IN the previous article in this series we looked at the colonial language, English, as a major shackle of the African mind.
Today we revisit the Western Christian religion to see how it has kept Africans shackled to the colonial pillar.
The deliberate and sustained effort to alienate Africans from their traditional ways of life has been led by Western Christian churches.
After the 1884-85 Berlin Conference at which European powers agreed to carve up and share African territories for their exclusive exploitation, King Leopold of Belgium drew up some guidelines for the advance missionary forces who were being deployed ahead of the armed occupation forces.
The duty of the missionaries then, as now, was to use religion to soften Africans so they would not resist European colonisation.
King Leopold of Belgium advised missionaries to select appropriate Bible verses that would induce psychological meekness in Africans, draining out all elements of hostility and resistance.
Despite claims that Western missionaries were saving African souls from burning in hell, the contrary was true.
The gospel of humility, non-aggression, acceptance and submission to authority formed the core of all sermons preached every Sunday week-in-week-out.
That same gospel is still preached today, but with increased frequency.
Church services and meetings used to be held every Sunday.
Now these are held mid-week, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
Some churches meet on Saturday.
Both the message and the frequency of meetings point to a sustained effort to keep the congregants fully engaged so that they do not think of other ‘things’.
When people boast Zimbabwe is a Christian country, they are re-affirming that the country is still shackled by colonialism.
We must hasten to assert that Africans have always known God/Musikavanhu/ uMdali.
The Africans in Zimbabwe and surrounding countries have always had their indigenous religions for millenia before the whiteman emerged from the cold caves of Europe.
African religion defined how the people related to their God and to each other.
Among the Shona and indeed most other so-called Bantu tribes, the ‘religious value chain’ if we may call it that, starts with the individual, his/her siblings, parents who include all the brothers and sisters of the mother and father; all the grandparents from both sides of the family tree (mother and father).
This lowest segment will include all living members of the family.
The second tier consists of the spiritual members referred to as the ancestors.
This part of one’s family extends back through all the generations back to Musikavanhu/the Creator.
Each one of us traces our ancestry all the way back to the Creator.
This is why we Africans approach and relate to our Creator through our ancestral spirits.
That is the only real route linking us to our God.
This is true of all other nations.
Christianity imposed an alternate foreign religion totally at variance with our way of life.
We posit that Christianity was less to do with saving souls and more to do with shackling the African mind.
So we must reject any insinuation that we Africans are lost unless we embrace Christianity.
The Christian churches remain as enduring symbols of the cultural and religious devastation dealt our African society by Western colonial agendas.
The Western Christian religion imposed by European invaders can never replace our own religion.
That is not possible.
No amount of pretence by our Christian leaders and the various congregations can make Christianity the indigenous religion of Zimbabwean Africans.
The tragedy is that our younger generations are more isolated than ever from our African religious roots.
A cultural revolution where we restore and deliberately promote our culture will restore the dignity of our African cultural and religious values.
That is very feasible; it requires political will on the part of Zimbabweans.
We accept that Western Christianity is currently the single most disabling shackle on our cultural and religious minds.
The fact that the majority of Africans still recognise and respect their African roots speaks to the enduring nature of our African roots.
If we look at Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and even South Africa, we see that these African nations still uphold the core values of their African identity, including language and traditional dress.
But they too are battered by Christianity.
The new educational curriculum will go a long way in restoring our Zimbabwean cultural identity.
As our analysis has shown, the gospel was never about saving people’s souls; no!
It was and continues to be lulling people into slumber while their resources are being looted by foreigners.
I remember when we went out hunting for honey.
We used to dig up the roots of the ‘mupfumbwa’ tree, crush them and place at the entrance of the beehive.
The bees would become ‘drunk’ and docile.
We would rob the hive with very few or no bee stings at all.
By the time the bees awoke from the induced slumber, we would be far from the hive.
The Christian gospel also induces temporary sleep.
To keep the Africans near-permanently ‘drugged’, it is necessary to dose them every Sunday and several times during the week.
So the frequency of prayer and worship sessions is increased to prevent the church members from drifting away.
The European colonisers’ churches used missionaries as their long range artillery to soften the target African populations.
Missionaries took advantage of the deeply religious culture of the Africans to lure them to the white god, persuading them to believe that he was the same as the African Mwari, Musikavanhu, Mlimo.
Once the Africans accepted that the white Christian God was the same as Mwari, they were induced to substitute all the African religious ceremonies and rituals with Western Christian worship practices.
They were strongly admonished to abandon and reject all things African.
The preachers demonised and stigmatised African culture, religion, foods, medicine and even clothes.
Africans were made to feel and believe they were worthless, that their culture was backward.
As with all indoctrination practices, over decades and lifetimes, Western Christian religion has constantly and relentlessly demonised African religion, cultural norms and values as backward and primitive.
The practising of African cultural rituals has been labelled a sin punishable by burning in hell.
It is hard to believe that God would burn us for being and acting like Africans.
The fear of being caught by the Christian ‘uMfundisi, uFata’ or by other fellow worshippers being on the ‘wrong’ (African) side keeps most Africans spiritually and culturally enslaved.
They are afraid of indulging in traditional cultural practices such as conducting rain-asking ceremonies, consulting medical experts (mhondoros and n’angas), burial and funeral rituals, appeasing avenging spirits, counselling children and young couples, training children to grow into adulthood (‘chinamwari’), preparing and eating traditional foods, honouring our ancestors and generally celebrating life and the rites of passage.
The Western churches have a permanent firm grip on the social life of those under their influence.
The church is constantly monitoring, admonishing, preventing, discouraging and even banning all practices that are deemed African and inimical to Western Christian values.
It is a cultural struggle, not a religious one.
We must reclaim our religion and culture.