Rupiah should repent over sangoma activities, says pastor

Rupiah should repent over sangoma activities, says pastor
Written by Mwala Kalaluka
Tuesday, March 31, 2009 4:46:28 PM

PRESIDENT Rupiah Banda should wear sack-cloth, fast and repent if the abominable acts by South African sangomas [traditional healers] in Zambia are to be cleansed, a Pentecostal pastor has said.

Commenting on the healing and cleansing services that were held by the sangomas, under the auspices of the Freedom Park Trust, at graves of deceased freedom fighters, Power Life Church pastor Reverend Harrison Kalumba said it was against God's commandments to call upon the dead.

"The South African government brought the sangomas so that they can transfer the spirits of these dead African National Congress freedom fighters from Zambia to South Africa," pastor Kalumba said. "What has taken place is an abomination as far as the word of God is concerned. It has defiled the nation. Government should take responsibility, more especially our head of state should wear the sack-cloth and repent."

Pastor Kalumba said with such ‘underworld’ activities, the government could fail to run or govern the country.

"Because they will not have the wisdom of God. They will think they are thinking but they are not, because they are spiritually blind," he said.

Pastor Kalumba said it was surprising that while the late president Levy Mwanawasa had not allowed the sangomas to enter the country during similar previous exercises, President Banda had tolerated them.

"There is a lot that happens in the underworld," he said. "Last year, they tried to bring them but the church rose."

Pastor Kalumba said Zambians were having difficulties to generate wealth from the resources the country had been endowed with due to such things.

"Babies were born in that night and yet there was some abomination that was going in the land," he said. "The old politicians will die but the consequences will remain with those innocent children."

When reminded that a South African church leader, Reverend Joseph Maphatsoe had explained that there was nothing strange about the healing and cleansing service as the Bible supported it, Pastor Kalumba disagreed.

Pastor Kalumba said the particular verse that Rev Maphatsoe talked about carrying the bones of the dead Israelites into the Promised Land but it never talks about calling on the dead.

Last week, the sangomas from South Africa conducted healing and cleansing services to carry the spirits of the freedom fighters that died and were buried in Zambia back to their country.