Life Cycle Pregnancy Botsetsi Childhood Initiation Engagement Marriage Death Ancestors

© 2018 Dr Margaret Sheppard

An example of the power attributed to the Ancestors has already been referred to in the section on Traditional Medicine and  Religion -when a certain traditional doctor wanted to retire from his practice due to ill-health (asthma) in 1974, he had consulted a traditional prophet from a sub-village of Kanye, a certain woman. Amongst other things such as reducing his ditaola (divining bones) set from 8 to 6, she had warned him not to retire, but to continue his work because the Ancestors of the people he cured, and he is a very well-known “powerful” traditional doctor, wished him well and they were helping to keep him alive. That is the Ancestors of his patients were showing their gratitude to him for helping their descendants.

Setiloane's third category of Tirelo is Tirelo in the Kgotla. He quotes the example of someone who offends an elder and then suffers bad luck and this bad luck is caused because "Badimo ba mo hularetse" (the Ancestors have turned their backs on him) and the offender has to provide a beast to be slaughtered in order to bring back the favour of his Ancestors and drive away the bad luck. This is the causal category called Dikgaba and seems to be related to a similar custom called Bojalwa jwa marogano - beer of insults. This beer must be brewed when a person insults an older person. (It should be emphasized that it is a terrible taboo to insult an older person, and to do so is believed to attract the disfavour of the Ancestors, resulting in much bad luck and failure.) So, if a person does insult an elder, in order to avoid the resulting bad luck he must arrange for beer to be brewed and all the comrades of the person who was insulted are invited to drink it. The beer pleases them, and because they as elders are pleased, the ill-fortune that the Ancestors would have sent is averted.

The final category of Tirelo is Tirelo of the Morafe (tribe). Setiloane gives seed-cleansing, First Fruits and Rain making as examples of this category. Seed cleansing and First Fruits are now not public ceremonies in Kanye. However Dikgafela is probably in this category (see section on Dikgafela). Elements of this are obviously to thank the Ancestors for the last harvest and to please them so that they may try to ensure that Modimo sends good rains for the new season.

As the official religion is Christianity, when the rains fail everyone is called to the Chief's Kgotla for a day of prayer. These prayers are led by Christian priests from the various denominations and are addressed to God and Christ. However, much of the format, for example, that everyone should be present and the fact that prayers are held at the kgotla not at a church, appears to be similar to those traditional rain making ceremonies described by Setiloane and Schapera.

Perhaps one or two further examples of the activity of Ancestors can be mentioned, as they illustrate the power of the Ancestors and also illustrate the effect of Ancestors in social control. One of my informants suffered from talking in her sleep. She had been told that the cause of this was Badingwana (little Ancestors). She was supposed to be disturbed in her sleep by the Badingwana of one of her sister's dead children, and it was this disturbance which was causing her to talk in her sleep. The cure for this, according to the family traditional doctor, was to hold a Badimo Feast for these Badingwana. As my informant did not believe strongly in this she did not perform the cure - she continued to talk in her sleep!

The second example, which really strongly illustrates the power of Ancestors in affecting social control, is as follows: in 1980 there was a very unpleasant murder in Kanye, a Sangoma (a female South African Diviner) was murdered. A nurse was popularly supposed to be responsible for this.  It was believed to be a ritual murder to obtain powerful medicines to promote and make successful the pharmacy business she was about to open. When she was arrested she went mad, and it was said that she was badly troubled by, and kept seeing, the dead woman and the dead woman's Ancestors.

Although eventually the accused was sentenced for man-slaughter (she managed to prove with the help of “clever” lawyers that the woman had died whilst the nurse was performing an abortion) it was popularly believed that the dead woman and her Ancestors would exact revenge on the nurse - perhaps a more effective punishment than the "modern" system of justice.

It can thus be seen from the above example that Ancestors and the Tirelo that Ancestors demand are very powerful agents/forces for maintaining the status quo, for example, respect for elders, general politeness and generosity, and also for maintaining and conserving long established practices. It should further be emphasized that an individual who pleases his Ancestors will be well protected and live a good and prosperous life. The Ancestors are thus truly the under-pinners of the society, typical of the type of religion often found in traditional African and other similar societies.

Other Examples of Ancestral Influence