ABSTRACT
As long as we have no more biographical details on Mupumani, it is impossible to say whether this second avant-garde model applies to him. The data on the other Ila prophets suggest that Mupumani had been a rather usual sort of prophet before his highly original visions made him radically depart from existing prophetic institutions, and, for instance, made him temporarily reject the ecological emphasis, as unessential in the light of his more profound and direct mystical experiences. However this may have been, religious authorities in the avant-garde situation postulated here did certainly play an innovatory role in other episodes of religious change in western Zambia: e.g., doctors are known to have contributed to eschatological prophetic movements, and to both primary and secondary prophetic cults of affliction.136
