Religion and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Southern Africa

Fortune Sibanda, Tenson Muyambo, Ezra Chitando, Fortune Sibanda, Tenson Muyambo, Ezra Chitando

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000542080
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion & Science

This book investigates the role of religion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Southern Africa.

Building on a diverse range of methodologies and disciplinary approaches, the book reflects on how religion, politics and health have interfaced in Southern African contexts, when faced with the sudden public health emergency caused by the pandemic. Religious actors have played a key role on the frontline throughout the pandemic, sometimes posing roadblocks to public health messaging, but more often deploying their resources to help provide effective and timely responses. Drawing on case studies from African indigenous knowledge systems, Islam, Rastafari and various forms of Christianity, this book provides important reflections on the role of religion in crisis response.

This book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of African Studies, Health, Politics and Religious Studies.

The Open Access version of this book, available at

http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

1IntroductionReligion and public health in the shadow of COVID-19 pandemic in Southern Africa

Fortune Sibanda, Tenson Muyambo and Ezra Chitando

DOI: 10.4324/9781003241096-1

Sweeping across the globe and causing death, untold suffering and unprecedented disruption, the COVID-19 pandemic announced its presence in a staggering manner in 2020 and 2021. Within a short period of time, the pandemic became the world’s most pressing emergency, exposing the limitations of bio-medicine and highlighting the vulnerability of human beings in different parts of the world. This included those in the Global North who had generally tended to associate pandemics with the Global South. Confirming the earlier observation by the historian of religions, Mircea Eliade (1959) that human beings are essentially homo religiosus (human existence is inherently religious), religion featured prominently in making sense of the pandemic, across different cultures and contexts. Even the global appeal of the South African massive hit song, “Jerusalema” (Master KG featuring Nomcebo with its accompanying dance challenge) that went viral in 2020 confirmed humanity’s search for healing in the middle of death and anxiety. It was in this context that religion in Africa sought to interface with COVID-19 and to be a positive force in society. Different religions played different roles in diverse African settings, intersecting with politics and shaping how people experienced and responded to COVID-19. As we elaborate below, this volume seeks to paint vivid images of such interactions, as well as to analyse them in depth.

Although several epidemics have been recorded in human history since time immemorial (Barry 2004), there has been limited work on the interface of religion and public health in the African context. As this volume was being finalised, the world was grappling with a health emergency caused by COVID-19 and it seemed timely to provide a scholarly introspection into the responses and impact of this pandemic in society. First identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, COVID-19 was declared a public health concern by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020. This was because this viral disease had reached alarming levels in terms of its spread and severity given that many people were infected whilst others died. Although some work on religion and the COVID-19 pandemic has begun to appear (among others, Dein et al. 2020; Kowalczyk et al. 2020; Parish 2020; Sonntag et al. 2020; Wildman et al. 2020), with additional publications on this theme to be expected in future, there is limited material emerging from the Southern African context. Given the speed and impact of the pandemic, we are anticipating an avalanche of literature on religion and COVID-19, perhaps similar to, if not exceeding, the interest in religion and other pandemics such as Ebola and HIV and AIDS.

This particular volume seeks to trace the diverse effects and responses to the pandemic across the broad spectrum of society including the religious, socio-cultural and public health fraternities. A lot of questions remain unanswered since the pandemic has affected people differently and has been responded to in a heterogeneous manner in the Global South, particularly in Southern Africa. Some of the key questions include: How have faith communities in Southern Africa acted as both a help and a hindrance (Mtata 2013) in response to COVID-19? What is the interface between religion and public health in the face of the pandemic in Southern Africa? As others are rethinking the entire Humanities curriculum in the wake of COVID-19 (Du Preez et al. 2020; Mendy and Madiope 2020; Ramrathan et al. 2020), how can the curriculum of Religious Studies and Theology in Southern Africa be transformed to equip graduates to be better able to handle pandemics in future?

In order to better understand possible responses to the pandemic, it is imperative to conceptualise how religion is understood in this volume. The use of the term “religion” follows an age-old debate on its elusiveness, culture specificity, flexibility, non-normativity and non-universality (Smith 1964, 1987; Cox 1996; Chitando 1997). In other words, the term is fluid and at times associated with misleading connotations because it is binding and confessional. For that reason, Smith (1964) suggests that we should jettison the term “religion” and replace it with two concepts, namely “personal faith” and “cumulative traditions”. In the same quandary with Smith (1964), Ninian Smart (1969) asserts that it is not prudent to expend our efforts in trying to define religion, but rather proposes its dimensions, to which he identifies six or seven in all. In fact, Smart (1969) cited by Sharma (2011:44) prefers the term “worldviews” over “religion”, which is more inclusive and beneficial. For Smart (1969) the separation of religion and the secular is unnecessary because essentially what we deal with is the religious and the symbolic aspect of human life – rituals, ultimate beliefs, myths and so on. Given these conceptions, contributors in this volume utilise a broad understanding of religion where the term “worldview” gives a new and more relevant view on religion. Smart quoted in Sharma (2011:49) had this to say:

I would argue that there are gains in stretching scope of religious studies and so in effect the definition of religion. It is of course awkward in ordinary conversation. So I use the term ‘worldview’ and the phrase ‘worldview analysis’ for what we do. It is not the best of words, but the English and other languages are very poor in vocabulary for discussing beliefs, ideologies as the like. Often the vocabulary of a people simply reflects its own religious history and that is typically not good for describing other systems.

Given the above insights, we learn that religion is a complex and variegated phenomenon which requires a “worldview analysis”. This does justice to the various religious traditions under discussion in this volume.

Writing as far back as the late 1960s, the Kenyan-born African Christian theologian, John S. Mbiti asserted that “Africans are notoriously religious” (1969:1). This has become a basis of understanding the spirituality and religiosity of Africans testified in the global shift of the centre of gravity of Christianity from the Northern to the Southern hemisphere (Kalu 2003:215; Sibanda 2018:8). In the context of COVID-19, the spirituality of Africans has been undoubtedly a prominent feature among the religious and non-religious personalities of various stripes, including politicians and public health practitioners. For instance, John Magufuli, the late President of Tanzania, claimed that the virus was a “devil’s tool” and went on to encourage people to continue visiting their places of worship at a time when other countries were stepping up measures to curb gatherings. Magufuli proclaimed that: “These Holy places are where God is. […]Coronavirus cannot survive in the body of Christ, it will burn” (Taylor 2020). Here, Magufuli was self-presenting as a faithful devotee of the Christian faith. His decision to reject the lockdown route that gained momentum in most countries in the world, including Africa, set him apart from other African leaders. Magufuli, with an unorthodox approach to the office of president, was projecting the image of a pious and independent African leader who was implementing a uniquely African solution to respond to a global challenge. During the second wave of the pandemic in early 2021, Magufuli persisted with his ultra-conservative stance, saying:

We will also continue to take health precautions including the use of steam inhalation. You inhale while you pray to God, you pray while farming maize, potatoes, so that you can eat well and corona fails to enter your body. They will scare you a lot, my fellow Tanzanians, but you should stand firm.

(Reuters 2021)

Contributors to this volume have approached their chapters with flexible definitions of politics, but leaning more towards appreciating politics as the exercise of power (Heywood 1997; Modebadze 2010), with an impact on development (Oloruntoba and Falola 2018) in Southern Africa. They seek to examine how actors in the fields that have traditionally been demarcated as religious (dealing with spiritual issues, indigenous knowledge systems, beliefs and practices that fall within their worldview in space and time), political (dealing with decision-making and relating to the distribution of resources) and public health (dealing with the allopathic and alternative medical services for human flourishing) have interacted in the wake of a global pandemic in Africa. Whereas one of the most prominent sociologists of African Pentecostalism, Asonzeh Ukah, makes the bold claim that, “COVID-19 could as much lay bare where the real power and resources of Africa and Africans lie: in religion or the political economy of the postcolonial state” (2020:459), we contend that an “either/or” approach is inadequate and misses the complexity of the interface between religion, public health and politics in Southern Africa. Contributors, therefore, seek to provide more nuanced analyses of how COVID-19 offers fresh insights into the religion, public health and politics conundrum in Southern African settings. Anthropologist Francis Nyamnjoh and historian Joel Carpenter have articulated an informative interpretation of the role of religion in society and we cite their observation below:

The fact that religion does not occur in a social, political and cultural vacuum should necessarily alert the attention of scholars – who provide for and are sensitive to the suggested approach – to the categorical imperative of the role of power, money, poverty and the cultures they engender and perpetuate in what form religion and religiosity assume in the lives of individuals and in the institutions and everyday relations of a given society.

(Nyamnjoh and Carpenter 2018:290)

In this way, the volume makes several assumptions that point to the role of religion in its variegated form as it interacts with public health and politics. The assumptions include:

1. that religion as an independent institution plays a vital role in health matters of the population, whether positively or negatively;
2. that religion facilitates in a positive way how states respond to the pandemic;
3. and that religion and politics are interrelated and, in some ways, interconnected to Africa’s development.

The foregoing assumptions are anchored on theoretical and methodological considerations that undergird this volume. Theoretically, the volume encompasses a wide range of theories on which contributors ground their chapters. By and large, the volume mirrors an Afrocentric thinking and experience where Southern Africa is the focus. In other words, contributors in this volume present the COVID-19 experiences of different communities, nations and states. Given the complex nature and severity of the pandemic, analogies/metaphors of collective consciousness become handy. It is in this context that we adopt “the theory of the hut on fire” (Kurian 2001; Dube 2009:83) metaphor to explain the diverse and varied responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This “hut on fire” theory was originally used by Kurian (2001) and further adopted by Dube (2009) to explain the different types of responses to the HIV and AIDS pandemic and we find it helpful in the context of COVID-19. As the nations feel the impact of COVID-19, they become the “burning hut” that members of the village provide varied responses to, which responses include (a) some villagers jumping into action to douse the fire and save the hut; (b) some villagers standing still, putting their hands on their heads and crying helplessly; (c) some villagers ignore the burning hut and remain indifferent taking it as none of their business, while (d) other villagers blame it on the victims whose hut is on fire saying that “those who play with fire get their fingers burnt”.

All these responses are indicative of the diverse standpoints of responses to COVID-19, positively or negatively. Contributors in this volume present many forms of responses to the “burning hut” due to COVID-19 along the lines of gender, religious, class and national identities. Using “the theory of a hut on fire”, the different chapters recognise that individuals, communities and the nations in Southern Africa under the shadow of COVID-19 can better understand the problem at hand and its possible solutions. Methodologically, contributors in this volume utilise various methods for data gathering and analysis from different paradigms. Due to COVID-19 crisis, the studies in this volume were carried out in the midst of the pandemic thereby leading contributors to adopt data collecting techniques amenable to COVID-19 containment measures.

Geographically, the book covers countries in Southern Africa whose boundaries largely follow those of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Initially, we sought to do an Africa-wide volume with all linguistic regions represented. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19-induced disruptions, we could not get contributors from the Lusophone and Francophone countries in SADC. However, chapters in this volume do not cover all the countries in the SADC region. The inclusion of a chapter from Tanzania is informed by Tanzania’s status as a member of the SADC. However, we included a chapter from Tanzania’s neighbour, Kenya, although Kenya is outside the SADC.

Background: religion, COVID-19 and politics

As COVID-19 took its toll in Western countries before coming to the African continent, one politician from Zimbabwe claimed that the virus was God’s way of punishing the Global North for imposing economic sanctions on Zimbabwe. God and COVID-19 were being roped into the sanctions discourse or “political football” (Chingono 2010). This shows the influence of religion in the public sphere. Some claimed that ancient prophecies of African Traditional Religions and relatively new ones within African Pentecostalism were being confirmed through this pandemic. Therefore, whereas many religious leaders, governments and communities were taking decisive measures guided by public health officials to slow the spread of the virus such as halting congregat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Short Biography of Corresponding Editor
• 1 Introduction: religion and public health in the shadow of COVID-19 pandemic in Southern Africa
• 2 Exploring the ethics of
• 3 Social distancing in the context of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe: perspectives from Ndau religious indigenous knowledge systems
• 4 Coping with the coronavirus (COVID-19): resources from Ndau indigenous religion
• 5 Living with COVID-19 in Zimbabwe: a religious and scientific healing response
• 6 Religion, law and COVID-19 in South Africa
• 7 Tele-evangelism, tele-health and cyberbullying in the wake of the outbreak of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe
• 8 The role of religion in response to COVID-19 pandemic challenges in Tanzania
• 9 COVID-19 containment measures and ‘prophecies’ in Kenya
• 10 Christian religious understandings and responses to COVID-19 in Eswatini
• 11 Standing together in faith through the time of COVID-19: the responses of Church umbrella bodies in Zambia
• 12 Churches and COVID-19 in Botswana
• 13 The coronavirus pandemic and persons with disabilities: towards a liberating reading of the Bible for Churches in Southern Africa
• 14 The influence of health perceptions on Zimbabwe Muslim responses to COVID-19 restrictions over Ramadan, pilgrimages and funeral rites in 2020
• 15 Repositioning the agency of Rastafari in the context of COVID-19 crisis in Zimbabwe and Malawi
• 16 ‘When a pandemic wears the face of a woman’: intersections of religion and gender during the COVID-19 pandemic in Zimbabwe
• 17 Religion and COVID-19 in Southern Africa: implications for the discourse on religion and development
• Index