PICS: Daswa a step closer to sainthood
Samuel Daswa was named SA's first homegrown martyr at a ceremony attended by more than 30 000 people.
|||Thohoyandou - He knelt, prayed and pleaded as his fellow villagers bayed for his blood after he refused to join them in consulting an inyanga about a lightning strike that burnt several huts.
The mob swarmed around him, and stoned and burnt him until his life ebbed away.
That was 25 years ago, in the village of Tshitanini, outside Tzaneen in Limpopo, when Tshimangadzo Samuel Benedict Daswa, then a school principal, was persecuted in a witchcraft ritual.
He had also refused to pay R5 towards a consultation fund and was therefore bran-ded a troublemaker.
Today, Daswa’s spirit lives on after the Roman Catholic Church beatified him in Thohoyandou on Sunday.
The beatification moves him a step closer to sainthood.
Daswa was named the country’s first homegrown martyr at the ceremony, broadcast live on television.
It was just before 10am when a representative from Rome, Cardinal Angelo Amato, pronounced in Latin that Daswa would be called “Blessed”.
The title places Daswa one step away from being pronounced a saint in the Catholic Church.
“While his executioners were killing him, Benedict was on his knees praying,” a priest said during the ceremony.
A letter from Pope Francis, read out by Amato, declared Daswa would join the ranks of “The Blessed” for his “heroic witness to the Gospel, even to the shedding of blood”.
In 1990, violence broke out after the 43-year-old Daswa argued that the lightning strike was caused by the weather and not witchcraft.
Daswa was bludgeoned for pleading with villagers not to resort to witchcraft in seeking a solution.
The case against several people arrested for his murder was later dropped due to a lack of evidence.
Sunday’s ceremony was attended by more than 30 000 people. The pilgrims travelled from as far as Cape Town and neighbouring states such as Zimbabwe and Botswana. The crowd had started gathering from as early as midday on Saturday.
They sang songs and prayed throughout the night.
The choir sang throughout the service and continued entertaining the throngs even after the service had ended.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa was among the dignitaries who attended the event along with politicians and traditional leaders.
A family friend of Daswa said: “They wanted to shut him up. They have just given him a much bigger platform.”
The family friend, who did not want to be named, said “two of the perpetrators are among the crowd here today”.
Daswa was described as a man who led a holy life, a diligent worker, a good family man, an industrious educator and an avid sportsman who was also a community leader.
The church, which has a strong presence on the continent, has put a number of Africans, and people who worked there, on the path to sainthood.
Josephine Bakhita, a former slave from Sudan’s Darfur region, became her country’s first native saint in 2000.
The ceremony came four months after the Catholic Church beatified an Italian nun, Sister Irene Stefani, who cared for the sick and wounded in East Africa during World War I.
Daswa was born on June 16, 1946 in Mbahe, 20km from Thohoyandou.
He was the first-born son of the late Tshililo Petrus Daswa and Thidziambi Ida, who is still alive.
He was named “Tshimangadzo” (the one with miracles) and later Samuel when he went to school.
timothy.bernard@inl.co.za
The Star