“I greet you all in the spirit of unity, healing, and remembrance.”
Welcome, Beloved Participants, Distinguished Guests, and Esteemed Partners,
I am Mr. Bernard N. Owusu-Sekyere, Founding Director of the Afrika Centre for Intangible Phenomena Studies (ACIPS). It is both a profound honour and a heartfelt joy to welcome you to this sacred gathering at the Durban University of Technology, here in the vibrant city of eThekwini.
Today, we are not simply opening a workshop—we are entering into a covenant of dialogue, healing, and restoration. We are here to remind ourselves that African knowledge systems are not relics of the past, but living traditions that continue to speak to us, guide us, and strengthen us in the present.
This DUT institution is a site of higher learning, stands as a bridge between the old and the new, between tradition and innovation, memory and imagination. It is fitting that we meet here, for the university is not only a place of knowledge but also a crucible where wisdom must be renewed, contextualised, and applied to the needs of our communities.
Inception and Conceptualisation of ACIPS
The Afrika Centre for Intangible Phenomena Studies — ACIPS — is not merely an institution; it is a reclamation. Conceived in 2018 in Harare, Zimbabwe, during a period of deep intellectual and spiritual reflection by its founder, Mr. Bernard Nyarko Owusu-Sekyere, ACIPS emerged as a response to a profound epistemic void. Rooted in the Akan philosophy of Sankofa — “go back and fetch it” - the Centre was envisioned as a vessel to recover Africa’s suppressed metaphysical technologies, restore broken memory systems, and reposition indigenous knowledge as central to transformation. As Owusu-Sekyere argued in his seminal 2017 article, African Transformation in the 21st Century: An Agenda without Ethos?, “Knowledge is indeed the spirit and character that shape revolutions which transform and alter societies positively by turning the self-transforming mode on.”
Legally registered in South Africa in 2022, ACIPS is now headquartered in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal. It stands as a pioneering research institution committed to exploring Africa’s intangible, spiritual, and metaphysical knowledge systems, those often excluded from mainstream academic inquiry. The Centre’s work is grounded in Afrocentricity and Afrikology, offering a scholarly platform for ancestral restoration, community-based transformation, and civilisational reawakening. In a context where colonial epistemologies have long mischaracterised African spiritual knowledge as superstition or witchcraft (Bramley, 1989).
This aligns with William Bramley’s critique in The Gods of Eden (1989), where he observes: “This misidentification is so strong today that almost all studies of the spirit and spiritual phenomena are lumped into such disgraced classifications as ‘occultism,’ ‘spiritualism,’ and witchcraft” (p. 69). The term “witchcraft” itself originates from the Old English wiccecræft, a compound of wicce, meaning “witch”, and cræft, denoting “power” or “skill.” Its linguistic roots trace further to the verb wiccian, “to practice witchcraft,” and the Proto-Germanic wikkōną, revealing a semantic lineage that once signified craft and knowledge, not malevolence (EtymologyOnline, n.d.). Witch hunts surged across Europe in the early modern era, driven by religious strife, social unrest, and economic instability. Belief in witchcraft waned with the rise of Enlightenment thought (Wikipedia).
Furthermore, the suppression of African metaphysical systems was institutionalised through colonial legislation such as the Witchcraft Suppression Act 3 of 1957 and its subsequent amendment in 1970. These laws were designed not merely to criminalise certain practices, but to delegitimise entire epistemologies rooted in African spiritual knowledge. As early as 1891 in colonial Natal, African healers and metaphysical practitioners were targeted under legal and religious frameworks that sought to sever communities from their indigenous systems of healing, divination, and cosmological understanding (South African Law Reform Commission, 2022). The term “witchdoctor,” for instance, while acknowledging the practitioner’s medicinal expertise, simultaneously imposes a derogatory colonial lens that conflates African healing with malevolence. This linguistic distortion served as a marketing strategy to promote European pharmaceutical products while undermining indigenous knowledge economies—similar to how Nubian blacksmiths were branded as witches to displace their market dominance.
In the current Aquarian age, there is a growing recognition that “witchcraft,” in its original European contexts, does not inherently connote evil. Rather, it encompasses a spectrum of spiritual technologies, ancestral communication, and ecological wisdom that colonial systems failed—or refused—to understand. The English term itself carries a legacy of distortion that warrants critical linguistic and historical unpacking. Moreover, contemporary judicial systems continue to struggle with cases involving muti killings, where the metaphysical dimensions of intent and belief are often obscured or dismissed due to evidentiary limitations. Scholars such as Bramley (1989) have noted that spiritual phenomena are frequently misclassified under pejorative categories like “occultism” or “witchcraft,” further complicating legal and cultural discourse. Many African Christian theologians have affirmed that early European missionaries profoundly misunderstood African cosmologies—or deliberately misrepresented them—to facilitate cultural domination and economic exploitation. These examples underscore the urgent need for deeper investigation into the epistemic violence embedded in colonial and postcolonial legal frameworks.
Today, ACIPS is guided by a constellation of scholars, spiritual practitioners, and cultural custodians who share a commitment to reactivating Africa’s self-transforming capacity. Through research, publications, and continental collaborations, the Centre seeks to illuminate the metaphysical dimensions of African life and offer them as valid, rigorous, and transformative tools for development. As we gather here, we honour not only an institution, but a movement—one that insists Africa’s future must be shaped by the wisdom of its past.
The Meaning of Sacred Dialogues
Our theme for this gathering—“Embodied Spirit: African Spirituality, Healing, and Dialogue”—reminds us that we are more than intellect and flesh. We are spirit. We are carriers of ancestral wisdom. We are communities woven together through stories, rituals, and the invisible threads of Ubuntu.
This is not an ordinary workshop. It is ceremony. It is remembrance. It is healing. It is an act of reclaiming that which coloniality, modernity, and systemic erasures sought to silence. Here, we answer the ancestral call to stand together, to listen deeply, and to affirm that African spirituality and traditional healing have a rightful, dignified, and urgent place in our institutions of learning.
Our opening session—“Remembering the Call”—asks us to listen carefully to the voices of our ancestors, carried to us in dreams, in visions, and in the unspoken yearnings of our hearts. Dreams are not merely private imaginings; they are sacred texts. They are messages that bind us to generations past and future.
Sacred Spaces and Healing Practices
Later today, we will turn to the theme of Sacred Spaces and Ritual Practices. Here, we recognise that the land, the rivers, the mountains, and even the most modest household shrines are not empty places. They are living sanctuaries—repositories of memory, guardians of identity, and channels of renewal.
Healing, then, is not only a matter of herbs, divination, or ritual cleansing. It is the restoration of harmony—between the individual and the community, between humanity and nature, between memory and future vision. It is also about justice, dignity, and the courage to affirm life in all its fullness—including spaces where our queer and gender-fluid siblings can be seen, honoured, and healed within African traditions.
Why This Gathering Matters
We know too well that we live in a world that prioritises speed over depth, profit over humanity, and fragmentation over wholeness. African spirituality challenges this order. It invites us back to balance. It tells us that education without spirit is hollow, healing without community is incomplete, and progress without memory is unsustainable.
What we are doing here together is profoundly revolutionary. By reclaiming these traditions within higher education, we are dismantling the false dichotomy between science and spirituality, between knowledge and wisdom. We are insisting that healing must be holistic, education must be decolonial, and community must be at the heart of all transformation.
Acknowledgements
I extend my deepest gratitude to our gracious funders, academic partners, and community custodians who have walked with us to make this moment possible. You have not only provided resources; you have enabled the creation of a sanctuary where stories can be told, traditions can be honoured, and voices long silenced can be heard anew.
Your trust and commitment remind us that the intangible—the unseen and the spiritual—holds immeasurable value for our future.
Invocation
Before we proceed, I invite us into a moment of silence. Let us acknowledge the ancestors whose breath still animates us, whose footsteps cleared the path before us, and whose love refuses to let us forget who we are. May we feel their presence in the rustle of leaves, in the rhythm of our heartbeat, and in the gentle embrace of this sacred gathering.
Closing this Opening Address
Friends, colleagues, elders, and seekers, today is not about passively listening. It is about active engagement. I urge each of us to enter into these dialogues with open hearts, attentive spirits, and the courage to be vulnerable.
Let us plant seeds here, seeds of healing, seeds of reimagined education, seeds of community renewal, that will blossom long after we leave these halls.
Welcome to Sacred Dialogues. May this day awaken in us a renewed sense of who we are, a deeper connection to spirit, and a collective commitment to healing that extends beyond these walls into our communities, our universities, and our continent.
Ngiyabonga. Asè. Mayibuye iAfrika.
Bernard N. Owusu-Sekyere
Founding Director, ACIPS