Religion: Tikoloshe in Church

It was a quiet afternoon in the South African shanty village of Moroka. Children played in the dusty roadway and mangy dogs snoozed in the warm sun. Women attended to their pots and gossip. Then Tikoloshe turned up.

At first the mothers of Moroka did not know what had happened. They looked up to see the children skipping and dancing about like corn on a hot pan, then, as their mothers gaped from their doorways, the kids streamed into the brand-new Presbyterian church. But one stayed back long enough to explain: “They’re following a little man no bigger than a boy—he’s got hair all over his body and a long white beard, and claws instead of fingers.” The mothers’ hearts froze. For this, they knew at once, was Tikoloshe—the evil sprite who tempts South African black men to murder and worse (TIME, Feb. 20), who has the power to lure children away with tales of a marvelous play land, which leaves their brains addled for life. The mothers piled into the church as fast as they could hustle.

Tikoloshe is invisible, of course, to all but children or evil men. The squealing children obligingly dashed about, pointing where he was. “There—there—next to the window!” Crash went stones, hymnbooks, everything throwable, until not a pane of glass was left. “There he goes—under the pulpit!” The heaving, frantic mothers reduced the pulpit to matchwood. But Tikoloshe skipped off to another hiding place, and in a matter of minutes the inside of the church was a ruin.

The Rev. Shedrick E. Majola was summoned from a church congress 30 miles away. He stopped for a moment outside his church, staring at the shattered windows, his black face sweating in the sun. With his own hands he had laid the foundations four years before, and raised $3,000 in pennies to build it. When at last he went inside, he found about $800 worth of damage. Even worse, everyone but the pastor was afraid to set foot within the building for fear that Tikoloshe might still be there.

To prove that Jesus Christ is stronger than Tikoloshe, Pastor Majola routed out his congregation at midnight to watch him walk alone into the dark church. It did not end the crisis, but it helped. “They are gradually coming back,” he said this week. “But when I preach, their eyes wander all the time to the broken pulpit as though they expect to see Tikoloshe suddenly jump out. With God’s help I shall get back my church and my people.”