Karunga, the great good god who dwells in heaven above is far too remote to be accessible, wherefore he neither receives nor requires worship and offerings. “It is their ancestors (Ovakuru) whom they must fear; it is they who are angry and can bring danger and misfortune on a man … it is in order to win and keep their favour, to avert their displeasure and wrath, in short to propitiate them, that the Herero bring their many offerings; they do so not out of gratitude, but out of fear, not out of love, but out of terror.”[9] The Rev. G. Viehe, a missionary among the tribe writes: “The religious customs and ceremonies of the Ovaherero are all rooted in the presumption that the deceased continue to live, and that they have a great influence on earth, and exercise power over the life and death of man.”[10]
The religion of the Ovambo, another Bantu tribe of German South-West Africa, runs on practically the same lines. The supreme being, Kalunga, the creator, desires neither adoration nor fear. The whole religion is the worship, or rather the propitiation, of the spirits of the dead. Every man at death leaves behind him a phantom form which continues a certain kind of life (not very clearly defined) upon earth, and this spirit has power over the living. Especially may it cause various kinds of sickness. The spirits of private persons can only exert their influence over the members of their own families; the souls of chiefs and great warriors have a much wider scope, they can influence the whole clan for weal or woe; they can even to some extent control the powers of nature and ensure a bountiful corn-crop by their careful provision of rain, since under their kindly direction there shall be neither too little nor too great an abundance. Moreover, they can ward off disease, but if on the other hand they be offended they can visit the tribe with pestilence and famine. It may be particularly noted that among the Ovambo the phantoms of dead magicians are dreaded and feared in no ordinary manner. The only way to prevent the increase of these dangerous spirit folk is by depriving the body of its limbs, a precaution which must be taken immediately after death. So it is customary to sever the arms and legs from the trunk and to cut the tongue out of the mouth, in order that the spirit may have no power either of movement or of speech, since the mutilation of the corpse has rendered a ghost, who would
