Set against that recent
dramatic discovery of ancient or even pre-ancient humanity is the encounter of the modern European
visitors, later settlers, with Africa. In
the 15th century European seamen stepped ashore, set foot on African soil and met the people of
Africa. Their most dramatic discovery was that these people have no religion. They had no religion
because there were no signs of religiosity: no temples or architecture of sacred places, no visible
places set aside as holy, no moments devoted to worship, no postures that showed recognition of the
divine. These people sang and danced and beat their drums with sensuous exhibitionism.
It is not surprising,
therefore, that what was discovered in Africa is not evidence of worshiping ancient humanity but the
very quintessence of being human, footprints. They left their imprint on their environment. They
walked to gather food, to dominate their environment and to build relationships. Humanity walks.
The culture and way of life of the ancient people is not discovered through religious artifacts but
through the activity of being human. Fossils of ancient animals, plant and sea life, stone tools at least
one million years old with which humanity fashioned life have been found in the gravels of the
western Cape. Peer's Cave at Fish Hoek testifies to human life that goes back to about 500,000
years. The Fish Hoek Man discovered in 1927 among nine human skeletons were discovered, was
aged about 12,000 years old. What all this says to me is that the people of Africa walked with God
and God with them. The shape of the footprint resembles the geographical features of Africa. There
can be no other footprints, no other evidence of God except by being at one with the activity of the
people. The God of Africa is coterminous and coexistent with the people of Africa. God has no
existence other than with the people. This God is weak and vulnerable because we have known no
other God. This is the God who shares our human condition because God has no other existence but
ours. We have only known God in the people of our everyday experience. There are no temples, no
stone architecture, no holy places, no holy dress or holy moments. The entire activity of the people,
their very being was a devotion to the deity who is the creator. To understand the people of Africa,
therefore, requires a paradigm shift about God and religious life. Africa IS the footprint of God.
Discourse about Africa
has to avoid the temptation of two extremes: the gloom and doom about a continent in perpetual
crisis, a people who have been throughout modern history the targets of exploitation, where
corruption and wars are rife and where the people suffer from every imaginable malady. A world
without science or knowledge. Zephania Kameeta gives us the most dramatic example of this view of
Africa from Keith Richburg, an African American journalist who has done service in the troubled
spots of Africa:
What I am offering is a mean between the two extremes: not falling for the gloom and cynicism of
her detractors or the glorification of her past by her admirers. I use faith as an interpretative tool of
the heart and soul of Africa. The image of the footprints is the one that tells me that the people of
Africa have journeyed and labored with God over centuries. They are the people of faith. It is the
faith that has sustained them. The faith that is part of their daily and ordinary lives. It is their faith
that says that God dwells in the midst of them. God walks with them and suffers with them. God is
not the ultimate explanation for the people are the explanation of their environment and their
circumstances. It is always interesting that African people never blame God for their suffering.
Theodicy is not the philosophy of our religion. Every effect has a cause and the search for meaning
and explanation means that diviners are kept in business because they can see beyond the elemental
world. Evil does not just happen, it is caused; often by human evil and ultimately by evil forces
beyond human understanding. Humanity has the power of good and evil.
Africans journeyed with God and God tabernacled in their midst. God was incarnate They were
sustained by faith and they lived in faith. Their cosmology linked the past and the present and the
future through the ancestors. The spirits of the ancestors were forever present mediating and
intervening in life's fortunes. This view of life meant that African people were a tolerant people. Yes,
they fought wars, had heroes and heroines. Yes, the dominant groups oppressed the less powerful.
That was the law of nature. But those who lived under their protection were accepted and the
stranger was assured hospitality. That explains why the people of Africa were colonized. They were
accepting and welcoming of strangers. They were vulnerable to forces that failed to understand their
ways of life. The religions of the world found a home in Africa. No culture was totally alien. It
became part of the whole and found expression in the culture of the Continent. That is why we have
a mix of cultures and religions in Africa today. The people of Africa journey with God in faith.
But this faith is in crisis and may even be the cause of the crisis of the Continent. African people are
not anymore good or bad that any other people the world over. They seek better systems of life for
themselves and their children. They dream of freedom, of better opportunities of life and the means
to extend their life choices. They have witnessed governments and systems come and go. Powerful
men have lorded it over them and when their time came they bit the dust. There is a cycle of life that
is as predictable as it is inevitable. And so the faith of Africa has always been tied up with humanity.
People have always shaped her fortunes. Faith is in crisis because confidence in people has been
shaken, betrayed. God seems to have deserted the people of Africa. The God who instilled hope in
tragedy and sustained the future is no longer in the midst of them. The people have been left to
merciless ravenous forces. We have sought like the Israelites to be like the other nations forgetting
that in our midst dwells the God who journeys with us. We have built walls of division and hostility
one from the other; we have built armies and frittered away resources on instruments of destruction.
We have turned our weapons on our own people and destroyed one another in fratricidal wars. The
wealth of our nations has been bargained in the global markets with scant regard for the needs of our
own people. Our leaders have stolen from us only to bank our money in Europe. We are burdened
with debt. In such circumstances, the faith of the ancestors needs a re-incarnation. But we have been
there before.
I said that I was merely devising an interpretative tool and not indulging in apologetics. It seems to
me that that tool will take us back to the people of Africa and their faith in God. The challenges we
face are threefold: eradicating poverty, establishing democracy, human rights and good systems of
governance and, finally, setting standards for a moral universe.
I start with poverty not because I wish to indulge in the politics of gloom about Africa. Although I
accept that Africa must take responsibility for her management of her affairs, one cannot lose sight of
the fact that poverty is not a natural condition of humanity. It is man-made. It is man-made because
poverty is the result of policy options that have been taken which impoverish some and enrich others.
Inasmuch as poverty is man-made, so also do I believe that poverty can be eradicated. The Human
Development Report 1997 puts it succinctly:
The second challenge I have pointed to is democracy, human rights and good governance. Of course,
poverty cannot be eradicated, corruption will not be eliminated except on the basis of truly
democratic policies, and sensitivity and responsiveness to human need, in short, good governance.
These aspirations express the vision of African states who in the preamble to the Charter of the OAU
founded in 1963, determined that "freedom, equality, justice and dignity are essential objectives for
the achievement of the legitimate aspirations of African peoples " The African Charter on Human
and Peoples' Rights, adopted in 1981, sets out a uniform and minimum standard of achievement for
African peoples based on the "virtues of their historical tradition and the values of African
civilization which should inspire and characterize their reflection on the concept of human and
peoples' rights." In his report to the General Assembly, Kofi Annan refers to the resurgent spirit of
Africa that seeks to address meaningfully and honestly the patterns of the past. Among these he
mentions human rights and the rule of law as the cornerstones of good governance. An Africa
committed to good governance, free participation of the people in the government of their country,
an interaction between the governed and those who govern by consent, a commitment to root out
corruption and to ensure accountability at all times will ensure long-term stability, prosperity and
people for all its peoples. This is how Kofi Annan puts it:
My third challenge is a call to moral regeneration of the Continent and its peoples. In a sense this is
an over-arching concern because it is fundamental to all our concerns. An ethical orientation of life is
a necessary condition for a society based on good governance and that protects the human rights of
citizens. Such a society will respond positively to the moral imperative to address the incidence of
poverty and inequality. A moral society will also be the one that seeks to approximate as much as
possible the will of God in human dealings and in then organization of society. The cause of Africa is
never going to be served by prevailing moral relativism and selectivity. There must be some
common, shared and abiding values that bind us together for all time. The mark of a great people is
their capacity to wrestle with the moral challenges of their time and lay the foundations for the good
society for this and future generations. We are at our most human when we display moral sensitivity.
That is the mark of ubuntu, the creed that has held many Africans to an ideal that affirms one's
humanity as being tied up with the humanity of others. The greatest gift we can bequeath to future
generations to a world that is more not less human, more caring and more loving.
That is what the parable of the fossilized footprints tells me. It says to me that God is great not
because God is powerful but because God has chosen to dwell among us ordinary sinful people. That
is the hope that Africa is ready to share with the world. As the ecumenical movement returns to the
great Continent since Nairobi, 1975, it will find Africa yearning for peace and more confident about
the future. The Africa full of faith and hope.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Talk
to me about Africa and my black roots and my kinship with my African brothers and I'll throw it
back in your face, and then I'll rub your nose in the images of the rotting flesh But most of all I think:
Thank God my ancestor got out, because now I am not one of them.
The other extreme is one associated with the famous African American scholar, Manning Marable.
Marable has studies ancient civilization of Africa. He is focused on what Africa has given to modern
civilization. Africa as the cradle of humanity, the fountain of ancient scholarship and science and
culture, the great Africans who have shaped the history of knowledge and civilization. Its an amazing
uncovering of history from an African perspective where Africa is the subject and not the object of
history and where the tools of interpretation are in the hands of the African as interpreter of his own
history, the teller of his own story. The problem with this is that it fails to take account of the fact
that Africa is no longer visible, it has been drowned out in the misery and suffering and exploitation
that has become the lot of many in Africa today. Colonization has robbed Africa of its soul. The
other problem is that one is inclined to blame everyone else for the fate of Africa except Africans
themselves. Africa need not take responsibility for their condition, their politics, their economy and
their culture. There are forces at work, the deus ex machina reeking its devilish power on a hapless
continent and its people. This is the theory of victimology and we must avoid it.
Eradicating
poverty everywhere is more than a moral imperative and a commitment to human solidarity. It is a
practical possibility and, in the long run, an economic imperative for global prosperity. And because
poverty is no longer inevitable, it should no longer be tolerated. The time has come to eradicate the
worst aspects of human poverty in a decade or two to create a world that is more humane, more
stable, more just.
(106)
This confident assertion is a very hopeful sign. With goodwill and the political will poverty can be
eradicated. Some 220m people in sub-Saharan Africa earn less than $1 per day, 122m with functional
illiteracy, 205m have no access to safe drinking water and 205m have no access to health facilities.
This trend should and can be reversed within our lifetime. It can be done if corruption in the
management of public resources is eliminated. Corruption is theft from the poor. It can be done if
national priorities in the distribution of available resources are restructured so that there is evident
bias for the poor in public policy. In other words, it can be done if there is the political will. It can be
done if globalization and the curse of the markets are controlled and managed to benefit the most
needy and genuine interdependence and burden sharing in trade policies is adopted. It can be done in
a less selfish world. It can be done if the poor do not have to carry a crippling debt burden. It can be
done. Poverty is a curse to humanity. The 1998 Human Development Report has identified trends in
consumption as one of the patterns of modern life that will need to be altered if humanity can address
the challenge of eradicating poverty.
Africa
must summon the will to take good governance seriously, ensuring respect for human rights and the
rule of law, strengthening democratization, promoting transparency and capability in public
administration. Unless good governance is prized, Africa will not break free of the threat and reality
of conflict that are so evident today.
Questions continue to linger about the most appropriate forms of democracy for Africa today. Since
the heyday of multiparty elections, the dismantling of one-party states and Presidents-for Life since
the end of the Cold War, questions abound not only about "the vitality, quality' and relevance of the
kind of democratic transition that is taking place but also about its sustainability and the prospects
for consolidation/ institutionalization of the reforms that have been put in place." (Olukoshi: 10)
These are all legitimate questions, answers to which could help ensure a more durable political and
social dispensation and one which the peoples of Africa could own and therefore defend.
Human Development Report 1997 and 1998; UNDP
Echoes: Justice, Peace and Creation 14/98; Geneva: WCC
Adebayo O Olokushi
(Ed): The Politics of Opposition; Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet; 1998
Kofi Annan: The Causes of Conflict and the Promotion of Durable Peace and Sustainable
Development in Africa; United Nations General Assembly; Doc A/52/871-S/1998/318.
© 1999 world council of churches | remarks to webeditor