Christian Shrines in Ancestral Lands. © Olga Sicilia, 2019

​Masvingo eJerusalem: A shrine of the Johanne Masowe Apostolic Church (of the Friday Apostolic branch) built in the 1990s. Adherents of this African independent church do not acknowledge the written authority of the Bible but that of the word of God through the Holy Spirit with whom they directly communicate. Apostolics experience the divine at assemblies in open air spaces and shrines which in the Dande locate in the historically attributed territories of lineage ancestors (mhondoro). The present shrine stretches about 500 m2 over the landscape within the area belonging to the mhondoro Nyamupahuni of the Nyamapfeka house.

​In blue skirt, a spirit medium of Chizombi (territorial ancestor of the Nyamapfeka house) dances at a mhondoro shrine in the Dande. Territorial shrines as well as mediums' burial places and other ecologically significant spots are sites of memory and ritual within the sacred ancestral landscapes. As historical ‘owners’ of the lands, mhondoro ancestors through their spirit mediums, groups of ritual support, and adherents continue challenging the chronological periodization of African history in precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial stages. So-called precolonial ancestors show agency at the present time in sacred landscapes of the Zambezi Valley. 

Territorial Shrines. © Olga Sicilia, 2005

Dr Olga Sicilia is an anthropologist based at the University of Vienna. Her research interests focus on ritual, memory work, phenomenological perspectives on spirit mediumship and the politics of ancestors in Northern Zimbabwe, and materiality and death. She is currently working on a prospective ethnographic monograph.