“The Devil’s Cataract”: Demonising the Tonga people’s spirituality through colonial naming

Abstract

In Zimbabwe, African spirituality is contentious as the majority of Christians generally associate it with evil. However, it is paradoxical that most of these Christians practise African spirituality in their private lives. Most of African Christian doctrines imagine African spirituality negatively, while their members engage with it in various ways. These Christian views on African spirituality are based on the colonial images of African culture as savage. This study engages with Afrocentric reasoning to demonstrate how Tonga spirituality is seen as evil spirituality through the nomenclature “Devil’s Cataract” at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. This qualitative research used purposive and snowball sampling to find a target population for interviews. It further utilised a desk review survey for data collection. Guided by the Afrocentric principle of nommoic creativity, the article establishes that the name given to a part falls is a reflection of the negative and savage images of African spirituality in Christendom. It traces the etymology of the name to the rainmaking and thanksgiving ceremonies performed at the falls which were regarded by the white Judeo-Christian namers as devil worship.