MAYBE it's my imagination, but the dead seem awfully busy these days. Given that ours is an ubuntu-haunted world, it was always probable, if not rational, that the ancestors would have an important role in the affairs of the living. But even so, they seem to be putting in a lot of overtime.
This week they were drummed into service by a group of traditional healers who burnt incense, sprinkled tobacco and sang outside the Pretoria hospital where former president Nelson Mandela has been treated for the past seven weeks. Their leader, one Khubane Mashele, put in the call: "We summon the great kings and soldiers of the struggle to help us in calling the ancestors of Mandela, and help him heal because we still need him."
Are they, I wonder, the same ancestors standing by to bring down heaps of harm on Julius Malema, the would-be liberator? Last month, on Youth Day, he and his followers were warned by President Jacob Zuma not to take on the ruling party "because if you do so, the ancestors will deal with you".
Malema ignored this and unwisely launched the Economic Freedom Fighters anyway. In these matters, Zuma has a direct hot line to wherever it is the spirits gather. With a bit of name-dropping here and there, it was all go in the curse department and the ancestors are now royally messing with Malema's head. As a result, and as this column noted last week, there's been much mischief in the beret department. Those in the know suggest this is a sign that more trouble is on the way.
But, further to the veneration of the dead, it has come as no small surprise that the well-known "psychic medium" John Edward plans to return to our shores in March.
The news has greatly excited us here at the Mahogany Ridge. We had to pinch ourselves on Wednesday to check if we weren't dreaming when we read in the Cape Times that Edward would, for a fact, be conversing with the dead. But no, there it was, without fear of contradiction: