Online Reporter
Bruce Ndlovu, [email protected]
IN 2020, Prophet Mduduzi Dube, popularly known as Black Elisha, became the talk of the town in Bulawayo.
In June that year, a man stormed the prophet’s home, claiming that he had rendered him impotent using one of his spiritual “tricks.”
The man alleged that after his wife sought Black Elisha’s advice about his philandering ways, he had been “locked” and could not summon any sexual desire whenever he was not in his matrimonial bed.
The prophet later confessed that he had indeed been the mastermind behind the man’s sudden bout of erectile dysfunction, saying he had administered his famous spiritual padlock.
Since then, Black Elisha has unleashed a series of “products” aimed at curbing the behaviour of cheating husbands and wives, thieves and others whose conduct puts their partners or fellow citizens at risk.
A year after the spiritual padlock became one of the most sought-after items in Bulawayo, the prophet introduced the spiritual spear, which he claimed had the power to deal with troublesome church leaders, businesspeople and even witchdoctors.
In 2024, his spiritual mat went on the market, with the prophet extolling its ability to solve a wide range of problems affecting people from all walks of life.
“It works for everyone — businesspeople, individuals and families. Whether you step on it, kneel on it in prayer or sleep on it, it is said to produce your desired results,” he said.
“It prevents vehicle accidents, heals the sick, casts out demons, brings financial breakthroughs and achieves many other desired outcomes.
“I provide the mats, then anoint and dedicate them specifically for you or your family.”
At the start of 2026, the name Black Elisha has once again become a conversation starter in Bulawayo after he claimed that his latest spiritual device, a clay pot, was now on the market, targeting the usual suspects: cheating partners, thieves and other transgressors.
While Black Elisha’s exploits have made him a darling among his followers, some have questioned whether his methods remain purely Christian.
For those who grew up clutching their rosaries in prayer, the concept of a spiritual clay pot may seem closer to traditional practices long regarded as unholy.
Despite such criticism, the prophet remains unperturbed and refuses to be lumped together with traditional healers.
“What I am doing is guided by prayer,” he told Sunday Life in an interview.
“I am not a n’anga, but I am proof that spiritual power does not reside in individuals — it resides in God.
“All these are remedies we access through prayer, not through any dark magic. If someone attends any of our sessions, they will testify that we are steadfast in prayer and faithful to the teachings of the Bible,” he said.
In 2016, the country’s traditional healers, through their mother body, the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association (Zinatha), urged the Government to compel prophets and other men of God to register with them.
George Kandiero, president of the organisation, said Zinatha believed that Pentecostal churches, prophets and faith healers should register with both the association and the Traditional Medical Practitioners Council (TMPC) in order to operate legally in the country.
The TMPC is a department in the Ministry of Health and Child Care that supervises and regulates the practice of traditional medical practitioners.
“At law, anyone who heals people using traditional methods is a traditional healer. Prophets who touch people’s heads while praying for and healing them, Pentecostal churches that practise the same, and other such faith healers are all traditional healers. In terms of the law, it is illegal for such people to practise without a licence,” said Kandiero.
For Black Elisha, although some of his methods have been equated with those who claim to draw their powers from sources other than God, the practices employed by him and other prophets are beyond reproach.
“I think it would be misguided to claim that prophets should register with organisations meant to cater for traditional healers. Throughout the Bible, there are numerous instances of God’s healing power and what we call miracles.
“If it was possible in ancient times for a man of God to perform such acts, then it is also possible in this modern era, unless the suggestion is that God’s powers have dissipated over time, which we all know is not the case,” he said.
Zimbabwe is not the only African country where the lines between prophecy and traditional practices appear blurred.
Flamboyant men of God who promise deliverance through eye-catching miracles have found favour across the continent.
In his paper, The Political and Social Impact of Prophetic Churches in Zimbabwe, Nonimous Hameno traces the swelling popularity of miraculous prophecy to Christianity’s complex and often uneasy roots in Zimbabwe.
When colonialism arrived on the back of the Bible and the gun, Christianity did not entirely sweep aside African Traditional Religion.
Instead, it entered into a quiet negotiation with it.
The result was not a clean break from the past, but a fusion, a faith filtered through Zimbabweans’ own cosmology, where ancestral spirits, visions and unseen forces had long formed part of the moral and spiritual landscape.
Hameno argues that much of the Christianity introduced by Western missionaries was shaped by the intellectual currents of Europe at the time.
It bore the imprint of the Age of Reason, secular humanism and rapid scientific advancement.
Liberal theology, which downplayed or even rejected the supernatural, had gained ground. In crossing continents, Christianity arrived in Zimbabwe clothed in doctrine but stripped of some of its mysticism.
“Most Christian teaching from the West was influenced by the Age of Reason, secular humanism and the scientific advancements of those times. Liberal theology, which rejected the supernatural, had gained acceptance. Christianity as it came through the missionaries therefore lacked spirituality,” he said.
For many Africans encountering the Bible for themselves, this created a striking contradiction.
The pages of scripture pulsed with miracles, seas parting, the blind seeing, the dead rising, angels appearing in dreams.
Yet the version of Christianity preached from missionary pulpits often felt measured, restrained, almost clinical.
“The African, on reading the Bible, immediately saw a disconnection between the Christianity taught by the missionary and the biblical experience. The Bible is full of miracles and supernatural encounters — a spirituality the African was more familiar with,” Hameno observed.
Ends
