Monze is the outstanding named figure of the Tonga basangu cult: a nineteenth-century rain prophet on the southern Zambian plateau whose spirit, itself called Monze, continued after his death to possess a line of mediums at his rain shrine. As a successful rain caller and healer he drew delegations from Tonga, Ila and Sala communities across an unusually wide region, and the authority of his cult crystallised into the Monze chieftainship recognised in the colonial and modern periods. His shrine remains a centre of the lwiindi rain-calling ceremonies, in which the spirit is petitioned to intercede for rain and communal wellbeing under the remote creator Leza.
Domains
rain
prophecy
Powers
to call rain and avert drought for the communities that petition his shrine
to possess successive human mediums and speak through them on communal crises such as drought, epidemic and pestilence
Colson, Elizabeth, Tonga Religious Life in the Twentieth Century, Bookworld Publishers, 2006
O'Brien, Dan, 'Chiefs of Rain — Chiefs of Ruling: A Reinterpretation of Pre-colonial Tonga (Zambia) Social and Political Structure', Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 53(4), 1983, pp. 23–42
Kaoma, Kapya J., 'Towards an African theological ethic of earth care: Encountering the Tonga lwiindi of Simaamba of Zambia in the face of the ecological crisis', HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies 73(3), 2017