African spirituality was fundamental to those who sow victory, for such many kings and queens rose to heroes...

African spirituality was fundamental to those who sow victory, for such many kings and queens rose to heroes.....

African Prophetess Anna Makgetha Mantsopa

MANTSOPA A SEER AND A WAR DOCTOR

Before the war of 1865-1866 with the Free State, Mantsopa and other diviners confidently prophesied victory, but this was not realised. Mantsopa’s directives were supposedly ignored. The anguish of the Sotho, already suffering from the scorched earth policy instituted by the Free State, was exacerbated by the loss of two-thirds of their best arable land in the peace treaty that followed, and Moshoeshoe now sought to come under British rule. Initially this was refused, but continuing conflict finally led to annexation by the British in 1868 and the establishment of ‘Basutoland’ as a Crown Colony. The border with the Orange Free State was finally fixed along the Caledon River, as in present-day Lesotho, giving the Boers the conquered territory’ to the west. Mantsopa and fellow Sotho residents were threatened with expulsion.

In 1852 Mantsopa gave a detailed prediction of Sotho victory against the British at the Battle of Berea, and again in 1853 foretold triumph over their old enemies, the Tlokoa, led by Sekonyela, in the north of the kingdom. Two years later Mantsopa correctly prophesied an extended period of peace.

At this stage Mantsopa became a transitional figure. While continuing to function according to past traditions, she also sought to incorporate the spiritual power of the incoming culture, but on the Sotho’s own terms. For her, the Hodimo of Sotho belief was supplemented by an intercessory divinity, the ‘He, Him’ of her prophecy, who became identified with the God of the missionaries. Also, rather than using the customary divining bones, she was inspired by visions (Thompson 1975:207). Joseph Orpen, sometime adviser to Moshoeshoe, notes that in 1862 Mantsopa augmented her considerable authority by claiming to have been to heaven to see God’. She and a blind boy called Katsi now professed to preach the God of the missionaries’, except that, whereas the missionaries received inspiration second-hand from a book, they were directly inspired and could identify the missionaries’ mistakes.

The withdrawal of the French Protestants to Lesotho coincided with the coming of the Anglican missionaries to Modderpoort, and Mantsopa joined the new church. But her relationship with the spirit world was ‘in her blood’, and she continued as a rainmaker. She was apparently stopped from practising ‘black magic’ (medicines for incisions, etc), but she still used herbs. Because her spiritual gifts were used to help people, and not to make herself great’, her reputation grew and people came from afar to consult her. Professor Gabriel Setiloane describes Mantsopa’s rainmaking practices as they were experienced by his maternal grandmother as a child: Little girls of pre-puberty age used to be sent to go and beg her for rain. She would fill their pots with water from a creek nearby, and send them home with an injunction not to look behind them, but to hurry to cross the Caledon to the side on which their home was because then rain would be following hard on their footsteps’, and, if they tarried, the river would fill up and be uncrossable. Sure enough, as they arrived at the river the first drops of heavy rain would begin to fall.

SOME OF HER DOCUMENTED PROPHECIES

Over the years, Mantsopa’s prophetic powers acquired mythic proportions extending over space and time. She is credited with foretelling the rinderpest epidemic after Union, and World War I, warning Africans against involvement. The sinking of the Nende with the huge loss of African life is attributed to their disregard of this warning, as was an increase in ritual murders in Lesotho at the time. Her other prophecies included the coming of the motor car (people would travel sitting down), and the aeroplane (birds would fly between the earth and the sky). As with all prestige myths, there is an ongoing need to increase the value of the symbol so that it can function more powerfully to achieve its goal. The growth of the Mantsopa tradition not only added to her prestige as a prophet, but also released a dynamic which had a spiralling effect on her symbolic importance. Furthermore, the greater the distance from the historical reality of Mantsopa, and the consequent fading of her symbolic importance in her original context, the more her importance to later generations came to be represented in a thaumaturgical manner. This the mission church found increasingly difficult to understand and accept. There was an unbridgeable gap between different universes of power.

MANTSOPA’S SPRING WATER

Mantsopa fled and in a time of loneliness and sorrow found refuge in the valley of Modderpoort.

It was here, in this valley that she was to discover a spring of fresh water. The ancestors told her that this spring was sacred; she later came to believe that the water of this sacred spring held healing qualities.

To this day Pilgrims from all over Southern Africa, travel many miles to Modderpoort Mission to pay respects to the memory of their prophetess and to collect water from the sacred spring.

HER DEATH

Mantsopa died on 11 November 1906. She was then over a hundred years old, and she was buried in the mission cemetery at Modderpoort. Her funeral attracted large numbers from near and far.

By African Thoughts