What if the next Messiah was a black woman

Scholastique Mukasonga, Renaudot prize in 2012 with Our Lady of the Nilea Rwandan who lives in Normandy, mixes in her new novel, Sister Deborahfrom historical facts to the power of fiction and storytelling.

We are in the 1930s in Rwanda, then Ruanda-Urundi, under Belgian administration. A black American prophetess and thaumaturge has come as a missionary and in her trance, she announces the coming of a new messiah, who will arrive in Rwanda and will be a black woman. She also acquired, by a dream she says, the magic cane of an older prophetess, Nyabikenke, and which is the tangible sign of her power. The faithful, mainly women, come in large numbers to see her, listen to her and touch her cane.

trance

Scholastique Mukasonga then tells the story of this woman, a feminist before her time, Joan of Arc from the South, who promises to give a thousand years of liberation to women: “a thousand years of happiness for women after a thousand years of misfortune.”

It returns to its beginnings in the United States in the blossoming of these various Churches which went so far as to preach the return of black Americans to their land of origin in Africa. Sister Deborah was noted for her spectacular trances, during which she spoke in unknown languages, which her mentor, Father Marcus, interpreted as voices coming directly from the Holy Spirit.

Trance is a recurring phenomenon in the history of religions. We know, on the side of the Catholic Church, the famous case of the “possessed of Loudun” in 1632, among the Ursuline nuns headed by Mother Jeanne des Anges.

In Scholastique Mukasonga’s novel, we see how the political authorities, the local chiefdoms, but also the religious authorities (the fatherthat is to say the white fathers) try to counter these churches of the evangelical revival which multiplied in the Thirties in Uganda, in Kenya and in Rwanda.

Pursued, oppressed, Sister Deborah finds herself in Nairobi under another name, that of Mama Nganga, the “witchdoctor” (the witch doctor). But there too, she is the target of various authorities and ends up burned alive like Joan of Arc, like a witch. Sister Deborah was a political danger, even though she could only express herself through religion, politics being forbidden to her then.

New Virgin

Her spirit survived, however, via a sickly young girl, Ikirezi, whom she had once healed by laying her hands on him. This has become Miss Jewels and succeeds in brilliant university studies. It was she who tracked down Sister Deborah in Nairobi. Sister Deborah had chosen Ikirezi as the new Blessed Virgin, destined to become the mother of this next Messiah, who would be female and black. But Ikirezi renounced this task and instead “delivered” a feminist book, announcing the emergence of radical feminist movements.

Scholastique Mukasonga explains that this story with unexpected developments is based on real facts such as the story of this prophet who announced in 1927 that a woman was going to emerge from Lake Muhazi, in the center of Rwanda, who would distribute a miraculous seed and drive away the whites.

Sister Deborah is a strange story illuminated by Mukasonga’s great talent as a storyteller: about anti-colonial struggles, proliferating sects, feminist struggles and the hope, always, of a savior who would come to rescue Rwandan women from their condition.

• ★ ★ ★ Scholastique Mukasonga | Sister Deborah | Novel | Gallimard, 146 pp. Price €16, digital version €12

EXTRACT

“The spirits of Rwanda had warmly welcomed their American fathers and had even made a blood pact with them. It was easy to understand why the black American Jesus went faster than that of the white fathers, it was the Rwandan spirits who served as his guide, opened his way in the sky and led the cloud of the Savior, just above the ‘Africa, just above Rwanda.’