The role of Magamba Spirits and Gamba Healers
A fifteen-year-long civil war came to an end in Mozambique through the 1992 General Peace Agreement between the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique or FRELIMO and the Mozambican National Resistance or RENAMO. The peace agreement marked a blanket amnesty for key actors, and a simultaneous adoption of an official policy of “forgive and forget.” Mozambique’s transition to peace was marked by the idea “the less we dwell on the past, the more likely we are to reconcile.” As a result, there was no effort made at the policy level to build a transitional justice mechanism of any kind (Cobban, 2007).
Seeing the far-reaching implications of this gap, civilians began to rely on everyday practices, rituals of justice, healing, and reconciliation, and community-level justice and peace processes. They relied on cultural resources to achieve this, where traditional healers known as curanderos and curanderas played a significant role. The worldview underpinning this approach was the inextricable link between the realms of the living and spirits. This perspective also defined how people interpreted and responded to the war and its impacts. This worldview recognizes that the death of individuals through traumatic action or killing without any metaphysical or social legitimation is an offence that needs redress through appropriate rituals of atonement. Not doing so would mean that the spirit of the victim would return to the living realm and wander in search of justice.
War is considered a traumatic action, an aberration that contaminates the community in tangible and intangible, metaphysical ways (Honwana, 2001). This contamination needs to be addressed, which is why soldiers and refugees are expected to follow cleansing and purification rituals to enable pathways for individual and collective healing, resolution of conflicts, reconciliation among individuals, and reintegration of all those who are affected by war and return home after being displaced. An example of this was the reintegration of child soldiers, where mediums and traditional healers performed rituals to purify and integrate these children back into society. These rituals strived to take the violence out of a person (Gibbs, 1997; Honwana, 2001).
Typically, upon the arrival of the soldier, refugee, or displaced individual, his family or relatives take him to the ndumba, or the house of spirits (Honwana, 1998). In this space, the returnee is presented to the ancestral spirits of the family. The spirits are thanked for the protection and informed of the return. Shortly after, a traditional healer arrives to perform a cleansing ritual to denote a rupture with the violent past (Honwana, 1998). Following this, a strengthening ritual is performed to restore the returnee to their full, and wholesome selves. Singing, clapping, and observing among community members form a significant part of the process (Honwana, 1998).
In central Mozambique, the rituals included acknowledgment, reparations, and reconciliation. These rituals centred the magamba (spirits) and gamba (spirit healers). The magamba, or spirits of dead soldiers wandering the realm of the living in the hope of justice, are acknowledged, and a traditional healer mediates a reconciliation for them (Honwana, 1998).
These rituals continued alongside the UNDP’s Reintegration Support Scheme. Some practitioners (Honwana, 2001) have noted the marked lack of articulation of one’s stories and experiences even in these rituals, and suggest that silence may produce more harm than good (Cobban, 2007). Though the mechanism was helpful for certain communities, it did not necessarily produce complete healing, especially where incidents of violence involved neighbours and family members turning on one another during the war. Another limitation was the lack of a gendered focus to provide justice for women and their experiences during the war.
References:
Cobban, H. (2007) Amnesty After Atrocity: Healing Nations After Genocide and War Crimes. Paradigm.
Gibbs, S. (1997). "Postwar Social Reconstruction in Mozambique: Reframing Childrens Experiences of Trauma and Healing." In Rebuilding Societies After Civil War: Critical Roles for International Assistance, edited by Krisha Kumar, 227-238. Lynne Rienner.
Honwana, A. (2001). "Children of War: Understanding War and War Cleansing in Mozambique and Angola." In Civilians in War, edited by Simon Chesterman, 123-142. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 2001.
Honwana, A. (1998). "Sealing the past, facing the future: trauma healing in rural Mozambique." In The Mozambican Peace Process in Perspective. Conciliation Resources, Accord Series No. 3. http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/mozambique/past-future.php
