HomeOld_PostsAfrican heritage studies and the challenge of crusading religion

African heritage studies and the challenge of crusading religion

Published on

THE National Heritage Studies component of the new primary and secondary curriculum in Zimbabwe is already being distorted by mis-framing it as a case of Bible Studies versus African Heritage studies, with one piece circulating on the internet (Bold Cogitations) alleging the following:
The new Zim Curriculum has phased Bible out of Religious Studies, and introduced National Heritage from Early Childhood Development (ECD) focusing on the African Traditional Religion (ATR).
They say that Christianity was a tool for colonialism (I do not know if it makes sense to say whites came up with the whole Bible, as a means of colonising us)… Teaching our children about spirit mediums and all?
This cannot be a way to start seeking understanding, making sense.
Against National Heritage studies, the writer clearly seeks to steer the debate toward entrenched stereotypes, demonic caricatures and long-established prejudices going back to the days of slavery.
So in this limited presentation I recognise the vast and complex nature of the subject and restrict myself, for now, to an attempt to outline a framework and context which might help facilitate real knowledge and understanding which, after all, is the real objective of public education.
l The first step toward framing this debate is to accept the historical fact that the missionary-derived Church in Zimbabwe claims to be part of the so-called ‘modernising project’ and it accepts modernity and modernism as an ideology and yet it does not accept that modernity in fact requires the strict separation of ‘church and state’.
The crusading missionary-based Church was given free reign in its own schools and in Government schools by the colonial and neo-colonial state by default. So it should count itself lucky that this privilege and contradiction has remained even 37 years into independence.
But that fluke will not remain forever.
l The second step is to state the fact that what is called ATR is not religion in the Eurocentric sense.
Elements of African spirituality derive from African Relational Philosophy otherwise called hunhu/ubuntu in this region.
African philosophy shuns conversion and crusading, so that even to frame this debate in terms of church versus state is to distort it.
African philosophy is primarily concerned with four basic questions:
(a) What does it mean to be human?
(b) What is good and moral and what is evil, bad or immoral, meaning, what makes for optimal human relationships?
(c) What exists and what does not exist?
(d) What is possible and what is impossible?
My fear is that even what the new curriculum might teach as ATR may be as bad as what is called African Customary Law which was an invention of white anthropologists, white missionaries and white Native Commissioners used to try to destroy African living law.
It is curious that the emphasis has been shifted from African philosophy and living law to emphasise ‘religion’ in order to match or counter the Western concept of religion.
l The third step is to state the fact that current wars in Africa which are using religion as justification in Libya, Chad, Nigeria, Mali, Uganda and Somalia are fuelled by imported non-indigenous religious beliefs and philosophies.
And the churches have not stopped to ask why?
The North-South conflicts in Sudan and Nigeria are not fed by indigenous African beliefs or ideologies, but by imported religions because ubuntu/hunhu is primarily a philosophy of peace.
In the case of Zimbabwe, there are indications that the ‘Christian’ crusaders are not worried about indigenous spirit mediums and African medicine men and women being understood by our children at all.
They are worried about Islam being taught in our schools to challenge the monopoly of the missionary-derived church.
The two crusading religious traditions would then clash.
But hunhu/ubuntu is not a religion and it neither crusades nor seeks to convert aliens.
If it enters the school curriculum, its mission is to teach zvironzo zvevanhu, mitemo yevanhu and tsika dzevanhu kuvana vevhu.
l The fourth step is to state the fact that there are at least two conflicting and contradicting traditions of the Bible as part of African History in Zimbabwe.
There is the tradition of Bible translations, interpretations and crusades which came with the Western crusading church, including the King James Version and various North American versions of the Bible.
This is in contrast to the African claim to the original philosophical foundations and practices which later evolved from Africa to become Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
According to James Breasted’s book, the Dawn of Conscience, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all offsprings of African philosophy.
And the idea of human conscience which distinguishes humanity from brutality is itself an African invention, so that the description of one who commits crimes against humanity as being ‘heartless’ comes from the ancient Africans of Egypt.
This is what missionary-derived churches do not want to know and do not want to be taught.
Where would that leave the Catholic Church and the Church of England?
James Breasted here accepts Western civilisation’s debt to Africa in the development of hunhu/ubuntu.
But in doing so, he appropriates hunhu/ubuntu and super-imposes the whiteman’s frame upon it by assuming that his own view of hunhu/ubuntu is the African’s view as well, by, in fact universalising the whiteman’s view of humanity.
In her chapter called ‘Africa, the West and the Analogy of Culture: The Cinematic Text After Man’, Professor Sylvia Wynter took for granted that morality, ethics and conscience originated in Africa with the Africans and that so-called Western civilisation is the whiteman’s localisation of elements borrowed from the African world, the Eastern world and its civilisation, as well as from the indigenous peoples of the Americas and of course, from the ancient European world.
From this, the European created an amalgam (mix), a counterfeit, which he universalised and globalised as man.
This ‘man’ is a specific, a local-cultural conception of the human, that of the Judeo-Christian West, in its God-rejecting, ancestor – forsaken and secularised escape.
The professional demonisation of Africa and Africans by well-trained Catholic authorities was largely responsible for the paradox which still exists to this day.
Abraham, Joseph, Jacob, Moses and Jesus were all welcomed in Africa (Ancient Egypt) as refugees, as economic migrants running away from drought, hunger and starvation.
Mary and Joseph took the infant Jesus to Egypt in order to save him from being assassinated by agents of Roman imperialism in Palestine.
So, in fact, Joseph, Moses and Jesus were educated in Egypt by Africans.
Evidence that ancient Egyptians were as dark as today’s Sudanese is overwhelming.
The paradox is that the image of Africa and Africans in Western Catholic history and religion is bad.
It’s not consistent with Africa’s role in the Bible, Africa’s contribution to the scriptures we call the Bible today.
And yet whole books, whole chapters of the Christian Bible today are in fact exact copies of the original Egyptian-African texts.
How then did the Catholic Church develop the worldview which cast Africa and Africans as enemies of Christ for whom the worst forms of pillage and slavery were justified?
In 1452, Pope Nicholas promulgated his papal bull called ‘Dum Diversas’, which gave the Portuguese the spiritual and political right to invade, conquer, overcome, subjugate and hold the states of ‘any Saracens, pagans and other infidels and enemies of Christ whatsoever’.
This was read all over Europe as a licence for the enslavement of Africans, opening up the floodgates of chattel slavery.
But the art or science of demonisation which explains the bad picture of Africa and Africans did not start with Dum Diversus and Pope Nicholas’s call to enslave Africans.
It was started in Europe by the same Catholic Church during the period of the Inquisition in which Catholic professionals tortured and exterminated groups, especially women practising traditional medicine and midwifery.
These were condemned as witches and burned alive.
l The fifth step is to state another fact which can be verified: Most leaders of the crusading, missionary-derived churches do not know what they are condemning as ATR and many of the academics seeking to teach it may also not know much about it.
This is the result of a self-fulfilling colonial prophecy.
If a way of life and teaching is banned and excluded as useless and spreading ignorance as well as superstition, the very act of excluding and banning it creates ignorance, mysticism and superstition precisely because it cannot speak for itself or teach its followers zvironzo zvevanhu, mitemo yevanhu and tsika dzevana vevhu.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Latest articles

Kariba Municipality commits to President’s service delivery blueprint

By Kundai Marunya IT is rare to find opposition-controlled urban councils throwing their weight on...

The resurgence of Theileriosis in 2024 

THE issues of global changes, climate change and tick-borne diseases cannot be ignored, given...

Britain haunted by its hostile policy on Zimbabwe

TWO critical lessons drawn from the recent debate on Zimbabwe in the British House...

The contentious issue of race

 By Nthungo YaAfrika AS much as Africans would want to have closure to many of...

More like this

Kariba Municipality commits to President’s service delivery blueprint

By Kundai Marunya IT is rare to find opposition-controlled urban councils throwing their weight on...

The resurgence of Theileriosis in 2024 

THE issues of global changes, climate change and tick-borne diseases cannot be ignored, given...

Britain haunted by its hostile policy on Zimbabwe

TWO critical lessons drawn from the recent debate on Zimbabwe in the British House...

Discover more from Celebrating Being Zimbabwean

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading