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N. Mndende: Address to Summit 2022, Session IVc
Written by Dr. Nokuzola Mndende, National chairperson, Council of African Religion; Director, iCamagu Heritage Institute, South Africa
Friday, August 12, 2022
Address to Summit 2022 and Leadership Conference,
Seoul, Korea, August 11-15, 2022
Today in our countries, every inhabited space is chaotic. Both the political and spiritual leaders appear to be running out of options. No one is safe anywhere, be it at home, work, school, spiritual gathering, public space, police stations, or military camps – it is the same. Human life is destroyed in many ways, whether it is by natural disasters, wars, pandemics, human trafficking, drugs, gender-based violence, femicide, and rape of women and children.
One may ask, what role should religion play in bringing back sanity to the people to find ways to live peacefully with one another and with nature? The actual question is what role should religious and spiritual leaders play in bringing back sanity in the world? This question is very loaded and before the leaders in question here can speak with one voice, a lot needs to be done. No solution can be reached without honestly exposing the causal factors and then engaging with possible solutions to bring unity to the continent.
Some of the critical areas that lead to these violent inhumane activities that we experience today in our continent are because of the holier than thou attitude of many groups over others, corruption, selfishness caused by greed, and suppression of the voiceless and the underprivileged.
Humanity has shifted from a communal way of life (us) to individualism (myself and my nuclear family). What needs to be done is multi-fold as leaders themselves are not speaking in one voice and are also not speaking and acting at one level.
Talking from experience, many discussions on different religions talking about peace bringing and morality either in countries of origin or globally are so far unfortunately at a level championed by the holier than thou, the privileged over the underprivileged. Certain religions are made to be champions of morality and are therefore used as a point of departure for all, irrespective of the histories of broken relationships and sufferings with others. Some religions are evangelizing, some are not.
Some religions are rich and can therefore reach a bigger audience by imposing their doctrines denouncing others, some are poor and are being fed by the rich on the condition that they accept the imposed doctrines as they are coming with food.
That approach on its own creates suspicions and tensions among participants themselves. The foundation for the discussions between different religions should therefore be the putting aside of differences in doctrines and focusing only on the common enemy – the destruction of life and the environment. The focus should be on how could these leaders restore and develop peace in our communities and our respective countries.
It is therefore the duty of religious leaders themselves to have, if possible, a common understanding of the purpose of this peace agenda and also a certain knowledge of the pillars of other religions they are working together with. It is important to at least understand the basics of the religion or religions one is working with as it is very dangerous to speak on just your religion as a norm, yet you are presenting a bigger whole. So, the purpose of inter-religious participation is very important and can take a big stride in helping political leaders to calm down and stop destroying the world.
Coming to our African leaders in the continent, it is a plea that before finalizing any legislation, they should base them on their roots. In the African culture before suffocation by outside cultures, individualism was despised, we were living a communal life, hence the say, I am because we are and since I am, therefore we are. That means no one lives on an island alone, and no one just came out of nowhere as an individual, hence we are clan based. One must understand that the present use of surnames or second names is new in Africa, it came when colonizers wanted to register Africans. That was the beginning and introduction of individualism.
Africans before colonialism never had the concept of what is today called a ‘nuclear’ family because we had what Mbiti called ‘kinship’ or commonly called clans. This kinship system also extends vertically to include the departed and those yet to be born.
Nangoli (1987) further argues:
In Africa, the family is more than man, woman and the offspring – what sociologists in the West call the nuclear family. The father, mother, uncles, aunties, brothers, sisters, cousins and all the relatives belonging to a singular family tree, make up a family in Africa – or more appropriately a clan.
The first step that Africans need to do is to restore their identity. Nangoli believes that Africans are the only nation in the world without a true identity. Without understanding who you are, there is no development of your people you could achieve.
What is happening now Africans are defining themselves in colonial languages, like Francophone, Anglophone and Lusophone. Africa’s indigenous spirituality is still at the lower level of the spiritual ladder if recognized, after all, those religions that came into the continent occupy the upper level, hence Africans themselves had adopted some self-hate. They regard their culture and spirituality as secular and those who came as holy as dictated to them. African culture was defined by colonizers as an outdated exclusive way of life without any form of spirituality. In all spheres of governance, the indigenous ways of life are subjugated by those from outside the continent.
Diala (2022) when speaking about the present legal system in Africa argues that:
African customs and traditions are subject to state courts. Importantly, these courts – both procedurally and content-wise – are replicas of the colonial justice system bequeathed by the Dutch and the British (4)… colonial schools, churches, and work systems were configured to reflect European culture. So, in essence, African elites, especially judges, are philosophical clones of Europeans because they carried on from where their colonial masters left off (5)…. When judges, legislators, and policymakers like the South African Law Reform Commission neglect the foundational dynamics of indigenous customs, they worsen the conflict between indigenous laws and state laws (7).
Africans have forgotten the teachings of their forebears that life is a journey with its prescribed responsibilities. According to indigenous norms, there is clear gender role clarification according to age and birthright.
All the above had been done first from the family as the basic pillar. African Traditional Religion involves a religious journey from conception to death and beyond. It is an all-encompassing human experience. For human beings, life centers on a system of beliefs that are translated into actions or practices.
Kibicho (1981) argues that during colonialization African peoples and their religion were placed on the bottom rung of the evolutionary ladder, while those religions that came to Africa were right at the top of the ladder. That is why it is important that Africans, after their independence, should redress the imbalances of the past, and in this case, the only way is to accord African Traditional Religion the status it deserves and to make it parallel with other religions and not to have a lower status than any other religions that came into the country.
The question that Africans need to ask themselves is why others are still at the top of the ladder and the indigenous spirituality at the lowest if there is freedom of religion and equality?
The post-colonial period was supposed to bring a government that would bring holistic liberation. Unfortunately, the African leadership itself became more arrogant than the previous governments. It is a pity that when liberation came, it was only the color that changed, otherwise all the oppressive tools brought by colonizers were taken over by the African leadership.
Looking at the journey from pre-colonial, through colonial and now liberation of Africans, Chinweizu suggests that the solution to the African problem is as follows:
To shift intellectual gear from what Europe has done to us (How Europe underdeveloped Africa), to what we are doing to ourselves (How Africans may develop Africa), and to what we must do for ourselves to get out of our condition (How Africans can develop Africa (Chinweizu, 1987:73)
It is unfortunate that whenever Africans think of rediscovering their identity, they always refer to the literature of the past, many of them have introduced very radical provisions especially targeting cultures and traditions wishing them away. Hansungule is correct when he argues that:
At independence, the new African regimes run by native Africans surprisingly perpetrated the contempt imposed by Western systems on indigenous society. Instead of using the opportunity of independence to reinstate the supremacy of indigenous law over and above Western law and society, native African rulers became even more aggressive in suppressing their own civilization.
He further states ‘The perpetuation of alien law and systems in independent Africa has dealt a severe blow to the whole idea of independence in Africa. Constitution after constitution while proclaiming the importance of traditional African values nonetheless subordinated these values to western values in the form of the bill of rights, in fact, nothing more than a simple act of ‘cutting and pasting from the foreign documents to equally ‘foreign’ but domesticated instruments.’
It is therefore important that if Africans are honest about bringing peace to the continent, they must first decolonize, de-patriarchies African history, and use African culture and spirituality as a basis for morality reclaiming and development in the continent.
Tinyiko Maluleke supports this approach as he suggests that if ATR has to be liberated:
As part of our going back to the drawing board, we have to return to the great host of all religions that came into Africa from outside, namely African religion. For Black and African theologians, African religions have become an important dialogue partner, now more than ever before. (Maluleke 2020)
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