Are we a cursed race?

THIS article was supposed to coincide with Africa Day — the day we Africans celebrate our achievements and our being. Unfortunately, I was distracted by my work schedule and family commitments and failed to write it. Writing this article after Africa Day has allowed me to read many articles, written to commemorate this very important day for any African worth the name. Most of the articles were mournful and engaged in self-denigration to the point of suggesting that as Africans we are a cursed race. The articles dismally failed to acknowledge that Africa finds itself in this mess because of the “coloniality of power, coloniality of knowledge and coloniality of being”. However, this is not the focus of my article. Hopefully, I will address these issues in the future.

This article explores and analyses the relationship and interaction between Christianity and Africa. Is Christianity a blessing or hindrance to the development of Africa? As Africans, did we make a humongous mistake of abandoning our traditional African religions? Is Christianity a religion of the white man? Did Christianity play a role in the colonisation and exploitation of Africa? Indeed, these are mind-boggling questions that deserve interrogation.

Before I go further, I should point out from the onset that I am a Seventh Day Adventist Christian (SDA). Growing up in Mberengwa district, under Chief Nyamhondo, I attended Lutheran Schools (Mudzidzi Primary School, Musume Primary School, and Chegato High School) and was subsequently baptised, becoming a bona fide Lutheran. After high school, I drifted away from Christianity, partly because most of my questions could not be answered by the Lutheran doctrines. As a grown-up man, I was introduced to SDA doctrines by my wife's pastor, a renowned theologian and scholar.

To my amazement, SDA doctrines which are biblically based, answered most of my questions eg the state of the dead, the ministry of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary, temperance, prophecy, etc. As a historian, I was intrigued by the intricate relationship between history and prophecy. In history, we see the fulfilment of prophecy. History is crucial to the correct interpretation of the book of Daniel, particularly Daniel chapters 2, 7 and 8.

The title of this article is largely motivated by Kayemb Uriel Nawej's book White Poison: A Black

Christian a Traitor to the Memory of his ancestors-Africa Wake Up. Nawej (2006) is unequivocal, vociferous, and unapologetic that the source of Africa's social, political, and economic problems is Christianity, which he calls “white poison”. According to Nawej (2007), Christianity is the cause of our “eternal” mental colonisation and slavery. No wonder why Bob Marley sang that we need to “emancipate ourselves from mental slavery”. Nawej asserts that “Christianity has been used as an instrument to enslave the conquered African nations, ensuring that they lose their identity” (p9). He postulates that the domination of Africa by Europeans was made possible through religious assimilation. Nawej contends that the process of domination started by “religiously assimilating” Africans to “ensure that their authentic religions are removed and abandoned” and subsequently impose Christianity (p11).

In a nutshell, Nawej argues that Christianity was the pathway to economic exploitation and its “inevitable corollary political domination” of the African people. To illustrate his thesis, Nawej cites Jomo Kenyatta: “When whites came to Africa, we had our land and they had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed: when we opened them, the whites had our lands and we had the Bible…”.

Noticeably, Nawej extensively quoted Leopold II the King of Belgium’s speech in 1883 when he was addressing Catholic priests who were being sent to the Congo (DRC) as missionaries, and some visceral racist statement from Catholic priests serving as missionaries in the Congo. Here is part of Leopold II speech:

“Priests, you will go of course to evangelise, but your evangelisation must be inspired above all by the interests of Belgium. The main goal of your mission in Congo is, therefore, not to teach the Negroes to know God, because they know him already. Your essential role is to facilitate the task of our administrators and industrialists. This means you will interpret the gospel in the way it will serve and protect our interests in that part of the world.

For that purpose, you will make sure among other things that our savages lose interest in the overflowing wealth of their soil, in order to avoid that they get interested in it, compete to death with us and dream one day to dislodge us. Your knowledge of the gospel will allow you to find easily texts recommending the faithful to love poverty, for example, blessed are the poor because the kingdom of heaven is theirs. It is difficult for a rich person to enter heaven. You will do everything so that Negroes are afraid to get rich in order to deserve heaven. Sing everyday that it is impossible for the rich to enter heaven. (p 13)

According to Jean-Felix de Hemptinne the apostolic vicar of Katanga, the “Black race has nothing behind it. They are a people without a written language, history, philosophy, and any sort of consistency” (p 21-22).

These statements evoke anger and frustration from the formerly colonised, and rightly so. It is such statements that make people have a negative attitude towards Christianity and its role in the colonisation of Africa.

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