African Liberation

Engaging Struggles in South Africa

Christianity in Africa
When the white men came to
Africa, the black people had the
land and whites the Bible, but
now the black people has the
Bible and the White man the
land.

In Latin America was God and

Gold.

Interrelation of Struggles
We have in our midst now the
Theology of Liberation, as developed in
Latin America, and Black Theology
developed in the USA and Southern
Africa: why does suffering single out
black people so conspicuous, suffering
not at the hands of pagans or other
unbelievers, by at the hand of the white
fellow Christians who claim
allegiance (Desmond Tutu, 1982)

Agenda for Week

Monday
Intro: Decolonizing Religions, Liberation Spiritualties.
Tuesday
Africana Liberation Theologies: God is Black!
Wednesday:
Latin American Liberation Theologies: Southern Solidarities.

Friday
African Liberation Theologies: Engaging
Struggle in South Africa
Global Apartheid: Religious Resistances from South Africa to
Palestine

Religious Census in SA
2001 Census
75% population Christian,
But no denomination more than
10%.

Others around 5% combined

Hinduism, Islam 1.5% each.
Judaism 0.4%
Non-religious 20%

What is missing here?

Negation of spiritualties; Christian
difficult absorption through
colonial times.

Religious Legitimation in SA
Missionaries were colonizers.
From 15th century first Portuguese encounters,
to the Dutch mercantile companies in 17th to
actual British invasion inland in the 19th .
Then quickly American, French, Scandinavian
and German joined.
Interpretation of Africans
Lack of Religion; lack of humanity.
Religion of the Devil; anti-humanity.

Intention
Clear construction of Evolutionism/Dualism.
Absorption into system of labor.
Legitimated the system.

Legitimation
Long History of providing religious resources
(symbols, myths, rituals, scriptures, tradition) to
conquest first and Apartheid later.
Dutch:
Gospel of Work and Calvinist insistence in
predestination; justification for land property as
empty land.

British:
Focus in individual sin of acceptance and easy
transition to justify paternalist inclusion in the
industrial system.

Legitimation
Dutch Style
Afrikaner National as a natural mission given by God to create
a pure community.
The Afrikanner accepts his national task as a divine task.. They
received their task from God and made their sacrifice for the white
race.
Construction of Nationalism: Theologians helped to construct
narrative re-interpreting bible; God as a market of separation
(light/darkness, male/female, land/sea, etc).
Support for Settler Rebellion: vs British even jailed for
interceding for them.
Generating Rituals: Day of Covenant; Ox vagons.
Race struggle: defending white workers vs black worker making
clear racial over class struggle.
Apartheid: During Apartheid legitimating actions and talking
about full separation as fulfillment of the divine mission.

Religious Legitimation
British Style
Do not be mislead by those who would
have you believe that your awakening raceconsciousness can be satisfied and your
true development secured simply by the
improvement of political, educational and
economic conditions. (Against
mobilization of Black Industrial and
Commercial workers in 1920s).
Response: If we dont get land on this
earth neither shall we get it in heaven.

Other Options
There were dissidents
University Christian Movement.
Steve Bikos SASO emerged from
there. But dissident.

Christian Institute.
Model confessing Church of
Germany.

Even after Apartheid Continue

But.. Another history of Resistance

Example I: Makhanda Nxele (early 19th century)
Learn some basic Christianity in Boer farm in
Eastern Cape Colony.
Early support for Christianity, then changed.
Theology: Whites killed the son of their white
God and as punishment were sent to the sea
looking for land. Blacks will be liberated by their
Black God and send them back to the Sea.
Liturgy: It is not through prayer but communal
dance celebrations.
Lead an army of 10 thousands Xhosa and were
defeated in 1819 in Grahamstown. But even after
then followers called him younger brother of
Christ and expected for his return.

Example 2: Israelites
Enoch Mrijima (1920s)
Prophet of Israelites.
Angel revealed to him bring people back
to the Hebrew Bible.
50 years before LTs Exodus focus.
Refused to pay taxes to white regime.
Connections across the Ocean with AfroAmericans.
Christianity is an instrument of European
Supremacy and domination of the world.
Most leaders were persecuted and
killed/jailed.

Example 3: Americans
Wellington Buthelezi
Following Marcus Garveys PanAfricanism.
Millenarists: Afro-Americans were
coming back to Africa to fight
whites and liberate Africa for
Africans.

Organized Black Churches

Ethiopian Churches (1880s-1990s).
Emerged as alternative to white Churches for not
leaving space for Blacks.
Before Black Consciousness movement key space
for Black political Pan-Africanism:
Africa for the Black Man.
The power of the spirit is more powerful than the
political order.

Ethiopian: Symbol of Abyssinia as Black

Christian Empire that resisted colonization and
become a symbol well beyond Africa to include
Afro-Americans/Caribbean.
Key role in ANC legitimizing the resistance. Most
ANC original leaders coming from Church
environment and/or cleargy.

How was Religion used for Liberation?

1) Show internal contradiction of
government supposedly legitimized by
Christianity.
How can a government proclaiming
itself Christian perpetrate such
cruelties?... To confront and disobey the
State is to obey God.

2) Emergence of the prophetic voice to

legitimate resistance and imagine
another possible world.
The power of the spirit is more
powerful than the political order.
(Cushit Church)

How Religion was used for Liberation?

3) Going beyond Colonial Manufactured
Tribalism
we believe in the divine national destine of
nations.. The African natives are one with
Africa.. So that all Africans must be converted
from tribalism to African Nationalism.. We have
then go out as apostoles to preach to the new
gospel of Africanism (Anton Lembede)

4) Context of Des-humanization bring humanity

I am in [the struggle] precisely because I am
Christian. My Christian believe in human society
must find expression here and now. (Albert
Luthuli)

Political Change
In 1912 the movement of political
liberation that was led by the African
National Congress worked to conform to
its political protests to Christian
principles. Bu the 1980s, however,
Christian theologies who identified with
the struggle of liberation worked to
conform their religious principles and
practices to the requirement of political,
social and economic liberation of South
Africa. (Chidester, 1992)
From Christian Ethics to Black
Liberation Theology

Black Theology
1940s-1980s and beyond
Leaders of the movement were not clergy. Some suspicious
of religion.
Particularly SASO (South African Student Association) of
Biko et al who left the multi-cultural University Christian
Movement.
This did not mean renouncement to Christianity but:
Understood according to Black Consciousness.
Depart from the social problems and think them in theological
terms.
Decolonizing (Fanonialy) role of Blacks in SA.
Unapologetical emergence more elements from African
traditions

Role of Church in Apartheid

1980s on
When in late 1980s the government
ban 18 anti-apartheid organizations,
religious leaders step up to the role of
being the voice. Figures that took the
stage were Desmond Tutu, Allan
Boesak

1985
Kairos Document.

Black Theology
I want to declare categorically that I believe apartheid to be
evil and immoral and therefore unchristian. (Tutu)
What does it means to believe in Jesus Christ when one is
black and living in a world controlled by white racists? And
what if these racists call themselves Christians also? Black
theologians still fail to see what was seen by MLK Jr. and
Malcom X: The relation between racism and capitalism.
Black theology, then, must mean a search for a total new
social order, and in this search it wil have to drink deep
from the well of the African tradition.

Black Theology
Black Theology starts with black people in the South
African situation facing the strangling problems of
oppression, fear, anger, insult, and dehumanization. It
tries to understand as clearly as possible who these
people are, what their life experiences are, and the
nature and cause of their suffering. This is an
indispensable datum of Black theology. (Basil Moore)
It is now time for the Black man to evangelize and
humanize the white man. (Mana Buthelezi)

Kairos Document
1985 No Signatures.
Contributions
3 Theologies
State
Church
Prophetic

Violence
Distinction Violence vs Force

In this Moment
The time has come. The moment of truth has arrived.
South Africa has been plunged into a crisis that is
shaking the foundations and there is every indication
that the crisis has only just begun and that it will
deepen and become even more threatening in the
months to come. It is the KAIROS or moment of truth
not only for apartheid but also for the Church.
There will be no place to hide and no way of
pretending to be what we are not in fact. At this
moment in South Africa the Church is about to be
shown up for what it really is and no cover-up will be
possible.

State Theology
The South African apartheid State has a theology of its own
and we have chosen to call it State Theology. State
Theology is simply the theological justification of the status
quo with its racism, capitalism and totalitarianism. It blesses
injustice, canonizes the will of the powerful and reduces the
poor to passivity, obedience and apathyThe South African
State recognizes no authority beyond itself and therefore it
will not allow anyone to question what it has chosen to
define as law and order. However, there are millions of
Christians in South Africa today who are saying with Peter:
We must obey God rather than man (human beings) (Acts
5:29).

Church Theology
Church Theology takes reconciliation as the key to
problem resolution. It talks about the need for
reconciliation between white and black, or between all
South Africans. Church Theology often describes the
Christian stance in the following way: We must be
fair. We must listen to both sides of the story. If the
two sides can only meet to talk and negotiate they will
sort out their differences and misunderstandings, and
the conflict will be resolved. On the face of it this may
sound very Christian. But is it?

Reconciliation
The fallacy here is that Reconciliation has been made
into an absolute principle that must be applied in all
cases of conflict or dissension But there are conflicts
in which one side is right and the other wrong. There
are conflicts where one side is a fully armed and
violent oppressor while the other side is defenseless
and oppressed. There are conflicts that can only be
described as the struggle between justice and injustice,
good and evil, God and the devil. To speak of
reconciling these two is not only a mistaken
application of the Christian idea of reconciliation, it is
a total betrayal of all that Christian faith has ever
meant.

Reconciliation
In our situation in South Africa today it would be totally
unChristian to plead for reconciliation and peace before the
present injustices have been removed. Any such plea plays
into the hands of the oppressor by trying to persuade those
of us who are oppressed to accept our oppression and to
become reconciled to the intolerable crimes that are
committed against us. That is not Christian reconciliation,
it is sin. It is asking us to become accomplices in our own
oppression, to become servants of the devil. No
reconciliation is possible in South Africa without justice.
What this means in practice is that no reconciliation, no
forgiveness and no negotiations are possible without
repentance.

The problem for the Church here is the way the word violence is being
used in the propaganda of the State. The State and the media have
chosen to call violence what some people do in the townships as they
struggle for their liberation i.e. throwing stones, burning cars and
buildings and sometimes killing collaborators. But this excludes the
structural, institutional and unrepentant violence of the State and
especially the oppressive and naked violence of the police and the
army. These things are not counted as violence. And even when they
are acknowledged to be excessive, they are called misconduct or
even atrocities but never violence. Thus the phrase Violence in the
townships comes to mean what the young people are doing and not
what the police are doing or what apartheid in general is doing to
people. If one calls for nonviolence in such circumstances one appears
to be criticizing the resistance of the people while justifying or at least
overlooking the violence of the police and the State. That is how it is
understood not only by the State and its supporters but also by the
people who are struggling for their freedom. Violence, especially in
our circumstances, is a loaded word.

Violence
There is a long and consistent Christian tradition
about the use of physical force to defend oneself
against aggressors and tyrants. In other words there are
circumstances when physical force may be used. They
are very restrictive circumstances, only as the very last
resort and only as the lesser of two evilsBut it is
simply not true to say that every possible use of physical
force is violence and that no matter what the
circumstances may be it is never permissible.

Key Options
Social Analysis
Oppression in the Bible
Resistance to Tyranny
Message of Hope
God Sides with the Oppressed.
Small Community of Reflection
Civil Disobedience.
Participation in the Struggle

Christianity not the only one

Struggling
Other Cases