James Hall

MBABANE, Apr 8 (IPS) - - The miracle-healing crusade of an American evangelist was this month's sensation in Swaziland, drawing the largest crowds seen in the country since the last championship soccer tournament.

Purported miracle cures, and the attending publicity, have allowed comparisons between followers of the country's traditional beliefs based on supernatural acts and born-again Christians whose God works through miracles.

''I don't think Swazis are more superstitious than other people, African or otherwise, but there is an Old Testament-style belief amongst followers of both Christian and traditional religions in divine intervention in people's lives,'' says Shawn Shongwe, a graduate student of theology at the University of Swaziland.

Shongwe notes that traditional healers, called tangoma, affect their medical cures by seeking the guidance of ancestral spirits, and in some instances calling upon the spirits to do the healing. Christian evangelists bringing well-organised crusades to the kingdom and promising miracle cures have for decades proved popular, and all have credited their healing abilities to the direct influence of Jesus Christ, whom some Swazis view as an ancestral spirit.

The March through April crusade of American evangelist Rev. Ernest Angley produced sensational newspaper headlines, and renewed debate over Swazis' enthusiastic desire for miracles.

''The Times of Swaziland, which is the largest and most influential newspaper, was a virtual publicity machine for Reverend Angley,'' says freelance writer Bheki Magagula. ''The 'miracle cures' were reported as fact, and no behavioural psychiatrists or sceptics were sought to offer a balanced picture.''

The Times might simply have been playing up to its readership, which considers miracles, be they performed in the name of Christ or through the ancestral spirits (emadloti), to be facts beyond question or analysis by scientists who view miracle healing as a psychological or sociological phenomenon.

''This is not only bad journalism, it is dangerous,” says Magagula, who points to the Times' front-page headline of Mar 28: ''Boy Walks After Angley Healing''.

The boy, a relative of King Mswati III, was in fact never crippled, as the paper asserted, but was bedridden on doctors orders until he could undergo an operation to insert an iron support rod in one leg to compensate for a congenitally defective pelvic bone. While on his feet, the doctors had the boy use crutches to alleviate his pain.

At a prayer meeting with the royal family at Lozitha Palace, Rev. Angley called upon the boy to throw away his crutches, which he did, to the wonderment of those present.

Agatha Dlamini, a nurse at RFM Hospital in Manzini, says, ''The boy was always able to walk without crutches, so where was the miracle? Now, his mother says she does not want to pay for his surgery because she feels it is unnecessary. The boy's medical condition has not changed, and it will get worse if he is not treated.''

The boy's mother has not produced new X-Rays to show her son's pelvic bone has changed. To do so, she argues, ''would be like questioning the healing miracles of Our Saviour.''

Reverend Angley also laid hands upon ailing cabinet ministers, media and other prominent personalities. They lined up to be received by him in the same manner as followers of other American evangelists, like Jimmy Swaggart in the 1980s, who periodically create a sensation in the small African kingdom.

A local miracle preacher, Reverend Nash Shongwe of the Divine Healing Mission in Manzini, approves of his fellow evangelists Angley because ''he says he cures through the power of Christ, and not through his own power, which would be against the bible''.

Shongwe worries about the people who came to Angley's crusade meetings, which drew nearly one tenth of the nation's population to open-air show grounds in the capital Mbabane and Manzini, the country's commercial hub. The people were motivated not by a religious message but by a desire to obtain a miracle cure. ''They will go back to their sinful lives afterward,'' Shongwe frets.

Meanwhile, Julius Ndlovu of the Swaziland Traditional Healers Association is critical of religious-inspired miracle cures when, he says, healing ought to be performed with medicinal plants and the intervention of ancestral spirits.

''Even the bible says God created the plants of the world for our use, and it is through them that traditional healers cure the ill through miracles we know in our culture,'' Ndlovu says.

A 1997 census, the most recent done in Swaziland, showed that Swazis vacillate between traditional beliefs and Christianity. Census takers drew responses from Swazis saying they attend church services, and then return to their homesteads to petition the ancestral spirits or be healed by a traditional healer who works through the ancestral spirits.

Indeed, the annual Incwala pageant, the highlight of the Swazi cultural calendar, sees tens of thousands of Swazi warriors, royalty and commoners in traditional attire engage in a month-long petitioning of the national ancestral spirits at the Queen Mother's village.

The ancestors' guidance for the king is sought, and their blessings for the nation. The rituals must be performed precisely, or rains essential to the agriculture-based economy will not come, it is believed.

''It is not surprising that Swazis believe so strongly in miracles, whatever their origin, or that miracles are a way of life in the country,'' says Joshua Mzizi, a theologian at the University of Swaziland. ''The very basis of government is a miracle: the ancestral spirits endowing the king with wisdom to rule the nation.''

Swaziland is sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarchy, partly because of the reverence Swazis hold for their king and Queen Mother, who by tradition possesses sacred herbs and tools that make rain, yet another miraculous power.

A country whose government is faith-based and whose people live in a world where supernatural forces intercede in their lives may not be the place for critical assessment of purported miracles.

But given the destruction of African traditions during colonial and modern times, and the Swazis' ability to retain theirs as well as their sovereignty as a small nation, some political observers say this is evidence enough of the miraculous. (END/2002)