Seers

In its narrowest and most literal sense, a seer is a person with the ability to foretell events or a person's destiny. However, in a broader and more interpretive sense, a seer is also one with profound moral and spiritual insight or knowledge, such as a sage. Using either definition, seers abound in Africa. A seer is, first and foremost, one who sees. What precisely is being seen and how it is being seen is another matter. Because African ways of knowing include a combination of cognitive faculties, such as divination, thinking heart, intuition, possession, dreams, and keen observation from sources that are both natural and supernatural, a seer has a potentially infinite well from which to draw information. This information can be accessed in a systematic way, such as by divination, where the diviner or client poses a specific question on which to receive information. Or the information may come in the form of a dream, where the person would act on the information in the dream or seek the counsel of someone with a reputation for interpreting dreams. Sometimes by learning the language of nature, such as the songs of birds or the movements of clouds and wind, a person is able to “predict” a future event. Because of all of these sources of information, the tasks of a seer are spread across many roles in the community, such as priests and priestesses, diviners, medicine men or women, rainmakers, and family elders. Often these people work in the context of a specific family or community, so their information is targeted or meaningful to a relatively small group. This, along with the perception that traditional Africans have a limited concept of the future and are influenced by the future-oriented religions of Christianity and Islam, feeds the perception that Africa does not have prophets. However, there have been instances where seers have predicted events with broader implications, such as the coming of Europeans to Africa, the arrival of guns and airplanes in Africa, World War I, and the invention of the telephone. One sangoma sharing such information is Credo Mutwa of South Africa, who says that “prediction is a vital human power” and an “early warning device that the gods placed within the human soul so that one can recognize future dangers.” With the power to recognize the dangers comes the power to avoid them. Information about the future, whether received intuitively or requested, is really about what is happening now. African people want to know what needs to be done now so that situations can be made right, harmony can be restored, or that whatever the undertaking it will be a successful one.