Ghosts of Kanungu

Fertility, Secrecy & Exchange in the Great Lakes of East Africa
Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-1-84701-072-8
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 233 mm, Gewicht: 404 g

Reihe: African Anthropology

Shortlisted for the Herskovits Award, this book throws light on secrecy and violence in Uganda, Rwanda and the Great Lakes area of East Africa.

On 17 March 2000 several hundred members of a charismatic Christian sect, the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (MRTC), burnt to death in the group's headquarters in the Southwest Ugandan village of Kanungu. Days later the Ugandan police discovered a series of mass graves containing over 400 bodies on various other properties belonging to the sect. Was this mass suicide or mass murder?
Based on eight years of historical andethnographic research, Ghosts of Kanungu provides a comprehensive and scholarly account of the MRTC and of the events leading up to the inferno. It argues that none of these events can be understood without reference to abroader social history of Southwestern Uganda during the twentieth century, in which anti-colonial movements, Catholic White Fathers missionaries, colonial relocation schemes, the breakdown of the Ugandan state, post-war reconstruction, the onset of HIV/AIDS, and the transformation of the regional Nyabingi fertility cult into a Marian church with worldwide connections, all played their part.

RICHARD VOKES is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia

Uganda: Fountain Publishers (PB)

Autoren/Hrsg.

Vokes, Richard

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Afrikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Prologue: The End as a Beginning
Introduction
On Fertility & Misfortune
The Many Lives of the Nyabingi Spirit
Genesis: Building the Network
Numbers: Religion in the Time of AIDS
Chronicles: The History of an African-Initiated Church
Revelation: The Last Days of the MRTC
Epilogue
Appendix: Marian Literature Used by the MRTC

Über Autor(innen)

RICHARD VOKES is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia

Uganda: Fountain Publishers (PB)