Lenshina: An enduring legacy, a new generation

Alice Lenshina.

Alice Lenshina built one of the biggest church buildings in 1956, and attracted thousands of worshippers every week.

 

A young girl recites scriptures at a church in Ndola. It is one of the most vibrant congregations in the country.

A shrines stands on the spot where Lenshina is said to have met God, and where she was handed instructions and powers as a prophetess. In the foreground, objects surrendered by witches and wizards to Lenshina.

The church has a few thousand followers.

A woman drums to call people for prayers.

A worshipper during Sunday service in Chinsali.

JACK ZIMBA

IT IS 10:00 hours in Kasomo village in Chinsali District, and an elderly woman is repeatedly beating a big drum with a stick. It is a call to prayer.

It is the same drum that was used to call people to prayer when Alice Lenshina, a powerful self-proclaimed prophetess and leader of the Lumpa Church, walked these grounds over five decades ago.

As the sound of the drum reverberates across the treed landscape, one by one, the worshipers emerge from their thatched mud houses and gather under young trees.

These are faithful remnants of the banned Lumpa Church. The Church is now called New Jerusalem.

The women, dressed in white, and blue gowns, sit on reed mats while the men sit on logs or wooden stools brought from their homes to the prayer grounds.

A boisterous choir, mostly made up of teenage girls and boys clad in green gowns, sings to uplift the small congregation.

Back when the Lumpa church was at its peak, thousands of people would have gathered to listen to the prophetess. Today, however, only 44 souls have gathered. 

But the leaders don’t look any way discouraged by the diminishing glory of the church, or its dismal numbers. And the preacher preaches with zeal, proclaiming the same messages that Lenshina proclaimed decades ago.

The preaching, which is mainly a message against sin, is punctuated by song and drumming from the choir.

A few metres from where the congregants are meeting is the foundation of the church that Lenshina built back in 1957.

The Kamutola Cathedral was a grand piece of masonry. One newspaper in Southern Rhodesia put the value of the building at two million pounds in 1964.

It is recorded that at one time, back in the late 1950s, about 1,000 people would arrive in this settlement every week to come and listen to Lenshina.

According to Mwansenga Ng’andu, who is one of the deacons in the church, there are now about 350 people registered as members of the New Jerusalem Church in Chinsali. That is just one percent of the total number of people who belonged to the Lumpa Church in district back in the late 1950s. At its peak, the Lumpa Church had about 100,000 members across the country.

Today, the congregation is joyful because it has received new members – a woman and her daughter.

For Mwansenga, the fact that Lenshina’s church is still alive today, is enough evidence that she was sent of God.

“If she was not from God, this church would not be here today,” she tells me.

She believes people did not fully understand Lenshina.

“We want to tell the world the truth about the history of Lenshina and the Lumpa Church, and we will shame the devil,” she says.

She adds: “I think if they knew who she was, they wouldn’t have done the things that they did to her. The killings would not have happened.”

During the military crackdown of the Lumpa Church in 1964, about 700 of its members are recorded to have been killed.

After worship, we walk down to the Itempili, about 300 metres from where the old church stood, well-hidden from view by a dense young forest. It is strictly forbidden to cut trees in the vicinity of the shrine.

The Itempili is the place where Lenshina is said to have met God, and where, like Moses in the Bible, she received instructions. The place is now a shrine highly revered by her followers.

When we reach the entrance to the hallowed grounds, Mwansenga, her husband, and Cecilia Mumba, an elderly deaconess from the church, who also acts as guardian of the grounds, remove their shoes, mutter prayers before lifting the barrier and stepping in.

There is a second barrier before we reach a small white cubical with metal roofing.

The small structure marks the spot where Lenshina is said to have met God in 1953. 

The three leaders make several bows, their backs against the cubicle while muttering prayers, and raising their arms in worship.

Only the overseer, in this case, Leshina’s daughter, Jennifer Bwalya, is allowed to enter the cubicle.

“We do not worship to this alter, we just respect it because it is where God met Lenshina. It is just a remembrance,” explains Mwansenga.

She adds: “It is a holy place. It is like where Moses saw the burning bush, and a voice called out ‘Moses, Moses, Moses, take off your shoes, for where you stand is holy ground.’”

Once in a while, Mwansenga herself comes here for special prayers.

She says all her prayers get answered when she prays at this site.

“I feel my spirit liberated whenever I come here,” says Cecilia.

“I truly believe that Lenshina received the spirit to bring deliverance to all of us,” she says.

Within the grounds of the hallowed grounds is an altar-like structure with a several broken vessels, some made of glass or earth.

These are the amulets that witches and wizards brought to Lenshina as a way of surrender at the height of her campaign back in the 1950s.

In fact, it is said that some witches brought the mummified bodies of infants they had killed to the prophetess.

Lenshina’s followers have kept this as evidence of her power over witchcraft.

But Lenshina’s church today is a shadow of its past glory.

Sibefwe Mumba, who is the national general secretary of the church, says membership of the church is now around 25,000, concentrated along the line of rail.

There are 48 branches of the New Jerusalem Church across the country, and there are still four churches in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“The numbers are stagnant because of how we have been branded by society, which makes recruitment very hard,” says Sibefwe.

He says most of the new membership is through marriage.

The church is now planning on holding crusades to get more membership.

But he says it has been difficult to shake off the tag of a sect involved in strange acts.

Lenshina followers were accused of drinking urine and smearing their bodies with faeces to protect themselves from bullets when the colonial government was trying to stop the movement.

Today, the members scoff at the ridiculousness of the government propaganda against their church.

“That was just politics. Even a mad person cannot do those things, so how can normal people like us do such a thing?” says Justine Bwalya, who is the husband of Lenshina’s daughter, Jennifer.

“They just wanted to insult us. Remember we were fighting with the government and they had the power to get evidence if we were doing those things. They had cameras,” he says.

Lenshina followers were also accused of flying when faced with danger.

“When we were in prison at Mumbwa prison with Lenshina, intelligence officers asked us how we used to fly like birds, and I told them I had no idea about flying,” says Justine.

He says all Lenshina told them was to shout “halleluiah!” when the soldiers came shooting their guns.

“It was all God’s power,” he says.

Like Lenshina, Justine was never convicted or sentenced by the courts, but he spent eight years in prison.

Joseph Kampampa is the publicity secretary for the church.

He says it is only government that can help cleanse the name of the Lumpa Church.

“There is a hand missing in shaking off the tag. On our side we have tried our level best, but there is government hand which has to help us shake it off,” he says.

He says a formal apology from government will help the church shake off the negative tag.

He says the members of the Lumpa Church were killed for nothing else but for belonging to a Christian church.

“But this is not a strange thing, it happened to the Israelites,” he says.

“Unfortunately some of our brothers and sisters were eaten up by crocodiles as they were trying to cross rivers, and for these there will never be a grave for them, but we must remember them. They died not because they did anything wrong, but for simply being Christians,” he says.

Josheph was only 12 when he and his parents returned from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where about 19,000 Lumpa Church members had gone to seek refuge.

“We know it is a bitter pill to swallow, but on moral principle, one must come out and say this was a mistake. For a long time our people have lived like refugees in their own country or like Bedouins moving from one place to another. Most of our elders have lived in more than 10 places since independence. We have never enjoyed independence,” says Sibefwe.

But many of the members also speak of forgiveness.

“We have forgiven them. We can’t continue living in the past. We are now living in a new world with a new generation. We have forgiven everybody, we don’t even remember what happened in the past,” says Mwansenga.

Many of Lenshina’s followers also believe the killings of 1964 was persecution that was allowed by God, and that the prophetess herself foretold.

Joseph also thinks the lack of education has affected the Lumpa followers.

He says because majority of the members lived like pilgrims, they never got educated.

“Majority of our leaders are missing basic education,” he says.

Sibefwe says the church now plans to build an education centre at Kapiri in Central Province to educate its members.

Jennifer Bwalya, Lenshina’s third-born child, and the current overseer of the New Jerusalem Church wants the church’s original name to be restored.

She says restoring the name can help restore the church’s former glory.

“We want the name to be restored because it is the foundation of the church,” she says.

Ms Bwalya was a little girl when her mother started her evangelistic campaign, but she remembers being chased away from school because the villagers didn’t want children of the Lumpa members to attend school with their children.

“We ran back to the village through the bush. It was only God, they could have killed me,” she recalls.

Jennifer also wants the Kamutola Temple rebuild, but she does not know how.

“We will rebuild that church by the grace of God. I believe that very much,” says Mwansenga.

She never worshiped in the church, herself. She was born after the demolition of the church.

“I never saw that building standing,” she says.

The church is also now repossessing some properties around the Copperbelt that were occupied by other churches when they fled.

At Baluba, in Kitwe, I attend a thriving congregation of the New Jerusalem Church.

About 200 members gather at the church every Sunday. Half of the congregation’s adult membership makes up the choir which sings with a lot of energy.

The preacher makes several references to Lenshina during his sermon, but nothing to suggest she is immortal or a deity.

The church is also comprised of many children who attend the Sunday school.

Today the children are reciting scriptures they have memorized. They all go over the scriptures without making mistakes to the delight of the adult congregants. 

Matilda Mulenga is a third-generation member follower of Lenshina, and she is now grooming her children and grandchildren in the church.

“I was born in this church, and I was baptized in this church. And now I have my daughter and granddaughter,” says Matilda.

Ends