How Christianity killed rainmakers
Thalefang Charles | Friday November 22, 2013 17:24
One notable rainmaker was Kgosi Sechele I of Bakwena. So on October 1, 1848 Kgosi Sechele I of Bakwena, after parting ways with his ‘superfluous’ wives, was baptised by the missionary David Livingstone. It was a sad day in Kweneng. “Many of the spectators were in tears of sorrow for the loss of their rain-maker or of grief at seeing some of the ties of relationship to him broken,” writes Livingstone in his Missionary Travels.
As fate would have it, the people’s sorrows were vindicated as unforgiving drought ensued following the famous (or rather infamous, depending on whose side you viewed it) Sechele’s conversion into Christianity. Rain would not fall and Sechele refused people requests for him to ‘charm the clouds’ and end the dry spell. Many people believed that Livingstone had bound Sechele with some magic curse. “I received deputations, in the evenings, of the old counsellors, entreating me to allow him [Sechele] to make only a few showers,” writes Livingstone. He said people pleaded with him saying the corn will die if he refuses and they will scatter. Livingstone records one of the pleas; “Only let him make rain this once, and we shall all, men, women, and children, come to the school, and sing and pray as long as you please.” This was the real test, not only on Livingstone’s celebrity convert but also on the reputation of Christianity among Africans who had their own beliefs and faiths. Livingstone had earlier noted; “The belief and gift of ‘rain making’ is one of the most deeply-rooted articles of faith in this country”
In the height of drought in November 1848 Livingstone wrote to Arthur Tidman, secretary of London Missionary Society capturing the desperate conditions they were living in at Kolobeng. He wrote, “Long for rains. Everything languishes during the intense heat; and successive droughts having only occurred since the gospel came to the Bakwains, I fear the effect will be detrimental.” The drought was so bad that it even tested the faith of the Scottish missionary as evident in these words from one of the letters recovered from his Kolobeng house after the Boers vandalised it. “There is abundance of rain all around us. Has Satan power over the course of the winds and clouds? . . . O Devil! Prince of the power of the air, art thou hindering us?” prayed Livingstone.
Livingstone had advised the Bakwena that the best way to live in the desert was to find an area with water and start irrigation of crops. He thus led them to settle at Kolobeng where he built a garden and Botswana’s very first school and church. During drought water dried at Kolobeng and white-man’s new way of life initiative was doomed to fail. People resorted to old ways of asking rainmakers to charm the clouds. Livingstone writes, “The natives, finding it irksome to sit and wait helplessly until God gives them rain from heaven, entertain the more comfortable idea that they can help themselves by a variety of preparations.”
Interestingly Livingstone also attempted to shed light on the workings and trail of thought of rainmakers in his journal. He presented a dialogue of a medical doctor and rainmaker arguing over their powers. Although Livingstone wanted to show the lunacy of natives’ beliefs of rainmaking, most historians agree that the rainmaker won the argument. Here is an excerpt from the exchange;
Medical Doctor: So you believe that you can command the clouds? I think it can only be done by God.
Rainmaker: We both believe the very same thing. It is God that makes the rain, but I pray to him by means of these medicines and the rain coming, of course it is then mine. It was I who made it for the Bakwains for many years, when they were at Shokuane, through my wisdom, too, their women, became fat and shining. Ask them, they will tell you the same as I do.
Medical Doctor: But we are distinctly told in the words of our Savior that we can pray to God acceptably in his name alone, and not by means of medicines.
Rainmaker: When we first opened our eyes, we found our forefathers making rain, and we follow in their footsteps. You, who send to Kuruman for corn, and irrigate your garden, may do without rain, we cannot manage that way.
Medical Doctor: I quite agree with you as to the value of the rain; but you cannot charm the clouds by medicines. You wait till you see the clouds come, then you use your medicines, and take the credit which belongs to God only.
Rainmaker: I use my medicines and you employ yours, we are both doctors, and doctors are not deceivers. You give a patient medicine. Sometimes God is pleased to heal him by means of your medicine, sometimes not – he dies. When he is cured, you take credit of what God does. I do the same. Sometimes God grants us rain, sometimes not. When he does, we take credit of the charm. When a patient dies, you don’t give up trust in your medicine, neither do I when rain fails. If you wish me to leave off my medicines, why continue your own?
As the agitation continued about Livingstone’s influence on Sechele’s reluctance to “make rain”, despite the rain strangely skipping Bakwena’s land and raining elsewhere, the missionary, feeling somehow remorseful, noted in his journals that it was “distressing to be hard-hearted” to Bakwena by urging Sechele to act according to the words of the Bible. He wished Sechele to act according to his own ideas of what was right. So he gave him the liberty to do what he had to do. But Kgosi Sechele was unmoved as he told his Scottish baptiser, “You will never see me at that work [rain-making] again.” Sechele was born again and the once celebrated moroka of Bakwena was retired.