Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Mchape '95, or, the sudden fame of Billy Goodson Chisupe: healing, social memory and the enigma of the public sphere in post-Banda malawi

1999; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 69; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1161079

1750-0184

Peter Probst,

African cultural and philosophical studies

From February to June 1995 approximately 300,000 people attended an anti-AIDS healing cult in Malawi. The name given to the cult was mchape . The article investigates the so-called ‘ mchape affair’ and compares it with the anti-witchcraft movements which swept Malawi during the 1930s under the very same name. Against the background of this linguistic identity, the article reflects on the politics of healing, social memory and the public sphere as the national space in which the affair assumed its distinctive shape. Focusing on the perception of AIDS as encoding decay, it is argued that the mchape affair can be understood as a negotiation of the limits of power and the meaning of suffering nourished by the moral imagination of post-Banda society.