Women, witches and demons! Interrogating the feminisation of demoniacs among Pentecostal-Christian communities in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Since the Christian church came to Zimbabwe, women have been its backbone. Today, even more than before, women are the ones
who keep the church spiritually and numerically alive. Paradoxically, women are treated as objects of a male-created, monitored and imposed power structure and theology. Power seems to be located within a multidimensional system of oppression in which people can be oppressors and the oppressed simultaneously. Miracles involving exorcisms of demons continue to play an important role in defining sainthood, while possession itself has become increasingly the experience of women. With particular reference to selected Pentecostal churches in Zimbabwe, the study explores the nexus between the gendered African traditional beliefs on the status of women in society and the spiritual devaluation of women and their decimation as witches or as keepers of demons in Christian churches.