Reverend’s Funeral Spotlights Clash Between Christianity And African Tradition

HARARE, Zimbabwe — The Rev. Oscar Nyasha Mukahanana, the third-most senior cleric in the United Methodist Church in Zimbabwe, committed suicide on Oct. 20 after audio of a conversation between him an a younger congregant that he was having a sexual relationship with mysteriously leaked onto the church’s WhatsApp group.

Overwhelmed with shame, the 46-year old clergyman checked into a Harare hotel and consumed an alcoholic drink mixed with poison, leaving a suicide note in which he apologized to his wife and the church.

This set in motion a series of events that led to Mukahanana’s “alternative burial” three days later after the church denied him a Christian one, essentially treating him like someone who had renounced his faith. While the UMC conducted the late cleric’s funeral, the event was largely a combination of both Christian and African traditional practices — some of these practices on the treatment given to suicides are in agreement — although for different reasons.

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Mukahanana’s funeral was held at the parsonage in the upmarket Harare suburb of Mandara, where he lived, without the body, which was kept away at a local funeral parlor. In this regard, analysts say both the Christian practice and the African traditional belief are in agreement on the importance of minimizing contact with the remains of someone who has committed suicide.

Locally, in both Christian faith and African traditional practice, such dishonorable treatment of the dead is considered a “dog’s burial.” The church’s practice is informed by the belief that sin has been committed. In the local African tradition, the corpse of a person who commits suicide cannot be taken into a home for fear that the person’s suicidal spirit may afflict others.

The order for the burial of the dead in the Methodist “Book of Worship for Church and Home,” written in 1965, specifies that “funeral services of church members should be held in the sanctuary. The casket should be placed before the altar.”

The coffin is traditionally covered with a white pall, symbolizing the resurrection of Christ. This was not the case with the funeral of the tainted superintendent of the Harare East District of the UMC in Zimbabwe.

The original program included the main church service at a UMC chapel in Cranborne, on the southern outskirts of the Harare central business district. As it turned out, the church also balked at the prospect of having the body on its premises — prompting a last minute switch of venue from its chapel to a funeral parlor chapel.

From the parlor, the body was taken straight for burial at Zororo Memorial Park, a private cemetery on the outskirts of Harare. In African culture, burial at a family plot at one’s rural home is considered more dignified than burial among strangers in an urban cemetery. Considering that the late reverend was a member of the Mukahanana chieftainship of the Mutasa district in the country’s eastern province of Manicaland, the family’s decision to bury him in Harare might as well have been informed by the circumstances surrounding his death.

As a sign that the late preacher was considered dishonored, UMC church members attended his funeral and burial without their uniforms. At the funeral, even his widow, Emma Mukahanana, had already switched back to her maiden surname, Mwadiwa. In her eulogy, she was careful to refer to him as her “friend” — not husband.

***The funeral of the Rev. Oscar Nyasha Mukahanana became controversial after he committed suicide. (UMC photo)***

Church ashamed and disgraced

When Religion Unplugged sought clarification on Mukahanana’s burial and the reasons behind it, the Rev. Taurai Maforo, the communications director handling details to relay to church members regarding the funeral, referred a Religion Unplugged reporter to the Rev. Alan Gurupira, the administrative assistant to Bishop Eben Nhiwatiwa, the UMC leader in Zimbabwe.

Gurupira did not respond to questions via Whatsapp. He also did not respond to follow-up calls.

The Rev. Tsitsi Madziyire, one of the church’s pastors, admitted to fellow church members at the funeral that the incident had left them ashamed and disgraced as a church.

“I know you are angry, you are angry with the bishop, you are angry with the church, you are angry with the pastor, you are angry with Rev Mukahanana. … You are angry. … so tell God about everything that is making you angry,” Madziyire said. “I know you are pointing fingers at each other, but it will not help us. I know we are so ashamed, we are so disgraced as a church, but we should tell it to God in prayer.”

On the church’s social media channels, some followers even wondered if it was proper to use the phrase “rest in peace” in this particular circumstance.

Kenneth Mufuka, a history professor at Lander University in Greenwood, South Carolina, said the UMC’s call to deny a proper burial to someone who commits suicide is modeled after Catholic doctrine that God creates life, so only He can end it. Anything outside of this is considered a sin.

“Catholics do not allow a suicidal body in their church, nor in their cemeteries. Such a body is denied a place in heaven,” he said. “This doctrine, though pronounced among Catholics, is widely held among Protestants as well. Suicide is contrary to divine law of self-love and self-preservation. It is also contrary to divine law in that the suicidal subject usurps God’s power as the sole creator to end life.”

A preacher in the United Methodist Church, Mufuka said the practice of treating a suicide differently is also common in the African tradition.

“Surprisingly, this belief, that suicide portends a curse is also widely held among the Bantu (African people). A suicidal death body, when brought down from its hanging place, usually a tree in the bush, is not brought home into the village, lest the avenging spirit affects the family or clan negatively,” Mufuka said. “The string is cut by a sangoma (traditional healer) after spreading some (herbal) smoke repellents to disperse evil spirits. The body is then buried in a hurry, and no ceremony or prolonged discussions are allowed.”

African traditional beliefs

Saul Gwakuba-Ndlovu, a journalist and historian who died in 2021, conducted research on how suicides are handled in African cultures. He concluded that while there are slight differences from one culture to another, there is general conformity when it comes to keeping the bodies outside of homes, nonperformance of the body-viewing ritual and the prominent role played by traditional medicine men.

He wrote that the practice in Zimbabwe, for example, is not to bring the body of someone who committed suicide into a residential home. Instead, whatever is necessary is done outside the village before burial.

“Body viewing is confined to the closest relatives such as parents, siblings and children,” Gwakuba-Ndlovu wrote. “Some communities do not body-view a suicide whatsoever. The reason for all this is that body viewing is a very sensitive part of bidding farewell to the deceased and that the evil spirit that caused the (person) to take his/her life can migrate to one or more survivors, especially those related by blood to the dead person, during that emotional stage.”

He wrote that there is belief that bringing the body into the home before the burial would give the demon shelter and facilitate this migration to a close relative of the deceased.

Gwakuba-Ndlovu found that in cases of suicide by hanging from a tree, the African tradition demands the tree be completely destroyed — stem, branch and leaves — by having it chopped very close to the ground and burned.

“The ashes are then put in a sack and are emptied in a river,” he wrote. “This is done in the presence and with guidance of a local leader such as a village head or headman or chief. This reason is that if the tree is not destroyed, witches and wizards will strip the tree of it’s bark, burn it and mix the ashes with some other charms and herbs and use the concoction to drive their enemies or victims to commit suicide.”

Throughout African culture, there is a belief that the spirits of the dead are inherited by surviving relatives — contrary to Christian belief where the soul of the dead ends up in either heaven or hell.

“It is a matter of great controversy whether dead people’s spirits can be inherited by some of the survivors or that they go to heaven or hell depending on how the dead person lived on earth, that is to say sinfully or righteously,” Gwakuba-Ndlovu noted in his research.

According to Gwakuba-Ndlovu, some cases of suicide are a result of drug and substance abuse: “For one to consume such drugs, one must be mentally unsound. That mental condition is what Judaic-Christian communities refer to as demonic and it is to keep such a demon out of the village or residential house that the suicide body is supposed to be left and dealt with out there in the bush where it would have been found.”

Prince Mutandi, the secretary for education and research at the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association, said he is convinced the cleric's funeral was handled in an African traditional way.

“What the church did to the reverend is linked to our African traditional religion,” Mutandi said. “In our African traditional religion, when one commits suicide, he or she is not supposed to be given a decent burial because it is believed that the person may also pull others to die the same way.”

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Cyril Zenda is a Christian and an African journalist and writer based in Harare, Zimbabwe.