In Pentecostal churches, becoming independent
individuals is celebrated. Independent means free from the stifling bonds of
kinship, free from the influence of the devil (which is often related to these

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kinship bonds) and free from the traditional hierarchy that endorses age and
masculinity over youth and femininity. In this way, Pentecostalism supports a
more individualist style of production, distribution and consumption (Meyer
1998a:229).
Research from Kenya and Ghana supports the view that Pentecostal
Christianity endorses individualism. In an analysis of sermons in Pentecostal
churches in Nairobi, Kenya, McClendon and Riedl (2015) find an emphasis on
individual autonomy at the expense of traditional collective ties. Similarly, in a
study of the concept of love in Ghana that compared Pentecostal and mainline
churches, Osei-Tutu et al. (2021) found that members of Pentecostal churches
were less likely to conceptualise love as material care and scored weaker on
measures of family obligation and relationship harmony. These results point to
the conclusion that, if pressed, Pentecostals are inclined to choose for
themselves and their nuclear family rather than the extended family when it
comes to the distribution of their assets.
Children who have traditionally benefited from kinship solidarity now live
on the edge of rejection. In Kinshasa, some children take matters into their
own hands and choose a life on the streets. De Boeck quotes the sentiment of
some street children (De Boeck & Plissart 2004):
At home, it is ‘cold-cold’ [malili-malili], but the street is where one is free [place ozali
libre]; if you feel like stealing you can steal; if you feel like fighting you can fight; if
you feel like lying, you can lie; if you feel like smoking you can smoke. (p. 188)

If the situation at home becomes unbearable, children may use their agency
to ‘uninsert’ themselves from the responsibilities and expectations that they
are confronted with in the family context (De Boeck & Plissart 2004:189).
Under the influence of the embrace of the nuclear family and increasing
individualism, children and youths are increasingly perceived as burdens or
even threats. A sense of spiritual insecurity adds to this process. The term
spiritual insecurity was coined by Adam Ashforth (2005) in his ethnography
of the South African township of Soweto near Johannesburg. In Ashforth’s
use, the term has connotations both to the ever-present threat of harmful
spiritual forces and to a sense of ignorance and uncertainty towards spiritual
issues. Where in traditional African notions of witchcraft, a witch never struck
without a reason that made sense within a network of relationships – out of
jealousy or spite or anger – the new forms of witchcraft and similar phenomena
that have become common in Africa do not seem to work from this logical
framework. The forces of evil have become omnipresent. As we have seen in
this chapter, they are in the market, on the road, in school and (if you are not
careful) even in church and in your home. Even though in the narratives of ex-
Satanists relationships still matter, the danger of Satanism is everywhere.
Whether a product or a stranger is dangerous cannot be easily determined; it
is a lingering, undetermined threat.

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This spiritual uncertainty means that anyone can be perceived as a threat,

even children. Harri Englund (2004:302–303) notes concern with ‘deceptive
appearances’ amongst Pentecostals in a Malawian township. Things there are
often not what they seem: a church member may be an agent of the devil or
may be found in an unchristian place like a bar after faithfully attending a
church service. Reality is not straightforward. What appears to be real may be
masking a truth that can only be discerned by a religious expert, as we will see
in the next chapter.
The spiritual insecurity about an evil that can be hidden amongst both
those who are closest to you and the strangers in public places can attach
itself to anyone. In Kinshasa, it is often attached to the children in structurally
weak family positions who are accused of witchcraft. In Zambia, as we have
seen, suspicions of Satanism are levelled against people with status and power,
like politicians and businessmen, but children can also be perceived as a
threat. The fact that most testimonies are given by adolescents seems to
imply that there is an inherent relationship between youths and evil in Zambia
as well.
In this section, I have discussed shifts in the hierarchical order of society
and the position of youths and children. Under the influence of socio-economic
changes, the position of youths has shifted at the expense of the traditional
male authority figure. At the same time, an emphasis on the nuclear family
and individualist norms has made the situation of vulnerable children more
precarious. Spiritual insecurity contributes to the perception of these children
as not only a nuisance or a burden but a threat.
These developments show that the traditional society with a clear
hierarchy based on age and gender has become problematic. Youths no
longer want to wait until they are elderly before they can enjoy status and
authority, especially as their father figures (if they are even present) are
often struggling to embody the ideals of masculinity themselves. Furthermore,
the values of individualism that are on the rise within nuclear families are
also affecting youth. They want to use their agency to make their own
choices in life, without being pressed into the expectations of their elders.

Conclusion
The stories about Satanism in Zambia, including the testimonies given by ex-
Satanists, are examples of narratives about evil Others. As we have seen in
Chapter 1, these types of narratives introduce a group that stands at odds
with the norms held in the society in which the narrative develops. The Other
is an inversion of everything that is counted as good and proper within that
society. These narratives seem to be related to changes and tensions present
in society. People start speaking about evil Others if the world they knew has

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changed and its norms are no longer unquestionable. In such times, there is
often a sense that something is wrong, but it is yet unspecified. Narratives
about evil Others give this unspecified sense of threat a name and a face and
a place within a larger narrative, which makes it easier to cope with changes.
For scholars of these narratives, they act as a gauge to measure the
sentiments in society. An analysis of narratives about evil Others can give an
insight into what specifically is perceived as vulnerable or under threat within
that society.
In this chapter, I have analysed testimonies and accusations of Satanism in
newspapers to find out which tensions in society they address. From these
sources, it is clear that Satanism is a danger related to the urban world and a
Zambian understanding of modernity. For Zambians, becoming modern is
often perceived as entering a better state, with higher-quality education,
health care and infrastructure, as well as access to coveted consumer goods.
In the testimonies, however, all of these dreams of modernity are tainted with
evil. Schools, hospitals, roads, shops and the things one can buy there are all
associated with the realm of the devil. The testimonies speak to the fear that
modernity may not be the promised land it was dreamed to be.
More specifically, the testimonies are concerned with the consequences of
becoming modern. Many of the consumer goods discussed in the testimonies
are used to change one’s appearance. For example, creams can lighten your
skin, and weaves may make your hair appear straight. Other items are used as
an extension of one’s identity, such as a nice car, fashionable clothes or
nontraditional food and beverages. The testimonies address a fear that these
changes go deeper than just the surface. In the testimonies, using these
products leads to changes in behaviour and character. In the most extreme
cases, they may make you lose even your humanity.
It is not so strange that modernity is associated with changes in
behaviour. The traditional norms for proper behaviour are under discussion
in contemporary Africa. Women and youths are no longer content with a
position at the bottom of the hierarchy, and socio-economic shifts have
weakened the authority of the elderly men who used to be at the top. A
growing appreciation of individualism means that the redistribution of
assets to the extended kinship network is no longer self-evident and also
that youths begin to perceive themselves as autonomous individuals who
want to control their destinies.
The testimonies show a fear of what happens when traditional patterns of
behaviour are inverted. Rather than men, it is women and youths who hold the
positions of authority. Rather than contributing to the community, they keep
everything for themselves, sacrificing their family members to acquire even
more. Even sexuality no longer contributes to the bonds within a relationship;
instead, it corrupts and does harm.

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Today, the roles prescribed by gender and age are less clear than they
previously may have been. For example, adolescent girls expect to have some
measure of control over their destiny and are strengthened in that expectation
by school and media. According to Misty Bastian (2001), testimonies celebrate
gender roles where the (young) woman has power over the man while at the
same time enforcing a patriarchal form of Christianity. In the testimonies, it is
the adolescent women and not the men who have authority, who can act
without showing respect and take whatever they want. For a short period, the
ex-Satanists can embody this strong image of femininity, albeit one that is
cast as evil. But in the end, the message of the testimony is that this evil is
conquered, and the woman has found her way back into the Christian fold.
According to Bastian (2001:88), ‘Women’s modern magics, while feared, are
thus ultimately tamed […] and brought under the surveillance and control of
senior, masculine forces’. It seems that in Bastian’s analysis, the testimonies
enforce the status quo.
However, the Zambian testimonies also exemplify change. Zambian ex-
Satanists, after their deliverance, do not exactly go back to the norms that
they inverted as Satanists. The desire for autonomy and freedom stays with
them. For Eve, being delivered brings freedom. She says:
‘From the time I’ve been delivered, I’ve been set free. I’m at peace. I’ve got a free
mind. I’ve got a free mind and I enjoy myself in the Lord. I love working for God.
I love everything that I do. I actually love myself now more than before, and I’ve
accepted myself and everything.’ (#37a, Eve’s recorded interview, 2013)

Pentecostal spiritual warfare Christianity allows Eve to act as a powerful

individual. ‘One thing I’ve learned as I was going through deliverance’, she
says, ‘was that I have a certain authority in me, that even the devil cannot
control me’.
Naomi shows this authority in the prayer with which she starts her testimony:
‘Father, may you guide me. May you be the bodyguard. Let your Holy Spirit be
with me, that wherever the devil is, I dominate him wherever he is. I dominate his
computers. Devil, I know you are listening to my prayer. Now I am tying you with
the holy chains and throw you in the endless pit where the Holy Ghost fire is always
burning.’ (#41a, Naomi’s recorded testimony, 2011)

Naomi does not ask for God’s intervention in the works of the devil. Rather,
she finds in herself the authority to bind him. Grace also finds a different role
than mere subservience; she wants to be a role model:
‘[My experience with Satanism] has helped me to be more sensitive and careful.
And now I can encourage others. I see their behaviour and because I went through
the same thing, I can tell. So then I call them and try to help them. God was not a
fool when he saved me; he had some purpose for me.’ (#43, interview with Grace,
08 July 2013)

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Looking at these examples, the testimonies do not seem to be repressing

changes and keeping the status quo. Rather, the ex-Satanists use their
experience to find the ability to wield some authority while still contributing
to the community. They do not adhere to the traditional roles for their age or
gender but become role models as born-again Christians. Here, testimonies
may inspire innovation and change rather than reinforce the norms of society.
In the anxious imaginations of contemporary Zambians, becoming modern
seems to be associated with becoming an inversion of traditional norms. It is
this worry that makes Zambians receptive to the message of testimonies
about Satanism. The testimonies portray a picture of the worst that could
happen when one becomes modern. But the performance of testimony does
more than just allow the audience to conceptualise the ‘worst possible things’
(cf. Frankfurter 2006:99). The ex-Satanists also give a glimpse of a way out.
As born-again Christians, they embody both a life lived according to a
conservative (if not traditional) value system as well as a sense of authority
over their situation. They have the power to deny Satan and the status to act
as role models for other youths. They can show the way to become modern in
a manner that does not negate all norms while at the same time claiming a
position that was unavailable to them in the traditional hierarchy.

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Rewriting the life story after

the diagnosis of Satanism

Introduction
Over two weeks in 2015, Tsitsi gave her testimony in church on two consecutive
Sundays, on a television programme hosted by the pastor of the church and
in an all-night prayer meeting in the same church. She is a slight woman who
speaks with a low, strong voice. Growing up, she feels rejected by her father
and develops emotional and physical problems. One day, Tsitsi and her sister
notice a crusade in town. Her sister suggests that they go there so that the
pastors can pray for Tsitsi’s ailments. In her testimony, Tsitsi narrates:
‘We went there. When the altar call came for people with sickness, I went in front.
I remember falling down, and then I remember waking up covered in dust in another
place. They told me I had been moving like a snake and that I was so violent that
they couldn’t handle me, so they had to take me to this place. It was when the
pastors started to dig into my life that I realised that my problem started earlier; it
started when I was born. When I was growing up, my father never wanted to buy
me female clothes. I would wear shorts, and I was always hanging around with boys.
To this day, I still don’t really know how to walk like a woman. That is why I often
don’t wear heels.’ (#10c, Tsitsi’s testimony in church, 08 February 2015)

In the process of her deliverance, Tsitsi remembers all kinds of events from her
youth: her father who showed no love for her, the time that she fell into a river
while visiting her grandparents (a river that was connected to a marine spirit)

How to cite: Kroesbergen-Kamps, J 2022, ‘Rewriting the life story after the diagnosis of Satanism’, in Speaking
of Satan in Zambia: Making cultural and personal sense of narratives about Satanism, in HTS Religion &
Society Series, vol. 14, AOSIS Books, Cape Town, pp. 147–181. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2022.BK373.05

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and how she used to think bad about her siblings. But Tsitsi’s deliverance is
not easy. She says:
‘It took 15 years of prayers to get deliverance. Wherever there were prayers, I
would go. Whenever there was a pastor from Nigeria or Ghana, I would be there.
So many pastors laid their hands on me. They were addressing demons in their
prayers, but I was married to the devil himself.’ (#10c, Tsitsi’s testimony in church,
08 February 2015)

In the end, Tsitsi finds out that her case is not just simple possession:
‘I came to know I was in blind Satanism. I came to know that I was in lesbianism,
which I had never known in the physical. I learned that I had a higher rank than the
Queen of the Coast. My heart was changed with that of a mouse and my tongue
with the tongue of a bat. […] If I said, “I will never see you again,” it was true. If I
said, “I hate you,” bad things would happen to that person.’ (#10c, Tsitsi’s testimony
in church, 08 February 2015)

Eventually, Tsitsi meets a pastor who can set her free from Satanism. Later,
Tsitsi and this pastor get married. The husband is present at her testimonies in
church as well. In his role as husband as well as a pastor with a deliverance
ministry, he explains:
‘Satanism, blind Satanism, is especially for the youth. Never older people are
initiated. […] That is where the battle is, not with older people. She got initiated
when she was six years old. You may have a child who is into Satanism, and you
don’t know.’ (#10d, Tsitsi’s testimony in church, 22 February 2015)

Narratives about Satanism in Zambia draw on various traditions: ideas about

witchcraft and possession, theologies of deliverance and spiritual warfare and
dreams and nightmares about the prospect of becoming modern. This web of
meaningful narratives makes the content of these stories plausible to Zambian
Christians with a Pentecostal bend; it means that stories about Satanism in
Zambia make cultural sense.
It is one thing to deem the existence the existence of an organisation
devoted to evil plausible. To claim that one has been a member of this
organisation, however, is something else completely. For ex-Satanists like
Tsitsi, not only does the discourse of Satanism make cultural sense, but it also
makes personal sense. It is a reality that they have experienced for themselves.
In this part of the book, we turn to how narratives about Satanism make
personal sense, and in this chapter, we start with the Satanists themselves.
How do they come to see themselves as Satanists?
At first sight, conversion seems to be an important interpretative frame for
testimonies of ex-Satanists. Testimonies follow the common script of
conversion stories, in which an evil past gives way to a newfound, born-again
Christian present. Narratives about a past as a Satanist and the subsequent
affirmation of a born-again Christian identity seem to point to a change (or
maybe even two consecutive changes) in religious conviction. The picture of

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Satanism that emerges from the testimonies, however, has little to do with
religious beliefs or doctrines. The conversion that the ex-Satanists describe is
not one from the religion of Satanism to the religion of Christianity. In terms of
the first chapter, the narrative of ex-Satanists is an anti-Satanist narrative, in
which an image of an evil Other is invoked and embodied by the narrator of a
testimony.
Another difference between a conversion and the experience of ex-
Satanists is that for the ex-Satanists whom I have interviewed or whose
testimonies I have heard, becoming a Satanist was not a choice, not even a
misguided one. Usually, they can point to a specific moment when it all started,
an initiation in their words. But this initiation often happens to them involuntarily
and they are initially even unaware of it. This is why Satanism is often called
blind Satanism, like it was in Tsitsi’s case. Other ex-Satanists tell similar stories.
Grace, for example, was initiated in a dream:
‘I had a dream that I was in a room with all these Satanists. They spun me around,
and when I didn’t fall, they said, “If you had fallen, you would have become a
Satanist, but since you didn’t fall, you are not”. Later, I had another dream, where I
was at a party with friends. They offered me a drink and I took it. When I drank it, I
realised that it was blood. I knew then that I had joined Satanism.’ (#43, interview
with Grace, 08 July 2013)

Martha, another ex-Satanist whom I interviewed, traces her initiation back to

a gift received from a friend at school:
‘When my birthday came, she asked me what to buy. I said, “Anything”. She bought
me a neck chain. When I got it, I didn’t understand what it meant, but after I got it,
I started dreaming about being under the ocean.’ (#3, interview with Martha and
Loveness, 23 March 2015)

Under the ocean is where the realm of the Satanists is located, and the
necklace gave Martha access to this place. Other testimonies claim initiations
through wearing clothes given by a friend, sleeping under a certain blanket at
the house of a relative or eating food given to them.
Only two testimonies describe a somewhat more intentional involvement
in Satanism. Both David, an unsuccessful businessman from Lusaka, and
Moses, a soldier in the Congo, intended to do something to acquire wealth
and power (#31a, David’s recorded interview, 2013 and #38, interview with
Moses, 11 November 2013). Later, they realised that the rituals they submitted
themselves to were their initiation into Satanism. In none of the testimonies
that I have collected or heard about through conversations with pastors and
the Fingers of Thomas was becoming a Satanist a doctrinal choice.
Becoming a Satanist does not mean leaving the doctrines of one religion
behind for the beliefs of another. Scholars have noted this lack of a profound
change in religious convictions for African religious change in general. In his
research on narratives of Zambian born-again Christians, the scholar of African

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Christianity Adriaan van Klinken (2012:216–217) argues that conversion in

Zambia refers more to a change in lifestyle than a change in beliefs or doctrines.
Nicolette Manglos is a sociologist who has researched conversion narratives
of born-again Christians in Malawi. She adds another element to Van Klinken’s
change in lifestyle: ‘The conversion experience is central to how Pentecostals
understand themselves as miraculously “healed,” emotionally and physically,
and empowered to live a devout, moral life’ (Manglos 2010:413). The frame of
conversion as adopting a new belief or theology does not explain how
someone first becomes a Satanist and afterwards becomes a born-again
Christian.
In this introduction, I have argued that Satanism is not a religious conviction.
If that is the case, then how does someone come to see their experiences as
involvement in Satanism? In other words, through what process does an
individual accept the discourse of Satanism as a personal narrative? In the first
part of this chapter, I will argue that affliction is a better interpretative frame
than conversion for the discourse of Satanism. The second part of the chapter
discusses how the diagnosis of Satanism is incorporated into the life story.

Satanism as affliction
If Satanism is not a religious conviction, what is it? The responses of an
audience to a testimony may shed some light on this question. In a certain
Christian radio programme, different kinds of testimonies are delivered. Some
focus on overcoming barrenness, miraculous healing or even coming back
from death. Others emphasise the dangers of traditional ceremonies and
visiting traditional healers. Still others report having spiritual husbands and
wives. Some testimonies are specifically about Satanism, although Satanism is
mentioned in some of the other testimonies as well.
Between January and March 2015, throughout several episodes, a guest
named Mr X gave a testimony about his involvement in Satanism. His testimony
is in itself not very special. It seems to rely heavily on Gideon Mulenga Kabila’s
published testimony, with some details repeated almost verbatim. What
makes these episodes interesting is that listeners had the opportunity to call
in and send SMS messages with their questions. This makes it possible to
establish how an audience hears a testimony. What does it make them think
of? The following is a list of the questions asked during one of the episodes of
Mr X’s testimony:13
•• ‘The Bible says that money is the root of all evil. But we need money every
day, so what can we do?’
•• ‘I often dream that I am getting married.’

13. Most of the questions were asked in Chinyanja; this is my abridged translation.

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•• ‘My niece, who is two years old, often wakes up at midnight. She cries and
starts vomiting. This happens up to three times a week, but only when she
is sleeping alone. When she is with her mother, it never happens.’
•• ‘How should I preach?’
•• ‘I have never slept with anyone, but now I have an STI. How is that possible?’
•• ‘I often dream of women and of getting married, and at the end of 2014, I
dreamed about a snake entering my stomach.’
•• ‘I am dreaming about a snake. It always bites me, and one time the snake
shouted, “I am your wife”.’
•• ‘I am a pastor and I fail to understand these things. Sometimes I pray for
people, but the situation stays the same. I want to meet you.’
•• ‘I have a problem in the night with my legs; they are twitching.’
Both men and women call in to ask questions. Of these questions, only the
first about money directly engages the topic of the testimony. Testimonies
often explain how Satanists are rewarded with money for sacrificing people.
Does that mean that money is always evil? But do you not need money to
survive? Two questions seem to be asked by aspiring pastors who want to
learn from the host. The other seven questions all have the same underlying
concern: what is wrong with my loved one or with me?
In all of the episodes where listeners had the opportunity to ask questions,
this was a major concern. For the audience, hearing a testimony triggers
questions about their state of well-being. The academic literature, especially
from the modernity of witchcraft perspective, often interprets testimonies of
Satanism as reflecting the political and economic situation. This situation may
be there in the testimony, like the backdrop against with a play is performed,
but it is not the message that a Zambian audience gets from a testimony. For
the audience, testimonies do not offer an abstract explanation of how the
world works. Rather, upon hearing a testimony, people look at their own lives
and the lives of those close to them and wonder whether a similar thing could
be happening to them. They have the feeling that something is not right in
their lives, and narratives about Satanism provide a possible cause for that. In
short, they are looking for afflictions.
In testimonies, the connection between Satanism and affliction is present
as well. Many ex-Satanists describe their initiation as the start of their
involvement in Satanism. But as this initiation often happens without their
conscious assent, the question arises at what moment they realised they were
Satanists. The answer is not a topic that is generally discussed in a testimony;
it does not form part of the general script. However, in some testimonies, it is
possible to see glimpses of the moment when someone realised that they
were involved in Satanism. A good example is Eve, on whose testimony the
following case study is based.

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Case study: Eve’s affliction

Eve is in her early 20s when her testimony is recorded in an interview with a
pastor and radio host. As a teenager, she went through a difficult time:
‘I was 16, and I can say I was very lonely. I was staying far away from my parents.
I was actually being mistreated by the people I was staying with. So I used to feel
like nobody loves me.’ (#37a, Eve’s recorded testimony, 2013)

She suffered from some vague physical complaints, like the feeling of a lump
in her throat and high blood pressure. In retrospect, Eve saw that she had
always been different from others. She says:
‘I was just a weird kid. I was very quiet. I never had friends and I never liked being
around people. I would lock myself in my bedroom, stay there the whole day.’ (#37a,
Eve’s recorded testimony, 2013)

She was especially wary of others, men, touching her. Friends and relatives
noticed her strange behaviour:
‘Somebody told me that he thought that I behaved in a very strange way. I was very
quiet. I was too quiet. […] I remember at school that they used to laugh at me that
I never had a boyfriend.’ (#37a, Eve’s recorded testimony, 2013)

Her friend advised her to see a certain pastor who might be able to help.
It was only after being prayed over several times that Eve realised the extent
of her divergence from the norm:
‘After they’d prayed for me in church for a month, […] that’s when I began to
realise what was happening to me. That’s when I realised that there was something
wrong with me. […] Even certain thoughts I used to have were not normal thoughts.
They were somehow … maybe I can call it crazy.’ (#37a, Eve’s recorded testimony,
2013)

Something was wrong with Eve, as she repeated four times in her testimony.
In Eve’s narrative, there are several intermediaries involved in her dawning
realisation of being a Satanist. Eve herself feels out of sorts. People around her
are worried. A pastor is instrumental in both Eve’s realisation that she is a
Satanist and in her deliverance from this evil. For Eve, Satanism is the diagnosis
of what is wrong with her. Rather than a religious conviction or ideology,
Satanism appears to be an affliction. A similar dawning realisation seems to
have struck Tsitsi, whose process of deliverance took 15 years and started with
physical problems as well (#10c, Tsitsi’s testimony in church, 08 February 2015).
The word affliction suggests a medical discourse. Much has been written
about the difference between a Western biomedical perspective on health
care and a holistic African perspective, where physical health is seen as closely
related to other aspects of well-being. According to Laurenti Magesa (1997),
the essence of traditional African cosmology is maintaining or reviving the
force of life. If this vital life force flourishes, families enjoy good health,
are relatively prosperous and see their children survive into adulthood.

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As we have already seen in Chapter 2, a disturbance in this life force, caused

by moral transgressions or a malevolent human or spiritual entity, may cause
problems in various spheres of life. From this perspective, the very different
problems of physical illness and poverty, for example, may have a common
cause. A health problem is not seen as merely a personal medical issue but as
having a social and spiritual dimension as well. Compared to this holistic view
of health care, the Western biomedical paradigm is said to be limited, and it is
criticised for addressing symptoms but not the cause of an illness.
However compelling this distinction between Western and African
perspectives may be, a strict dichotomy may not be very helpful in
understanding how contemporary Zambians see well-being and affliction.
Holistic or alternative healing is not a purely African thing but is popular today
in the West as well. On the other hand, hospitals in Zambia offer biomedical
cures rather than holistic healing. It seems to me that everyone, whether
Western or African, strives for well-being in all aspects. People from all over
the world could probably agree that a lack of well-being may have medical,
social or spiritual causes.
In different contexts, however, people may differ in their evaluations of who
can help in a specific situation. In southern Africa, for a common, mild illness
like a cold or a sore throat, basic treatments are well-known within the general
population, and no health care specialist is involved (Steinforth 2009:66). For
serious ailments, treatment is sought in hospitals (Sugishita 2009), although
in rural areas traditional medicine is often more accessible and affordable
(Stekelenburg et al. 2005; Van Rensburg 2004:33). The choice to visit a
traditional healer is also made if the physical symptoms are unusual or persist
even after a visit to the clinic (Sugishita 2009). Unexplained and lingering
symptoms indicate that more is going on than just a medical problem, and the
wider expertise of a holistic, traditional healer is required. Research conducted
in Lusaka shows that distance and cost are not decisive in the choice of a
traditional healer. Clients are willing to travel far to visit a well-known traditional
healer and to pay more than for treatment in the hospital (Mildnerová 2015).
Chinese doctors in Zambia, who use a combination of Western biomedicine
and traditional Chinese healing practices, are an interesting category that
transcends boundaries.
Besides biomedicine and traditional healers, Christian faith healers form a
third alternative for persons seeking healing and an explanation for their
afflictions (Manglos & Trinitapoli 2011). As I have argued in Chapter 3, one of
the reasons for the success of Pentecostalism in Africa is the holistic answers
it provides to African problems in various spheres of life. Like traditional healers,
faith healers are receptive to nonbiological causes of affliction. Although some
faith healers discourage the use of biomedicine (Togarasei 2010), most accept
biomedical diagnoses of illness (Manglos & Trinitapoli 2011).

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It is not just the Pentecostal churches that support faith healing. Along with
the rise of Pentecostalism in Africa, a ‘Pentecostalisation’ of mainline churches
has taken place as well. Manglos and Trinitapoli (2011) state that in Malawi:
As expected, Pentecostal congregations are most likely to be practising faith healing
and to score very high on our index of faith healing indicators. Yet the Mission
Protestant churches closely follow Pentecostals as the most actively engaged in
faith healing, and they are followed by African independent congregations, [and]
Catholic parishes. (p. 110)

This is similar to my observations in the Zambian mainline mission churches.

As I have argued elsewhere, the RCZ, especially, is shifting towards
Pentecostalist views and practices (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2016).
In case of an affliction, Zambians make their own choices on where to seek
help. These choices are, however, not fixed. Many Zambians shop around for a
diagnosis and a therapy that fits best with their understanding of the situation.
Research on therapy-seeking behaviour in Lusaka shows that clients seek out
a variety of diagnoses, finally choosing the one that feels most appropriate
(Mildnerová 2015:36). This is not an individual process but is informed by
conversations with and the opinions of the patient’s network. The acceptance
of a diagnosis is ‘a process of negotiation between a healer, a patient and his
significant others (kinsmen, friends or neighbours)’ (Mildnerová 2015:96).
In her testimony, Eve describes herself as lacking well-being. She feels
lonely and weird, has physical problems, her behaviour is evaluated as strange,
and she calls herself ‘maybe crazy’. Eve does not explicitly describe seeking
help from the medical profession, although the remark that she had high
blood pressure indicates that she may have undergone a medical examination
at some time. For the lump in her throat that Eve experienced in combination
with dreams about eating flesh, her mother took her to a traditional healer.
Eve narrates:
‘Once, I woke up with a piece of meat in my mouth. […] I told my mom about it. And
at that time, my mom wasn’t born again, and she believed so much in traditional
medicine. She gave me something; I don’t know what it was. She told me to chew
it. Then I chewed and we forgot about it. […] There was a time when I got very sick,
I had something moving in my stomach, and then someone said that it was trying
to eat my heart. The person that said that gave me medicine. It was traditional
medicine, but I don’t know what it’s called. That day, it left my stomach, and then
the very day, in the night, it came again. It entered through my left arm. I didn’t
see it, the way it was, but I could see it moving in my skin. And then my mom
took me to the same man, who made a tattoo on my left arm. After that, we went
home. My mom got scared and she went to a witch doctor. They said that I needed
protection, and she was given medicine that was mixed with a python snake. She
was asked to make those tattoos on me, and when putting the same medicine,
she was told to say certain words. I don’t remember them. After she made those
tattoos, I was asked not to bathe. Because I was going to school the following
morning, I was asked, “Don’t bathe in the morning, bathe later in the day”. So I just
went to school, just like that.’ (#37a, Eve’s recorded testimony, 2013)

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We do not know why Eve’s mother ‘believed so much in traditional medicine’.

It may have been an assertion of her traditional African worldview, as Magesa
would have it. It may also have been a question of availability and affordability,
although people are known to travel far and pay a lot for the services of a
traditional healer, regardless of the presence of medical facilities in their
neighbourhood (Mildnerová 2015:34). It may have been that she believed that
the symptoms Eve was showing, namely dreaming and the experience of
things moving in her body, were more connected to spiritual than biomedical
causes. The therapy that the healer prescribed for Eve is common. Rubbing
medicine into incisions (tattoos) in the skin is believed to have a purifying
effect (Mildnerová 2015:120).
According to Eve’s testimony, after undergoing the rituals as per the
instruction of the traditional healer, her condition worsened. It took more than
a month of prayers from a Pentecostal pastor before Eve felt better and was
delivered. Like traditional healers, Christian pastors who heal through prayer
see spiritual causes for the afflictions of their clients. Maybe this leads to
competition between both groups. Evidently, in Zambia, Christian faith healers
have little regard for traditional healers. In Eve’s testimony, this becomes clear
through the way she speaks about going to a traditional healer. It is only
because her mother was not yet born again that she even considered going to
a traditional healer. Later, Eve does not mention him as a traditional healer
(or in the vernacular a nganga) but refers to him with the pejorative ‘witch
doctor’. Traditional healers, from a Pentecostal perspective, may not be
Satanists as such, but they are definitely in league with the devil.
In Eve’s narrative, Satanism is, more than anything else, a diagnosis of what
is wrong with her. This section has given an overview of the specialists
Zambians may turn to when they feel that there is something wrong with
them. For complaints of a strictly medical nature, hospitals are visited where
possible. Unexplained and prolonged illness and lack of well-being in other
areas of life are addressed by professionals who take into account spiritual
causes as well, such as traditional healers and Christian faith healers. Because
of the Christian background of the discourse, the diagnosis of Satanism is
restricted to Christian faith healers. In the following section, I will focus on
Christian faith healing and on how the diagnosis of Satanism is established.

Christian faith healing

What is Christian faith healing in the Zambian context? According to Christian
faith healers, illness, poverty and other problems may be caused by spiritual
forces, for example, through demon possession and witchcraft. As I have
described in Chapter 3, these forces need to be expelled in deliverance. A common
spot to see Christian faith healing in action is during deliverance services at
church. In such a service, it is common for the pastor to make a so-called altar

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call, in which he invites members of the audience who suffer in some way to
come to the front of the church – the altar – and be prayed for. A small group of
people will assemble at the altar, and the pastor and his helpers go from one to
the other, praying and often laying their hands on them. Prayers after an altar call
are relatively quick, and if real problems emerge, people are asked to come back
later for an individual appointment with the pastor. Many pastors offer walk-in
sessions for individual deliverance at a fixed time during the week. In mainline
churches like the RCZ, it may be a group of intercessors or ‘prayer warriors’ rather
than the pastor who pray for the afflicted.
Eve does not say much about what happened during her deliverance,
except that one or possibly more pastors prayed for her over an extended
period. As a researcher, I have witnessed several deliverance sessions. The
following example shows that the diagnosis is not fixed at the beginning of a
prayer session.

Case study: Pastor Jere prays for Monica

Pastor Jere, who founded his Pentecostal church a few years ago, opens his
house every Friday for anyone in need of healing. During my visit, people are
waiting for their turn in the living room while Pastor Jere is praying for a family
in a spare room. This room is not big, maybe three by four meters. Apart from
three plastic garden chairs, there is no furniture in the room. When I arrive, the
pastor is praying for a young woman. Her mother and aunt are there as well.
An assistant pastor records the proceedings on a tablet. The pastor’s wife, his
three-year-old son and two female helpers are in the room too. Soon, the
prayer for the daughter is finished, and it is the mother’s turn. The mother and
daughter come from a provincial town in Zambia. They are visiting the mother’s
sister, who lives in Lusaka and visits Pastor Jere’s church. In their hometown,
the mother and daughter go to one of Zambia’s mainline churches.
As it is her turn to be prayed for, the mother moves hesitantly to the centre
of the room. ‘Don’t worry, God is able. He will break every chain in your life,’
Pastor Jere says reassuringly. The middle-aged woman nods and whispers,
‘Yes’. ‘Okay, raise your hands. What’s your name?’ the pastor asks. ‘Monica,’
the woman answers. ‘Okay. Come two steps forward’. Pastor Jere touches
Monica’s forehead briefly, sighs and starts to pray. ‘Father, we bless our name,
that you are God […] Close your eyes,’ he tells Monica, and then he lays his
hand on her forehead. ‘Every power of darkness that has held your life
bondage, the spirit of blood pressure […]’. With her eyes closed, Monica lifts
her head as if she is looking up. ‘Satanic invasion in your blood!’ Pastor Jere
shouts, ‘I command you to go!’ Monica tilts her head further and further
backwards. ‘Loosen. Something is happening. Loosen, in Jesus’ name’, Pastor
Jere says as Monica collapses to the ground.
The helpers arrange her neatly on the floor, taking care that her legs stay
covered. Monica has her eyes closed and does not move. ‘Every demon that

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has held her children and have followed her family, I command you today to
leave this bloodline and go. Your time has expired, in the name of Jesus! Every
sickness and disease […],’ the pastor says as he kneels next to Monica. At first,
she lies very still as the pastor commands the demons that she suffers from to
go. Then she starts breathing heavily. ‘Something is happening. Get out of her!
Get out of her! Get out of her! This body is under fire!’ Every sentence the
pastor says is accompanied by a ‘Yes, yes,’ from the helpers. ‘Yes, it’s under
fire!’ ‘Under fire’, the helpers repeat. Monica groans:
‘I command you, open her mouth, surrender and leave this woman and go. You
have been hiding in her blood, trying to kill this woman, but God wants her to
live. I command you: go! Take your luggage! Take your sickness. Get out of her!
Loosen your hold! You spirit of a dead person, your season is over, leave her.’ (#152,
participant observation, 2015)

Monica lets out a long moan while Pastor Jere says, ‘Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go
out!’ ‘In Jesus’ name,’ responds a helper.
‘Get out, right now! Leave her. You have no longer power over her soul. All of you
devils, people that have died in the bloodline, I command you, move. Leave her. Go
back to the graveyard. Human spirits, leave her now, by the fire of the Holy Spirit.
Go.’ (#152, participant observation, 2015)

Monica is moaning almost continuously now. Pastor Jere and a helper stand
on either side of her head. ‘Get out of her,’ the pastor says. ‘Now,’ the helper
responds. ‘Get out of her’. ‘Now’. ‘Get out of her!’ ‘Now!’ Monica’s groaning
turns to shouts. ‘Leave her now! I command you, go!’ ‘Aah,’ shouts Monica.
‘I command you, go!’ ‘Aah!’ ‘I command you, go!’ ‘Aah!’ ‘I command you, go!’
‘Aaaah!’ Monica’s screams get louder as Pastor Jere continues to command
the demon to get out. ‘Fire!’ ‘Ai!’ ‘Fire!’ ‘Ai!’ ‘Fire!’ ‘Ai!’ Monica shrieks, high and
loud, and her body contorts. Helpers quickly cover her with a spare chitenge
cloth. ‘By the fire of the Holy Spirit, leave this woman! Go out! Go!’ Monica rolls
over from one side to the other. The screaming has stopped. ‘Go. This marriage
is over! Get out! Leave her children!’ Monica lies still:
‘Never come back in this body, and go. This body belongs to Jesus. All devils are
broken. Generational curse, your marriage is over. She’ll never die of HIV. She’ll
never die of sugar, diabetes. She’ll never die of blood pressure! I command you to
take all the diseases out of her blood because God has come to heal her. I break
every witchcraft disease!’ (#152, participant observation, 2015)

As Pastor Jere continues praying for her, Monica’s muscles tighten. She seems
to lift her hips from the floor, and her arms are flailing and threshing. ‘I set you
free. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, I declare freedom
is your portion. It’s over, in the name of Jesus.’
Then, suddenly, Monica lies still, and it is over. ‘Can you stand up?’ the
pastor asks. Monica gets up with difficulty. Her hair is in disarray and she looks
exhausted. ‘Chains have been broken’, Pastor Jere announces:
‘She was married to the spirit of a big man. Demonic forces held her life and
wanted to kill her. All the symptoms in your life will die. Your health will revive, and

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God will give you strength and power. You are healed just now.’ (#152, participant
observation, 2015)

With a soft voice, her head shaking, Monica says, ‘Thank you’. ‘How are you
feeling in your body right now?’ the pastor asks. ‘I’m just feeling light,’ Monica
responds in a whisper. ‘Amen! Something heavy has been moved from you.
The devil has left you. From today, you will feel different. Your body is healed.’
In this description, Pastor Jere prays for Monica and Monica manifests,
meaning that she falls into a trance and moves or speaks strangely. Manifesting
means that a demon is demonstratively present in her. In the study of
possession and exorcism, the theatrical quality of the ritual of deliverance has
been noted (cf. Frankfurter 2006; Levack 2013). There is a rhythm in the call
and response between the pastor and helpers and between the pastor and
the possessed client. During the session, tension builds up, in Monica’s muscles,
in her moaning, in the increasing volume of the pastor’s orders and his helpers’
encouragements. Then, suddenly, a climax is reached, and everything is quiet
again.
Public deliverance sessions have a stage and an audience. The actors on
the stage are well defined: the pastor, who expels the demons; the victim,
showing signs of possession during the deliverance and peace and happiness
afterwards; and often some helpers responding to both of the main actors.
The pastor wears a clerical costume, which makes him easily recognisable,
and he uses the props of his religion, such as a cross, a Bible and a flask of holy
water or anointing oil. The actions of the pastor and the victim do not exceed
the expectations of the audience. They are, as Brian Levack (2013:29–31) calls
it, ‘scripted’, bound by the cultural notions connected to possession.
Levack (2013:28) describes the participants in the deliverance session as
‘performers in a religious drama’. This does not mean that they are play-acting,
aware of their roles in the way actors may be. Rather, they are, consciously or
unconsciously, following patterns of behaviour expected in the context of
Christian faith healing. They learn their script by reading about possessions,
hearing about them in sermons, and seeing possessed people being exorcised
in public gatherings. For someone unfamiliar with this practice, Monica’s
moans and Pastor Jere’s shouting at her may seem shocking or offensive.
However, within the Zambian practice of deliverance, there is nothing out of
the ordinary in their actions.
In his description of the ritual of deliverance, Stephen Hunt (1998:218–220)
speaks about phases in the deliverance process. Firstly, the pastor establishes
that an evil spirit is present. He or she then names the spirit. Finally, rituals
aiming for the expulsion of the spirit are applied. In the case of Monica and
Pastor Jere, this succession is not very obvious. The pastor has no previous
history with the client; she is visiting her sister and has never before been
prayed for by this pastor. There is no introductory conversation between

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healer and client; Pastor Jere immediately starts praying. What ails Monica is
not clear. Maybe Pastor Jere does not need that information: after the session,
he explains that he has the gift to discern the presence of demons. Likewise,
for Zambian traditional healers, it is a sign of their power and effectiveness if
they can diagnose and cure a client without having spoken to them first. What
is clear is that in this session, little time is spent on establishing whether
Monica’s problems are caused by a demon, by witchcraft or by another natural
or supernatural cause.
Possession, witchcraft and Satanism are three spiritual causes of affliction
recognised by Christian faith healers. Although there seems to be no fixed
relation between specific causes and symptoms (Mildnerová 2015:64)
because all three phenomena can manifest themselves with multiple,
diverse symptoms, according to the literature, some symptoms have a
closer connection to witchcraft and others to possession. In their analysis of
letters sent to Archbishop Milingo, Ter Haar and Ellis (1988) give a pathology
of possession:
Physical symptoms commonly considered to be caused by spirit possession include
many complaints with no obvious physical cause. […] General aches and pains fall
into this category. So does the mysterious sensation of a lump travelling round the
body. Bad smells, lack of concentration, obsessive behaviour, impotence, infertility,
social strife and disturbing dreams are also typical symptoms of spirit possession.
(p. 197)

Although witchcraft may cause similar complaints, witchcraft is typically

associated with sudden, severe illness (Van Binsbergen 1981:141) and recurrent
misfortune in general (Sugishita 2009:440). Swollen legs are claimed to be
caused by stepping on a charm, and they are also attributed to witchcraft
(Stekelenburg et al. 2005:74–75). Incidentally, this latter phenomenon is what
is troubling Monica’s sister. After Pastor Jere’s initial prayers during a Sunday
deliverance service, the sister is relieved that her legs are not troubling her as
much anymore.
In his prayers for Monica, the pastor immediately starts expelling demonic
forces. He repeats several times that evil forces affect the bloodline, a diagnosis
that is supported by the fact that Monica’s daughter and sister experience
troubles as well. In deliverance theology, many problems are thought to be
caused by generational or ancestral curses, which may affect a whole lineage.
Although these teachings have been developed and popularised outside of
Africa by evangelical and Pentecostal preachers such as Derek Prince and
Kurt E. Koch, they resonate with specifically African beliefs about the influence
of ancestors on one’s well-being.
Apart from a force of evil affecting the bloodline, Pastor Jere addresses
demons associated with medical conditions like high blood pressure, HIV and
diabetes. After the prayers have finished, the pastor gives his final diagnosis:

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Monica was married to the spirit of a big man. In Zambian traditions, the
ancestral spirits of chiefs, healers or warriors, who may be addressed with the
honorific ‘big man’, can possess an ethnically related person. For traditional
healers, such a possession often forms the beginning of their career. After a
period of affliction, they learn to communicate and live with the spirit, which
gives them the ability to diagnose and heal the problems of others. The
relation between the healer or medium and the spirit is sometimes characterised
as a marriage. In the Pentecostal Christian discourse, such a positive evaluation
of ancestral spirits is out of the question. Any spirit that is not the Holy Spirit
is seen as an evil spirit, a demon sent by Satan. From this perspective, Monica’s
spirit of a big man cannot be accommodated and has to be expelled.
Although Pastor Jere concludes that Monica was afflicted by the spirit
of a big man, during the deliverance session there is no clear moment in
which the demon is named. Rather, Pastor Jere seems to be trying different
options: an ancestral curse, a medical condition personified as a demon, an
affliction by a male spirit or a disease caused by witchcraft. There seems to
be a buffet of possible causes for Monica’s unstated problems. In a first
deliverance session like this, these remain largely undifferentiated. Pastor
Jere’s eventual diagnosis seems to be supported by Monica’s symptoms
and responses: sometimes she moans in a deep, manly voice. She does
not seem to be responding to the mentioning of Satanism or witchcraft,
while she seems to moan louder when the pastor refers to a male spirit
possessing her.
When confronted with an affliction, Zambians have a choice regarding the
professional they will use to find restoration. They may go to a hospital, a
traditional healer or a faith healer. In many cases, people shop around for
diagnoses and therapies that feel appropriate to them. Bernhard Udelhoven
(2021) has interviewed many people suffering from spiritual afflictions and
provides more than 20 specific cases in his book on dealing with spirits,
witchcraft and Satanism. In some cases, a relative has been accused of
witchcraft before, and witchcraft becomes the main focus of interpretation.
Other families have a history of spirit possession and interpret problems in
that way. I have no information about what happened with Monica after this
first deliverance session. She may have been healed completely, but it is just
as likely that she continued seeking an improvement in her health and well-
being. If Pastor Jere’s diagnosis of spiritual marriage to a big man seemed
appropriate to Monica and her family, she may have continued seeking help to
cut her bonds with this oppressive demonic force. On the other hand, she may
also have visited a traditional healer in her hometown or gone to a hospital to
receive medical treatment.
Specific to Pentecostal faith healing is the conviction that all non-Christian
spiritual forces are of a demonic and evil nature. In a first prayer session, the

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causes for affliction are largely undifferentiated, although a preliminary

diagnosis is given. In later sessions, in the process of negotiation between the
healer, client and significant others, the diagnosis is clarified. How this works
in the case of a diagnosis of Satanism is the topic of the next section.

Diagnosis: Satanism
If Satanism is an affliction, then how does a healer come to this diagnosis? The
testimonies can only show us glimpses of this process. Testimonies are
constructed after the diagnosis of Satanism and often are silent on what
happened before this diagnosis was stated. What are the symptoms that lead
a Christian faith healer to investigate whether Satanism could be at stake
here? As was mentioned in the previous section, in deciding whether problems
are caused by possession or witchcraft, not only the symptoms are relevant.
The response of the client during deliverance is important too, as is the
assessment of the client and their family. In diagnosing witchcraft and
possession, symptoms, the response of the client and the context of the client
all help in establishing what the problem is. In what situation is Satanism the
preferred diagnosis?

Case study: Bishop Phiri and his nephew Bright

As Tsitsi’s husband in the introduction already mentioned, Satanism occurs
mainly in young people. For older clients visiting a Christian faith healer, a
diagnosis of possession or witchcraft is more likely. Often, the youth and/or
his family have a feeling that there is something wrong. One such youth is
Bright, whose uncle is a bishop in his church in northern Zambia. Bright’s
experience with Satanism led to the involvement of Bishop Phiri both as a
family member and as a pastor. He narrates:
‘My nephew Bright is the son of my younger brother who lives in the Copperbelt.
He used to walk to school every day, a two-hour walk. His father didn’t have money
for his lunch, but he had a friend who invited him to his home to have lunch with
his family. One time, they exchanged school uniforms. Later, we realised that
this was how Bright was initiated. At another time, the friend brought a packed
lunch to school and told Bright, “Today we’ll have very special food!” Later, Bright
understood that the soup was actually blood.
‘I had the feeling that there was something wrong with my relatives on the
Copperbelt. I had to persuade my brother to send Bright to me, so I could have
him close for a while. When he was staying with me, he showed some strange
behaviour. He wouldn’t talk. He would sit in the yard where the chickens are, and
he would stay there all afternoon. Once, we found him there lying on the ground,
unconscious. At the hospital, they said it was malaria, but I think it was something
from the underworld. Later, he confessed that he had an altar there, which he used
to fly to Chingola. He said that Chingola is the headquarters of the Satanists in that
region.

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‘Another strange thing: while he was staying in my house, he used to eat soap. I
called his father and he confirmed that Bright ate soap at their home as well. Then
a pastor from Tanzania who was visiting us told me that this is a sign of demon
possession. So we prayed over him and he manifested. He even confessed that he
had pledged my daughters for sacrifice. During the exorcism, the demon said that
the first daughter would be sacrificed that evening at 21:00 hours, and promptly one
of my daughters had trouble breathing. We prayed and prayed, and she survived.
The next day, I continued praying for Bright. This time, the demon said, “Now the
contract is broken, but Satan can mend it again”. We prayed more, binding the
demons, and finally, the contract was gone. Bright confessed that he had sacrificed
more than 500 people, including a pastor in Kenya and a pastor in Namibia.
‘After this, his father took Bright back to the Copperbelt. I doubt whether he is really
delivered. His father now denies that his son ever was involved with Satanism, and
because of this, we don’t speak anymore.’ (#154, interview with Bishop Phiri., 2017)

In Bright’s case, as in that of Eve, it is evident that there was some shopping
around for a fitting diagnosis. Apart from his uncle, the Christian faith healer,
a hospital was briefly involved. What makes Satanism a likely cause for Bright’s
problems? Bright’s uncle already had the feeling that something was wrong
with his relatives, and so he urged his brother to send Bright to him. Here,
Bright’s behaviour stands out. Instead of interacting with his family, Bright
stays outside. He also eats soap, which is interpreted by a visiting pastor as a
sign of possession. During Bright’s deliverance, a demon manifests in him, and
he confesses to being a Satanist. Now, other things start to make sense as
well, for example, Bright’s friendship with a boy who was better off than him
and shared his food with him. This must have been his moment of initiation. In
the end, however, Bright goes back to his parents, who are not convinced of
Bishop Phiri’s diagnosis of Satanism.
Bright’s case is an introduction to the topics that will be discussed further
in this chapter: that the diagnosis of Satanism is related to abnormal behaviour,
that this diagnosis is not always accepted and that the acceptance leads to a
new interpretation of events in the personal history. In this section on the
diagnosis of Satanism, I will first explore the types of behaviour that are
associated with Satanism.

Abnormal behaviour linked to Satanism

In a diagnosis of Satanism, abnormal behaviour is often an indicator. Eating
soap, as Bright did, is not mentioned elsewhere. More frequent are strange
happenings related to sleep, for example, a girl who goes to sleep in her bed
and is found somewhere else every night (Udelhoven 2021:302–309) or a girl
who twitches her legs while sleeping, or, conversely, lies completely still.
Disturbing dreams, although absent in Bright’s story, may enforce the feeling
that something is happening. Dream images that many ex-Satanists recount
in their testimonies are dreaming of eating, dreaming of snakes and lions and
dreaming of entering an underwater world.

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In Zambia, certain dreams are seen as messages from the spirit world, although
the interpretation of dreams differs significantly between traditional healers
and Christian faith healers. In traditional healing, a dream about receiving food
is linked to witchcraft attacks. As was described in Chapter 2, dreams about a
snake or a lion or about swimming underwater point to a calling from an
ancestral spirit known as mashabe in Chinyanja or ngulu in Chibemba. These
spirits are auspicious; they may assist a medium in healing or give warnings
(Mildnerová 2015:68, 111). In Christian faith healing, the same images are
experienced as disturbing because they signify involvement with evil and
demonic spirits.
Dreams and strange behaviour can be indicators of involvement in Satanism,
but the most common symptoms of Satanism are troubled social relations.
These troubled social relations can be identified in the testimonies of ex-
Satanists in several ways. Their behaviour often falls outside the norms of
acceptable behaviour. Especially introversion and deviant behaviour are linked
to Satanism. They also may feel they are not able to live up to the expectations
that their social environment has for them. I will give examples of all of these
instances.
In most cases, behaviour that in the Zambian context is not considered
normal is mentioned. Eve, for example, prefers to spend time alone in her
room instead of hanging out with friends. Bright is silent and likes to spend his
afternoons alone in the yard. Tsitsi hangs out with boys and does not know
how to walk like a proper girl.
Rudeness and stubbornness are other undesirable character traits that
some ex-Satanists show. Grace, the first ex-Satanist I met, told me that after
she moved from her provincial hometown to Lusaka to stay with relatives, she
changed. ‘I went to live in Lusaka, and when I was there, I had really changed.
I became rude to other people. I was not who I used to be’ (#43, interview
with Grace, 08 July 2013). Naomi, a 20-year-old young woman from the
Seventh-day Adventist church, describes herself as stubborn and sees that as
a reason for becoming a Satanist:
‘By that time, I was growing very quiet and stubborn in some actions, so they
started to use my life in their kingdom because I was someone who was suitable.’
(#41a, Naomi’s recorded testimony, 2011)

For relatives and Christian faith healers, abnormal behaviour is a sign of

involvement in Satanism. Because the discourse of Satanism is so prevalent,
this relation between Satanism and abnormal behaviour is well-known in the
population. In some cases reported to the Fingers of Thomas, Satanism seems
to be used as a synonym for culturally unacceptable behaviour. For example,
the Fingers spoke to a girl who, in the past, had been involved in Satanism:
‘She got involved with Satanism when she was in boarding school. This was an
expensive school; her parents are quite rich. However, the girl never had the things

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her friends had, and she felt bad about it. The parents also were often away, abroad
for business. When she was 14, she and her friends decided to get into prostitution.
She was always a very quiet girl when she was at home, but during this period, she
acted wild. They were meeting boys and sleeping with them for money, and they
called this Satanism. She did it to become rich, to become rich by working as a
prostitute, and she would say to her friends, “Let’s go do Satanism”.’ (Fieldnotes,
10 June 2015)

Another case reported by the Fingers of Thomas dealt with a young woman
in a lesbian relationship. Homosexuality in Zambia is generally not accepted.
Rather than telling her parents that she was gay, the woman said to them that
she was a Satanist. Apparently, this was an easier thing to confess to than
being a lesbian (Fieldnotes, 10 June 2015).
In a different context, the behaviour of the ex-Satanists may be interpreted
differently. Take, for example, Bright’s habit of eating soap. In the medical
literature, the consumption of non-nutritive substances deemed inappropriate
in the developmental or cultural context is called pica (Sturmey & Williams
2016:18). Pica has been related to nutritional deficiencies, intellectual
disabilities and autism spectrum disorder. In a Western context, Bright’s
behaviour of not speaking to others and his upbringing in a family that lacked
the means to provide him with food may be interpreted from this perspective.
Extreme introversion, aggression and other behavioural problems that are
reported in testimonies may also be interpreted as caused by an underlying
psychological problem or mental illness. My aim, however, is not to give an
evaluation of the veracity of the diagnosis of Satanism or to deliver an
alternative diagnosis but to understand how ex-Satanists come to see
themselves as such.
The discussed testimonies so far have been from narrators who experienced
Satanism in their adolescence, which is the majority of ex-Satanists. The few
slightly older male narrators also speak of a troubled youth. One of them, for
example, says that he decided to sacrifice his father because he treated his
mother badly and was never there for him. However, these narrators are
generally older and have different concerns than a child living in a household.
The male ex-Satanist is an adult man looking for success in his professional life
as a musician, a businessman, a politician or a soldier. Like the adolescent
narrators, he feels the heavy burden of expectation from his family and friends.
They are not dependents themselves; rather, they have others who depend on
them. As men and heads of their families, they are expected to provide an
income to take care of their families. Their struggle to do so leads them to
seek help in quarters later realised to be satanic.
An example is David. David is a young man. When I saw him, he was smartly
dressed, with stylish, thick-rimmed glasses. In 2013, when his testimony was
recorded by a pastor, he was 28. David’s testimony is extremely detailed. ‘I was
dealing with hardware’, he says. He continues:

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‘The business was not going the way I was thinking it’s supposed to be going. So
I consulted my friend and said, “No, I’ve been trying and still I’m stagnant on the
same position”. Then my friend advised me, “You know, business nowadays, you
don’t just do business like you used to. You need to find help somewhere”. He
told me, “If you can travel with me to Beira”, that’s the border of Mozambique and
Zambia, “and there I might show you someone who can help you to do business”.’
(#31a, David’s recorded testimony, 2013)

David expected to visit a traditional healer specialising in giving his clients

business success. Instead, the canoe in which he and his friend were travelling
capsized, and David entered an underwater world in which he was initiated.
From this moment, what happened in David’s life and the superimposed
satanic narrative are hard to disentangle. What is clear, however, is that David’s
start of a career as a Satanist came when he tried to be more successful and
better able to provide for his family or save up for his bride-wealth.
Reporting disturbing dreams, feeling rejected, not being able to live up to
expectations and showing abnormal, deviant behaviour is enough to cause a
search for help from a Christian faith healer. If demons manifest during prayer,
the feeling that something is wrong is confirmed. The behaviour of the client
during the healing prayers may point specifically to Satanism, for example, if
the client avoids religious symbols like the Bible or the name of Jesus Christ.
Eve’s interviewer remembers:
‘One of the things that happened as I prayed for you […] The first day you came,
I realised every time I started reading the Bible to you, you would actually close
your ears, and I realised on the spot that had to do with your mind.’ (#37a, Eve’s
recorded testimony, 2013)

Eve agrees, saying that the Satanists had trained her mind.
During deliverance, the client may also say things about Satanism that he
or she later does not remember. When he is prayed for, a demon speaks
through Bright, confessing that Bishop Phiri’s daughters are next in line for
sacrifice. A case of Satanism is not solved within one prayer session. Eve says
she had to undergo a month of prayers, seemingly at the hands of several
pastors. Grace had to be delivered of 150 demons. Gideon Mulenga Kabila
(n.d.) starts his published testimony with an apology about his process of
deliverance:
This deliverance of mine started a long time ago as I was struggling for knowing
the truth. I would first of all like to apologies [sic] to all the pastors who wanted to
help me, and then after [I] disappointed them. All the pastors were good to me, but
the only thing was that I was not ready for it. Please, you are still my parents and I
respect you with the heavenly respect. (p. 5)

In sum, the diagnosis of Satanism is confirmed by symptoms like disturbing

dreams, abnormal behaviour and occurrences during the deliverance prayers.
The pastor is an important figure in the confirmation of the diagnosis of
Satanism. Bishop Phiri is convinced that his nephew, Bright, was or may even

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still be a Satanist. However, the father did not accept that his son might be a
Satanist. The diagnosis of a pastor needs to be accepted by the client and his
or her family.

Accepting the diagnosis of Satanism

The diagnosis of Satanism explains strange occurrences and abnormal
behaviours. Receiving this diagnosis gives meaning to these occurrences.
A girl who, before, did not understand why she must feel so rejected now
understands that it is because she belonged to Satan’s kingdom under the
sea. Accepting this new meaningful interpretation of one’s life is a process
that takes time. Maybe this is also one of the reasons that the deliverance of a
Satanist takes such a long time.
It is not easy to reconstruct this process from the finished testimonies of
ex-Satanists, but it seems likely that the first response to the diagnosis of
Satanism is bewilderment. On the Fingers of Thomas blog about Satanism
and the deliverance ministry, a concerned young woman writes (Udelhoven
2008b):
Usually, I am not going to other churches. My friend asked me to come. She
had manifested during prayer with a certain pastor and said something about
me. The pastor told her to bring me for prayers. So I went with her, though I felt
uncomfortable. […] I was scared ’cause [the pastor] told me that he saw something
wrong with me. When he prayed, I collapsed. I don’t know what I said. They say I
manifested demons. They also say I talked about my family. He said I should bring
my aunt about whom I had revealed something, though I don’t even know what I
said. (n.p.)

The author seems confused. She has not accepted the diagnosis of Satanism
at this moment, although that may change if she continues seeking help from
this pastor.
Similar bewilderment speaks from the story of a woman calling in on a
radio programme that often airs testimonies. In a previous week, the host had
prophesied that women were suffering from certain afflictions because their
underwear had been stolen and was now used by witch doctors for evil
purposes. This unnamed woman – I will call her Rose – approached the host,
confessing that she had indeed lost her underwear. On air, she explains:
‘You were saying that the person who lost the pants […] It’s like those pants were
used for charms to destroy the marriage or something like that. Each time I am in my
house, I feel like, “What am I doing here?” It’s like I’m just sweeping for somebody
and just cleaning. You know, I’ve been to school, and I can work. Each time […]
Because we’ve come a long way, but this time, instead of me being affectionate,
my mind is just telling me something else, something contrary to marriage life. It’s
just telling me, “What are you doing here?” And all I see, I’m just seeing a bother in
the house and nothing else. So when you were praying on the radio, I started telling
myself, “No, it’s that pant which is actually working”, because you said that the pant
was used for charms and things like that.’ (#49d, Rose’s recorded testimony, 2013)

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Rose feels like a slave in her marriage. She can accept and understand these
improper feelings when she hears the host explain that they may be caused
by external, evil agents.
She does not leave it at that but seeks help in her local church. She says:
‘After we talked, I went to attend a certain meeting within my area. And for sure,
when they were praying for me, they started saying I am married under the ocean,
and I’ve got 15 children [there].’ (#49d, Rose’s recorded testimony, 2013)

Suddenly, satanic imagery enters Rose’s story. The prayers of deliverance led
the pastor or the intercession group to the conclusion that Rose has a
connection with the satanic, underwater world and that she even has 15
children there. Rose still sounds a little stunned by this discovery. ‘They said,’
she says. She is not yet ready to identify herself with this diagnosis by stating,
‘I was married under the ocean’. The host picks up on this as well and asks her
whether she is completely delivered now. ‘It’s not complete,’ Rose says,
‘because I had 15 children under the ocean. They managed to kill ten; I remained
with five’.
In Rose’s narrative, the distinction between possession, having a spiritual
husband and full-fledged Satanism is vague. The diagnosis is not entirely clear
and, more importantly, still fresh. It takes more than a diagnosis to become an
ex-Satanist. According to Mildnerová (2015:42), ‘the stronger a social pressure
is exerted on [the] patient, the more probable it is that he finally identify with
his illness’. The network of family, friends and neighbours surrounding someone
suffering from an affliction is very important, as can be seen in the case of
Bright, whose parents did not believe in the diagnosis of Bishop Phiri.
Accepting the diagnosis means giving it a place in one’s life history. In that
process, Rose could become not merely someone struggling with an unhappy
marriage, interpreted as an affliction, but an ex-Satanist. The following section
discusses how a diagnosis can change one’s life story.

Rewriting the life story

Dan McAdams (1993:11) calls a life story the ‘personal myth’, a narrative that
contains the things we find true and meaningful in our life: ‘In order to live
well, with unity and purpose, we compose a heroic narrative of the self that
illustrates essential truths about ourselves’. McAdams’ (1993:5) claim is not
only that the stories we share about ourselves say something about who we
are, but that ‘identity is a life story’. Our life story unites different parts of
ourselves and our life into a meaningful narrative. It shows the pattern we
perceive in our past that makes us who we are today. Telling stories is how we
construct our identity. In this section, my focus is not on the social aspect of
the narratives of Satanism (about, for example, what they say about the
context of Zambia) but on how the narrators construct their identity through
these stories.

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The relevance of life stories has been noted in both the study of conversion
and the study of living with (chronic) diseases. Both are defining moments in
a personal myth. These moments compel us to look back on our life and
reconstruct our life stories. According to Peter Stromberg (1993:29),
constructing the narrative of conversion ‘draws a new part of the subject’s
experience in the realm of the self’. Looking back on one’s life from the
perspective of conversion gives a new meaning to experiences from the past.
These experiences, which may not have seemed relevant to one’s identity
before, are now comprehended as foreshadowing the conversion.
The narratives of ex-Satanists are not conversion narratives in the sense of
reports of a changing religious conviction. However, they do provide a new
interpretation of the past. In this chapter, I have analysed the testimonies and
reflections of a diagnosis. Like a conversion, acquiring a severe or chronic
illness asks for a reinvention of one’s identity, and with that, of one’s past. An
example of a study discussing the relation between illness and the life story is
Arthur W. Frank’s (2013) The wounded storyteller: Body, illness & ethics. Life
stories may also be used as a form of therapy after receiving a diagnosis
(McKeown, Clarke & Repper 2006). Transformative or disruptive experiences
like illness and conversion encourage us to develop a coherent life story once
more, in which there is a narrative continuity between the past and the present
and a purpose for the future.

Self and personhood in an African context

The perspective that sees identity as constructed through life stories is in line
not only with the narrative turn in the social sciences but also with the modern
‘turn to the self’. According to Anthony Giddens (1991:75), the contemporary
self is ‘a reflexive project, for which the individual is responsible’. Individuals
write their own life stories and have the agency to make significant life choices.
Before applying these ideas about identity and the self to the testimonies of
ex-Satanists in Zambia, it is relevant to ask whether this ‘contemporary self’
exists in Zambia. Does the concept of the person exist outside of Western
society?
This anthropological question has a long history and has become a hot
issue in recent years. Around the middle of the 20th century, some
anthropologists argued that personhood, defined as the notion of an
autonomous individual, is a European idea (Mauss [1938] 1985; Read 1955).
Later, most anthropologists argued that every society has some notion of
personhood, although personhood in different societies may look different.
We are dealing with slippery terms here. Person and individual are used as
synonyms in common parlance, but in some anthropological traditions, they
refer to different aspects of a human being. For example, for Radcliffe-Brown

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(1940), an individual is a biological organism, ready to be studied as a

specimen. A person, on the other hand, is a human being in its web of relations
to other human beings. This distinction can be problematic, for example, if
one is discussing the Western, individualistic notion of personhood. In
Radcliffe-Brown’s distinction, another related term is conspicuously missing:
the self. Harris (1989) proposes to assign each term to a corresponding field
of study: ‘individual’ belongs to the biological way of conceptualising a human
being, ‘self’ to psychology, and ‘person’ to sociology. Together, they give a full
account of a human being. In actual practice, however, the terms are used
interchangeably by scholars across these fields, as they will be in this study.
These problems with defining slippery terms notwithstanding, there seems
to be some consensus that the specific concept of personhood that has
developed in Europe, namely that of the person as an autonomous unit of
society (cf. La Fontaine 1985:137), is contextual and cannot be readily applied
to other places and times. In comparison to this Western concept of
personhood, other notions are characterised as holistic, socio-centric or
groupist (Smith 2012:50).
In African philosophy, personhood has been a much-debated issue.
Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe (2013) traces the history of this discussion
back to Placide Tempels, who wrote about Bantu philosophy. According to
Tempels, having personhood meant being in possession of a vital force, and
the quality of this vital force depended on relationships with others (Oyowe
2013:206). This is consistent with the tenets of the African worldview described
in Chapter 2. The famous African philosopher and theologian John Mbiti used
the same perspective to play on Descartes’ statement, ‘I think, therefore I am’.
According to Mbiti, in Africa, the statement should be, ‘I am because we are,
and since we are, therefore I am’ (cited in Oyowe 2013:207). The Nigerian poet
and philosopher Ifeanyi Menkiti takes this perspective to a logical conclusion
when he argues that a child that has just been born has no personhood yet
and only becomes a person through its introduction into the community and
society (Oyowe 2013:214–215). Menkiti refers to the African concept of
personhood as maximising, in contrast to a minimising concept in the West.
Speaking from a more global perspective, Marilyn Strathern has introduced
a similar distinction between ‘individual’ and ‘dividual’. The (Western)
individual is conceptualised as having an autonomous existence, separate
from its relations to others in society. A dividual, on the other hand, is a
multiple person, produced in relationship to others and able to divide itself, to
shed parts in favour of others if the context requires it (Strathern 1988:185).
A different conceptualisation of the various notions of personhood is the
distinction between porous and buffered selves (Taylor 2007). The buffered
self is imagined as possessing a clear boundary between the person and the
influences of the surrounding world. T.M. Luhrmann (2020:85) uses the image

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of a citadel to describe how the mind of such an individual is perceived:

‘European Americans are invited by their cultural heritage to imagine the mind
as a private place, walled off from the world, a citadel in which thoughts are
one’s own and no one else has access to them’. In the porous self, this boundary
or buffer is absent. The porous self is therefore penetrable by forces that
originate from outside, such as spiritual agencies.
The focus of the different distinctions, minimising–maximising, individual–
dividual and buffered–porous, seems to be slightly different, the former two
pointing at relations with other human beings, the latter emphasising openness
to spiritual forces. They all, however, see the conception of a person as an
autonomous individual as not wholly applicable to African (and Asian)
cultures, where obligations to others and relations with the spiritual world blur
a sense of autonomous personhood.
A few critical remarks can be made concerning this perspective. Firstly, this
account makes it easy to slip into an undesirable rhetoric of progress. In their
article on an African concept of personhood, Comaroff and Comaroff (2001)
ask some critical questions:
To the extent that ‘the autonomous person’ is a European invention, does its
absence elsewhere imply a deficit, a failure, a measure of incivility on the part of
non-Europeans? And what of the corollary: is this figure, this ‘person’, the end
point in a world-historical telos, something to which non-occidentals are inexorably
drawn as they cast off their primordial differences? (p. 267)

If this were the case, a nonautonomous self would be seen as somehow being
backward – an ethnocentric assumption that few anthropologists would
agree to.
Secondly, one may ask whether this autonomous self exists at all, even in
the West. Contemporary psychological theories of selfhood, for example, by
Hermans and others, argue that the self is extended, multivoiced and dialogical,
meaning that other persons and other cultural positions are parts of the self
(cf. Hermans & Dimaggio 2007). One’s perception of personhood is not fixed
and unchanging. Rather, it is constructed in an internal or external dialogue
with, for example, significant others like relatives and friends and with cultural
or religious positions and expectations. A person’s position concerning these
multiple voices may change over time and depend on the context in which
they find themselves. In anthropology, a stark polarity between individualism
and dividualism has also been criticised, for example, by Englund and Leach
(2000:229) who state that ‘all persons are both dividuals and individuals’. In
contemporary anthropology, buffered and porous, dividuality and individuality
are imagined as aspects of personhood, rather than as mutually exclusive
categories.
Although there are different conceptualisations of the self, African and
Western persons are not fundamentally different. To some extent (even)

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Westerners are dividual, and to some extent (even) Africans are individuals.
Both African and Western persons need stories to express and construct their
identities. Tilmann Habermas and Elaine Reese (2015) are psychologists
writing about the development of life stories in different cultures. They state:
The need to make connections between one’s past and present self is pressing
in contemporary society, regardless of one’s culture […] but the way that the
self is constructed and presented to others is likely to differ across cultures and
subcultures. (p. 194)

All over the world, societies are touched by the modern project of the reflexive
self. Which expression of the self makes cultural sense depends on the stories
that are known in a given context. These stories also affect the narrative
framework of a life story. In Europe, the life story of a Zambian ex-Satanist
would be bewildering. In Zambia, this is much less the case.

Narratives of Satanism as life stories

Now that we have established that Africans and people from the West are not
so fundamentally different, I will apply the ideas about life stories to the
narratives from ex-Satanists. But before that, a few words about how
testimonies of ex-Satanists differ from life stories.
The narratives of ex-Satanists are different from the life stories McAdams
and others recount in some respects. Firstly, the narratives of ex-Satanists are
not told as life stories. They are told as testimonies, to show something about
God’s power. Testimonies do not always narrate a whole life, making sense of
it from its beginning to the present. Rather, they form an episode, though
probably an important episode, within a life. The content of the narrative of
the ex-Satanist is chosen because of its relevance to the testimony. The past,
for example, the childhood years, is reviewed from the point of view of the ex-
Satanist recounting how it all happened and how they got over it.
A second difference lies in the audience and the setting of the narration. In
common life story research, the subjects are interviewed about their life by a
researcher. The researcher asks a fixed set of questions to gather similar life
stories from several subjects. Although the stories they narrate are not new to
the narrator, one could say that these life stories come into existence at the
moment of the interview. The interviewer is the coaxer, and his questions bring
out the life story and its elements, for example, by asking for an absolute high
and low point in life.
In contrast to these interviews, the ex-Satanist delivering a testimony has a
big audience. They tell their story in a church as a part of a deliverance service
or overnight prayer or on local or national radio and television. They know
beforehand that they will tell this story and have had time to prepare it.
Probably it is not the first time that they are telling it. They may be regular

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guests at such meetings precisely because of this story. More than life stories
based on interviews, the confession of the ex-Satanist is a performance with a
relatively fixed script; a text that the narrator has laboured on, maybe even
improved over time. It has become a public, religious document. In this chapter,
I will focus on the testimony not as a public narrative but as a personal
narrative. The production of the testimony as a public narrative is the topic of
the next chapter. Despite these differences between a testimony and a life
story, the similarities between both are significant. As I will argue in the
following sections, both involve a reinterpretation of the past, and both aim to
construct a meaningful, coherent story about one’s identity.
While situations differ between, say, Zambia and the Netherlands, in both
places, persons have a sense of self and identity. The construction of this
identity is a reflexive process in which life stories play an important role.
Adolescence or young adulthood is a pivotal time in this process. Adolescence
is a stage in life when many things change in the body as well as in social life.
The place of an adolescent in the family and the community shifts as adulthood
approaches (Jones, Presler-Marshall & Samuels 2018:1). For many Zambian
girls, adulthood starts during adolescence. Almost a quarter of Zambian girls
aged 15–19 years old have already given birth (UNICEF 2021:103). During this
time, individuals start to bring unity to everything they have been through up
to that point by embarking on the creation of a coherent life story. McAdams
(1993) states:
They become creative historians as they experiment with different ways of making
sense of their early years, their relationship with their parents, and even their ethnic,
religious, and class roots. (p. 92)

This upsurge in mythmaking during adolescence, this creation of new

frameworks to understand oneself, may be one of the reasons that experiences
of Satanism are often narrated by youths and young adults between the age
of 15 and 25. Furthermore, in the previous chapter, we have seen that youths
are under special pressure because of shifts in the hierarchical order of society.
If youths feel the diagnosis of Satanism fits their experience, it may be because
they are already involved in the process of identity formation and can use the
diagnosis as input for that, but it may also be that the specific diagnosis of
Satanism fits with the pressure they feel from society. Receiving a diagnosis
of Satanism at this time, when a fixed identity is not yet established, encourages
new evaluations of the past. Testimonies of Satanism form a reflexive
reinterpretation of personal history, establishing one’s identity as an ex-
Satanist. The diagnosis of Satanism becomes a frame through which life is
reinterpreted.
The diagnosis of Satanism is often based on the behaviour of the suspected
Satanist. The ex-Satanists themselves mention another aspect of their life that
makes the diagnosis of Satanism plausible, namely a feeling of rejection and
isolation. Looking at the background stories of the ex-Satanists who give their

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testimonies, one sees that many of them have grown up in difficult

circumstances. Parents are divorced or deceased, and often the children are
living with relatives. In none of the testimonies does the ex-Satanist look back
on a happy childhood. In the testimonies, ex-Satanists often tell how they
shifted from one household to the next, going from living with a mother to
living with a grandmother, a sister or an aunt. For example, Naomi, a 17-year-
old ex-Satanist who gave her testimony in 2011 and 2012, says that in 2004, ‘I
lived with my grandmother and grandfather, the elder brother to my
grandmother’. Then:
‘The devil threw me out from Chipata to Lusaka. In Lusaka, I stayed with my
grandfather. After that, he died. […] I started asking about my father, but nobody
told me what happened to him. Some years later, I was brought to stay with my
mother.’ (#41b, Naomi’s recorded testimony, 2012)

In itself, being raised by a single parent or by relatives is not an uncommon

situation in Zambia, as we have already seen in the previous chapter. Almost
one in three youths between 15- and 17-years-old do not live with a biological
parent (CSO, MOH & ICF International 2015:25). Amongst them are many
single or double orphans living with, for example, their grandparents. Others
are living with relatives because they are financially more able to take care of
the children or because of practical reasons like the availability of schools in
the vicinity. Like many Zambian children, Naomi was never able to live with
her sister and their biological parents.
According to the Fingers of Thomas, what is special about the living
situation of ex-Satanists is that they often do not feel accepted by the family
they are living with. Udelhoven (2008) quotes the testimony of a girl
interviewed by the Fingers of Thomas:
My mother became pregnant with me while her husband was abroad. Her family
advised my mother to abort me, but she refused. When her husband came back
home and found me, he committed suicide. When I grew up with my mother, my
stepbrothers told me that their father died because of me. My mother could not
support me and she gave me to my father, who was married to another woman.
I grew up without ever confiding myself to my stepmother or to any other
person. I grew up knowing: this is not my family. I knew very well since childhood
that I belonged somewhere else. (p. 6)

Eve, the ex-Satanist introduced earlier in this chapter, has a similar story. She
sometimes lives with her mother, but at other times she stays with other
people, possibly relatives. In her testimony, she says that she feels mistreated
by them (#37a, Eve’s recorded testimony, 2013).
Even when living with parents, the situation is not necessarily ideal.
Testimonies tell about absent fathers and uncaring stepmothers. Gideon
Mulenga Kabila narrates in a video recording of his testimony that sometime
in his childhood, he discovered that his father, whom he had believed was
dead, lived in Zambia (How I was set free from Voodoo and witchcraft 2007):

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That is how I moved from Namibia to Zambia. When I came to Zambia, I found that
my father was still alive. […] When I came to my father’s place, I discovered that
my father was a man who had a heart for the children. He loved me so much. (n.p.)

Because of his father’s love, Gideon is later unable to sacrifice him. But his new
living situation is not a happy one (Kabila n.d.):
He was married again to another woman, who was my stepmother. The stepmother
hated me so much. She would mistreat me. She used to push me, do a lot of
things. (n.p.)

Kabila proceeds to sacrifice his stepmother.

Another Satanist, David, is asked to sacrifice either his mother or his father.
The choice is easy:
‘I loved my mother so much. The problem was with my father, because my father, he
mistreated us when we were young. He was a drunkard, beating mom. He divorced
her. I had that bitterness and hatred with my father. So I said, “Okay, I can sacrifice
my dad”.’ (#31a, David’s recorded testimony, 2013)

These little biographical details in the testimonies show that living together as
a family is often unattainable or filled with conflicts.
Other ex-Satanists feel rejected by their friends. Gideon Mulenga Kabila
(n.d.) describes his youth as follows:
My mother and father divorced when I was young, and mom decided to go and stay
in Namibia where I was taken with her. […] One thing that surprised me a lot was
that I had no friends at school, and every time I wanted to contribute in class, they
could laugh at me. This made me develop bitterness and [I] stopped contributing
in class. (p. 8, 9)

In a recorded testimony, he adds (How I was set free from Voodoo and
witchcraft 2007):
‘That’s how I went to my mom, and I said to her, “Mom, I don’t know what’s happening
in my life. No one loves me, even my teachers, and a lot has been happening. Tell
me what is happening”. She told me, “You know, you don’t belong to this world. You
belong to another world”.’ (n.p.)

This sentiment can be recognised in several testimonies. The ex-Satanists

somehow feel rejected, as if they do not belong. This feeling may make them
more receptive to a diagnosis of Satanism. Through this diagnosis, their
difficult circumstances and feelings of rejection and isolation are given meaning
within a greater narrative. The life story of an ex-Satanist is not just a collage
of personal experiences, but a chronicle of a war between God and Satan.

Case study: Tsitsi’s new life story

Tsitsi’s testimony shows how the process of reinterpreting a life story
through the lens of the diagnosis of Satanism works. The experiences
narrated in Tsitsi’s testimony happened years ago. Unlike many ex-Satanists,

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she is not an adolescent, but she has never really dealt with these experiences.
Creating a life story starts during adolescence or young adulthood, but it
never really stops. The life story is open to change and revision. Tsitsi’s
experiences never used to form a part of her life story. Now that she has
decided to share her testimony, she is forced to look again at her past and to
see connections that she had never before been aware of.
Like many ex-Satanists, growing up, Tsitsi felt rejected. Tsitsi is a woman in
her late 30s when she decides to share her testimony at a Pentecostal church
in Lusaka. Looking back at her youth, she says:
‘I am the sixth in a family of eight. I have four elder sisters. There were already two
born before a male child was born in my family, and my father really wanted a male
child. So a male child was born, and he named him after himself. Everybody was
happy. His family was happy that finally there was a male in the family to take up the
family name. You know, in Africa it is very important to have a male child.
‘The fourth child was born, and this child was also male, but he only lived for a
month and died. My father was very bitter because he thought, “Yes! Everybody will
say that I am a man; I have two sons!” But then he didn’t live long. After a month,
he died. Then, my father being bitter and frustrated and all that, they tried to have
another child, and they had a female child. My sister, though being named after my
father’s aunt, was not very [sic] favourite because it’s like my father was really in
love with the male children. However, she was somehow accepted. She got the love
and care that she needed.
‘And then another boy was born. Very healthy, handsome; I saw his picture. He
really took after Dad. The baby was just looking good. Everyone was happy. He
was loved. He was given everything that a baby needed. That boy only lived up to
18 months when he died of measles. He had finished all the vaccines, but despite
finishing the vaccines, he still died of measles. My father was more bitter than ever.
‘They attempted having another baby. The baby came, tiny, me, female. Eish, my
father was bitter! And he said [to my mother], “This one you can have. I won’t even
give her a name”. As I was growing up, there grew a vacuum inside me. […] I desired
the love of my father. It is the father’s responsibility to give his children love. I didn’t
receive that.’ (#10c, Tsitsi’s testimony in church, 08 February 2015)

Tsitsi longs for the love and acceptance of her father, but being the child born
just after a beloved male child passed away, she feels rejected.
Her feelings start to make sense when she is diagnosed with Satanism after
a long search for deliverance. In her new view on her personal history, the
vacuum she felt while growing up was filled by Satan. Tsitsi starts to adjust her
life story according to this diagnosis. This process does not stop, even after
delivering her testimony. Within two weeks, Tsitsi gave her testimony at an
all-night prayer meeting, during Sunday services and on television. The second
time she gave her testimony in the Sunday service, she was still reworking,
reshaping her life story. ‘What I am going to share today,’ she said, ‘I didn’t
share before because it just came to my awareness yesterday afternoon’.
The experiences that she will narrate in this service were always there in her

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personal history, but they never before took on a meaning significant for her
identity. She continues:
‘In my family, a lot of things have been going on. I did never understand why these
things were happening. I never understood how these things were happening. My
younger brother, he is 30-years-old. Everything he does, he always fails. He still
lives with our mother. My older brother, he got great scores in school, but yet he
never succeeded. And now I know that I was responsible. My elder sister, she is very
intelligent. But her life, it just got frustrated, all the way until now. Her marriage, it
did not succeed because of me. She has got divorced. Now, all three, they are living
with our mother at home again. They are doing nothing, drinking a lot, are on drugs.
‘I prayed for them all the time, “Lord, save them”. But yesterday afternoon, I was
taken aback, then I suddenly realised. Like I told [sic], at six I was initiated. Then I
had that power. Naturally, I always was quiet. I liked to lock myself in my room. I was
rejected by my father, and all the little love that was left for me was taken by my
brother. I would take things in my heart. I didn’t understand what was happening.
I would think bad of my brothers and sister, they who got my love and the praises
that I was supposed to get. I would think, “Later, you will have to beg from me”. And
everything, it happened. Every wish I made, it got to happen. They got nowhere.
Yesterday afternoon, I understood [starts crying] that I had a higher rank even than
the Queen of the Coast.’ (#10d, Tsitsi’s testimony in church, 22 February 2015)

Tsitsi has accepted the diagnosis of Satanism. Unlike Rose, who takes some
distance from the diagnosis by stating, ‘they said I was married under the sea’.
Tsitsi fully identifies with the diagnosis: ‘At six I was initiated’, and ‘I had a
higher rank even than the Queen of the Coast’.
The experiences that are rendered meaningful through the lens of the
diagnosis of Satanism are generally negative. Feelings of isolation and
rejection are almost always mentioned. In this excerpt of Tsitsi’s testimony,
added to that is the difficult relationship with her brothers and sister and their
later failure in life. In other testimonies, the deaths of relatives or disasters like
road accidents become meaningful events in the life story because, as a
former Satanist, the narrator takes responsibility for these events. All of these
things did not just happen; they happened for a reason.
The identity that Tsitsi constructs in her life story is that of an ex-Satanist.
As an ex-Satanist, she takes responsibility for all the bad things that have
befallen her brothers and sister. They fail, they never succeed, they are
unmarried, doing nothing, drinking a lot, on drugs, all because of Tsitsi’s power.
But the evil deeds that Tsitsi recognises in her personal history after accepting
the diagnosis of Satanism are in the past. Now, she is delivered and wants to
share her testimony. Testimonies, like conversion stories, are examples of
redemptive personal narratives, where a bad past is overcome and gives way
to a good present. Despite the negative occurrences that have happened in
the past and for which the ex-Satanist takes responsibility, this type of narrative
is essentially optimistic. According to McAdams (2006), the central message
of the redemptive life story is that suffering and disadvantages can be
conquered.

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Credibility, coherence and meaningfulness in

life stories
A good life story needs to be credible, coherent and meaningful. According to
McAdams (2006:66), these aspects of the life story are even more important
than the literal truth of the narrative: ‘The story tells us who we are, even if in
its details and scenes it is not exactly “true” ’. It seems likely that parts of the
Zambian testimonies ring true in their narrator’s inner world, while not being
exactly true in the outer world. The ex-Satanists discover their responsibility
for the deaths of others without physically having killed them. A life story,
however, needs to be credible enough to be accepted by an audience, a factor
that is partly dependent on cultural expectations. To a Dutch audience, Tsitsi’s
claim that she is responsible for her brothers’ and sister’s failure just by
thinking badly about them is not credible. In Zambia, where a majority of the
population has grown up with notions of witchcraft and spiritual harm, bad
thoughts are believed to have the power to cause misfortune, and therefore
Tsitsi’s testimony can very well be seen as plausible.
Coherence is another characteristic of an adequate life story. Coherence in
the context of life stories means that the events described in the life story are
presented as meaningful, allowing the narrator to find unity and purpose in
life. In the end, what makes Tsitsi’s story meaningful is that it is a foundation
for her to help others. ‘We came to realise that we should be a blessing. You
here should get something from this. God is speaking to you,’ says Tsitsi’s
husband, while Tsitsi prays, ‘God, we are here to shame the enemy. You set
captives free. I am one of the captives who has been set free by you. Amen’.
Other ex-Satanists are even more clear about the sense of purpose that
their life story fills them with. Eve, for example, explains that she wants to be
a role model for others:
‘God allows things to happen in our lives. That’s for a reason. I’m sure that he just
never allowed such a thing to happen to me, because I know there are a lot of
people, young people or maybe older people, who have been in blind Satanism and
they don’t know it. But if I share my testimony like this, at least somebody would
be able to identify certain things that have happened to them.’ (37a, Eve’s recorded
testimony, 2013)

According to psychologists Theodore Waters and Robyn Fivush (2014),

constructing a coherent and meaningful life story is related to psychological
well-being. Almost all of the ex-Satanists who give their testimony in public,
and most of the people who were willing to talk about their experiences with
me, give meaning to this episode in their lives, similar to Eve. Being delivered
makes them feel free, clean and less fearful than before. They want to be role
models and examples of God’s power over the forces of evil. This new
perspective on their life and the future also holds a promise of positive agency
that is absent in the past.

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These narrators of testimonies have accepted the diagnosis of Satanism and

integrated it into a meaningful life story. However, this is not always as easy as
it may seem from these successful life stories. Many adolescents with
experiences that point to Satanism, or even with a diagnosis given by a pastor,
do not want to talk about it. For example, Bright, the nephew of the Pentecostal
bishop who suspects that he is a Satanist, denies the diagnosis of Satanism.
He will probably have constructed a life story that finds meaning in other
experiences or a different diagnosis. Rose, the lady who feels like a slave in her
marriage, is in the process of revising her life story. As of now, it is unclear
whether she will accept the frame of Satanism.
Martha and Loveness are two girls from one of the poor, high-density areas
in Lusaka. Their church has an active intercession group where Satanism is
often mentioned. One of the intercessors has arranged my meeting with
Martha and Loveness. Hesitantly, they come into the vestry, where we are
waiting for them. They say their names in a whisper. They do not meet my
eyes. The intercessor urges them to share what they have experienced. Martha
begins to speak haltingly. Loveness only speaks when directly addressed.
‘What did you learn from this experience?’ I ask them. ‘Has it changed you?’
Martha answers, ‘I learned nothing’. For her, there is nothing good that can
come from her experience of Satanism. Martha says she feels free after the
intercession group prayed for her. Loveness still feels oppressed: ‘I see no
change. They still attack me’ (#3, interview with Martha and Loveness, 23
March 2015). She feels haunted by the Satanists who are after her. For the
intercessor, it is clear that Martha and especially Loveness are not completely
delivered yet; otherwise, it would have been easy for them to give a testimony
and they would have been able to find meaning in the experience. I cannot
judge whether Loveness and Martha are delivered, but from the perspective
of life stories, I can tell that this episode is not, or not yet, part of a coherent
and meaningful life story. In Loveness’ and Martha’s narrative, there are too
many loose ends that, in a coherent life story, would have blended out.
Interpreting testimonies as more or less successful life stories gives these
narratives a positive meaning. Most of the ex-Satanists seem to have found
some peace with their history. They can ‘render sensible and coherent the
seeming chaos of human existence’ (McAdams 1993:166) without focusing
only on negative experiences, fear and powerlessness. However, there is also
a risk in presenting a testimony over and over again. According to McAdams,
a life story should always leave room for reinterpretation and ambiguity. In the
future, the life story and its interpretation of the past may need to change yet
again. A testimony, as a public narrative, runs the risk of becoming too rigid
and unable to change.
In his book on how to pastorally deal with possession, witchcraft and
Satanism, Fingers of Thomas founder Bernhard Udelhoven explicitly warns

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pastors, counsellors and other helpers against creating fixed testimonies. In a

list of helpful and unhelpful approaches to experiences of Satanism and
witchcraft, he writes:
•• Helpful: To allow the experience of the victim to be integrated into their life
story in a natural way. To allow the experiences to be retold in different
ways. While retelling an experience, one can often gain new insights.
•• Not helpful: Fixed styles of testimonies, which can close the experience
into one single interpretation. To narrate an experience under group
pressure. To retell the story when no new insights are emerging in the
process. (p. 230)
The Fingers of Thomas, whose approach was introduced in Chapter 1, take the
experiences of Satanism seriously but emphasise that they are happening in a
person’s inner world, which is not shared with others. The approach of the
Fingers is to reduce fear and powerlessness by focusing on strengths and
positive aspects of the ex-Satanist’s life.
Chileshe is a member of the Fingers of Thomas. She used to have experiences
that she interpreted as Satanism. She came into contact with the Fingers of
Thomas through the Catholic Church she visited in Lusaka. When I interviewed
her, she had been involved with the Fingers for some time. Her narration was
short, minimally detailed, and she seemed to distance herself from the imagery
of Satanism. Her first experience of Satanism happened when she was in
secondary school in a provincial town in Zambia. She bumped into a girl who
was said to be involved in Satanism, and after that, she started dreaming of
going to the graveyard with that girl to drink blood and eat human flesh.
Charismatic church members prayed for her, and she was sent to Lusaka to
continue her education. Chileshe continued:
‘But in Lusaka, it happened again. I would find myself in a forest or say that my
grandmother came to our home and brought presents like necklaces. This was not
true. My grandmother has never visited Lusaka. In a diary, I would write names of
classmates and I would say that my grandmother would come and initiate them. […]
My friends at school were scared of me. I would hear voices when I was sleeping:
“When you join us, we will stop troubling you”. Now, I think it maybe had to do with
the situation with my sister and brother-in-law where I was staying. I never wanted
to tell my sister [that my brother-in-law came onto me], I kept it all to myself.’ (#39,
interview with Chileshe, 06 November 2013)

During the interview, Chileshe questioned parts of her earlier testimony. She
used to say that her grandmother initiated people into Satanism by giving
them necklaces. Now, she retracts that story: her grandmother had never been
to Lusaka. She also gave a new interpretation of the things that happened
when she stayed in Lusaka: maybe it had to do with the fraught living
conditions with her sister and brother-in-law. Chileshe’s example shows that if
there is no pressure to repeat the testimony over and over again in public, the
life story may change, and new meanings may be found.

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The perspective of life stories shows us that it is not so much that people are
ex-Satanists because their lives have ‘really’ followed a certain path. It is rather
that they construct and believe in these kinds of life stories because they have
accepted the diagnosis of Satanism. As long as the identity of ex-Satanist is
embraced, the testimony can give a sense of meaning and purpose. As our
lives change over time, this identity and the interpretation of the past that
goes with it may eventually be discarded again.

Conclusion
This chapter focused on the narrator of the testimonies. Through what process
does an individual accept the discourse of Satanism as a personal narrative?
Two main points have been made. Firstly, afflictions and diagnoses form a
better interpretative framework for the testimonies of Satanism than religious
conversion. This diagnosis should be seen in the context of contemporary
charismatic faith healing in an African environment. A diagnosis of Satanism
is often given if there are specific elements present in the life of a client, like
youth, having disturbing dreams, behaving in a typical way during deliverance
and, especially, feelings of rejection and isolation.
Secondly, testimonies, like other life stories, involve a reinterpretation of
the past. Constructing a coherent and meaningful life story provides the
narrator with a stable identity and a sense of purpose. Testimonies of Satanism
help to make sense of negative experiences like deaths in the family, accidents
and the feeling of not belonging. Most testimonies give the narrator a sense of
purpose in life.
Adopting the life story of an ex-Satanist gives meaning and a clear identity.
However, it remains an open question whether building one’s life story on the
negative image of the Satanist is beneficial, even though the fact that Satanism
is seen as an affliction may mitigate feelings of guilt and personal responsibility.
Any benefits are, furthermore, undermined when the life story becomes a
fixed, static testimony, unable to change or respond to new circumstances as
a life story should.
This chapter discussed the conceptualisation of personhood in
contemporary Zambia. In anthropology, the discussion about personhood is
mainly focused on the influence of Pentecostal Christianity on a believer’s
concept of the self. Making a break with the past and with evil spiritual agencies
could imply a buffering of the self. On the other hand, the Pentecostal person
still conceives affliction by spiritual agencies as a possibility and is also highly
dependent on affirmation by others.
Becoming a Satanist is not the choice of an autonomous individual but the
effect of an external influence, a force from outside penetrating the person.
This means that experiencing Satanism as an affliction is in line with the

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conception of the self as porous. The diagnosis of Satanism is given by a

religious specialist, and its acceptance is dependent on the recognition by
family members and others close to the affected person. This means that
there is a strong relational or dividual aspect to the experience of oneself as
an ex-Satanist.
However, the self is not imagined as porous and dividual only; different
models of personhood co-exist. The evidence of shopping around for an
appropriate diagnosis shows that alternative causes are considered as well,
and these may be rooted in different conceptualisations of the self. Importantly,
the diagnosis of Satanism needs to become part of a life story in the narrative
praxis of identity formation. Ex-Satanists are involved in what Daswani (2011)
calls a process of self-fashioning: balancing individual boundaries and the
control and expectations of human and nonhuman others. As we will see in
the next chapter, this self-fashioning is not a process that happens in isolation
and has only personal relevance.

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Mediating the divine and the

demonic

Introduction
In the previous chapter, we have seen that young African Christians may
wonder whether their problems are caused by an unknown involvement in
Satanism. At several church services and religious meetings that I observed in
my time in Zambia, when a pastor asked people who had such fears to come
forward to be prayed for, many adolescents did so. In certain circumstances,
the fear of involvement in Satanism, either by adolescents themselves or by
their parents or caregivers, can lead to a diagnosis of Satanism made by a
pastor or intercessor. For a smaller group, this diagnosis makes enough sense
to become part of one’s identity and inspire a rewriting of the life story.
But what happens next? Some ex-Satanists decide to go public with their
story by becoming role models for other adolescents and guiding them past
the dangers of growing up in this modern world. Some do this by presenting
their testimonies in church services or overnight prayers, on the radio or in
self-published pamphlets. It is these most visible ex-Satanists whom we will
turn to in this chapter. How does one become an ex-Satanist with a public
platform? And what role do the testimonies of these ex-Satanists play in the
religious life of their audiences?

How to cite: Kroesbergen-Kamps, J 2022, ‘Mediating the divine and the demonic’, in Speaking of Satan in
Zambia: Making cultural and personal sense of narratives about Satanism, in HTS Religion & Society Series,
vol. 14, AOSIS Books, Cape Town, pp. 183–215. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2022.BK373.06

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Often, when presenting their testimony, ex-Satanists are not alone. Gideon
Mulenga Kabila is introduced by a Norwegian pastor, Jan-Aage Torp, in the
video How I was set free from Voodoo and witchcraft: Interview with Gideon
Mulenga Kabila. Torp, a middle-aged white man wearing a shirt in the colours
of the Zambian flag, is sitting in a living room with Gideon. Looking straight at
the camera, he says (How I was set free from Voodoo and witchcraft: Interview
with Gideon Mulenga Kabila 2007):
It’s an honour and a privilege for me here in Ndola, Zambia, to introduce a young
man of 27 years of age. His name is Gideon Mulenga. He was a Voodoo incarnate,
high-ranking Satanist, among the highest ranking. And three years ago, we’re
talking about 2004, Gideon Mulenga met the Lord Jesus Christ. This young man
has been set free, and he is now a shining testimony to the power of Jesus Christ to
change a life from darkness to light, from Satan to God. (n.p.)

Pastors are involved in many testimonies to introduce and question the ex-
Satanists. Another example is Naomi’s testimony. Her interviewer says:
‘Dear brothers and sisters. Here is a very important discussion of your lifetime. To all
followers and nonfollowers of Christ Jesus, please be attentive and listen carefully.
The discussion is with a young lady, who was involved in Satanism, but one day she
met Christ our Saviour. Most of you could have heard about Satanism. Satanism is
real and more dangerous than you ever thought. Knowing that his time is short, the
devil has devised sophisticated techniques to bring many people to his side. Now
listen to the person who was involved in the various activities of Satanism. Not
rumours, but reality. Let’s get it from the horse’s mouth.’ (#41a, Naomi’s recorded
testimony, 2011)

Testimonies do not simply, unprompted, burst forth from anyone that has had
an experience of Satanism. They require preparation, a certain setting with an
audience and often the involvement of a pastor who introduces the narrative.
In the first section of this chapter, we will investigate how testimonies are
developed as narratives that follow a certain script and use specific jargon.
The sharing of a testimony is also an act of storytelling, and in storytelling, the
interactional terrain plays an important role (Gubrium & Holstein 2009:31–32).
Interactional terrain refers to the social interactions that shape the development
of narratives. Narratives need a specific context to materialise. In the following
sections of this chapter, we will look at this context and the people involved
in it, namely the ex-Satanist, the pastor and the audience.

Scripting the testimony

In many evangelical and Pentecostal churches, a specific slot in the worship
service is set apart for testimonies. What is a testimony in general, and more
specifically a testimony delivered by an ex-Satanist in Zambia? Before giving
a definition, I will discuss some narrative genres that show similarities to
Zambian testimonies.

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Narratives of ex-Satanists and the religious genre

of testimony
Narrating means selecting, singling out certain details from a mass of data
and emplotting them. The selection of these details depends on the story that
a narrator wants to tell, as we have seen in the previous chapter. In the personal
life story of an ex-Satanist, those events that make sense from the perspective
of the diagnosis of Satanism are highlighted. But personal significance is not
the only criterion. A successful plot is also dependent on the audience’s
expectations of the storyline (Koschorke 2012:56).
In my research, I have found that prompting by an interviewer is no
substitute for the context in which testimonies are normally produced. The
narratives I acquired through interviews often seemed bland and far less
detailed than testimonies narrated in their natural environment. For testimonies,
this is often a religious context, like a deliverance service, an overnight prayer
meeting or a religious media broadcast. This environment moulds how the
testimony is told.
According to the advocates of narrative ethnography Jaber Gubrium and
James Holstein (2009), narrators are aware of their audience and formulate
their account with that audience in mind. Bernhard Udelhoven gives clear
examples of testimonies that are presented with a certain audience in mind.
For example, when speaking to a Pentecostal audience, an ex-Satanist explains
that the devil is not afraid of Catholics because their churches are not ‘spirit-
filled’. But another Satanist, who speaks to a Catholic audience, warns, ‘The
devil is really out to destroy the Catholic Church. […] The Catholic Church is
the real Church and the devil knows it’ (Udelhoven 2021:404–405). In their
testimonies, ex-Satanists create boundaries of who is good and evil, and those
boundaries depend on the audience of the testimony.
Testimonies also address what Gubrium and Holstein (2009:33) have
labelled ‘interpretive communities’, namely audiences, both present and
anticipated, who share certain stories, concepts and interpretive frames.
In previous chapters, we have seen the main interpretive frames for the
narratives about Satanism: notions of illicit accumulation, Christian theology
and emic understandings of modernity. A testimony acquired in an interview
runs the risk of being formulated in the concepts of the interviewer rather
than in the language of the narrator, shaped by the natural environment of a
testimony.
A testimony is always told not as a factual report but as a demonstration
and explanation of an experience of transition that is meaningful for both the
narrator and their audience (Davidman & Greil 2007:203). This means that in
testimony, the experience of transition is a vital part that an audience will
expect to hear about. There are many different narrative genres in which

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transition is an important factor. One could even argue that transition is what
makes a collection of events a narrative. The eminent literary critic Tzvetan
Todorov, for instance, defines an emplotted narrative as ‘the passage from
one equilibrium to another’ (Todorov 2006:213). Some kind of change or
transformation is inherent to every narrative.
Some narrative genres, however, show a particular similarity to the
testimonies of Zambian ex-Satanists. In the most general terms, testimonies
of ex-Satanists are a variety of the narrative of redemption described by Dan
McAdams (2006). Redemptive narratives are religious or secular stories that
describe blessings born from death and suffering. Often, these narratives
stress the long-term benefits of negative experiences (McAdams 2006:16).
Testimonies of ex-Satanists are full of negative experiences, and often they
end on a positive note: the experiences of the past have made the ex-Satanist
stronger and able to warn or encourage others.
Another genre with obvious similarities to testimonies of ex-Satanists is the
genre of conversion narratives. Conversion narratives generally follow a typical
formula: ‘I was living in sin, but now I am saved; I was lost, but now I’m found’
(Gooren 2010:93). Ex-Satanists describe a past away from the fold of
Christianity, which could be labelled as being lost or living in sin.
However, as I have argued in the previous chapter, there are some problems
with conversion as an interpretative frame for narratives about Satanism. For
one thing, the word sin is virtually absent in the narratives of ex-Satanists. This
is in line with the concept of personhood discussed in the previous chapter.
Ex-Satanists demonstrate a concept of the self as porous and afflicted by
external forces rather than an individual self, choosing a new religious
conviction or choosing to do evil. As we have seen in the previous chapter,
conversion in Africa refers to a change in lifestyle or finding healing more than
to a change in beliefs or doctrines (cf. Manglos 2010:413; Van Klinken
2012:216–217).
The third genre with similarities to testimonies of ex-Satanists is the
apostate or ex-member narrative. In these narratives, a former member of a
religious group gives insight into the workings of that organisation, often
emphasising the atrocities experienced in their time with this group
(cf. Chryssides & Geaves 2014:85–86). The experience of conversion is
important in these narratives. The ex-member has experienced a conversion
to the now rejected group and their leaving the group often goes together
with a new experience of conversion. As discussed, this is not entirely
applicable to the testimonies of Zambian ex-Satanists.
But apostate narratives do not necessarily describe an existing group, and
this is where they are similar to narratives of ex-Satanists. In a volume on
religious apostasy, Daniel Carson Johnson (1998) writes about ‘the apostasy

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that never was’, meaning that some apostate narratives describe a fictitious
conversion to a nonexistent group. The narratives about evil Others described
in Chapter 1 often draw on alleged testimonies of defectors (Jenkins & Maier-
Katkin 1991:129). In the history of Satanism, there are some examples of this
phenomenon that we have already encountered in Chapter 3. For example,
Mike Warnke, one of the first ex-Satanists who gave his testimony in
Pentecostal churches in the USA, has been called a ‘fake apostate’ as many
elements in his narrative proved untrue. According to Johnson (1998:122),
there is no evidence that the satanic groups that people like Mike Warnke
speak about really exist: they are apostates absque facto. This means that
their apostasy is of a special kind in which the experience of conversion may
not be central. Like the American testimonies, testimonies of Zambian ex-
Satanists imply the existence of an organisation of Satanists that factually
does not seem to exist.
The different narrative genres discussed show some similarity to testimonies
of ex-Satanists, whereby the ‘fake apostate’ narratives seem to be the most
analogous to the Zambian testimonies. But what are the characteristics of the
testimony as a genre in itself? In this Chapter, I define testimony as: a personal
narrative of divine intervention, which is publicly performed and scripted
according to standards and expectations shared by the audience.
As personal narratives, testimonies are deemed more credible than mere
rumours or stories that happened to the proverbial ‘friend of a friend’. The
narrator of testimony claims first-hand knowledge of the workings of
the spiritual world, and the credibility of the testimony is further enforced by
its endorsement by pastors who allow people to share their testimonies in
church services.
The narrator of a testimony is an eyewitness to a significant event.
In Pentecostal churches, the sharing of testimonies is often aptly referred to
as witnessing. The events described in a testimony can vary. Some testimonies
describe finding healing or job opportunities; others deal with battling
addiction or returning to society after a life of crime. Always, the events are
brought in relation to divine intervention. A testimony ‘asserts something
particular that God has done for the speaker’, according to Elaine Lawless
(2005:86), who researched women’s narratives in a Pentecostal church. This
subjective interpretation of events is the personal meaning of the testimony.
For the testimonies of ex-Satanists, this personal meaning was addressed in
the previous chapter.
A testimony, however, transcends the purely personal because it is a
narrative that is performed in public. The audience has certain expectations of
what a testimony sounds like, and testimonies generally follow these
conventions. Sometimes they do so very strictly. In the church described by

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Lawless (2005:87), for example, the repertoire of conventional phrases was so

extensive and well-known that a narrator could very well give a testimony
without adding anything original. Sometimes there is more freedom in the
emplotment of a testimony.
Testimonies of ex-Satanists in Zambia often follow the same scheme, and
certain elements are shared by almost all testimonies, like the drinking of
blood or the eating of human flesh, sacrificing relatives or others and going to
the underworld. The testimony of the ex-Satanist is a performance with a
relatively fixed script, a text that the narrator has laboured on and maybe even
improved over time. It has become a public religious document, maybe even
to a greater extent than it is a personal story.
The following example shows that not every experience is framed according
to the fixed format of a testimony. Laura is a woman who had an experience
but who chose not to script it as a testimony.

Case study: Laura and the story that did not

become a testimony
Testimonies of ex-Satanists performed for a religious audience are scripted,
meaning that they share the same jargon and storyline. This process of
scripting or emplotting the testimony does not always happen. Laura’s
narrative is not a testimony about Satanism because the typical storyline and
jargon, even any mention of Satanism at all, is absent (#153, interview with
Laura, 05 June 2016).
Laura is a young woman in her 20s, currently living with her parents,
together with her three-year-old son. She is married to a businessman who
often travels to Europe and Dubai, but when I speak with her, they are
separated. A couple of years ago, Laura began to have strange dreams and
see things. For example, she would see a woman in the bed between her and
her husband. While she was pregnant with twins, voices would tell her that
only one would live. This was exactly what happened: after she gave birth in
the hospital, the nurses brought her only one baby; the other was stillborn.
About a year before I met Laura, the voices and strange occurrences at her
home became too much for her, and she came back to her family. For a while,
she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. She also came into contact with
the Fingers of Thomas, who help those who have experiences with Satanism.
The details of Laura’s story could easily be transformed into a testimony
about Satanism. Her family, aware of Laura’s experiences, suspects that her
husband may be into Satanism to gain success for his business. After she came
back to her mother’s place, the family even burnt her clothes because they
thought they might be dangerous. Laura’s testimony, if she had one, could

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narrate how her husband sacrificed their unborn child or how she was initiated
through her clothes.
When I speak to her, however, this storyline is absent, as is the jargon
common in testimonies. By now, Laura has started school, and that keeps her
busy. But she still hears voices that tell her what she should do. For example,
when she is about to write down an answer for an assignment at school, the
voices tell her, ‘That is the wrong answer’ and that she should write something
else. They also tell her to get up in the morning and bathe herself and her son.
Often, the voices give her good advice, but sometimes they say negative
things, for example, that she has made a mistake or that she did not explain
something well. At times, the voices annoy Laura, and she feels controlled
by them.
About her husband, Laura says that the two families are now discussing
whether she and her husband can get together again. They still speak to each
other on the phone, although her husband sometimes has no time for her.
Until now, they have never really sat down and talked about the issues that
drove them apart. Laura says that her husband is afraid of her because of the
things she hears and sees.
Different cultures have different ways of dealing with hearing voices.
A comparative investigation of the experience of auditory hallucinations in
India, Ghana and the USA indicates that in the African setting, the experience
of voices was predominantly positive (Luhrmann et al. 2015). Laura’s case is
unresolved. She is still searching for a way to deal with the voices she hears,
and there is uncertainty about the future of her marriage. But Satanism does
not seem to be a frame that gives meaning to Laura’s experiences, and
therefore her narrative does not show the storyline and jargon common in
testimonies.
Although Laura has visited pastors who prayed for her, she takes the stance
of the Fingers of Thomas, who are critical of charismatic deliverance and
narratives in the style of a fixed testimony.14 In an earlier publication, I discussed
the work of the Fingers of Thomas in more detail (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2018).
For the Fingers, it is an important point of departure that anyone can help
those who have frightening experiences related to witchcraft, possession or
Satanism. One does not need to be a pastor or a ‘man of God’ to empower
those who go through disturbing experiences. In this way, the responsibility
for healing is kept with the individual instead of being assigned to a specialist.

14. A detailed description of the work of the Fingers of Thomas can be found in Bernhard Udelhoven’s Unseen
Worlds: Dealing with Spirits, Witchcraft and Satanism (2021). In ‘Dreaming of Snakes in Zambia: Small Gods
and the Secular,’ I discuss the approach of the Fingers in comparison to neo-Pentecostal ways to handle similar
experiences (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2018).

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Secondly, the Fingers see spiritual issues, like hearing voices or having
frightening dreams, as closely connected to issues in other spheres of life. The
Fingers make a distinction between ‘inner world’ and ‘outer world’ (Udelhoven
2021:147–167). In the inner world, dreams and visions can be experienced by
an individual, but bystanders do not have access to this world. For the Fingers
of Thomas, this inner world is real, but as it cannot be accessed by them, they
focus their actions on the outer world that both the Fingers and the person
they are helping inhabit. In Laura’s case, this means helping Laura to get back
to school and facilitating marriage counselling and reconciliation between the
two families.
Thirdly, the Fingers of Thomas take the experiences of the inner world to
be symbols for problems in the outer world. These symbols do not have a
fixed meaning. Hearing voices, for instance, does not necessarily mean being
under attack by evil powers. The Fingers try to show Laura a different way to
deal with her voices. Rather than seeing herself as a victim, fearful of her
experiences, the Fingers encourage her to hear the words of the voices as
positive advice and stimulate her to enter into a conversation with them. In
that way, she may become able to accept the voices and visions and transform
them into something that she controls instead of something that controls her.
The approach of the Fingers of Thomas allows Laura to retell her experience
in different ways rather than to force this experience into the fixed storyline
and jargon of the testimony of Satanism. In the previous chapter, I argued that
narratives about Satanism can form a meaningful interpretation of the past.
The Fingers of Thomas seem more negative about these narratives. The ability
to incorporate change is a characteristic of a successful life story. The Fingers
of Thomas warn that an interpretation of the past that is suspended in a fixed
form, like a testimony, can hinder further growth because it prevents the life
story from changing again.

The pastor and the production of a testimony

Whether an experience becomes a testimony depends on the context in which
the experience is interpreted. The Fingers of Thomas provide an example of a
context that does not promote the development of a testimony. In which
interpretive context are testimonies cultivated?
The Belgian anthropologist Filip de Boeck (2008), writing about alleged
child witches in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, discusses the
role of pastors and churches in the emplotment of testimonies (pp. 501–504).
Children accused of witchcraft are taken in by churches and kept in seclusion
for a while. During this period of seclusion, the children are interrogated by
church members. According to De Boeck (2008):

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During these more private sessions that evolve between the child and the preacher
or one of his or her assistants, there slowly emerges a narrative of disruption and
descent into evil. (pp. 502–503)

Partly, De Boeck sees this as a therapeutic narrative process, helping to give

meaning to difficult experiences. This is the perspective that guided the
previous chapter of this book.
At the same time, De Boeck (2008) emphasises how the resulting narratives
conform to the specific expectations of their audience:
This period is a crucial point in a whole process of emplotment which helps to shape
up the imaginative task of modelling an experience of crisis and drawing a rather
standard and stereotypical narrative configuration out of a simple succession of
illnesses and deaths. (p. 503)

The narratives developed by the children are not merely life stories; they are
meant to be performed in church as testimonies.
In Zambia, ex-Satanists are not kept in seclusion like the witch children of
Kinshasa, but the role of churches and pastors in the emplotment of testimonies
is considerable as well. As experts who give the diagnosis of Satanism, pastors
are closely involved in the narrative process of interpreting the past in the
frame of Satanism. A pastor I spoke to is very aware of this process. He says:
‘People have to be taught to give a good testimony. Some people only tell how they
messed up their lives and forget to share what God has done for them. So I give
them pointers, for example, that they should first tell what happened to them and
then turn to how God saved them.’ (#155, interview with Pastor P., 08 October 2013)

In this way, the narrative is fitted into the mould of a testimony of God’s power,
moving from a bad past to a better present.
Less explicitly, pastors are influential in the production of testimonies
through the questions they ask in the deliverance process. Gideon Mulenga
Kabila ends his published testimony with advice for pastors and intercessors
praying for people who have experiences with Satanism. He writes (Kabila n.d.):
There are many steps of delivering a person, and these are some of the
steps:
1. Ask the person what he or she wants, let him confess with his or her mouth,
because there is power in confession.
2. Ask your client to forgive all the people who did wrong against him or her.
3. Ask him or her how he was initiated, whether it was parental, material,
food, ancestral, childbirth, etc. NB: Many people are initiated into Satanism
through different means and they need different solutions.
4. Ask the person whether she was spiritually married or not. This can only be
identified through the dreams and marriage breakages even miscarriages.

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5. Ask the person whether she or he was given some tattoos as a symbol of
blood covenant; this can also be done through blood exchange.
6. Ask the person about the code number; most of the people have different
codes that connect them to the communication system of the devil.
7. Ask the person whether his mind or heart was once changed or transferred
into any living thing such as animals, trees and reptiles, etc.
8. Ask the person about his or her dream life, whether she goes to the
underworld by astroprojection or transcendental meditation.
9. Ask the person about the level that she or he reached in the devil’s kingdom.
(p. 63)
Deliverance, in this example from Gideon Mulenga Kabila, is more than praying
for someone to expel their demons. The pastor or intercessor needs
background information from his client to finish the process of deliverance. De
Boeck mentions that children accused of witchcraft in Kinshasa are subjected
to interrogations. This list from Kabila’s testimony gives an idea of the questions
supposed Satanists are asked during such conversations. Code numbers and
astral projection are unique to Kabila’s testimony, but the other elements are
very common elements of testimonies, as we will see.
Asking people in a crisis to think about these questions encourages them
to interpret past events in the frame of Satanism. For example, that there was
an initiation is not even a question, but the supposed Satanist can choose
which of the options fits his experiences best: initiation by the parents, by a
gift, or by eating certain foods. The questions also show what the expected
elements of a testimony are. In the next section, I will discuss these in
more detail.

Script and jargon in testimonies of Zambian

ex-Satanists
Testimonies are adjusted to the expectations of their presumed audiences.
Through this process, they become more or less scripted, as we have seen in
the previous section. The scripted nature of testimony refers to how testimonies
follow certain conventions and expectations shared by the audience of the
narrative. What are these conventions for testimonies of Satanism?
According to narrative analysts like Jerome Bruner (1986:16), there are
limits to the variety of stories people tell. The common storylines are known
as canonical narratives. The conversion narratives, stories of redemption and
apostate accounts discussed are examples of such canonical narratives. The
closest comparable narratives to the testimonies of ex-Satanists are
the testimonies of apostates. Johnson (1998:123) interprets these
apostate accounts as captivity narratives, where the protagonists somehow
find themselves under the control of a religious group. For a time, they are

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true followers, but eventually they ‘wake up’ and find an opportunity to escape.
After that, they renounce this former religious affiliation.
Testimonies of ex-Satanists in Zambia have a different storyline. Whereas
Johnson’s interpretation emphasises a struggle to break free from control, in
testimonies of ex-Satanists, the rewards and costs of assignments take a
central place. The typical testimony starts with an experience of initiation,
followed by an assignment, generally to sacrifice a relative. In the most
complete narratives, this assignment is accepted, and the protagonist receives
rewards. Eventually, however, there comes an assignment that the protagonist
cannot execute, often because the one they have to sacrifice is an especially
loved family member. The failed assignment inspires the protagonist to search
for deliverance. This is often a difficult and lengthy process, but in the end,
after being delivered by a powerful pastor or prayer group, the protagonist
finds a new, positive human identity. Almost all testimonies shared in a religious
setting have this structure. In testimonies narrated in an interview setting,
however, steps are often missing, especially the acceptance of assignments
and the final failed assignment.
Not only do most testimonies share a canonical storyline, but they also use
a common jargon, ‘a new vocabulary through which the satanic world, its
locations and hierarchies were described’ (Udelhoven 2021:392–393). Satanists
do not visit hell or devilland but the underworld or go under the ocean or
under the sea. There, they do not enter a contract or go on missions, but they
may make a covenant, receive assignments and meet the queen. By their
prevalence in testimonies of Satanism, traditionally neutral concepts like
initiation or sacrifice are cast in a negative light. This of course fits with the
Pentecostal program of demonising traditional African religions. The 13
extensive testimonies all use a selection of these eight terms.
In comparison, other types of narratives use different jargon. Ngũgı̃ wa
Thiong’o coined the term ‘devilland’ in his novel Wizard of the Crow (2006).
In this novel, he describes the African state of Aburĩria, which is obsessed
with the forces of evil. Although passages in Wizard of the Crow are very
similar to narratives about Satanism in Zambia, he never quite uses the same
jargon, as in the case of his use of ‘devilland’. In another episode, Ngũgı̃ writes
about an elderly couple befallen by Satan with a desire for the flesh of other
people. For one familiar with stories of Satanism, it is surprising to discover
that this refers not to the eating of human flesh, but sexual lust. My experience
with the book is that if a story does not follow the expected conventions the
audience is left in confusion.
Two Zambian sisters, Rachael and Zipporah Mushala, have built an audience
amongst end-time believers with their prophecies and visions of heaven and
hell (#26a-c and #27a-c, online testimony, 2013 and 2014). Their testimonies
show some similarities to testimonies of ex-Satanists, but like Ngũgı̃ wa

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Thiong’o, they use different jargon. Both the sisters and the ex-Satanists
describe the manufacturing of satanic products. However, in Rachael and
Zipporah’s texts, the typical jargon of testimonies is missing. In six testimonies
about these visions, the words sacrifice and initiation are used only once.
The testimonies collected in interviews also show a marked difference in
the use of jargon. On average, in a testimony performed for an audience and
in a religious setting, the specific jargon of the discourse of Satanism – words
and phrases like the underworld, going under the ocean or sea, covenant,
assignment, queen, initiation and sacrifice – are used 83 times per testimony,
in a range between 14 and 218 times. In testimonies collected through an
interview, these words are, on average, used only five times per testimony, in
a range between two and eight.

Ex-Satanists and their testimonies

Performing testimony
As we have seen, the context in which a narrative is shared has important
effects on the emplotment of its content. Sociologist Gary Fine and folklorist
Bill Ellis (2010) add an element to this, namely the influence of performing the
testimony. According to them, narratives are not waiting out there to be
written down by a researcher but are generated in a social process. Sympathetic
reactions from the audience, like verbal responses, gestures or laughter, are
interpreted by the narrators as a licence to prolong the narration and repeat
certain elements (Koschorke 2012:160). This is the social setting in which
testimonies are performed.
In religious studies, the term performance has a wider application than the
performing arts of theatre, music and dance. The term performance was
popularised in sociology by Erving Goffman. According to Goffman (1956), all
social action is staged. People are always aware of being watched and present
themselves according to the impression they want to make to their audience.
They play the role and wear the mask most fitting to the situation and the
others present.
The anthropologist Victor Turner (1987), who did most of his fieldwork
amongst the Ndembu, a tribe living in north-western Zambia, has a slightly
more limited view of performance. For him, performance refers specifically to
the theatrical qualities of ritual actions in times of crisis or transformation. In
the final stage of initiation rituals, for example, the presence of an audience is
significant because, through the ritual, the performers show others what they
have learned and thus acquire recognition for their new state and status.
Both Goffman and Turner stress that social (inter)actions have a theatrical
quality. They are observed by what could be called an audience, and the
participants inhabit established roles that they are more or less aware of.

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Performance theory has been used to interpret religious events like possession
(see e.g. eds. Behrend & Luig 1999; Frankfurter 2006; Levack 2013).
Sharing a testimony in a religious setting is a relatively obvious example of
performance. In a church service, the audience consists of the members of the
congregation who see what happens at the front of the meeting hall. It is not
farfetched to call the place where things are happening the stage. It is, after
all, often a slightly elevated podium occupied by those who have a function in
the service.
To do justice to the performative aspect of testimonies, this chapter looks
at the different individuals and groups involved in the performance of a
testimony: the ex-Satanist who is the narrator of the testimony, the pastor
who acts as sponsor or enabler for the performance of the testimony and the
audience of the testimony. In this section, we focus on the ex-Satanist.

The performance of testimonies as confirmation

of group membership
What does it mean to give a testimony in a church setting? Testimonies form
a genre of religious narratives that have been studied extensively. Most of
the literature on the performance of religious testimonies concentrates on
the question of what sharing a testimony means for one’s position in the
community. Like Turner, some authors emphasise that giving a testimony in
a religious setting marks a transformation in that position.
For example, Meredith McGuire (1977) compares the importance of
glossolalia and sharing testimonies as markers of conversion in Catholic
Pentecostal prayer groups. Glossolalia or speaking in tongues has often been
discussed as the focal point of conversion to Pentecostal-style religion.
Conversion means showing commitment to a new group and an abandonment
of one’s previous life. This show of commitment must be both public and
private. It must have a subjective meaning to the convert as well as be
performed in public to establish their membership. According to McGuire, in
the Catholic Pentecostal groups she researched, glossolalia does not fulfil this
function because it is something that happens in private prayer. Testimony, on
the other hand, is given publicly and, therefore, is a better signifier for
conversion.
When applying this idea to testimonies of ex-Satanists, we have to
remember that these testimonies are not so much stories about conversion
but of a change in lifestyle or healing from affliction. This means that for ex-
Satanists, sharing the testimony may be a public announcement of the
transition from an evil, Satan-controlled, afflicted life to being born again,
experiencing healing and belonging to Christ. At first glance, testimonies do
seem to be a marker of transformation.

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Other authors, however, doubt whether this transformation is truly central to

the sharing of testimonies. In the Holiness sect investigated by J. Stephen
Kroll-Smith (1980), giving a testimony is a common occurrence and not
restricted to new members. Rather, according to Kroll-Smith, performing a
testimony means signalling your commitment to the group. Sharing a
testimony in this group is a ritual of affirmation, attesting to the position in the
group that the performer of the testimony already has.
McGuire and Kroll-Smith do not agree on whether a testimony necessarily
signifies a transformation. For both McGuire and Kroll-Smith, however, sharing
a testimony is related to group membership. The function of testimonies,
according to McGuire and Kroll-Smith, is giving evidence for the conversion of
the narrator (and thus an authorisation of their group membership) or an
affirmation of their religious commitment and position in the group. The
testimonies discussed by these authors are performed by members of the
religious community, whether new members who want to show their
commitment or long-standing members who affirm their membership by
sharing a narrative fitting to the standards of that group.
It is difficult to see testimonies about Satanism in Zambia as an indication
of a group membership. Ex-Satanists are rarely regular members of the church
in which they give their testimony. After sharing their testimony, ex-Satanists
often disappear again. They are only at that church for the occasion of
performing their testimony. If they are church members, they often do not
want to be remembered for their testimony of evil deeds. In the context of the
discussed academic literature, it is remarkable that an affirmation of their faith
and their place in the community does not seem to be the point of the
testimonies for ex-Satanists.

The performance of testimonies as a way to acquire

status or freedom
Giving a testimony could have a function other than confirming one’s position
in the community. Jennifer Badstuebner mentions the reward of a privileged
position by the narrator in her article on testimonies of witchcraft in a South
African Pentecostal church. She argues that the narrator of a confession gains
some advantages from sharing the story at revival meetings (Badstuebner
2003):
These revivals offer these young women an opportunity to travel, to be the centre
of intense public attention. Their lives on the revival trial are an adventure compared
to the usual lot of young, unemployed women living in the townships (many days of
boredom and unending household duties). (p. 20)

Badstuebner’s argument echoes I.M. Lewis’s functionalist theory of peripheral

cults of possession. These cults provide the possessed, mostly women, with

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an opportunity to air their grievances and, in time, to gain status and authority
in a possession cult group (Lewis 2003). The young women discussed by
Badstuebner gain status and opportunity from delivering their confessions, at
least from a short-term perspective.
In Zambia, this may happen as well. Some ex-Satanists travel from one
overnight prayer meeting to the next to share their story, like the women in
Badstuebner’s article do. This was certainly the case for Zambia’s most well-
known ex-Satanist, Gideon Mulenga Kabila, who from 2005 spoke at meetings
in various churches, published his testimony as a pamphlet and whose
confession on video is available on YouTube and through other websites. From
2015 until he died in 2017, he worked as a pastor of his church in Zambia and
South Africa.
However, it is only a small portion of those with a similar experience who
can use their testimony to gain status. Often, the first time that a testimony is
shared is also the last. Ex-Satanists find that the reactions are negative, for
instance, because family members are angry or afraid owing to the confession
to having killed family members. Friends may turn away, and the confessor is
the subject or rumour and gossip. In my research, I found that only very few
ex-Satanists were willing to talk about their experiences. They do not want to
draw attention to the issue, and mostly they just want to get on with their
lives. Apparently, for Zambian ex-Satanists, the profits of the attention a
testimony receives, as emphasised by Badstuebner, do not normally outweigh
the negative effects.
Like Badstuebner, Filip de Boeck mentions the advantages of status in his
discussion of witch children in contemporary Kinshasa. One of these
advantages is that a confession to witchcraft creates for these children
freedom from the control of their parents or families (De Boeck & Plissart
2004:188). In Zambian narratives about Satanism, the suspected Satanists
often remove themselves from parental or educational control. Suspicions of
Satanism, as we have seen in the previous chapter, often go together with a
drop in school attendance and grades, and often parents do not know where
their children are when they are missing school.
It is, however, debatable what comes first: accepting the narrative of
Satanism and using that to be free from control, as De Boeck states, or first
being absent from home and school, resulting in suspicions of Satanism. In the
Zambian situation, it seems likely that some children take the liberty to
abscond from school and their homes, after which this abnormal behaviour is
interpreted as a sign of Satanism.
Cases of missing children are often interpreted spiritually, for example, by
linking them with rituals to gain wealth and accusing a local businessman of
the abductions. When the spiritual answer is accepted, a thorough search for
the missing child is not always undertaken. One children’s home in Lusaka

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with connections to the Fingers of Thomas regularly had cases of children

where the home managed to find the child’s family. In some cases, the family
said that they did not look for the child because they went to church and the
religious leader said that the child was dead.
In Zambia, the advantages of the status and freedom that sharing a
testimony provides seem to be more limited than is presupposed by the
literature. Also, it is not clear whether the freedom from parental control is a
consequence or a cause of suspicions of Satanism.

The role of the pastor in the production

of a testimony
The incentives for ex-Satanists to share their testimony in a church service or
other religious setting seem very limited. So how does such a testimony come
about? In an article about apostate narratives – narratives of former members
of religious groups who are very vocal in discrediting these groups – Daniel
Carson Johnson (1998) points out that these apostates often have a sponsor
who pushes and helps them to share their story. These sponsors (Johnson 1998):
Encourage the apostate to go public, and furnish the means for him to do so –
serving as ghostwriters, securing publishers, financing fact-finding trips or
speaking engagements, staging the rituals that typically accompany the apostate’s
going public, adding extra-narrative materials that situate the story in a broader
contextual history, etc. (p. 131)

For ex-Satanists, pastors and other religious specialists are such sponsors.
Some examples of the role of the sponsor in a testimony were given in the
introduction to this chapter.
As we have seen in the previous chapter, pastors are instrumental in finding
ex-Satanists. It is often in prayer sessions with a pastor or an intercessor that
future ex-Satanists find out that they are involved in Satanism. During these
sessions, as we have already seen, the pastor or intercessor asks the alleged
Satanist questions that help them to frame their story. Once they are freed
from the powers of evil through deliverance, these pastors and intercessors
encourage them to share that story.
For example, one of my interviews was with two girls from Lusaka. I knew
about their experiences with Satanism through the Facebook page of their
congregation, where an intercessor reported that several cases of Satanism
had emerged (#3, interview with Martha and Loveness, 23 March 2015).
I contacted the intercessor, and he arranged for me to meet the two girls. He
was present at the interview as well. My first question was supposed to be
easy: ‘Martha and Loveness, thank you for coming. Can you start by telling
something about yourself?’ The two girls looked shyly at their feet, and the
intercessor interrupted: ‘Now you have to give your testimony like it is said in

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the Bible. Tell her how it started, how you became involved in Satanism.’ I had
expected an answer about their age, school and background, but the
intercessor’s prompting urged the girls to start recounting their testimony.
Similarly, pastors of neo-Pentecostal churches will encourage those whom
they deliver to share their stories in church.
As hosts of talk shows about testimonies or pastors of services in which
testimonies are shared, pastors set the stage for the performance of a
testimony. The pastor selects his guests and vets them before giving them a
platform. He also ensures that the story of the ex-Satanist is credible.
Testimonies are presented as first-hand experiences and therefore are already
seen as more trustworthy and more credible than mere rumours. Daniel Carson
Johnson (1998) calls the different techniques of adding credibility to the
testimony ‘defensive posturing’. One technique is to address critical questions
beforehand, for example, by explicitly saying that what is going to be told is
not fiction or by challenging the audience to check certain facts.
This often happens in the staging of testimonies. One of the interviewers
quoted in the introduction to this chapter for example emphasised that the
testimony his listeners were about to hear was real: ‘Not rumours, but reality.
Let’s get it from the horse’s mouth’. Others are careful to point out things that
could be checked to increase the credibility of a testimony even further. For
most people, being given the possibility to check the details of the testimony is
in itself evidence enough for its credibility. Just the fact that the pastor is asking
for some kind of tangible evidence increases the credibility of the testimony.
A final role of the sponsor is, according to Johnson, adding material that
contextualises a narrative, placing it in a broader history or theology. The host
of the performance of a testimony embeds this testimony in its religious
context by pointing out the relevant aspects of the testimony in his introduction
and by praying for elements in the testimony that he deems significant. Often,
the involvement of the host goes even further. If a testimony is presented in
the form of an interview with the host, this host has ample opportunity to
influence the meaning of what the ex-Satanist says. As a pastor, the host has
special knowledge, often labelled as revelation or discernment, that allows
him to take a step beyond the boundaries of the narrative of the ex-Satanist.
As sponsors, pastors provide the means to go public with a testimony, and
in that process, they add supporting sources to the narrative. They not only
give a platform for the sharing of the narrative but also add extra-narrative
materials to the testimony. In an interview, the pastor can do this through his
questions and interventions. In a church service, the pastor adds meaning to
the testimony through his sermon and his prayers. This framing of the
testimony with a sermon and with accompanying rituals places the testimony
in the theological context described in Chapter 3, of traditional notions
reinterpreted in the framework of neo-Pentecostal spiritual warfare theology.

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In the following case study, I will show through a close reading of one testimony
how a pastor acts as a sponsor for the testimony of an ex-Satanist.

Case study: The pastor and David’s testimony

Testimonies are shared in religious settings, for example, at an overnight
prayer as the testimony of the girl that started off the introduction or in a
deliverance service like the testimony of the father in Chapter 3. Another
religious setting in which testimonies are shared is special broadcasts on radio
or television. In all of these settings, the ex-Satanist is a guest speaker in a
show or service with a host. Some pastors have a role in multiple settings. The
presenter of a radio program in which testimonies are shared may well also be
a pastor, inviting speakers to both the radio station and his church.
The endorsement of a pastor lends a testimony more credibility. As Katrien
Pype (2015b:77) notes, ‘recurrently [anecdotes] begin with the words “I heard
in church […],” as if to emphasise their validity’. Pastors give a platform to ex-
Satanists, but as we have seen in the previous section, their involvement often
goes further. One pastor told me that he likes to prepare people who give
their testimony for their performance. He added:
‘It’s even better to interview the ex-Satanist rather than to give them a free
podium. In that way, you can guide them to the parts that are educational for the
congregation.’ (#155, interview with Pastor P., 08 October 2013)

In this case study, I will discuss a testimony that was presented at a popular
Zambian radio show specifically aimed at sharing testimonies. The format of
the show is that of an interview. The host introduces the guest and then asks
questions that help the guest to narrate his or her experiences. The program
ends with a prayer by the host. As the case study will show, this context shapes
the meaning of the events and experiences narrated to such an extent that the
host may even be labelled as a co-author of the testimony.
The text I use for this case study is the transcript of an unedited version of
the interview between the host and the ex-Satanist sharing his testimony. His
name is not mentioned in the interview, but I will call him David. In total, the
audio is over 5 h long, and an edited version of the interview was broadcast
on the radio in several sessions. For this case study, I use a representative 2-h
portion of the interview in which David narrates how he became involved in
Satanism, how it made him a successful businessman and how he married his
first wife, whom he sacrificed after two years of marriage. Rather than looking
at the plot of the narrative or specific inversions, as I have done in in earlier
chapters, I will analyse the interactions between David and the host of the
radio program.
In some testimonies, hosts do no more than introduce the ex-Satanist. In
other cases, the testimony consists of a conversation between the host and

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the ex-Satanist. David’s testimony is an example of the latter. David and the
host speak almost equal amounts of time, David narrates his experiences and
the host asks for clarifications before adding his own knowledge and
understanding. The host contributes as much or even more to the testimony
than David, the narrator. The nature of these contributions is diverse. The
interviewer can ask for clarifications or ask questions that help the narrator to
tell his story. The contributions of the interviewer can also be more active
interventions in which he adds his own experience or interpretation.
The following quote is a small section of the interview in which the interplay
between interviewer (H) and narrator can be seen. David (D) is recalling his
first experience with the underworld. He went to Mozambique with a friend to
get charms that would make his business more successful. In Mozambique,
they board a canoe together with the owner of the canoe. David says:
D1: ‘So we jumped in the canoe, the three of us, although I had that fear because it
was my first time to move in a canoe. We moved about three to four hours.’
H1: ‘On the canoe? You were not reaching?’
D2: ‘Yes.’
H2: ‘When you look back, three hours, did you see where you were coming from?’
D3: ‘No, it was just water this side.’
H3: ‘Could you see where you were going?’
D4: ‘No, there was just water.’
H4: ‘On the sides also water? All you could see was the sky?’
D5: ‘Yes, it was just water. I said, “Ay, man”. Then I was even asking him, “What time
are you going to reach?” He was just telling me, “Don’t worry”. At a certain point,
there just came some waves. Then the canoe overturned, and we all drowned.’
H5: ‘It capsized.’
D6: ‘Then, to my surprise, I was going down and down, but I was not [...]’
H6: ‘Drowning.’
D7: ‘… Drowning. I was just thinking, “What is happening?”’
H7: ‘But you were going down?’
D8: ‘Just going down.’
H8: ‘Meaning at that point, your friend had already chanted. Your friend had already
done charms, and most likely what you were moving on was not even a canoe. It
could have been a coffin already. By the fact that you are not drowning, being in
that same coffin, which was not a canoe, already gave you some powers that could
not make you drown. In other words, just by getting in what looked like a canoe to
you was an initiation already, an initial stage where they initiated you.’
D9: ‘Mm.’
H9: ‘And the person you thought was a person paddling a canoe, most likely it was
not even a person. It could have been just some demonic force, some demonic

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spirit, not a person per se. At that point, that’s why you could not drown as you
were going down, because everything was artificial around you. The canoe was not
real. So you thought you were drowning?’ (#31a, David’s recorded testimony, 2013)

Most of the host’s interventions, H1 to H7, are meant to stimulate David to tell
his story and to clarify some details. The longer interventions H8 and H9,
however, are of a different kind. The host interprets and explains what David
has told him, thereby adding meaning to David’s testimony.
I am aware of the fact that the questions an interviewer asks are never
completely neutral. However, in this case study, I take questions for clarification
and more details as neutral in comparison to other, more active interventions.
Two-thirds of the host’s interventions are open questions, questions for
clarification or more detail and summaries of what David has said; these I
count as neutral interventions. The remaining one-third is adding meaning to
the testimony, and it is these interventions that I will focus on. These active,
meaning-altering interventions make the interviewer a co-author of the
testimony. David may be the ‘owner’ of the experience, but with his
interpretations, it is the host who transforms the experience into a testimony
on the struggle between the powers of good and evil.
The interviewer connects the narration to his own experiences and wider
discussions. He adds interpretations, as in H8 and H9, exclaims, prays and
makes plans for the future. The host’s meaning-altering interventions can be
divided into four categories. The category ‘Other’ contains exclamations like
‘Oh my God!’ or ‘Hear this!’, as well as prayers and plans for the future, like
presenting David’s testimony in other churches, inviting his mother to tell her
story and visiting the house David rented when he was a Satanist to pray for
the people who live there now. Almost 28% of the host’s intervention fall into
this category. More interesting are the categories of revelation, evidence and
polemics.
The largest category of the host’s meaning-altering interventions is that of
revelation, which includes 42% of the interventions of the host. The interviewer
is constantly trying to ascertain what really happened in the events that David
describes. As a pastor, he has access to special knowledge – in his own words,
‘revelation’ or ‘discernment’ – that allows him to step beyond the boundaries
of David’s narrative. David’s observations are not taken at face value but
examined for a deeper reality.
The host’s statements often have this structure: ‘What you thought was X
was not really X, but Y’. In the section quoted from David’s testimony, the host
reveals that what David thought was a canoe was probably really a coffin, and
the person paddling the canoe was most likely not a person but a demonic
spirit. This interpretation is not denied by David, who hums and says yes, but
on the other hand it does not naturally follow from what has been said before.
The host is adding his own meaning to David’s story.

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Later in the testimony, the host says, ‘[God], he’s given me revelation in this
area, he’s given me grace in this area to interpret some of the things you are
saying that even you don’t know’. Through this gift of discernment, the
interviewer cannot only establish what is really happening but also why it is
happening. He can explain the motives of the satanic world.
Revealing reality and revealing reasons go together in the following quote.
David recollects how he is ordered to go to his home village after his first visit
to the underworld. In the underworld, he receives goods like blankets, sugar,
salt, cooking oil and kapenta (a small, locally caught fish) to present to the
villagers.15 The host comments:
‘Sugar, salt […] So what they were doing […] It was not actual kapenta. Some of
it were snakes. You know they can cut snakes and they can make it look like it is
fish. They would get things like blankets, and it’s not blankets. They manufacture
all of those things. And now you go to this village, and you are going to blind or
brainwash everybody who partakes of that stuff. They become, what word can I
use, they become useless. They become easily manipulated by you. You can tell
them anything, they’ll obey you, they’ll do it. That’s what’s happening. […]
‘So you gave them the blankets. You gave them the kapenta from the underworld.
You gave them everything. The idea was to actually enslave them. They don’t
question you, should they sense that you are moving out in the night or you’re
doing something funny. They have no right to question you now. You have bought
them with these things.’ (#31a, David’s recorded testimony, 2013)

The goods that David brought to his village were not what they seemed, and
it is the host, not David, who reveals their true nature and explains why David
was ordered to give the goods to the villagers. The words of the host connect
David’s narrative to older and newer stories about the dangers of accepting
gifts or aid, emphasising that it never comes without strings attached. His
words also resonate with the local knowledge about practices such as the
Malawian kukhwima, in which someone who strives for wealth or power can
enslave others by taking their mental capacities (Steinforth 2008:40–41).
Other interventions, which I have labelled as polemics, tie the testimony to
a wider discussion surrounding the existence of spiritual forces in which the
host is involved. Almost 10% of the interventions of the host fall into this
category. The host uses the testimony to defend his position that there truly
is a spiritual war between God and Satan in which spiritual forces are agents
of the devil. He especially takes the opportunity to highlight the idea that
spiritual husbands and wives can cause problems in marriages. At one point,

15. This selection of goods and the location where David takes them is quite uncommon in testimonies of ex-
Satanists. This is one of the few places in which a village is the setting for what happens in a testimony. The
items that David takes there are also items that are associated with life in the village: basic foods like sugar,
salt and cooking oil, as well as a locally produced fish. As we have seen in the previous chapter, most of the
testimonies take place in an urban setting, and the products mentioned are connected with that urban, modern
world.

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he begs his listeners to believe him: ‘People have got to hear me, hear me,
hear me!’
The host also addresses his opponents in this discussion directly. When
David narrates how before he married his first wife, he is taken to the
underworld where he is married to a mermaid that looks exactly like his
fiancée, the interviewer says:
‘What you slept with there was a spiritual wife. It wasn’t the normal person you left
on Earth. This is what pastors don’t understand. When we use the term spiritual
wife, it’s not like […] Yes, you can’t find it in the Bible, but we are saying these
spiritual things are there. They exist. You married somebody; the marriage was not
physical but spiritual, so we call it a spiritual marriage, so we call her a spiritual
wife. It was not this woman on the face of the Earth, right? Those things, they exist
and they are there. They are there in homes right now.’ (#31a, David’s recorded
testimony, 2013)

In this and other examples, the host emphasises again and again that his
interpretation of marrying spiritual wives, which causes suffering in the
marriage in the physical world, is real. He advises his listeners not to stay in
churches that deny the existence of these spiritual forces and reveals that God
has given him the mission to start a church that does tell the truth in these
matters.
In earlier chapters, I argued that narratives about Satanism and spiritual
forces like these spiritual husbands and wives are plausible because of both
traditional beliefs and an African adaptation of Pentecostal spiritual warfare
theology. For the sake of the host’s revelations and his polemics, listeners
must accept not only the plausibility of the narrative but also the credibility of
David’s testimony.
Plausibility and credibility are related but not the same. While plausibility
refers to the content of a narrative, for example, by wondering whether
something could have happened, credibility refers to the trustworthiness of
its source (Fine & Ellis 2010:24–25). Through the third category of interventions,
namely contributing evidence for David’s narrative, the host increases the
credibility of the testimony. More than 20% of the responses of the host are
about evidence.
This evidence is taken from the host’s own experience as a minister, who
practises the deliverance ministry and hears many testimonies, but also from
other sources like movies and the Bible. When David, for example, recalls that
he was not allowed to sleep with his wife, the pastor connects this to the
conversation he had with a woman whose husband refused to sleep with her.
On other occasions, he compares David’s story with movies: ‘Just like those
things we see in some of these movies, especially the Nigerian movies. Those
things we see are real!’

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The host also points out where David’s narrative can be checked against
reality. For instance, when David mentions that the car he used on his wedding
day, a brand-new Mercedes-Benz, came from the underworld, the interviewer
asks whether there are photos of this car:
H1: ‘And everybody saw it on that day, that it was a Mercedes-Benz?’
D1: ‘Yes.’
H2: ‘If we looked at your wedding photos today … Do you have any?’
D2: ‘I have, lots of them.’
H3: ‘I’d like to see them.’
D3: ‘OK.’
H4: ‘And the Benz itself is there?’
D4: ‘It is there.’
H5: ‘And the photos came out as a Mercedes-Benz?’
D5: ‘Yes.’
H6: ‘I’d like to see those photos.’ (#31a, David’s recorded testimony, 2013)

Here, the host tries to find ways to check David’s narrative. By doing that and
by relating David’s testimony to his knowledge and experience, the host
makes his claim that the testimony is real more credible and trustworthy.
According to Daniel Carson Johnson, sponsors provide the means to go
public with a testimony, and in that process, they steer the development of
meaning in a testimony and add supporting sources. This case study shows
how the host of the radio show does just that with David’s testimony. He
encourages David to tell his story through the platform he offers to David and
through the questions he asks throughout the narration of the testimony. The
host, furthermore, asks questions that add meaning to the testimony, offering
interpretations and adding revelation and polemics. The host as a sponsor of
the testimony also tries to increase its credibility. All of these ways in which
the host adds meaning to David’s narrative make him a ghost-writer or co-
author of the testimony, just as Daniel Carson Johnson claims.
We have now seen that pastors are sponsors of testimonies, but what are
the motives of pastors to act in such a way? I will discuss this question in the
final section of this chapter.

The appeal of testimonies for pastors

Pastors have a moral obligation to help those in spiritual need. At the same
time, there is competition in the religious marketplace, and many pastors are
vying for church members to sustain their ministry and lifestyle. In this section,

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I will make the argument that the persuasiveness of a pastor and his church
need to be constructed. This involves the presentation of testimonies as
evidence.

Case study: The evidence of Sister X’s story

To make this point, I will use the case of one interview recorded for a Zambian
radio show. The recording that I have access to is unedited and includes
more material than what was eventually broadcast. The host interviews a
girl, designated as Sister X in the program, about shame and how to deal
with it. She had sent a text message to the host about being raped several
times, once by a pastor. The host then invited her to the studio for an
interview. Sister X speaks very softly and sounds quite vulnerable. After the
interview, the host thanks her and addresses the audience:
‘Dear listeners, here you are. I hope you have learned one or two things from
this interview. I hope it’s been an eye-opener to you. I pray that if you are that
person who says, “Brother […], that sounds like me; that sounds like what I’m going
through”, we are available for you to help as much as possible. Do not hesitate. Get
in touch with us.’ (#55d, Sister X’s recorded testimony, 2009)

As a ‘man of God’, the host can help people who struggle with shame and with
traumatic experiences such as rape. Sister X’s testimony is a calling card for
his pastoral ministry: ‘Get in touch with us,’ he says; ‘we are available for you
to help as much as possible’.
Commentators on neo-Pentecostalism point out that this pastoral approach,
focusing on resolving the personal problems of congregants, is not the only
reason why pastors like to spread narratives about deliverance. James Collins,
a theologian who studied the practice of deliverance in the 20th century,
explains that deliverance is a component of the larger emphasis on spiritual
warfare in neo-Pentecostalism. Personal experiences are significant because
they show something about the global struggle between the forces of good
and evil. According to Collins (2011:95), in neo-Pentecostal spiritual warfare
theology, deliverance is ‘more than just pastorally desirable’, because it also
offers evidence for both the presence of the demonic and God’s power.
Through testimonies, spiritual forces become real for Christian audiences.
The endorsement of a pastor lends a testimony more credibility. On the
other hand, a testimony also gives credibility to the work of a pastor. The next
sequence of the interview with Sister X shows something of this appeal of
testimonies that lies beyond the pastoral and personal. After having closed
the interview, the host remembered that he had forgotten to ask Sister X
about the time she got pregnant after being raped. Sister X starts crying. The
host explains that this means she has not been healed yet. Sister X says that
she just wants to feel normal and wants this thing to be in the past. The host
comforts her, saying that she will feel normal and that she needs to forgive the

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men who raped her. Sister X says she releases and forgives all the men. When
the host asks her to forgive her father too, who was never there for her, she
says she forgives him, and then she starts sobbing loudly. The host stops the
recording, and as he starts again, this is what he says:
H1: ‘Well, dear listeners, as I’m talking to you right now, it’s a totally different story
altogether. I’m just coming from praying with Sister X here in the studios. As you
can hear, I’m still panting for breath. It’s been a long battle. Now, do you know what
was happening to you just a while ago as we were praying for you?’
SX1: ‘No.’
H2: ‘The devil himself was refusing to leave your body. He was refusing to leave you.
He was actually saying that you came from the sea and that you were theirs and
that you were the chosen one. We told them that God chose you before you were
born. He knew you before you were created, and that’s what we were saying to the
devil. Today, he has let you go. How are you feeling right now?’
SX2 [softly, as if she could cry]: ‘I feel free. I feel so much joy in my heart. My body
feels lighter, and my mind feels … so empty. I feel different from the way I came in.
I feel so much joy in my heart. I don’t know how to explain it.’
H3: ‘In fact, you are not empty per se. What you feel as being empty is actually the
fact that there were those things that burdened you. They were like burdens, loads
that the devil had put on your shoulders. But now you are lighter because God has
taken all those things away from you. Amen and amen. What would you like to say
to God right now, as we finally close on this?’
SX3 [almost inaudible]: ‘I want to say, “Thank you, God, for setting me free and…”’
H4: ‘I know you are tired right now; you are weaker than you were before. But I
know you can be excited and let people know that you are happy because of what
happened today.’
SX4: ‘OK.’
H5: ‘As you talk to God right now, what do you want to say to God?’
SX5: ‘I want to thank God for what he has done for me, for setting me free. And I
want to say I promise that I’ll live my life according to God’s will. I want to thank you
for giving me this opportunity, that I’ve finally come here, and I’ve been set free. I’m
so happy inside, even though I can’t really express it, but I’m so happy. I want to say,
“Thank you, Lord”.’ (#55d, Sister X’s recorded testimony, 2009)

What started as a personal story about rape, shame and abandonment

suddenly becomes a battle on a global scale. During a prayer of deliverance,
the host ‘finds out’ that Sister X is a pawn in the spiritual war between God
and the devil. In H2, he explains that both the devil and God claimed her but
that today the devil has let her go. Sister X’s problems do not merely belong
to the realm of the individual self, but ultimately are significant within the
global realm (cf. Pype 2015b:71).
The host encourages Sister X to testify about her experiences, even though
she is weak and distressed. Here the host risks letting his desire to get the
right quote for his radio show trump his pastoral instincts. For the host, such

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a narrative is attractive because it is proof of his power as a man of God. In H1,

he is still panting from the difficult struggle, but he has won this fight.

The importance of testimonies as proof in a

competitive environment
Testimonies or acts of deliverance have a specific use in the context of religious
competition. Collins (2011) discusses this aspect in the context of competition
between pastors in the postwar Pentecostal healing revival. He writes:
It seems likely […] that emphasis on deliverance ministry was driven in part by the
competitive nature of the ministry during the revival which demanded continual
evidence of the evangelists’ elevated spiritual status and increasingly spectacular
evidence of God’s presence and power.(p. 90)

As we have seen, in contemporary Zambia ministry is a competitive affair as

well. This competition is consequential as the income of a pastor in neo-
Pentecostal churches, and to a lesser extent also in mainline churches, is
dependent on the tithes and offerings of the church members. The sociologist
Andrew Singleton (2001:136) predicts that a church that offers persuasive
testimonies will prosper. To succeed in a competitive environment, the
theology of the church – but maybe even more so the person of the pastor –
must seem to be attractive alternatives, and testimonies support both. This
explains why the host of the radio show seemed to put some pressure on
Sister X to share her experiences.
The evidence of testimonies is not only important in the competition
between different religious entrepreneurs. It is interesting to note that
testimonies of Satanism seem to be used more as evidence for the existence
of evil forces than as evidence for God’s power. Sponsors of testimonies do
not cry out, ‘Hear me, God is real!’ but rather focus on the reality of Satanism,
spiritual husbands and wives and other evil spiritual forces.
In the Zambian religious marketplace where pastors operate, the reality of
God and his power is not debated. The reality of evil forces, however, is.
Mainline churches in Zambia are under pressure from their church members to
practice deliverance but lack official policies. Pastors and students at
theological institutions are divided on the issue. The debate transcends the
religious marketplace, as it concerns the more general question of one’s stance
towards an enchanted or a more secular worldview. Testimonies are used as
proof for a worldview in which spiritual forces like Satanists, demons and
witches are real and out to harm and take control over human beings. This
worldview stands opposite a more secular, scientific worldview where spiritual
causes are rejected (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2018:248).
‘This is real’ is a sentence that recurs over and over again in the comments
of pastors on testimonies (cf. Kroesbergen-Kamps 2018:248). The ethnologist

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Jean Pouillon (2008:91) has argued that one opens up the possibility of doubt
by stating explicitly that something is real. If belief were self-evident, there
would be no need to express it in a statement, just as the only context in which
people point to a chair and say, ‘this is a chair’ is in philosophical discussions
about the nature of reality. Saying ‘this is a chair’ implies that it might be
thinkable that this is not a chair. In the same way, there is no need to say that
a testimony is real if there are no doubts about it. Pastors who present
testimonies feel the need to say it very often, implying that there are many
who believe otherwise.
In Zambia, testimonies seem to be used as evidence in the debate about
the reality of spiritual powers. Brian Levack (2013), in his study on possession
in the Western world, The Devil Within, makes a similar point. He writes,
‘Reliance on possession and exorcism as the main proof of demonic reality
persisted through the sixteenth and seventeenth century’ (Levack 2013:71). As
we have seen in Chapter 3, society grew increasingly sceptical about any
supernatural forces. In this context, exorcisms had a function as polemic tools,
attempting to enforce an enchanted worldview. Levack (2013:85) gives this
rhetorical use of exorcisms the label of ‘confessional propaganda’. Zambian
testimonies about Satanism serve as confessional propaganda as well, proving
that spiritual forces are real. In contemporary Zambia, the worldview that
holds that spiritual forces are real and can influence the physical world seems
to be fragile and in need of constant maintenance (Kroesbergen-Kamps
2018:248). According to the scholar of African Christianity Paul Gifford
(1998:328; see also 2019), many Africans have ‘an “enchanted” worldview’. But
this worldview is not unquestionable, and testimonies are used in its defence.
As I have argued elsewhere (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2018:248), testimonies in
their religious contexts can be seen as polemic devices in a discussion between
secular and religious or enchanted worldviews.
The case of Sister X shows the significance of testimonies for neo-
Pentecostal pastors. For pastors, testimonies function as a calling card for the
pastoral support they can give to church members. Besides that, they are
proof for a neo-Pentecostal spiritual warfare theology, where God’s power
battles against the forces of evil and where individual experiences have
meaning on a global scale. Testimonies show the power of God, but even
more, they show that evil forces are real and that the pastor is fit to conquer
them. This confirmation of reality is enforced by the content added by the
pastor as a sponsor of a testimony and also by the performance of the
testimony, which mediates the reality of spiritual forces.

Testimonies and the audience

So far, we have looked at the significance of performing a testimony for
the narrator and for the pastor who offers a platform to ex-Satanists to tell

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their story. In the context in which testimonies are performed, there is a third
party that has an interest in seeing them, namely the audience. What do
testimonies mean for an audience? In this section, I will argue that testimonies
make God and Satan real to an audience and that they allow audiences to
fantasise about transgressions.

The genesis of religious presence

People sometimes seem to assume that it must be easy for Africans to believe
in things like Satanism. They may even experience a kind of envy towards this
kind of faith in, for example, a spiritual war between God and Satan that gives
meaning to one’s whole life (cf. Kroesbergen 2021). While it is true that cultural
and religious frameworks like the notions of illicit accumulation and spiritual
warfare make it easier to accept narratives about Satanism as plausible, such
accounts overlook the reality that faith never comes easy. As anthropologist
T.M. Luhrmann states (2018:303), ‘faith is hard and requires effort’.
Although Africans have been labelled as incurably religious (for an overview
of the genealogy of the phrase see Platvoet & Van Rinsum 2003), the discussion
mentioned in the analysis of David’s testimony about whether invisible agents
like spiritual husbands exist shows that not everything is believed on all
accounts. African societies have also been described as ‘never-secular’
(Luhrmann 2012b). However, as I have argued elsewhere, a globalising secular
worldview informs African religious perceptions just as much as the globalising
theology of Christianity (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2018). Even in this context in
which faith seems to come more effortlessly than in the Western world, it is
not uncontested (cf. Luhrmann 2020:13–22).
For believers, it takes hard work to keep their faith alive and their gods real
(Luhrmann 2018:306). Both narratives and religious rituals support that work.
According to Luhrmann (2020:xiii), ‘The work of making an invisible other feel
present begins with a good story’. Narratives help believers to build a paracosm
or private-but-shared imagined world (Luhrmann 2020) that helps them to
see the world from a religious perspective. Luhrmann’s concept of a paracosm
is similar to the idea of a web of stories that helps people to make sense of the
world mentioned earlier. This paracosm is a necessary prerequisite to being
able to perceive religious or cultural beliefs as plausible and to interpret one’s
own experiences in terms of these beliefs. Participating in religious rituals has
a similar effect. According to Luhrmann (2018:307), ‘What rituals do is to
remind people that their beliefs are plausible’. Religious rituals tie into the
narrative paracosm and give it a place in this world.
Together, religious rituals and narratives contribute to the genesis of a
sense of presence (Meyer 2012b:22). Through what Birgit Meyer calls
‘sensational forms’, the religious real becomes tangible (Meyer 2020).
Testimonies are an example of such a sensational form. The threat of Satanism

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becomes real through the performance of testimonies. This is a boon for

pastors whose social and financial standing depends on the credibility of their
message, but it is also an important function of testimonies for the audience.
In a testimony, audiences can see with their own eyes that the theology they
hear about in church is real. An audience seeing an ex-Satanist tell her story
sees not just an (often) adolescent girl but the embodiment of the whole idea
that there is a war going on between God and Satan, as well as the effects that
Satan can have on human life.
To return to the case of Sister X, the host tried to make her speak in her
own words about what happened and how she now feels. Through these
words, spoken haltingly and with emotion, the listeners who hear this testimony
come close to seeing the power of God over the devil for themselves. In an
article on testimonies of healing, Andrew Singleton (2001) comes to the
following conclusion:
As a vivid and highly persuasive communicable form, storytelling allows the
narrator to emphasise the plausibility and incontrovertibility of their experience.
Consequently, a well told story has enormous utility in convincing the audience
about the reality of God. (pp. 135–136)

This is an important function of testimonies. They bring God close to an

audience. That alone makes them an essential part of neo-Pentecostal
services, in which the emotional experience of the audience plays an
important role.
It may be easier to make the devil or another force of evil present than to
ensure God becomes real in the experience of believers. According to
Luhrmann (2020:20), humans instinctively look for demons, devils and other
forces of evil: ‘Something goes wrong – a crash, a rustle in the bushes, a dark
and lonely road – and humans look for an agent that could harm them’. But
the focus in services in which testimonies of Satanism are shared is not just on
the existence of the devil. The message of the service is that it is God who can
overcome the power of Satan. This resonates with Luhrmann’s (2020:96) own
experience in Africa: ‘Every church service I attended in Accra – from any of
the new charismatic churches – focused its emotional crescendo on a
counterattack to evil’. In these services, Satan and God have to become real,
and testimonies assist in both objectives.

A space to play with ambiguous experiences

Not only do testimonies help to make the presence of spiritual beings real, but
they also provide a space to play with ambiguous experiences. In the
performance of a testimony, the personal experience of the ex-Satanist
becomes a shared narrative that addresses certain pressing concerns of the
audience (Meyer 1999:201). What are these concerns of the audience that
resonate with the ex-Satanist’s narrative?

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As we have seen, the genre of stories about evil Others that the narratives of
ex-Satanists belong to is strongly related to changes in society that affect the
perception of values. When the norms of a society are under pressure,
narratives about evil Others may help to make sense of what is happening and
who is to blame. The performance of a testimony supports this process.
Audiences not only want to hear stories that confirm their value system, but
they also crave to see these stories embodied in public by real people
(Frankfurter 2006:173).
In Chapter 4, I have argued that ‘becoming modern’ is, in the contemporary
emic jargon, coveted as well as fraught with anxieties. Testimonies resonate
with this interplay between desire and fear. In an early article, Birgit Meyer
(1995) discusses Ghanaian confessions of involvement with Satan. She is
struck by the fact that these confessions, which are very similar to the Zambian
narratives discussed here, are always related to money. The narrators talk
about a Faustian pact with the devil that promises to make them rich, but
what they find is that Satan’s terms are very harsh: the money is acquired in
exchange for human lives. This motive is present in local confessions, in
pamphlets like Emanuel Eni’s Delivered from the Powers of Darkness, and also
in Ghanaian and Nigerian so-called ‘occult movies’.
According to Meyer (1995:243), the performance of these stories makes
them very believable: ‘Anyone who admits to having killed others by witchcraft
or done harm to people must indeed be telling the truth’. The content makes
these narratives credible. Meyer does not discuss the context of the
performance of testimonies, but as I have argued in this chapter, pastors who
offer a platform for these narratives often try to enforce this credibility even
more. Once a narrative is affirmed as credible, an audience can easily accept
it as a revelation from a hidden world.
Meyer interprets the Ghanaian stories about money and the devil as
reflecting tensions surrounding relationships within kinship networks, a topic
that I have discussed extensively in Chapter 4. Wealth is on the one hand
something that many people in Africa greatly desire. On the other hand, there
are worries about what becoming wealthy might mean for one’s identity and
relationships with others.
Listening to stories about satanic riches helps people to playfully engage
this dilemma. Audiences can relish the image of unimaginable wealth and
opportunities, or a woman being stronger than she would ever be allowed to
be in contemporary Africa. The testimonies allow people to think about these
ambiguous desires from a safe distance (Meyer 1995:250). The audience can
sympathise with the narrator’s choices to become wealthy and at the same
time renounce these choices as evil and satanic. In the words of David
Frankfurter (2006:156): ‘These lengthy depictions of transgressive enrichment
and pleasure offer a safe arena for fantasy, for it takes place in a proscribed,
“evil” world’.

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In this way, if Satan becomes real in testimonies, this is not just a source of
terror. Testimonies offer an inspirational context in which the audience can
experience feelings and desires that are not entirely acceptable (Frankfurter
2006:158). By watching the narration of a testimony, transgressive desires can
be experienced from a safe distance.

Learning to see the world in a different way

What do testimonies offer the audience? They make the religious real tangible
and offer a space to play with ambiguous experiences. A final effect of
attending a testimony is that it teaches a new way to see the world. Testimonies
offer religious knowledge: knowledge of God and Satan, which is revealed by
the ex-Satanist, often in interaction with a pastor.
In the type of Christianity in which testimonies are shared, God is believed
to act in this world. Signs of this divine intervention can be discovered, or
‘discerned’, as evangelical and Pentecostal Christians would call it. In How God
Becomes Real, T.M. Luhrmann reflects on the research she has been involved
in since the 1980s. In her first big research project, she studied a group of
modern practitioners of magic in London and discovered that believing in
magic requires training in interpreting events from the framework of magic
(Luhrmann 2020:62–66). Later, in her research of American evangelical
Christianity, Luhrmann made a similar discovery about the way these Christians
spoke about the presence of God. It took them practice to feel God’s presence
or even hear God’s answers to their prayers (Luhrmann 2020:66–69).
Testimonies of Satanism as sensational forms allow audiences to practise in
the language and experience of a God (and also a devil) who is present in this
world. According to Birgit Meyer (2013), sensational forms:
[T]rain the senses so as to be able to feel the ‘extra’-ordinary. […] In this
understanding, experience is both personal and social. In other words, personal
experience is shaped through particular, religiously transmitted, and embodied
filters of perception. (p. 9)

In the testimonies, an audience learns what the signs of a satanic affliction

might be, and which products might be connected to the underworld. After a
service in which a testimony has been shared, audiences may go home and
start to see the influence of Satan all around them (Frankfurter 2006:168–169).
Luhrmann calls this process ‘kindling’, an awakening of a sense in which the
body learns to experience certain events as spiritually significant. Learning to
discern the meaning of these events has a multiplying effect: ‘These events
are important because they provide first-hand evidence that the claims of the
faith frame are valid’ (Luhrmann 2020:135). Testimonies provide audiences
with an opportunity to learn to recognise signs of Satanism. In the responses
to a testimony delivered on a radio programme discussed in the previous

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chapter, it was clear that the audience applied the testimony to their situation.
They started wondering whether their dreams may be a sign of involvement
in Satanism or whether the behaviour of their niece may suggest that she is
afflicted. These signs, when discovered, then further enforce the experience
that Satanism is real.

Conclusion
This chapter has looked at the processes and actors involved in learning and
performing a testimony about Satanism. In the production of a testimony, the
ex-Satanist is the most obvious agent, but as I have argued in this chapter,
pastors are important sponsors and sometimes even ghostwriters or co-
authors of the testimonies. The expectations of an (implicit) audience also
play an important role in the production of testimonies.
In their storyline and in the jargon that is used, testimonies are adapted to
the standards of the group for which they are performed. In testimonies of
Satanism, the typical storyline talks about an initiation, followed by the
execution of assignments that produce rewards. A failed assignment paves
the way to deliverance and a new, Christian identity. Ex-Satanists learn to use
this jargon and interpret their life story in the frame of the canonical narrative
of Satanism by hearing other testimonies and, more significantly, in the
process of deliverance.
Pastors play an important role in the production of testimonies by asking
the ex-Satanists certain questions that help them to re-evaluate their personal
history in the context of Satanism and by encouraging them to share their
story with an audience. Pastors are also crucial as sponsors of the testimony,
securing speaking arrangements for the ex-Satanists and adding meaning to
their narratives. The pastors put such emphasis on narratives about Satanism
because the testimonies act as living proof of spiritual warfare theology, as
well as the power of the pastor to fight the forces of evil.
In the performance of testimonies, the battle between God and Satan is
made tangible for the audience. The presence of God and Satan is embodied
in the ex-Satanists who tell their stories in a religious setting. These narratives
also provide a space for the audience to engage with ambiguous experiences
brought about by changes in society. Finally, they teach an audience to see
the world in a new way, as imbued with spiritual forces.
The topics discussed in this chapter can be conceptualised in terms of
mediation (cf. Meyer 2012b, 2013, 2020). Mediation refers to the processes
through which beliefs, traditions and other imaginaries become real to a
community. A religious setting like a church service mediates the religious
real, meaning that in and through the service, the religious beliefs of the
congregation become tangible and real. In church services at a church that

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follows modern spiritual warfare theology, not only the divine needs to be
mediated; the demonic needs to be made tangible as well. This is where the
testimonies of ex-Satanists become relevant. As a first-hand account, a
testimony can mediate beliefs about God’s intervention. Testimonies about
Satanism add to that the tangible presence of demonic forces.
This chapter has discussed some criteria that make the mediating character
of testimonies possible. A testimony can evoke the presence of the divine and
the demonic if it follows the expectations of the community. The audience
must deem the performance of a testimony credible. Testimonies that speak
about God or the devil in unconventional ways will be doubted and thus fail to
make the divine and the demonic real to their audience. Also, experiences are
interpreted in the categories that are present. In Zambia, experiences of
affliction and alienation are, as I have argued in the previous chapter, perceived
as related to Satanism. These emotions and experiences are mediated through
and embedded in the category of Satanism (cf. Meyer 2015:19).
The role of mediator holds some advantages for the ex-Satanist, such as
the confirmation of one’s position in the community or the status that comes
with taking centre stage. However, as I have argued in this chapter, the best
explanation for taking up the role of mediator of the divine and the demonic
is the encouragement and sponsorship by pastors. Pastors make sure that
testimonies follow the expectations of the religious community, they create
opportunities for ex-Satanists to give their testimony and their interventions
may even make the pastor a co-author of a testimony.
For a pastor, sponsoring testimonies about Satanism has distinct
advantages. Mediating the religious real is the core business of the church in
general. If testimonies contribute to that aim, which they do, sponsoring them
is a sensible course of action. More specifically, testimonies mediate a special
kind of religious real, namely a religious real that encompasses both the divine
and the demonic. For churches following spiritual warfare theology, this is
important in the context of competition with more secular views or views that
contest the emphasis on the demonic. Finally, for the pastor, a testimony not
only mediates the reality of God and the devil but also his role as a mediator
of God’s power. It is because of his access to God that the devil can be
conquered. Because of the importance of testimonies for pastors in spiritual
warfare churches, the pastor will work hard to advance the mediating role of
testimonies by taking an interest in their production and by using media –
radio, television, the Internet – to supply their audience with an edited message

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‘These things are real!’

Satanism and epistemic
anxiety

Introduction
As I have stated in Chapter 1, in Zambia, Satanism refers to a supposed
organisation of human agents, commanded by Satan, who are dedicated to
bringing evil and harm, especially to Christians. In narratives about Satanism,
sacrifices to Satan play an important role. Road accidents, illnesses and other
harm that befalls people can be interpreted as a sacrifice to Satan made by his
agent, the Satanist. Stories about Satanism are shared in different contexts,
for example between friends or colleagues, at the market or in school, but the
most extensive accounts of Satanism come from testimonies of ex-Satanists.
These testimonies are performed in a Christian setting, which is characterised
by neo-Pentecostal spiritual warfare theology. This theology is not only
prevalent in the Pentecostal churches, but also within denominations like the
RCZ and the Seventh-day Adventist church.
Anyone can become a Satanist, although in Zambia two groups stand out:
adolescents who confess that they have been Satanists in the past and adults
from a limited number of professions connected to the urban world, like
businessmen and politicians. For adolescents, accepting a gift from a friend at

How to cite: Kroesbergen-Kamps, J 2022, ‘”These things are real!” Satanism and epistemic anxiety’, in
Speaking of Satan in Zambia: Making cultural and personal sense of narratives about Satanism, in HTS
Religion & Society Series, vol. 14, AOSIS Books, Cape Town, pp. 217–227. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2022.
BK373.07

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school can be enough to initiate one into Satanism, even if the receiver is not
aware of it at the time. The adults who are accused of Satanism are thought
to have made a more conscious choice to use illicit means for personal gain in
wealth and power.
In previous chapters, I have argued that Zambians are receptive to narratives
of Satanism for several reasons. Firstly, these narratives about spiritual evil
make cultural sense. A hybrid of traditional notions of witchcraft, possession
and illicit accumulation, together with Christian theology, in particular of a
neo-Pentecostal type, makes the idea that an organisation of evil exists
plausible to Zambian Christians of a Pentecostal predilection. The notions of
potentially harmful spiritual agents (such as witches and spirits) and spiritual
means of causing harm (for example, to gain extraordinary wealth or power)
have a long history, which has been introduced in Chapter 2. In missionary
Christianity, all spiritual powers became connected to the Christian image of
the devil. The fight between God and Satan has received new emphasis in
contemporary neo-Pentecostal spiritual warfare theology. In Africa, spiritual
warfare entails the idea that traditional spiritual beings and powers fight on
the side of Satan. In Chapter 3, I have argued that this theological framework
is disseminated by Western as well as African pastors operating on an
international scale. Because the narratives about Satanism fit so well with
these ideas, they make cultural sense and are deemed plausible by Zambian
Christians.
Another way in which narratives about Satanism make cultural sense is
through their relation to the urban and modern world. The professions, places
and products that are singled out as dangerous in narratives about Satanism
are all connected to the city and an emic conception of modernity. This local
idea of modernity brings together Christianity and development in an imagined
space where health and wealth are accessible for everyone. Roads, schools
and hospitals are part of the necessary infrastructure to get to this promised
land of modernity and enjoy its spoils in the form of consumer goods. As I
have argued in Chapter 4, the dream of modernity can turn into a nightmare
of Satanism. Narratives about Satanism turn the image of modernity as a
promised land around. Politicians, government officials, businessmen, pastors
and teachers, who are all connected to the city in the Zambian imaginary, are
not leading the country to this promised land but bringing harm to its citizens.
Roads, schools and hospitals are portrayed in the testimonies as threatening
spaces instead of places where development takes place. The new products
that can be bought in the international stores in the cities bring harm instead
of joy. In Chapter 4, I have related the disenchantment with the dream of
modernity to anxieties surrounding the moral consequences of becoming
modern. Narratives about Satanism particularly reflect fears surrounding a
growing individualism.

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That the narratives about Satanism make cultural sense makes them plausible
in the ears of contemporary Zambian Christians. But for some, the narratives
also make personal sense. These learn to self-identify as Satanists, or rather,
as ex-Satanists. For these ex-Satanists, mainly adolescents and particularly
girls, Satanism is an affliction. It is not a conscious choice or a matter of
conversion to a different religious ideology but something that inadvertently
befalls someone. In Chapter 5, I argued that the diagnosis of Satanism is
provided by neo-Pentecostal pastors or intercessors and is related to
behaviour that is deemed abnormal as well as feelings of isolation and
rejection. This diagnosis does not appeal to everyone. But for some, it becomes
the basis for a new evaluation of one’s life and a new life story. This life story
gives meaning to events in the past, to the present situation and to one’s
plans and hopes for the future. If narratives about Satanism make personal
sense, it is because they provide a meaningful interpretation of the lived
reality of the ex-Satanists.
In the previous chapter, we have seen that the receptivity to narratives
about Satanism is reinforced by their use in public religious gatherings.
Testimonies are produced and performed in Christian settings, in which the
ex-Satanists learn to narrate their experiences in a way that fits with the
genre of testimonies of Satanism. Pastors act as important sponsors of this
narrative by creating opportunities where ex-Satanists can share their
testimonies while giving authoritative interpretations of these stories. For
the pastors, narratives about Satanism have a clear appeal. Testimonies
function as proof for the pastor’s spiritual warfare theology and of his ability
to wage war against the powers of Satan. In Zambia’s competitive religious
environment, this is a crucial matter. For audiences, testimonies make the
divine and the demonic real. They also provide a space to play with ambiguous
experiences, for example, the desires as well as the fears related to changes
brought by development and contact with Western modernity.
To summarise, Zambians are receptive to stories about Satanism because
they make cultural as well as personal sense. These narratives are deemed
plausible, and they respond to lived experiences. They also have a place within
religious practices that reinforce their credibility. In this concluding chapter,
I want to discuss two general issues related to the narratives about Satanism
in Zambia. Firstly, I will revisit discussions surrounding the reality of Satanism,
and secondly, I will interpret fears around Satanism as a form of epistemic
anxiety.

The reality of Satanism

‘These things are real!’ is an expression I have heard many times during my
stay in Zambia. It is how my students would end stories about witchcraft or

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other phenomena that are hard to grasp for a Westerner like me. It is also how
pastors tend to frame narratives about Satanism and other spiritual dangers
that threaten their flocks. But what does it mean to say that these narratives
are real? What does it mean for me as a researcher, and what does it mean to
a Zambian audience? This question has been present in the background of
several discussions in this book, and in this final chapter, I want to return to it
more explicitly. To address this question, I will make use of examples from
contemporary literature and film that also deal with the thorny issue of reality.
In this investigation, it is not my intention to make a philosophical statement
about the nature of reality but to investigate how references to reality are
used in narratives about Satanism and comparable stories.
In the academic study of witchcraft and similar phenomena, it is quite
common to see such narratives as an expression of anxieties surrounding
other spheres of human life, such as economic exploitation, inequality and
political power. The narratives are explained in terms of something else.
Although the academic authors may not explicitly make any claim about the
reality of witchcraft or zombies or Satanism, the fact that they feel the need
to explain these phenomena shows that they are not taken at face value.
In the young adult fiction series Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,
a similar frame is introduced. In the first volume, Jacob, the protagonist of the
series, hears strange stories from his grandfather about monsters and a safe
haven for magical children. Growing up, Jacob realises that these stories
cannot be true in a literal sense: monsters and magic do not exist in this world.
He concludes that his grandfather’s stories are ‘truths in disguise’ (Riggs 2013):
They weren’t lies, exactly, but exaggerated versions of the truth […] My grandfather
was the only member of his family to escape Poland before the Second World
War broke out. […] He never saw his mother or father again, or his older brothers,
his cousins, his aunts and uncles. Each one would be dead before his sixteenth
birthday, killed by the monsters he had so narrowly escaped. […] Like the monsters,
the enchanted-island story was also a truth in disguise. Compared to the horrors
of mainland Europe, the children’s home that had taken in my grandfather must’ve
seemed like a paradise, and so in his stories it had become one: a safe haven of
endless summers and guardian angels and magical children […] What made them
amazing wasn’t that they had miraculous powers; that they had escaped the ghettos
and gas chambers was miracle enough. (pp. 21–22)

The monsters in the stories of Jacob’s grandfather are the Nazis who killed his
family, and the true peculiarity of the children he meets in the children’s home
is that they are Jewish. The elements of the grandfather’s story can be
deciphered so that they portray real events.
Narratives about Satanism can and have been read in this way as well. In
this reading, when Satanists speak about sacrificing their relatives, this can be
deciphered as follows: ‘if you want to be a wealthy individual, you have to cut
the ties with your extended family because otherwise, they will drain all of

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your resources’. I do not know whether Jacob’s grandfather intended to speak

in riddles, but I would argue that the narrators of stories about Satanism do
not have the intention to speak the truth in disguise. When Zambians are
afraid of Satanists and Satanism, they fear an affliction, as I have argued in
Chapter 5. The stories about Satanism resonate with changes in society, but
they are not intended as poetic expressions of these changes.
In the movie World War Z (2013), the world is overrun by zombies. Israel,
however, built a wall around the country early on and was able to stave off the
zombie war. Gerry, the protagonist of the movie, wants to find out how Israel
was able to take its measures in time. Jurgen Warmbrunn, a specialist in the
Israeli intelligence agency, tells him the following: ‘Since everyone assumed
that this talk of zombies was cover for something else, I began my investigation
on the assumption that when they said “zombies”, they meant zombies’. The
zombies in World War Z should not have been explained in terms of something
else. When people talked about zombies, they actually meant zombies.
Interpreting narratives about zombies or witches or Satanists in terms of
something else makes these narratives seem innocent and domesticated. But
these narratives inspire actions that sometimes have grave consequences.
Lessons may be suspended, children are kept at home or are sent away from
school and teachers are sacked because of accusations of Satanism. Property
is destroyed in riots that erupt after suspicions that relate local businessmen
to the disappearance of a child from the community. Pastors can make their
churches grow by appealing to the threat formed by Satanism or can find
themselves under suspicion when their emphasis on the power of Satan turns
against them. Spaces, professions and products, mainly those that are in the
Zambian imagination related to modernity, acquire a new layer of meaning
when they are related to Satanism. Individuals who somehow show deviant
behaviour are diagnosed as Satanists and may become outcasts in their families.
Perceptions of what is real are not the same all over the world. In Zambian
church services in which testimonies are presented, audiences learn to use the
concept of Satanism in their definition of what is real. If a teenager in the
Netherlands prefers to stay in her room and read a book, this is not interpreted
as deviant behaviour. Maybe the teenager could do with some training in social
skills, but otherwise, introversion is nothing to worry about. If a teenager acts
stubbornly and antagonistically towards their parents, this is, within limits,
also seen as appropriate behaviour for someone of her age. In Zambia, however,
this behaviour is perceived as abnormal and prompts suspicions of Satanism.
Likewise, a person who hears voices will in Europe generally seek help from a
psychiatrist, but in Zambia, traditional or Christian healers may diagnose
this person as possessed or involved in Satanism. What these examples show
is that people in the Netherlands and Zambia have different imaginaries
that allow them to interpret and talk about events in different ways.

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These imaginaries are mediated through narratives and practices. Neo-

Pentecostal churches, where there is space for testimonies and where sermons
are based on spiritual warfare theology, teach people how to live in a world
with Satanists – a world in which God is at war with Satan and where Satanists
are threatening one’s surroundings and even oneself. For those who share this
imagery, Satanism is a plausible cause of affliction, a source of threat or an
explanation of misfortune. One may say that, quite literally, ‘speak of Satan and
he appears’.
In scholarly discussions that explain narratives about Satanism in terms of
something else, a focus on how Satan and his agents become real and the
consequences of this perceived reality is lacking. What does it mean to accept
Satanism as a reality? The ontological turn in contemporary anthropology
attempts to take narratives and beliefs that are hard to grasp seriously by
seeing them as belonging to ontologically different worlds (see Holbraad &
Pedersen 2017). Such phenomena should not be rejected as superstitious or
interpreted and explained away in other terms but should be taken at face
value. When people say Satanists, they mean Satanists. As I have argued
elsewhere (Kroesbergen-Kamps 2020a), this position has problematic
consequences. Portraying phenomena like Satanism as belonging to a different
ontological reality may have an unwanted effect of othering people for whom
Satanism is real (Geschiere 2013) and also makes it impossible to take a critical
stance towards these beliefs (Geschiere 2010; Niehaus 2018). Whatever
Zambians mean when they say that Satanism is real, I would not want to place
them in a different ontological world because of it.
T.M. Luhrmann points out that in different contexts, reality may be
conceptualised in different ways (Luhrmann 2012b). For evangelicals in the
USA, the reality of God will ‘feel’ different than it does for Zambian Christians.
Still, it is interesting to compare the American and the Zambian perspectives.
Luhrmann’s research on the evangelical experience of God has taught her that
American evangelicals can act as if God were a real presence in their lives.
They perceive God as present even in their kitchen – without, however,
expecting that God would want a cup of tea or that he would actually drink it.
Luhrmann describes this conceptualisation of the reality of God as playful and
not without humour. Speaking about God in Zambia seems different, more
serious, a matter of life and death even.
For me, a movie clarifies this difference. In the movie Monster Trucks (2016),
huge, custom-built SUVs race against each other on difficult, off-road terrain.
The twist in the movie is that the protagonist’s monster truck is literally a
monster truck: instead of an engine, it contains a monstrous creature that
powers the truck. Here, a play on words – taking the monster in Monster Trucks
literally – playfully invites audiences to imagine a world in which the things we
say are more real than we had expected. In her study of American evangelicals,

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Luhrmann (2012b) labels this playful imagination that the expressions of their
belief may be true as hyperrealism.
Testimonies of ex-Satanists sometimes seem to play with words in the
same way as the movie Monster Trucks. They explain, for example, that the
type of sausage known as Hungarian is actually made out of people from
Hungary. If you eat a Hungarian sausage, you are literally eating a Hungarian.
This message, however, is much more serious than the proposition of the
movie. It is presented not as an invitation to just try to see the world in this
way (Luhrmann 2012b) but as a revelation about how things really are.
For Luhrmann, this difference between contemporary American evangelicals
and Christians in Zambia can be traced back to the presence of a secular
mindset in the USA and the absence of this mindset in Africa. She describes
the African context, as well as the contexts of Melanesia and Indonesia, as
‘never-secular’ (Luhrmann 2012b:380–381). It has been questioned whether
the distinction between religious and secular is apt in an African context
(Engelke 2015). It is clear that atheism is a worldview that many Zambians are
unfamiliar with, and that is different from the contemporary context in the
USA and Europe. However, this does not mean that there is no doubt or
scepticism in Zambia. There is a popular consensus that spiritual beings exist
and that human agents such as witches or Satanists can use spiritual forces to
inflict harm or cause misfortune. But this consensus is by no means ubiquitous.
In schools, pupils and students are taught according to Western models in
which causality is not attributed to the spiritual world. In mainline churches,
issues like Satanism are present mainly among the youths but rarely addressed
by ministers or the leadership. Are things like Satanism real? Contemporary
Zambians are confronted with more than one answer to that question. Calling
them never-secular or placing them apart in their own ontological world
denies the presence of this diversity.
Narratives about Satanism play an important role in the apologetic debates
between different worldviews. Pastors fulfil the role of revealing the secrets
that lie behind the obvious reality that people perceive and testimonies about
Satanism and other spiritual issues are their evidence. A movie that gives the
same sense of apologetic argumentation as narratives about Satanism is The
Conjuring (2013), to which a sequel appeared in 2016. In these movies, Ed and
Lorraine Warren help families who are terrorised by an evil presence in their
homes. The movies have all the twists of standard horror movies: dark, creepy
rooms, terrifying sound effects, et cetera. They add to that the assertion that
this is a movie based on a true story, namely the case files of the real Ed and
Lorraine Warren, who operated as exorcists in a charismatic Roman Catholic
environment. The Conjuring movies are enjoyed by audiences who like horror
movies as well as by Christians who see in them a confirmation of their spiritual
warfare theology. In the last shots of the movie, a quote by Ed Warren appears

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(cited in Pasulka 2016:542): ‘Diabolical forces are formidable. These forces are
eternal, and they exist today. The fairy tale is true’. This is exactly how narratives
about Satanism and similar occurrences are often framed. Zambian testimonies
confirm the existence of spiritual forces in Zambia and at the same time
introduce non-Pentecostal audiences who listen to narratives about Satanism
to the ideas of spiritual warfare theology.
If Zambians say that Satanism is real, what do they mean? And how should
this reality of Satanism be evaluated by scholars? In this section, I have argued
that narratives about Satanism are not intended as disguised truths. They are
also not ‘hyperreal’ in the sense of T.M. Luhrmann’s description of the
evangelical experience of God, nor is it helpful to see them as belonging to a
different ontological reality. Rather, the reality of narratives about Satanism is
used as an apologetic instrument. As I have argued in Chapter 6,
conceptualisations of reality in contemporary Zambia are contested, and
narratives about Satanism are used to enforce a position in the debate about
whether harmful spiritual forces exist. At the same time, the narratives are not
merely a rhetorical foil. They spark emotions and may have grave consequences
in the world, which should not be overlooked by scholars. In this book, I have
tried to do justice to the different ways in which narratives about Satanism are
real to their audiences: as stories that make cultural as well as personal sense.

Epistemic anxiety
Contemporary Zambia is a place full of insecurities. Economically, Zambia
experienced growth in the first decade of the 21st century, but as global
copper prices dropped, Zambia’s economy stagnated again. Poverty remains
widespread in Zambia. For many people in Zambia’s urban centres, the spoils
of wealth have come close. In advertisements and on huge billboards along
the main roads, everyone can see what money can buy. The billboards
communicate the prospect of international travel, of owning the newest
smartphone, of drinking the trendiest beverages. These prospects may be
visibly close, but they are by no means attainable for everyone. For many
Zambians, life is a struggle to make ends meet and to find the money for
school fees, medical bills, funerals and other emergencies. They live in insecure
material conditions, lives that James Ferguson (2015:94) has characterised as
‘improvisation under conditions of adversity.’
Insecurities may also be related to health and well-being. Zambia has been
hit hard by the HIV and AIDS epidemic. But well-being in the Zambian context
goes further than the absence of medical problems. As I have shown in Chapter
5, many Zambians worry about the question ‘what is wrong with me?’ Illness,
misfortune, problems in relationships and lack of business success are all
connected to a deficiency in well-being that can generate insecurity.

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There is also an element of insecurity in Zambians’ relations with others. In

Chapter 4, it became clear that there are many uncertainties about what to
expect from family members. Will relatives be willing to help out in case of
illness or emergencies? Will they take responsibility for the education of nieces
and nephews? The African extended family is an imaginary construct that is
not necessarily present in everyday reality (Ferguson 2015:96). A similar thing
can be said about the nuclear family. In reality, few children grow up in a
household that consists of two parents and their children. What, in this
situation, is the role of the father? Can he be the provider? How should parents
treat their children and children their parents? Chapter 4 discussed the
insecurities related to these questions.
Economic insecurity, worries about health and well-being and uncertainty
concerning family ties make life in Zambia difficult. These practical insecurities
are exacerbated by what I will call epistemic anxiety. According to several
scholars, the combined forces of colonialism and modernity have brought
about epistemic anxiety (Ashforth 1998; El Fadl 2015; Stoler 2010). Epistemic
anxiety refers to uncertainty towards ways of knowing the world that used to
be self-evident. Adam Ashforth describes how in contemporary South Africa
there exist multiple modes of understanding spiritual experiences. Western
science, cultural or traditional notions, and Christian churches all offer distinct
interpretative frameworks. As Ashforth (1998) writes:
No one here lives in a single consistent system of interpreting signs emanating from
unseen powers, and for every scheme of interpretation there is another, equally
plausible and diametrically opposed, way of making sense of the world. (p. 59)

The question of which scheme of interpretation is the right one is present for
anyone living in this postcolonial context.
In matters of affliction, we have seen in Chapter 5 that many Zambians try
out different options from different systems. This multiplication of options
increases a sense of uncertainty. Moreover, the different options are often
mutually exclusive. If an affliction is caused by a biomedical cause like a virus,
it cannot be caused by a spiritual agency. If all spiritual agencies are demonic,
an affliction cannot be interpreted as the call of an ancestral spirit to a path of
mediumship. So which interpretative knowledge system is right? The
uncertainty surrounding different knowledge systems and their frames of
interpretation is one form of epistemic anxiety.
It is not only medical knowledge that has become insecure. Moral
knowledge concerning the right action to take or how to be a good person
is fraught with uncertainty as well. Questions like ‘who am I?’ and ‘what will
I become?’ or ‘how should I behave and relate to others?’ are very common,
especially in adolescence. The answers to these questions become harder to
find in societies that are globalised and uprooted from their past, such as

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‘These things are real!’ Satanism and epistemic anxiety

postcolonial Africa. The imaginary of Satanism provides Zambian adolescents

with a special answer to these questions. In the song ‘Within’, the French
duo Daft Punk (2013) expresses insecurities surrounding identity in a way
that seems familiar to the experiences of Zambian ex-Satanists:
There are so many things that I don’t understand. There’s a world within me that
I cannot explain. […] I can’t even remember my name. I’ve been, for some time,
looking for someone. I need to know now; please tell me who I am. (n.p.)

Like the ‘I’ in the lyrics, Zambian adolescents who experience Satanism find a
world within them that they do not understand. They feel isolated, as if they
do not belong to their families or with their friends. Like the ‘I’ in the lyrics, the
Zambian adolescents also long for someone who can tell them who they are,
as traditional role models are no longer sufficient. Pastors and intercessors
who give the the diagnosis of Satanism do exactly that. They teach adolescents
that their experiences signify an involvement with Satanism and give them the
tools to reconstruct their life story – and with that their identity and place in
the world – as ex-Satanists.
Even expectations of the future are uncertain. A good life should be a life
without material worries, a life lived in health and well-being, a life of
harmonious relationships. In Zambia, this image of the good life is often
connected to the emic concept of modernity. But life as people experience it
is not as it was expected to be. The promised land of modernity has not
arrived. Worse, places, professions and products associated with modernity
are perceived as threatening in the narratives about Satanism. Where will we
go from here? Will we ever reach that modernity where life is good, or will this
mean that we have to become ruthless, egotistical individuals with no regard
for our elders and our relatives? Like the knowledge about afflictions, the
spirit world and the moral universe, the expectations of the future have
become a source of anxiety.
Narratives about Satanism – or possibly narratives about evil Others in
general – tend to latch on to epistemic uncertainties such as those present in
contemporary Zambia. When there are gaps between expectations of the
future and lived reality, when identities are uprooted from the past and when
competing frames of interpretation are present, narratives that assume the
existence of hidden agencies and require specialists in revelation seem to
become popular. This is a suggestion that requires more investigation.
Narratives about Satanism and other evil Others may serve to curb
epistemic anxieties. According to what Bill Ellis has called the Rumpelstiltskin
principle, the act of naming may make an undefined problem easier to
handle. Satanism can give a name to a previously vague sense of insecurity
and threat. It also gives meaning to insecurities of living conditions by
revealing their cause. Take, for example, the idea that Zambia is not simply
poor because of historical coincidence; it is poor because the devil is strong

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and needs to be conquered. This explanation does not take away poverty,
but it incorporates poverty into a meaningful framework, thereby alleviating
some of the insecurity that poverty may cause.
On the other hand, narratives about Satanism can cause at the same time
an increase in anxiety. Someone who had not thought of Satanism in connection
with their own life may be inspired to do so after hearing a testimony. Starting
to see Satanists in one’s environment can solve some tensions, but it may also
cause other fears and uncertainties: now that the undefined fear has a name,
people start to be afraid of Rumpelstiltskin. Pastors in Zambia and other parts
of Africa can attest to this: often, the pastors who are most vocal in the
struggle against evil spiritual forces are also the first to be accused of Satanism
themselves. Spiritual warfare is a dangerous instrument that can blow up in
the pastor’s face.
At the beginning of this book, I gave the example of a girl who confessed
that she was a Satanist during an all-night prayer meeting in a church in a
provincial town in Zambia. The girl reportedly said, ‘I am a Satanist, sent here
to this all-night prayer to bring confusion’. Confusion is a very negatively
charged word in contemporary Zambia, so causing confusion is a serious
threat. But in this final reflection on narratives about Satanism, it has become
clear to me that this girl did not need to bring confusion; the confusion was
already there. The participants in the all-night prayer already lived in a world
that did not live up to expectations, a world in which appearances can deceive
and where there are alternative conceptualisations of reality. The girl who
confessed that she was a Satanist did not cause that confusion. Before her
confession, the world was already hard to understand, uncertain and contested.
Speaking of Satan not only makes the devil appear, but it also expresses the
confusions and anxieties of life in contemporary Zambia, sometimes appeasing
them and at other times aggravating them.

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244
Index

A anthropologists, 4, 17, 23, 25–26, 44, 49–50,

abuse, 19, 70, 89, 111 59, 126, 168, 170
adolescence, 139, 164, 172, 175, 225 anthropology, 4, 26, 28, 170, 180, 222
adolescent, 43, 48, 132, 134, 139, 144, 164, 172, anxieties, 24, 30, 32, 78, 102, 120, 128, 212, 218,
175, 211 220, 226–227
adolescents, 11–12, 26, 31, 69, 132–133, 139, 142, anxiety, 24, 51, 118, 217–220, 222, 224–227
178, 183, 217, 219, 226 anxious, 14, 145
Africa, 2–3, 5–6, 14, 16, 26–27, 32, 35–39, apocalypse, 65
41–42, 44–46, 49–55, 57–58, 61–62, 64, authority, 23, 54–56, 58, 79, 133, 139–140,
66–68, 70–76, 78, 80–82, 84, 86, 88–92, 142–145, 197
97–98, 102–103, 107, 109, 112, 116, 119–121, autonomy, 141, 144
125, 127–128, 130, 136, 138–141, 143,
153–154, 159, 169, 175, 186, 197, 211–212,
B
218, 223, 225–227
behaviour, 9, 11, 20–22, 24, 28, 39, 72, 113, 115,
African Christianity, 70–71, 75, 80, 209
129, 132–133, 135–137, 143–144, 152, 154,
African Christians, 3, 30, 70, 73, 76, 79–80,
158–159, 161–165, 172, 197, 214, 219, 221
93, 183
bewitched, 77
African context, 5, 33, 44, 54, 76, 89, 168, 223
Botswana, 54, 82, 117
African Pentecostalism, 75, 77
business, 7, 11–12, 21, 27, 46, 58, 61, 74, 85, 92,
African perspective, 29, 152
104–105, 108–111, 114, 130–131, 137, 139,
African traditional beliefs, 71
164–165, 188, 201, 215, 224
African traditional religions (ATRs), 4–5,
35–36, 82–83
African worldview, 29, 33–36, 38–40, 42–44, C
46, 48, 50, 52, 54–56, 58, 77–79, 155, 169 capitalism, 79
African, 2–5, 9, 17, 25–26, 29–30, 33–46, Catholic, 4, 13–14, 26, 40, 65–67, 73, 80–82,
48–59, 62–63, 67, 70–71, 73–80, 82–84, 154, 179, 185, 195, 223
86, 88–93, 96, 102–103, 109, 112, 116–117, ceremonies, 150
119–120, 122–123, 128–131, 133, 137–141, challenge, 3, 90
149, 152–155, 159, 168–171, 180, 183, 189, challenges, 31, 57, 79, 98, 136
193, 196, 204, 209–210, 218, 223, 225 change, 21, 24, 30, 35, 56, 59, 65, 95, 97,
age, 58, 65, 98, 101, 122, 127, 132–133, 141–142, 100, 113, 115–118, 125, 128, 140, 143–145,
144–145, 172, 184, 199, 221 148–150, 166–167, 170, 172, 175, 178–180,
agencies, 170, 180, 225–226 184, 186, 190, 195
agency, 45, 72, 89, 141–142, 168, 177, 221, 225 character, 15, 28, 41, 49, 71, 95, 113, 115–116, 119,
African Independent Churches (AICs), 67, 143, 163, 215
74–75, 81 charismatic, 13–14, 67–68, 70–71, 73, 77, 82,
AIDS, 7, 86, 127, 136, 138, 224 179–180, 189, 211, 223
alienation, 63, 215 charismatics, 67
altar call, 87–88, 147, 156 child, 8, 18, 23, 34, 41, 43, 70, 89, 96, 121, 130,
ambiguity, 178 132–133, 135–136, 138–140, 148, 164, 169,
ancestor, 40–41, 71, 74 175, 189–191, 197–198, 221
ancestors, 39, 41–42, 45, 57, 72, 74, 77–78, 82, childhood, 139, 171, 173
86, 92, 127, 129, 159 children, 13, 18–22, 34, 39, 41–43, 46, 48,
ancestral, 39, 41–42, 77, 159–160, 163, 191, 225 61–62, 70, 77, 86, 89, 92, 96, 101, 106,
anointed, 107, 131 108, 113, 121, 125–127, 130, 132–133,
anointing, 76, 81, 158 135–142, 152, 157, 167, 173–175, 190–192,
anthropological, 4, 26, 168 197–198, 220–221, 225
anthropologist, 98, 190, 194, 210 Christian nation, 5, 82

245
Index

Christian, 1–2, 4–7, 9, 11, 14–18, 20–21, 30, 35–37, denomination, 4, 67

53, 62–64, 68–74, 79, 81–83, 86–87, denominations, 67, 81, 83, 217
89–93, 96, 103, 109, 111, 113, 115, 121, 125, development, 13, 24–25, 30, 32, 62, 68, 75, 90,
130, 144, 148, 150, 153, 155, 158–163, 165, 93, 98, 101, 105, 109, 112, 118–119, 130, 132,
185, 206, 214, 217–219, 221, 225 140, 171, 184, 190, 205, 218–219
Christianity in Africa, 32, 71, 74–75, 88 devil, 1–2, 6, 10–11, 13, 15–22, 26, 28, 44, 62–66,
Christianity, 3–5, 15, 18, 20, 27, 31–32, 35, 39, 43, 70–73, 76–80, 82–83, 89, 91–92, 95–96,
51, 59, 62, 64, 66–68, 70–77, 80–83, 86, 103–104, 112, 116, 131, 133, 135, 140,
88–90, 92–93, 102, 110, 112, 118, 124, 141, 142–144, 148, 155, 158, 173, 184–185, 192,
144, 149–150, 180, 186, 209–210, 213, 218 203, 207, 209, 211–213, 215, 218, 226–227
cities, 17, 30, 47, 101–102, 106, 118, 140, 218 dialogical, 170
city, 98, 100–104, 110–112, 117–120, 123, 128, dignity, 128–129
139, 218 discernment, 199, 202–203
colonial, 3, 36, 46, 50–51, 53, 58–59 disease, 86, 113, 136, 157, 160
colonialism, 55, 75, 128–129, 225 disenchantment, 218
communal, 85, 99, 127, 140 divergence, 152
confession, 2, 48, 172, 191, 196–197, 227 divination, 42
conflict, 12, 21, 65, 70 diviner, 29, 41, 56, 73–74, 109, 131
confused, 16, 32, 166 diviners, 42, 109
confusion, 1, 11, 16–17, 21, 50, 128, 193, 227 dualism, 38, 69, 72
confusions, 227
congregation, 21, 61–62, 84–88, 90, 99, 195, E
198, 200, 214 economic growth, 3
congregations, 66–67, 154 economic inequality, 99
consciousness, 1, 8 economic, 3, 53, 65, 79, 99, 101, 128, 133,
consumerism, 119 138–140, 142–143, 151, 220, 225
context, 3, 5, 14, 17, 22, 27, 30, 33, 36–37, 39, economics, 37–38, 79
42, 44, 47, 50–52, 54, 58, 62–63, 66, 76, economy, 4–5, 53, 98, 139, 224
78, 88–89, 97, 123, 126, 132, 141, 155, 158, education, 10, 73, 79, 104–105, 108–110, 112,
161, 163–164, 167–171, 177, 180, 184–185, 123, 130–131, 138, 143, 179, 225
190, 194, 196, 199–200, 208–210, embodiment, 57, 211
212–215, 223–225 emotions, 33, 42, 66, 83, 108, 215, 224
control, 8, 11, 42–43, 45–46, 54, 57, 64, 69, 78, empowerment, 78–80, 138
133, 143–144, 181, 192–193, 197–198, 208 enchanted worldview, 209
conversion, 9, 31, 80, 148–150, 168, 176, 180, enchanted, 208–209, 220
186–187, 192, 195–196, 219 enlightenment, 37–38, 65–66, 73, 92
counselling, 190 epistemology, 25
covenant, 10, 192–194 equality, 98, 138
crisis, 73, 121, 139, 191–192, 194 ethics, 168
cultural context, 164 ethnic, 4, 12, 42, 49, 122, 129, 172
cultural, 1, 5, 24, 26, 29, 33–34, 36, 59, 61, 77, ethnicity, 23, 45
95, 97, 124, 132, 136, 138, 140, 147–148, Europe, 15, 17–18, 29, 35–38, 44, 53, 65–66,
158, 164, 170–171, 177, 183, 210, 217–219, 69–70, 75, 80, 123, 140, 169, 171, 188,
224–225 220–221, 223
culture, 16, 29, 36, 42, 44, 63, 66, 70, 81, 134, European, 3, 18, 26, 41, 49–50, 55, 66, 121, 130,
140, 171 138, 168, 170
custom, 69, 222 Europeans, 37, 53, 170
customs, 42 Evangelical Christianity, 66, 213
evangelicalism, 66
D evil, 3, 5, 7, 9–10, 12, 15, 17–26, 28, 30–31, 35,
darkness, 2, 5–6, 63, 69, 91, 102, 156, 184, 212 39, 43–44, 46, 55, 62–66, 69–74, 76–84,
death, 9, 11, 13, 33–34, 40, 42, 45–46, 56, 58, 86–92, 96–100, 102, 116, 118, 123–124, 128,
61, 64, 109, 122, 136, 150, 186, 222 137–138, 141–144, 148–152, 158–160, 163,
deliverance, 9–11, 17, 61, 66–69, 76, 80–84, 166–167, 176–177, 180, 185–187, 190–191,
87–88, 91, 127, 144, 147–148, 152, 155–156, 193, 195–196, 198, 202, 206, 208–209,
158–162, 165–167, 171, 175, 180, 185, 189, 211–212, 214, 217–218, 223, 226–227
191–193, 198, 200, 204, 206–208, 214 exorcisms, 65, 209

246
 Index

ex–Satanists, 2, 5, 9, 13, 16–17, 21, 27–31, 43, hierarchy, 15, 43, 58, 124, 132–134, 138,
47–48, 53–54, 69, 89, 91, 102, 104, 141–143, 145
114, 116, 122, 125, 132, 134–135, 137–140, HIV, 136, 138, 157, 159, 224
144–145, 148–149, 151, 162–164, 166, 168, holism, 38
171–175, 177–178, 180–181, 183–188, 191–198, holistic worldview, 35–36, 59
209, 212, 214–215, 217, 219, 223, 226 holistic, 35–36, 38, 59, 69, 74, 78, 152–153, 169
holistically, 79
Holy Spirit, 20, 66, 68, 71, 74, 87, 104, 144,
F
157, 160
faith healers, 153, 155, 159, 163
families, 31, 46, 86, 101, 124–126, 139–140, 142,
I
152, 160, 164, 189–190, 197, 221, 223, 226
identity formation, 172, 181
family, 8–10, 14, 26, 39–40, 48, 56, 62, 77–78,
identity, 16, 22–23, 31, 35, 73, 110, 116–117, 119,
86, 100, 115–116, 119, 121–128, 134–136,
128–129, 143, 148, 167–168, 172, 176,
139–143, 156–157, 160–162, 164–167,
180–181, 183, 193, 212, 214, 226
172–176, 180–181, 188, 193, 197–198,
ill, 35, 97, 120
220, 225
illness, 9, 35, 39–40, 42, 73, 81–82, 87, 153, 155,
fear, 8, 12, 19, 42, 105, 121–123, 131, 143, 178–179,
159, 164, 167–168, 224–225
183, 201, 212, 221, 227
illnesses, 136, 191, 217
Fingers of Thomas, 10, 13–14, 26, 116,
individual, 15, 17, 29, 31, 39, 55, 58–59, 72, 92,
134–135, 149, 163–164, 166, 173, 178–179,
124–125, 132, 135, 139, 141, 144, 150, 154,
188–190, 198
156, 168–170, 180–181, 186, 189–190, 207,
foreigners, 128
209, 220
industrialisation, 126
G inequality, 45, 98–99, 220
gender, 100, 132, 138–139, 142, 144–145 infrastructure, 101, 104, 112, 143, 218
Ghana, 67, 71, 141, 148, 189 initiation, 6, 9–10, 39, 41–44, 54, 57, 90–91,
Ghanaian, 36, 56, 77, 212 105, 108, 116, 120–121, 130, 133, 149, 151,
ghost, 8, 40, 144, 157, 205 162, 192–194, 201, 214
gift, 114, 116, 121, 149, 159, 192, 203, 217 insecure, 101, 224–225
gifts, 10, 51, 66–67, 84, 114, 116, 120–122, insecurity, 78, 80, 99, 141–142, 224–227
135, 203 international, 3, 6, 21, 30, 35, 46, 75, 84, 110,
global South, 67 124, 138, 173, 218, 224
global, 14, 19, 67, 75, 78, 80, 91, 93, 97, 110, interview, 8, 10, 21, 95–96, 99, 114, 124, 133,
123–124, 169, 206–207, 209, 224 135, 144, 149, 152, 162–163, 171, 178–179,
globalisation, 80, 97 184–185, 188, 191, 193–194, 198–201, 206
globalising, 210 interviews, 3, 28, 171–172, 185, 194, 198, 206
government, 3, 13, 34, 53, 105–107, 110–111, 126,
130–131, 218 J
guilt, 180 jealous, 135
guilty, 46, 86 jealousy, 45, 123, 141

H K
heal, 62, 155, 157, 160 Kenya, 141, 162
healed, 109, 150, 158, 160, 206 Kenyan, 6
healer, 56, 87, 109, 125, 131, 153–155, 159–162, Kingdom of God, 63, 69, 78
165 knowledge, 25, 42, 53, 108–109, 117, 130, 133,
healers, 40, 42–43, 57–58, 77, 103, 109, 131, 187, 199, 201–203, 205, 213, 225–226
150, 153, 155, 159–160, 163, 221
healing, 35, 40, 42, 66–68, 70, 74, 76, 81–84, L
87–88, 150, 153–156, 158, 160, 163, 165, labour, 52–53, 139–140
180, 186–187, 189, 195, 208, 211 law, 47, 82, 179
health, 7, 36, 38–39, 41, 55, 68, 73, 76, 78–79, laws, 65, 126
83, 85, 88, 90, 102–106, 112, 121, 127, 138,
143, 152–153, 157, 160, 218, 224–226 M
hidden forces, 51 magic, 16, 43, 49, 56, 64–65, 91–92, 213, 220
hierarchical, 129, 132, 138–139, 142, 172 magical, 49, 86, 220

247
Index

mainline, 7, 51, 66–68, 73, 76, 78, 81–84, 87, Nigeria, 5, 30, 67, 74, 76, 82, 90, 120, 148
119, 141, 154, 156, 208, 223 Nigerian, 2, 8, 10, 30, 67, 75, 90, 92, 111, 124,
Malawi, 11, 46–47, 52, 54, 56–57, 59, 99–100, 169, 204, 212
109–110, 119, 131, 133, 135, 139, 150, 154
Malawian, 45–46, 59, 137, 142, 203 O
Man of God, 115, 119, 189, 206, 208 ontological, 28, 222–224
manifest, 40, 88, 102, 159, 165 ontologically, 222
marriage, 21, 41–42, 45, 47, 85, 90, 126, 135, 137, orphans, 173
157, 160, 166–167, 176, 178, 189–191, 200, 204 otherness, 20
mass prayer, 81 outsider, 110
mass, 81, 109, 111, 122, 185
media, 4, 7, 12–13, 34, 70, 89, 101, 105–107, 126, P
144, 185, 215 parent, 173
medicine, 50, 54–56, 58, 73, 85, 153–155 parents, 11–12, 41, 48, 108, 122, 125, 127, 132,
medicines, 27, 42, 46–47, 54–55, 74, 103, 131 152, 162–165, 167, 172–173, 183, 188, 192,
medium, 42, 160, 163 197, 221, 225
metanarrative, 98 pastor, 1–2, 6, 8, 10–11, 32, 61–62, 67, 75, 83–91,
metaphor, 76, 98–99, 133 106–107, 114–115, 119, 121, 124, 127, 131,
metaphysical, 28, 70 147–148, 151–152, 155–162, 164–167, 178,
Meyer, 2, 5, 50, 56, 71–72, 74–75, 77, 79, 91, 93, 183–184, 189–193, 195, 197–200, 202,
124–125, 137, 141, 210–215 204, 206, 208–209, 213–215, 219, 227
migrants, 101, 123 pastoral, 3, 13–14, 206–207, 209
minister, 2, 8, 99, 204 Pentecostal, 3, 5–7, 11, 19, 30, 32, 43, 62,
ministry, 67–69, 107–108, 110, 148, 166, 66–69, 71–93, 96, 102, 107, 109–110,
204–206, 208 118–119, 121, 124, 127, 140–141, 144, 148,
miracle, 85, 220 154–156, 159–160, 175, 178, 180, 184–185,
miracles, 65, 67, 85, 87, 90, 131 187, 189, 193, 195–196, 199, 204, 206,
miraculous, 65, 69, 111, 150, 220 208–209, 211, 213, 217–219, 224
miraculously, 131, 150 Pentecostalisation, 75, 83, 154
missionaries, 3, 30, 37, 71–77, 80–81, 90, 92, 126 Pentecostalism, 30, 62, 66–68, 74–80, 82–83,
missionary churches, 73, 80–81 90–92, 141, 153–154, 206
missionary, 3, 30, 67, 71, 73, 75–76, 80–81, 126, 218 Pentecostalist, 154
modern, 16, 37, 66, 73, 91, 93, 97, 100, 103, 112, Pentecostals, 66–69, 127, 141–142, 150, 154
117–119, 123, 126, 128, 143–145, 148, 168, performative, 195
171, 183, 203, 212–213, 215, 218 personality, 41, 52
modernity, 4, 30–31, 35, 93, 95–98, 100, 102, personhood, 98, 168–170, 180–181, 186
104, 106, 108, 110–112, 114, 116, 118–120, physical, 2, 8, 10–11, 38, 42, 44, 48, 50, 56–57,
122–124, 126–130, 132, 134, 136, 138, 140, 59, 68, 79, 87, 90–91, 109, 113, 134–135,
142–144, 151, 185, 218–219, 221, 225–226 138, 147–148, 152–154, 159, 204, 209
money, 7, 10–11, 27, 41, 51, 53, 55, 68–70, 83, pietism, 72
100–102, 108, 125, 131, 137, 139, 150–151, political, 3, 13, 24, 57, 65, 73–74, 105, 111, 128,
161, 164, 212, 224 130, 133, 138, 151, 220
moral, 9, 12, 31, 39, 45, 78, 100, 106, 110–111, politicians, 12–13, 105–107, 109–111, 130, 132,
122, 125, 128, 150, 153, 205, 218, 225–226 142, 217–218
morality, 79, 128 politics, 27, 36–38, 81, 105, 109–110, 130
positive confessions, 85
N postcolonial, 52, 98, 119, 225–226
narrative, 7, 9, 15, 17–20, 22, 24–25, 32, 34, poverty, 3, 5, 9, 39, 79, 86–87, 101, 114, 136, 153,
43, 54–55, 63, 93, 99–100, 120, 122, 155, 224, 227
124–125, 127, 142–143, 149–150, 152, pray, 2, 9–11, 61–62, 81–82, 88, 104, 113, 147, 151,
155, 165, 167–168, 171–172, 174, 176–178, 156, 202, 206
180–181, 184–189, 191–192, 194, 196–200, prayed, 61, 80, 84, 87–88, 99, 118, 152, 156, 158,
202–205, 208, 210–212, 214, 219 162, 165–166, 176, 178–179, 183, 189
nature, 15, 17, 22, 38, 46, 74, 79–80, 113, 121, 129, prayer, 1–2, 4, 7, 10–11, 14, 27, 61–62, 65, 78–79,
133, 155, 160, 192, 201, 203, 208–209, 220 81, 84–87, 111, 144, 147, 155–156, 160,
Neo-Pentecostalism, 68, 75–76, 80, 83, 165–166, 171, 175, 185, 193, 195, 197–198,
90–91, 206 200, 207, 227

248
 Index

prayers, 6, 67, 85, 87–88, 118, 148, 155–156, 159, salvation, 72

165–167, 183, 199, 202, 213 Satan, 1–3, 5–7, 14–18, 20, 26–30, 32–33, 39,
praying, 1–2, 11, 62, 85, 87, 136, 156–157, 159, 53, 59, 61–66, 68–72, 74, 76–80, 82, 84,
162, 166–167, 191–192, 199, 207 86, 88, 90, 92–93, 95, 102–103, 105, 112,
prays, 87, 156, 158, 177, 202 116, 119, 127, 134–135, 145, 147, 160, 162,
preacher, 15, 21, 31, 191 166, 174–175, 183–184, 193, 195, 203,
preaching, 1, 8, 104, 118 210–214, 217–219, 221–222, 227
Presbyterian Church, 80 Satanic, 7–8, 11–13, 15–19, 21, 23, 26, 28, 34, 47,
prophecies, 70, 87, 193 70, 72, 77, 80, 83, 86, 88–89, 96, 100,
prophecy, 42, 67, 87 103–104, 107, 111–117, 119, 121, 124, 127, 156,
prophet, 74, 87, 107, 109, 131 164–165, 167, 187, 193–194, 203, 212–213
prophetic, 73 Satanism, 1–22, 24–36, 38–40, 42–56, 58–59,
prophets, 87, 131 61–62, 66, 69–70, 75, 80, 86, 88–93,
prosperity gospel, 68, 75, 79, 83–85, 102, 118 95–98, 100–114, 116, 118–126, 128,
prosperity, 35, 67–69, 75, 79–80, 83–85, 102, 118 130–132, 134, 136–145, 147–152, 154–156,
protestant, 4, 22, 37, 65–68, 72, 76, 154 158–168, 170–172, 174–181, 183–194,
protestants, 65, 68 196–200, 204, 208–211, 213–215,
217–224, 226–227
Satanists, 2–3, 5–10, 12–13, 15–18, 20–21, 23,
R
25, 27–31, 43, 47–48, 53–55, 69–70,
race, 36, 222
79, 89, 91, 96, 98–99, 102–106, 108, 112,
racism, 73
114, 116, 120, 122, 125, 127–128, 131–140,
realities, 36, 38, 81, 100, 128
144–145, 148–149, 151, 155, 161–166, 168,
reality, 20, 25–26, 28, 34–35, 38, 65, 73, 99,
171–175, 177–178, 180–181, 183–188, 191–198,
126, 142, 148, 184, 199, 202–203, 205,
208–209, 212, 214–215, 217, 219–223,
208–211, 215, 219–220, 222–227
226–227
Reformed Church in Zambia, 76
sceptical, 209
Reformed church, 76, 80
scepticism, 73, 223
reformed, 76, 80–81
secularisation, 66, 102
revealed, 18, 64, 118, 166, 213
service, 7–8, 10, 13, 21, 61, 83–88, 104, 127, 142,
reveals, 99, 202–204
155, 159, 171, 175, 184–185, 195, 198–200,
revelation, 65, 105, 199, 202–203, 205, 212,
211, 213–214
223, 226
services, 2, 6, 32, 76, 82, 84, 86, 101–102, 155,
reward, 11, 51, 79, 196
175, 183, 187, 199, 211, 214, 221
rewards, 7, 9, 193, 214
sexuality, 42, 135–137, 143
rhetoric, 170
shame, 42, 177, 206–207
rhetorical, 80, 209, 224
sickness, 8, 47, 64, 147, 157
ritual, 12, 15–16, 19, 27, 33, 50, 52, 54–56,
sin, 65, 72–73, 186
58–59, 65, 70, 73–74, 78, 83, 89, 111, 120,
sins, 20, 64
130, 133, 135, 158, 194, 196
social imaginary, 35
ritualistic, 70
social interactions, 34, 120, 184
rituals, 5, 12, 17–20, 22, 29, 36, 39–43, 47, 57,
societies, 5, 34, 37–38, 42–43, 51, 55, 57, 71,
59, 62, 65, 69–70, 72–74, 78, 83, 89, 93,
107, 111, 128–131, 133, 138, 168, 171, 210,
107, 110–112, 120, 127, 130, 149, 155, 158,
225
194, 197–199, 210
society, 1, 5, 15, 17–20, 22–24, 26, 28–35, 39, 41,
Rumpelstiltskin, 24, 226–227
43, 45, 51, 56, 61, 80, 93, 95, 97, 99–100,
111, 116, 119, 126, 128–129, 132–135,
S 138–140, 142–143, 145, 147, 168–169,
sacrifice, 6–11, 17, 20, 27, 54–55, 58–59, 171–172, 183, 187, 209, 212, 214, 217, 221
99–100, 104–105, 109, 111, 116, 120, 124, socio-economic, 79, 139–140, 142–143
126–127, 129–130, 132, 136–137, 162, South Africa, 37, 52–53, 58, 74–75, 78, 82, 84,
164–165, 174, 193–194, 217 107, 109, 125, 127, 139, 197, 225
sacrificed, 8, 12, 18, 20, 48, 62, 92, 112, 127, 162, South African, 53–54, 78, 80, 117, 141, 196
189, 200 Southern Africa, 3, 27, 35–36, 42, 46, 57, 62,
sacrifices, 6, 10–11, 34, 39, 58, 70, 82, 124, 127, 74, 76, 80, 107, 153
134, 217 Southern African, 59
sacrificing, 7, 10, 111, 122, 125, 127, 143, 151, 188, 220 Soweto, 126, 141

249
Index

spirit world, 29, 35–36, 38–39, 41–43, 54, 56–57, V

59, 71, 74, 81, 90–93, 103, 110, 163, 226 value, 5, 20, 22, 51, 55, 73, 99, 116, 128–129, 137,
spirit, 20–21, 29, 34–36, 38–43, 52, 54, 56–57, 145, 202, 212, 220, 222
59, 63, 66–68, 71–72, 74, 77, 79, 81, 84, values, 17, 19–20, 22, 24, 31, 97, 113, 129, 132,
87, 90–93, 95, 103–104, 109–110, 135, 142, 212
144, 147, 156–160, 163, 202, 225–226 vernacular, 41, 43–45, 62, 155
spirits, 3, 13, 35, 39–40, 42–43, 46, 51, 56, village, 39, 47, 77, 103, 109–112, 118, 123–125,
63–64, 69, 71–74, 77–79, 81–83, 90–93, 140, 203
95, 100, 111, 113, 119, 157, 160, 163, 189, 218 violence, 12, 46, 48, 54, 59, 106, 108, 138
spiritual husband, 90–91, 167 vulnerability, 138
spiritual warfare, 30–32, 62, 67–69, 75–76, 78, vulnerable, 97, 101, 104, 127, 138, 140,
80, 87–93, 96, 102, 144, 148, 199, 204, 206, 142–143, 206
209–210, 214–215, 217–219, 222–224, 227
spirituality, 85
W
stranger, 120–122, 141
Well-being, 39, 43, 58, 68, 74, 78–79, 129–130,
strangers, 9, 48, 120–124, 126–127, 142
151–155, 159, 177, 224–226
sub-Saharan Africa, 36, 51, 76, 82
success, 5, 7, 11, 29, 35, 41, 45, 49, 53–56, 58, witchcraft, 3, 6, 10, 13, 20, 26, 29–30, 32,
61–62, 74–76, 79, 83, 92, 105, 108–111, 123, 35, 43–59, 61–62, 64–66, 69, 72–73,
127, 130, 137, 139, 153, 164–165, 188, 224 77–78, 91–92, 96–98, 104, 106, 109,
suffer, 61, 87, 114, 156 120–121, 123–125, 140–142, 148, 151, 155,
suffering, 10, 117, 160, 166–167, 176, 186, 204 157, 159–161, 163, 173–174, 177–179, 184,
supernatural, 38–39, 44, 46, 69, 71, 159, 209 189–190, 192, 196–197, 212, 218–220
superstition, 26 World Christianity, 67
symbol, 9, 101, 119, 127, 192
Y
T youth, 1, 7, 11, 105, 118, 133, 138–139, 141–142,
This-worldly, 39, 68, 79, 85 147–148, 161, 164, 174–175, 180
tradition, 17, 21, 37, 62, 64, 92, 100, 125
traditional African worldview, 77, 79, 155 Z
traditional healer, 87, 109, 125, 153–155, 160, 165 Zambia, 1–8, 10–18, 20–22, 24, 26–36, 39–42,
traditional healers, 42, 57–58, 77, 103, 131, 150, 46–51, 53–54, 56, 59, 61, 73, 76, 80–83,
153, 155, 159–160, 163 87–88, 90–93, 95–96, 98–99, 101–103,
traditionally, 29, 37, 43, 78, 92, 103, 109, 118, 105, 107–109, 111–112, 117–122, 126–129,
121, 129, 132, 140–141, 193 131–133, 135–136, 138–139, 142, 147–148,
traditions, 29, 37–38, 40–42, 44, 46, 59, 63, 150, 153, 155–156, 161, 163–165, 167–168,
71, 77, 91–93, 103, 111, 116, 124, 148, 160, 171–174, 177, 179–180, 183–184, 188–189,
168, 214 191, 193–194, 196–198, 208–209, 215, 217,
219, 221–227
U Zambian, 3–7, 9, 12–13, 17, 21, 28–29, 32–34,
uncertain, 5, 226–227 40–41, 48, 53, 59, 62, 81–82, 84, 90–93,
uncertainties, 225–227 96, 98–102, 104–105, 111–112, 116–118,
uncertainty, 24, 33, 45, 141–142, 189, 225 120–123, 125–126, 128–132, 134, 139,
unemployment, 136 143–144, 148–149, 151, 154–155, 158–160,
United Church of Zambia, 76 163, 171–173, 177, 184, 186–187, 192–193,
urban, 3–4, 14, 19, 29, 44, 46–47, 52, 93, 197, 200, 206, 208–209, 212, 218–222,
100–104, 106, 108, 110–111, 117–124, 224, 226
127–129, 132, 139, 143, 203, 217–218, 224 Zimbabwe, 46–47, 84, 109, 127

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Studies and research about Satan in the world have in the past focused on abstract theologies, such as
demonology; and often espoused a Western hegemony about the discourse. Quite often, demonology
lacks the contextuality and real-life experiences of the people affected. Essentially, it carries particular
Western ecclesial baggage that muddies an African understanding of Satan and his activity in the real
world, forgetting that an African worldview is not simple. Books on the topic of Satanism are few on
the continent of Africa. Here is a study that integrates the depths of theology, church history, and real
African experience of Satanism in a complex African worldview. Rarely do you come across a book in
Africa about Africans on Satanism that is teeming with narratives, case studies and real-life stories by
Africans who have lived the experience of having participated in the underworld and been delivered. The
integration of demonology and lived experiences brings about a lived-theology which has been lacking
in the African Church for so long. I strongly recommend this book to scholars in African Christianity or
African religious studies, as well as to seminary academia in African institutions of higher learning who are
preparing pastors for Church ministry.
Dr Martin Munyao, Department of Theology and Pastoral Studies,
Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Daystar University, Nairobi, Kenya

Speaking of Satan in Zambia is a thought-provoking, magnificently crafted, and eloquently articulated piece
in an area to which scholars have not given much attention. Weaved with a narrative thread from a parade
of anti-Satanic discourses, Kroesbergen-Kamps offers a fascinating study of how Christians process and
give meaning to perceptions of Satan and Satanism in postcolonial Zambian modernity. She first clears
the debris of scholarly discourses on the concepts of Satan and Satanism. Through implicit metaphysical
realism and epistemic empathy, Kroesbergen-Kamps guides the readers to anti-Satanism discourses in
Zambia. She argues that indigenous religious background conjoins witchcraft notions and experiences
and invests the ideas of Satan and Satanism with culture-loaded meanings, which conceptually enable
Christians to make sense of the imponderable fluid and contradictory aspects of modernity. Embedded
within a religio-secular informed society, Christians narrate and express the meanings of Satan and
Satanism as determined by indigenous cosmologies and equivalent categories and simultaneously retain
their global dimensions. This excess interpretation overcomes spatiality and legitimates the singular global
influence of Satan and Satanism while affirming particular manifestations of evil. This book gives a fresh
perspective on anti-Satanic narratives and reminds the reader that more is happening in the hearts and
thoughts of Christians than may be construed by all scholars put together.
Prof. Chammah J. Kaunda, United Graduate School of Theology,
Faculty of Theology, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

9 781779 952301
Open access at ISBN: 978-1-77995-230-1
https://doi.org/10.4102/
aosis.2022.BK373