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Mchape '95, or, the sudden fame of Billy Goodson Chisupe: healing, social memory and the enigma of the public sphere in post-Banda malawi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Peter Probst
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Extract

From February to June 1995 approximately 300,000 people attended an anti-AIDS healing cult in Malawi. The name given to the cult was mchape. The article investigates the so-called ‘mchape affair’ and compares it with the anti-witchcraft movements which swept Malawi during the 1930s under the very same name. Against the background of this linguistic identity, the article reflects on the politics of healing, social memory and the public sphere as the national space in which the affair assumed its distinctive shape. Focusing on the perception of AIDS as encoding decay, it is argued that the mchape affair can be understood as a negotiation of the limits of power and the meaning of suffering nourished by the moral imagination of post-Banda society.

Résumé

De février à juin 1995, environ 300.000 personnes ont participé à des manifestations cultuelles de guérison anti-SIDA au Malawi. Ce culte porte le nom de mchape. Cet article se penche sur ce que Ton a appelé “Paffaire mchape” et la compare aux mouvements anti-sorcellerie du même nom qui se sont répandus dans tout le Malawi dans les années 30. Sur ce fond d'identité linguistique, l'article examine la politique de guérison, la mémoire sociale et le milieu public en tant qu'espace national dans lequel cette affaire a pris sa forme distinctive. En se concentrant sur la perception du SIDA en tant qu'incarnation de la déchéance, l'article suggère qu'il est possible d'interpréter l'affaire mchape comme une négotiation des limites du pouvoir et comme le sens de la souffrance nourrie par l'imagination morale de la société post-Banda.

Type
Suffering and the seld in southern Malawi
Information
Africa , Volume 69 , Issue 1 , January 1999 , pp. 108 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1999

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