Demonisation and Distortion of Vhavenḓa Spiritualities Through Hymns 36 and 38 of the Tshivenḓa Lutheran Hymnal: A Decolonial-Africanised Interpretation

This article examines the demonisation and distortion of Vhavenḓa spiritualities in Hymns 36 and 38 of the Tshivenḓa Lutheran Hymnal through a decolonial-Africanised lens. It argues that, although these hymns function devotionally, they also preserve missionary assumptions that framed ancestral reverence, libation, healing, ritual objects, and Indigenous sacred mediation as darkness, error, and spiritual danger. Drawing on decolonial thought, African theological reflection, and scholarship on Vhavenḓa Indigenous Knowledge Systems, the article reinterprets contested hymnic language in ways that affirm the dignity, complexity, and resilience of Vhavenḓa spiritual traditions. It concludes that decolonising Tshivenḓa Lutheran hymnody requires critical retrieval, linguistic sensitivity, theological humility, and recognition that Vhavenḓa people were never without God, spirituality, ethics, or sacred knowledge before missionary Christianity.