Bøger udgivet af Kachere Series

The Muslim Association of Malawi, the GTZ Combating Gender Based Violence Project, the Mangochi Network against Gender Based Violence, and the GTZ consultancy unit "Islam and Technical Cooperation in Africa" cooperated to produce this study. It is based on nine public dialogues in Mangochi during 2005. A study at the start of the project found that violence in all its forms - physical or verbal - is regarded within Malawi as an acceptable method of resolving conflict whether within the family, or in hospitals, prisons, schools and between political parties. The objective was to establish an environment where participations would be able to interpret their own rule system towards reaching consensus with the other groups. The contributions are left to speak for themselves, rather than being evaluated.

In Christian Europe, witchcraft beliefs took over 1700 years to recede, and occult practice is still in vogue in certain circles. In Africa, and in Malawi in particular, supernatural beliefs continue to be widespread. Mystery or Magic considers what lies beneath such beliefs: e.g. the need to deal with loss, suffering and death. It then presents Christian responses to these conditions and illustrations from biblical teachings. Some subjects dealt with in detail include: Christianity in Aprtheid South Africa and Malawi today; faith and falsehood in the Old Testament; Hebrew perspectives on sickness, suffering and dealth; Christian affirmations; and boundaries of belief. The author is a theologian, and missionary priest. He is Director of Research at the ecumenical Zomba Theological College, Malawi.

It has now been twenty years since the Executive Commitee of the World Council of Churches (WCC) meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, called upon churches worldwide to urgently address the issue of HIV/AIDS. The call arose out of a consultation on the theme 'HIV/AIDS and the Church as a Healing Community'. This book is written with a view to providing culturally relevant theological reflection on the issue of HIV/AIDS and to act as a resource in the combat of HIV/AIDS particularly in bringing about meaningful behaviour change.

"An old dog (galu wamkota) does not dig for nothing", so the proverb says. The two authors, one from America (with 45 years in Zambia); the other from Zambia, explore the encounter of the Christian faith with African Traditional Religion, treating concept(s) of God, the world of the spirits, of powers and witchcraft, and then how the Bible can be translated into the language of Zambia and Malawi taking into account both changes in concepts of translation and in society

The poetry in this collection spans thirty years of writing, a period highlighted by great socio-political change in Malawi. Zondiwe Mbano poems have been published in The Fate of Vultures: New Poetry from Africa (BBC award winning poetry), Haunting Wind: New Poetry from Malawi, and in Operations and Tears. His short stories have appeared in The Unsung Song: An Anthology of Malawian Writing in English, and in WASI Magazine.

The thesis of this study is that a working Christian theology is constructed under the spirits' guidance from pre-Christian materials'. These materials or vessels are epitomised by 'pots' which in Africa seem to be ubiquitous in times of happiness or sorrow, in peace or war, at work or leisure, or wherever two or three meet for a purpose. Clearly the 'African Pots' here represent the African World View, traditions, anthropology, and indeed African epistemology which according to these authors, have to form the substratum of the faith and life of the Christians in Africa.

Joseph Booth penned his appeal in 1897 in protest of the racist stereotpying of the Africans by the colonisers; and witnessing the unjust and inhumane exploitation of the native peoples, for the sole benefit of the Europeans. He drew his ideas from the social and political messages he inferred from the Gospel and his appeal was published only thirteen years after European leaders met in Berlin to divide up the African continent. This now seminal text was republished in its centenary year and has continual relevance to debates about race and development in Africa. It is edited to include explanations of local and contemporary political references, biblical references and the sources of the author's citations.

Worldwide, societies have instituted rites of passage to mark transition, and African societies has given much prominence to them. Important as transition rites are, they are everywhere under the pressure of change. Even before colonial times the Chagga reduced the boys' initiation from three months to one; and the Zaramo in Tanzania who in the 1930s secluded their girls from the onset of menstruation to marriage, reduced the seclusion to one week. Both the Chagga and the Zaramo made the changes as a group and without major outside influences. In other societies specific outside influences are strong, as among the Chewa in Central Malawi where the Presbyterian Nkhoma Mission around 1940 forbade the traditional chinamwali for its members and replaced it by a Christian chilangizo with some success. There appears to have been much less success on the Baptist side which attempted a similar approach in the 1960s. This book investigates that phenomenon: what factors caused the Baptist approach to fail, give initiation for girls was as important; what is the traditional initiation which any new approach would have to replace; and how could a chinamwali be framed for Chewa girls that is equally Christian and culturally relevant?

This book sets out, translates into English and interprets the key documents and texts of the African Ancestors Religion. It contextualises the movement within Malawi's new religious movements and conflicts between tradition and modernisation. It argues that both the negative and positive aspects of the teaching reflect an indigenous, carefully considered strategy to mobilise the masses for a return to traditional practices of worship, and to challenge the foreign ideologies of Christianity, which its follows consider are undermining the religious heritage of Africans.

Missionary history in Africa asserts that political history on the continent cannot be understood without an in depth understanding of the workings of the missions: missionary activities and ideologies were central to political consciousness. The Anglican Church was involved in society, education, health and politics right from its first foray into Malawi. This study considers the nature of the involvement of that Church in society, and how it engaged with the State from its genesis in the colonial period through the post-independence period to the new post-Banda political dispensation in 1994. It illustrates how the Church was involved on both sides of the independence struggle; and interrogates why it fell conspicuously silent thereafter.

Wisdom of the Yawo People is a collection of traditional proverbs and stories from the Yawo people of South Eastern Africa. The literature contains deep wisdom rooted in African soil, which will be applicable to people everywhere. The proverbs are told in both the Yawo language and English and reveal the end result of greed, laziness and pride. They also promote the value of welcoming strangers, belonging and being respectful. Each proverb and story is accompanied by a short interpretation, and illustration.

Many scholars have tended to take African Christianity as a given, and study its social, political, economic or ecological implications, without coming to terms with the nature and character of African Christian faith A knowledge of how faith is understood at the popular level and how it functions in personal, domestic, and communal life is essential to this task. In this context a significant contemporary Christian movement which has received little attention is studied in depth - revival meetings or crusades which are a regular and popular feature of urban life in Malawi.

The early growth of Christianity in northern Malawi has often been told as a predominantly missionary story. In reality it came about through the varied interactions of local peoples, and Scottish and Xhosa missionaries (of whom the most famous was William Koyi). In these selected essays, Jack Thompson concentrates mainly on how the Ngoni people interacted with both Scottish and Xhosa missionaries in the period between 1875 and 1914. During these years, the Ngoni were struggling for religious, cultural and political survival, and all these elements are dealt with in these essays.

This book argues that the Baptist religious denomination underscores the empowerment of women and the expansion of their cultural sphere in Malawi. The study provides the theological background, and gives the history of Baptist women in the south of the country for the period 1961-2001. Women, baptism and marriage is a further subject of study. The author is a theologian, specialising in gender issues.

Chikanga was one of Malawi's most powerful and successful healers who brought concepts and methods from indigenous tradition to his own Christian culture. During the fifties and sixties people having heard he had the power of divination to free them from the bondage of witchcraft and other evil practices, would make pilgrimages to him from the whole of eastern and southern Africa. His methods were, and are, popular and common, though always controversially opposed by the institutional Christian church. This book documents eye-witness accounts of pilgrims, and Chikanga's sessions and techniques, and includes interviews with his acquaintances. It describes his activities in the political context, which forced him to go into exile for seventeen years, and his final period in Malawi.

This volume brings together extracts from the explorers' diaries accompanied by a narrative situating the texts in geographical, historical and socio- political context. They complement the publication of some of McEwan's earlier diaries, and are arguably the most important, dealing with the last portion of William McEwan's life - his arrival in Malawi, his meeting with Swahili slave traders, and his experiments with photography. Finally, the writings document McEwan's death as told by his companion Donald Munro.

Malawi has received significant financial aid from external donors over the past fours decades, but for one reason or another, this has not translated into meaningful development. This author argues that unless the Malawian people begin to address the internal sources of the problems, and the 'interior poverty' of the people, then the situation will worsen. He develops his thesis, explaining how he believes that transformation must happen at the level of the consciousness of individuals; and states that a majority must commit to taking a positive stance in working towards this end.