Invisible Agents
Spirits in a Central African History
David M. Gordon
ohio university press athens
new african histories series
Series editors: Jean Allman and Allen Isaacman
Books in this series are published with support from
the Ohio University National Resource Center for African Studies.
David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, The Risks of Knowledge: Investigations into the Death of the Hon. Minister John Robert Ouko in Kenya, 1990
Belinda Bozzoli, Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid
Gary Kynoch, We Are Fighting the World: A History of Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947–1999
Stephanie Newell, The Forger’s Tale: The Search for Odeziaku
Jacob A. Tropp, Natures of Colonial Change: Environmental Relations in the Making of the Transkei
Jan Bender Shetler, Imagining Serengeti: A History of Landscape Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Times to the Present
Cheikh Anta Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya in Senegal, 1853–1913
Marc Epprecht, Heterosexual Africa? The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDS
Marissa J. Moorman, Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, Angola, from 1945 to Recent Times
Karen E. Flint, Healing Traditions: African Medicine, Cultural Exchange, and Competition in South Africa, 1820–1948
Derek R. Peterson and Giacomo Macola, editors, Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa
Moses Ochonu, Colonial Meltdown: Northern Nigeria in the Great Depression
Emily Burrill, Richard Roberts, and Elizabeth Thornberry, editors, Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa
Daniel R. Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968–1977
Emily Lynn Osborn, Our New Husbands Are Here: Households, Gender, and Politics in a West African State from the Slave Trade to Colonial Rule
Robert Trent Vinson, The Americans Are Coming! Dreams of African American Liberation in Segregationist South Africa
James R. Brennan, Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania
Benjamin N. Lawrance and Richard L. Roberts, editors, Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children
David M. Gordon, Invisible Agents: Spirits in a Central African History
Acknowledgments
This book has been supported, sustained, and inspired by many communities. Zambians answered my questions with patience and care. Kampamba Mulenga was a wonderful companion in our journeys across Zambia’s Northern Province. I have fond memories of weeks spent with the members of Chinsali’s New Jerusalem community who introduced me to the power of their faith. A community of Africanist scholars pushed me to refine many of my ideas. Allen Roberts, Dan Magaziner, Kairn Klieman, Paul S. Landau, Stephen Ellis, Clifton Crais, Tom Spear, Anne Mager, James A. Pritchett, Karen Tranberg Hansen, Parker Shipton, Nancy Jacobs, Megan Vaughan, and Heather Sharkey helped with their insightful discussions and questions following many conference presentations. A community of Zambian scholars, associated with the Network for Historical Research in Zambia, hosted Zambia-focused symposia, which allowed me to fine-tune the details of the book. Marja Hinfelaar, Giacomo Macola, Walima T. Kalusa, Chris Annear, Miles Larmer, Mwelwa C. Musambachime, Jan-Bart Gewald, Bizeck J. Phiri, and several others have all contributed to an invigorated Zambian historiography. Marja Hinfelaar deserves special mention for her work in making available new archival resources that provide the empirical depth to sustain my ambitious arguments. The New African History series editors, Allen Isaacman and Jean Allman, and Ohio University Press’s Gillian Berchowitz had confidence in the book, and offered suggestions for improvement.
Bowdoin College provided an unmatched intellectual community. Students, especially in my seminar on Religion and Politics in Africa, inspired me with their enthusiasm and sophisticated thinking about issues unfamiliar to many of them. Discussions with colleagues, over lunch and during faculty forums, helped in conceptualization, writing, and revision. Allen Wells, Rachel Sturman, John Holt, and Elizabeth Pritchard read and provided insightful comments on parts of the book. The interlibrary loan staff, especially Guy Saldanha, persevered in tracking publications obscure to them but essential for my research. Eileen Johnson drew the map. The generous research support and sabbatical leave provided by Bowdoin College contributed to the timely completion of the book.
Academic nourishment alone does not sustain a good book. Arguments about politics and religion with my family, especially my siblings, are frequent; this is yet another stab at a discussion that will always be part of our lively dinner-table conversations. My mother and stepfather are not only supportive but interested in the details of my research. My brother Ryan helped to refine the images. In the ten years that I have been researching and writing this book, my love for my wife, Lesley, has inspired all of my most valuable accomplishments. Love does shape life. While I was nearing the book’s completion, my father died. My grief, and my knowledge that he lives on in so many ways, further convinced me of the power of our emotions, our hidden spirits, and our invisible worlds.
Abbreviations
AMU African Mineworkers Union
ANC African National Congress
ARC African Representative Council
BSAC British South Africa Company
CAF Central African Federation
CCZ Council of Churches in Zambia
CfAN Christ for All Nations
DC district commissioner
DRC Democratic Republic of Congo
EFZ Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia
ICOZ Independent Church Organization of Zambia
MMD Movement for Multiparty Democracy
MUZ Mineworkers Union of Zambia
NRR Northern Rhodesia Regiment
PC provincial commissioner
RLI Rhodes-Livingstone Institute
UCCAR United Church of Central Africa in Rhodesia
UCZ United Church of Zambia
UMCB United Missions of the Copperbelt
UNIP United National Independence Party
UPP United Progressive Party
ZANC Zambia African National Congress
ZCTU Zambia Congress of Trade Unions
ZEC Zambia Episcopal Conference
introduction
Seeing Invisible Worlds
Invisible forces mobilize us to action. Sometimes they are remote and absolute, such as “freedom” and “fate”; or they are proximate and changing human creations, such as the “state” and its “laws”; or they combine proximity with the personal, as in the emotions of “love” and “hate.” Invisible forces are sometimes imagined to be spirits that possess bodies, incarnate the dead, and guide the actions of the living. Yet not all agents of the invisible world are compatible. While we accept the influence of our own invisible worlds, those of others appear implausible