LAST week we looked at various incidents related to rainfall where there was evidence to suggest intervention by our ancestral spirits and God, Musikavanhu.
In short there was evidence suggesting that rain falls in the fields of those who comply with African religious customs, while drought may persist where such customs are not respected.
In this episode, we explore the phenomenon where Africans, especially the so-called educated, deliberately ignore or refuse to acknowledge phenomena and incidents common in our daily African experience for fear of being labelled primitive or backward.
We interrogate why Africans are refusing to be themselves.
We are saying Africa cannot solve its challenges until its citizens accept and engage the reality of their own circumstances.
Here we explore some of the reasons Africans deny their identity for fear of stigma.
At the back of this unwarranted African reluctance to accept themselves is the long shadow or ghost of the church priest, spiritual father, prophet or pastor.
The simple truth is the desire to be seen to be a ‘good law-abiding faithful African Christian member of the white church organisation’ who shuns African practices (chivanhu) is a manifestation of the central role Christianity has played in colonising Africans.
The obsession with looking good before white people or church people is the colonial jacket that keeps Africans mentally shackled to a belief in a superior white culture that they never really experience.
Colonial mentality is cemented through the colonial education system which forces Africans to feel good when they shun the knowledge and wisdom of their forefathers.
All the curricula at Zimbabwean schools up to now belittle African culture, religion and denigrate our heroes such as Mbuya Nehanda, Sekuru Kaguvi, Chaminuka, King Mzilikazi and others.
The school curricula seek to infuse the African child with chirungu right from kindergarten.
I know one parent who withdrew a daughter from a pre-school because after a week-or-two, the child hardly spoke a word of English although she had already mastered a few Tsuro naGudo stories (ngano).
So even parents look to the school to isolate their children from all that is African and make them little Europeans or is it Englishmen?
The general tendency by blacks to strive to mimic European styles in most things they do is a manifestation of this colonial mentality.
Clothes, hair, skin and until recently virtually all music!
Yet among the youth, we often talk of peer pressure forcing them to indulge in anti-social behaviour such as doing drugs or pre-marital sex.
Some of the acts are copycats of what they see on television, mostly decadent Western culture that even white parents strongly disapprove of.
And we are arguing here that the same‘peer’ pressure operates among adults in a group, church, club or even business where consistently and against their consciences, they ignore or deliberately shun African practices and even natural phenomena for fear of being labelled ‘anti-Christian’, unbelievers or uneducated and backward.
This hypocritical self-denial by Africans explains the numerous reports of priests, politicians and other prominent persons in society visiting n’angas at night to seek various services.
These are the people who publicly denounce African religious and cultural practices by day to please the colonial master and then practice the same at night.
Our experiences as Africans are real and we should stop pretending.
Our scientists should openly explore the different phenomena, document the various incidents and analyse the data so as to better define our reality.
The educated elites of Zimbabwe should stop pretending that enlightenment and civilisation came into Zimbabwe and Africa with the arrival of Cecil John Rhodes and the so-called pioneer column and that African wisdom is second class to the whiteman’s.
The whiteman, save for his endemic bigotry, knows otherwise!
I remember a song we were made to sing at Mnene Boarding Primary School in Mberengwa in the mid-1960s.
The lyrics went like this:
“Tinotenda Mwari Bambo,
Vakatumira (Rev) Liljestrand’
Kunyika yeMberengwa,
Yakanga iririma,
Asi nhasi yasvinura.”
This song, roughly translated, says we (black Africans) are grateful to God who sent Reverend Liljestrand, missionary of the Lutheran Church (from Sweden) to the land of Mberengwa (then Belingwe), which was in darkness, but now has light (brought in by the white missionaries).
We sang innocently and over time came to internalise the message of the lyrics.
Particularly relevant to our discussion is the assertion in the song that the good Reverend from Europe brought light to a dark district (read continent).
Old and new (harahwa nechembere) still go regularly and faithfully to church and believe the good Lord sent missionaries to pull us out of darkness and from the brink of hell!
The missionaries and now pastors and prophets still preach the gospel, but deep down, the message still retains its original venom: To keep the Africans in check.
Being religious by nature, the Africans embraced and were left clutching the Bible and its message while the whites harvested and shipped back to Europe the economic benefits (gold, silver, diamonds, platinum etc).
The majority of Africans have, through the gospel preachers, been diverted from focussing on solving their economic challenges.
They are busy attending various church assemblies, prayer meetings and miracle crusades in preparation for a miracle fortune or a good life in heaven!
They have ignored God’s important message that man shall eat of his/her sweat!
Africans must boldly confront our reality, research it, understand it and exploit it to our advantages.
As Charles Dube said in one of his articles in The Patriot, we must accept our African identity and culture before aspiring to be whatever else.
We should emerge from the white colonial shadows of make-belief and live our real lives.
To our great dismay, but not surprising, even today there are Africans, many in high offices, who believe that indeed we should be grateful to the whiteman for bringing civilisation to the ‘dark continent’.
It is these educated Africans who work in cahoots with the detractors of the black people of Africa to keep the continent shackled in poverty and under-development.
These unpatriotic Africans play leading roles in non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that are often notorious for destabilising African states through fomenting divisions within countries along tribal, ethnic and regional lines.
While their love for 30 pieces of silver is a major inducement for their sell-out activities, the colonial education systems still dominant across most, if not all, of Africa, continues to create generations who are divorced from their communities and country.
Until Africans take control of their own agenda, neo-colonisers will continue to divide and rule us, exploiting our natural resources for their own enrichment.
We must reform our education systems to produce pan-Africanists.
That requires courage as the West will come with carrots and sugar to lead us not to Canaan, but Gehena!
Those with ears, let them hear.