AFRICA AND RELIGIONS FOR INDUSTRIALISATION

Theological censorship inherited from colonial governments may account for the state of technology and economic growth in Africa, argues Okello Oculi

The gap between core principles enunciated by organised religion and political practices runs deep in Africa. Ancient Egyptian civilisation created by black African Pharaohs valued ‘’justice’’ ( “maat’’) understood as community welfare. Its priests developed commandments which were later borrowed by religious movements that sprung out of ancient Egypt’s former colonies and barbarians who overthrew her rulers. Egyptologists credit Pharaoh Akhenaton with propounding the notion of one divine being whose power of creation was seen in the beauty of flowers; tempers of wind, stars, etc.

The second notion was that of the Pharaoh as the son of God and is also a part of God. As a ruler, He/ She was accountable for achieving ‘’justice/maat” through governance. At the gate of Heaven a panel of 39 judges weighed a Pharaoh’s soul against a bird’s feather; with a virtuous record of governance being heavier than the feather.

The Pharaohs ruled colonies included present-day Iraq, Sudan and Greece. Colonial governors recruited slaves to build pyramids as houses from within which the souls of the Pharaoh and top officials rose and travelled to Heaven. As drawings on walls of pyramids show, the Pharaoh was buried with servants, wives, domestic and paintings animals hunted in the wild. The brutal exploitation and enslavement of conquered peoples did not diminish the ‘’justice/maat’’ by which a ruler was judged at the gates of Heaven.

This heritage would later haunt Africa. For four centuries, Christian pirates from Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium, France and the British isles joined in looting human resources out of Africa to use for building their industrial economies; while excluding slaves from prosperity and taking part in politics. As Ottoman and Arab merchants crossed the Sahara from Morocco in the west to Egypt in the east, their religious beliefs did not prohibit the horrendous depopulation of Africa.

As the French historian Jean Suret-Canale has insisted, Christian commandments failed to prevent European nations that carved up Africa in 1885, from practicing genocidal colonial dictatorships. In the Congo, for example, the Catholic Church blessed King Leopold’s barbaric cutting off hands of five million villagers who resisted collecting rubber latex. It was little wonder that at independence, Congolese people in rural districts raped Belgian women, including Catholic nuns, and whipped Belgian men with hides of rhino skin. Frightened and mauled Belgians fled into Uganda. King Bedouin of Belgium walked out when Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba recalled this sordid history.

In Rwanda and Burundi, Catholic schools favoured enrolling children of a minority group they called ‘’Tutsi’’. As the independence wind gushed across Africa, they changed direction and began to favour the majority ‘’Hutu’’; while inciting them to revenge humiliations they had suffered from Tutsi chiefs and clerks. At mid-night on Independence Day, adult Hutus rushed out with panga/machete to hack any Tutsi in sight. That was the genocide of 1959/60. President Kagame has resolved to dredge out the hatred in the Hutu-Tutsi relationship engineered by Belgian officials. The law prohibits labelling a person by those poisonous identities. Camps for youths are imparting a new identity of ‘’New Rwandans’’ pledged to build a new united non-tribal community. The Catholic Church had been a willing farmer of conflicts in Rwanda and Burundi.

In Ethiopia, the Coptic Church had, for centuries walked hand in hand with brutal imperial and feudal regimes. In 1974, the gun wielded by angry soldiers with socialist convictions

SERMONS FROM PULPITS NEVER MENTION COMPETITION BY CONGREGATIONS WITH BRITISH AND JAPANESE COMPANIES WHOSE BANKS AND VEHICLES RULE AFRICA. IRONICALLY, LUXURIOUS VISUALS OF IMPORTED GOODS INCITE DESPERATE YOUTHS IN NIGERIA TO KIDNAP POLITICIANS AND SCHOOL CHILDREN FOR RANSOM

brought into governance principles of justice, human dignity and commitment to the development of the masses of the people. Mengistu Haile Mariam gave land to serfs trapped under poverty and ravenous landlords. Prime Minister Meles Zenawe moved the country from having only one rickety university to over 23 universities. Both wielded guns directed by socialist values. The Coptic Church may be waiting for history to take them backwards to a time when Christian practices ignored development, justice and equality before the law and God.

Out of South Africa came a stark contrast. From 1948 believers in doctrines of a ‘’Dutch Reform Church’’ won political power through an election. It was a tribal victory to be used to drag rural Boer farmers from low-income agriculture into modernised farming, industrial production and commerce. They borrowed from the United States of America laws for enslaving black people and denying them access to prosperity and citizenship. A vital ethos was the use of Calvinist notions of salvation through work to build prosperity for the Afrikaner tribe. They grabbed and retain as much of profits being carried away by European and American mining companies to finance government parastatals to build an industrialised economy in Africa for their tribal paradise under Heaven. The Dutch Reformed Church won the distinction of being a religion that anchored and celebrated a “crime against humanity.’’

Protestant Europe and the United States of America had used the “Protestant Ethic’’ to fuel industrialisation. However, the Protestantism spread to African peoples avoided this fuel for economic development. Together with Catholicism, their priority was on bashing minds of colonised peoples with accusations of being sinful; rather than creative producers of wealth as worship of God, and winning tickets to heaven. Doreen Baingana in her novel, Tropical Fish, expresses the mental damage done to girls in Gayaza Girls High School – a leading Protestant/Anglican boarding school - as follows: “All around me the girls swayed in sweet suffering, relishing the pain of being outcasts on earth, but chosen by God for heaven. Only Jesus could see them through. Only Jesus.’’

The deep poverty which colonial Christianity has wrapped with worship has since the early 1980s been thrown into panic by American “Prosperity Christianity’’. It tells followers to threaten and intimidate God and wrestle wealth from His hands. With prayers - not mobilising to force the state to provide funds to support personal invention and productivity - God will be coaxed into sending wealth, thereby saving the ‘’wretched of the earth’’ from trenchant poverty.

There is no contact with the fuel for development in the “Protestant Ethic’’ and the version of Calvinism that drives development by Afrikaners in South Africa. Sermons from pulpits never mention competition by congregations with British and Japanese companies whose banks and vehicles rule Africa. Ironically, luxurious visuals of imported goods incite desperate youths in Nigeria to kidnap politicians and school children for ransom.

Perhaps this is a new form of alliance between religion and violence. There is no talk about a “Christian African industrialisation theology’’. That theological censorship inherited from colonial governments may account for the propensity of graduates of missionary schools across Africa to be consumers and corrupt leaches on state funds; not inventors and manufacturers of technology as drivers of economic growth.