The Importance Of Rainmaking

In saying this, Euro-Centric works on the ‘rainmakers’ or ‘royal leaders’ have all argued for ‘primitive’, ‘backward’ and traditional representations. Evidence from British administrators during the colonial rule never prohibited or demonized rainmaking. As Sanders comments “the question of rainmaking is one which must be approached with the greatest caution”. This is because the ‘traditional’ rainmaking and reign making was linked with ‘modernity’. For there to exist witchcraft, they had to bring rain. By turning these rainmakers into rulers, then at least certain traditions could exist. This case study reflects at a political level, an example of the ways in which the ‘traditional’ were negotiated by ‘modern’ colonial powers, and can be seen as going against the typical colonialist inferiority/superiority complexes associated with the perceived unequal relations of power. Good
Furthermore, given the evolutionary nature of witchcraft, and the manner in which some witches were imposed in some areas by colonial rulers in nations such as Botswana and Namibia, the conviction by a number of colonial authors, such as levy & Fallers() was that the practice would become outdated, discarded and replaced by modern institutions of governance. “Indigenous structures and practices were bound to wither away” (Levy).
However, from a postcolonial frame, these predictions have never materialized in a post-colonial world. Its adaptability to "trimming its sails to different political winds, without either capitulating or meeting them head on" (Pinkney) has accounted for its ability to survive in various unstable political terrains, not least the periods of decline following independence, and periods when local government structures had served...

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...litics in a postcolonial setting are obvious, as politics is generally supposed to be concerned with the distribution of power in society, religious texts are at least implicitly political in nature”. Religious discourse therefore have implications for states which, as mentioned previously, show signs of political fragility, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the modern ‘state’ hardly functions at all.
This is encapsulated by Ellis & Haar () who state “such discourses are not devoid of political significance in an African context, where there are deeply rooted concepts of power which tend to merge the religious and the political, and that such movements acquire a specific public role when the institutions of state have rotted away”. Thus, it would be more accurate to refer to witchcraft, or the revival of religion in the occupation of political space.