Overview

This work talks about paths and pilgrimages - shrines in the South African cult of the High God. This is a study of pilgrimage to the Njelele shrine, a major centre of the Mwali cult - Southern Africa's cult of the High God. The study is mainly about the importance of sacred spaces in central places in a cult that is nodally organised. It raises questions of mediation and intermediaries between the High God and the various congregations lying in the vast cult domain; the relationship between oracular cult centres and the low-level shrines and affiliated congregations; the nature of and the volume of traffic of supplicants between cardinal shrines at Njelele and the periphery of the cult domain; and the symbolic exchange involved in the pilgrimage tradition in the cult of the High God. Since the traffic between the periphery and the centre itself is based on and controlled by the people's conceptualisation of sacred centrality, Contesting Sacred Space discusses the various ways in which conceptions of sacred centrality are constructed. The other interest of Nthoi's study is the organisational aspect of the Mwali cult - power and authority within the cult; the leadership disputes that have characterised it; and the cult's relationship with other organisations in Botswana and Zimbabwe.

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9781592213962

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Leslie S. Nthoi is a lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Botswana.

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