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African Apocalypse: The Story of Nontetha Nkenkwe, a Twentieth-Century South African Prophet. By Robert R. Edgar and Hilary Sapire. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000. xxvi + 190 pp. $20.00 paperback.
The influenza epidemic of 1918 swept through the African subcontinent with devastating effect and profound religious consequences. For traditional societies, still struggling to cope with the massive social upheaval associated with the colonial encounter, the epidemic's deadly passage magnified the acute dilemmas already threatening to overwhelm the religious fabric. Throughout the continent, invariably in areas where the Christian faith had been absorbed within traditional cosmologies, a spate of prophet-healing movements emerged with a range of messages in response to the crisis. In African Apocalypse, the authors investigate and recount the remarkable story of Nontetha Nkenkwe (ca. 1875-1935), a middle-aged Xhosa women who emerged as a prophet in the eastern Cape of South Africa.
Curiously, in the light of her subsequent ministry, Nontetha was never a member of a church; though the strong Christian content of her subsequent ministry indicates sustained exposure to Christian teachings, augmented perhaps by a strong proclivity for the divine. She was an herbalist and diviner when she received her prophetic call, which came while she lay deathly ill with the influenza virus. She had a series of dreams or visions in which two men (one of whom appeared to have been Jesus) revealed to her that the influenza was a punishment from God for the sins of the people-the list of transgressions included drunkenness, witchcraft, and neglecting the Bible. She was commissioned to call people to repentance, preach the teachings of the Bible to the uneducated, urge the society's leaders to work towards national unity, and warn of impending judgment. This visionary experience was wholly compatible with the...