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The Tsonga believed that man had a physical (mmiri) and a spiritual body with two added attributes, the moya and the ndzuti. The moya was associated with the spirit, entered the body at birth and left it at death to join the ancestors. The ndzuti was associated with the person’s shadow and reflected human characteristics.
Upon death, in the spirit world, it left the body. This meant that the spirit of the dead was imbued with the individual and human characteristics of the person. Inherent in this concept is not only the belief in life after death but also that the dead retain very strong links with the living. Passing over into the spirit world was an important stage in the life of a Tsonga. Shortly after death, the members of the family performed a welcoming ceremony to help ease the passage of the dead person into the spirit world. The death of a member of the family also caused all the other members in the homestead to become unclean and they all had to go through ritual cleansing ceremonies.
These ceremonies were performed at different times of the day over the next few months. During religious ceremonies the family gathered together at a special area to pay homage to the ancestral spirits. Food and drink was offered to the ancestors to thank them for providing for the people. Requests were also made to the spirits to intercede in specific problems. For more general purposes, the spirits could be approached in a more informal way, through prayer. The existence of both good and evil spirits was integral to Tsonga beliefs.
Good spirits brought rain and caused good things to happen, and evil spirits, controlled by sorcerers, caused great harm to the community. Illness or persistent bad luck usually indicated the presence of baloyi (evil spirits) but occasional illness was accepted as part and parcel of everyday life.
However, if the illness was serious or the cycle of bad luck persisted, a cure had to be found through divination. The diviner consulted the ancestral spirits by “throwing” the bones, shells or other artefacts and was thus able to determine the cause of the bad luck and suggest ways in which to get rid of the cause. | 
