Mennonite
Central
Committee

Africa: The Primordial Home of Life and the Challenge of Globalization "Globalization: Africa as a Global Centre"

Keynote Address by Rev. Dr. H. Mvume Dandala - General Secretary, All Africa Conference of Churches

Introduction

We Christians contend that the origin of all things and the absolute holy ground upon which all life is embedded is the sole explanation of our destiny in the universe. The claims that the event of creation and the flourishing of life on earth begun here in Africa cannot be ignored or dismissed out of hand. Tracing the footprints of God on the Garden of Eden, certainly Africa does point to the landscape upon which the grandeur of God embraced the whole universe. Unfortunately our theological reflections about the origins of human life have largely been informed by territoriality and the hermeneutics of conquest.

Africa is the sacred and primordial home of life; hence, the motif of Africa as the mother and father of all humanity is truly grounded on the ethic of existence. As the living sanctuary of human origins, Africa is filled with the most exquisite landscapes ever seen anywhere in the world. From the boundless mountains to the great lakes, meandering rivers and the vast savannah before Sahara that form the amazing landscapes north and south of the Limpopo, Africa is the grandeur of Gods creation. Even with the dawn of modernity traced to the most ancient of civilizations in antiquity, they all find their roots on this very mother continent. As the home of all humanity endowed with all the features of the primordial garden, it makes sense for us to say with theological and philosophical confidence that this is the place where the first human community encountered God and the cosmos.

The global imaging of Africa while focusing on the state of apathy and impoverishment produced by the recent histories from slavery to neo-colonialism has failed to capture the vivid picture of the human heritage of this continent. While Africa is bequeathed with the primordial legacy, it has also embraced modernity with its entire vicissitudes. The coming of Christianity in the continent via the infrastructures of the colonial enterprise continues to challenge the doctrinal claims of exclusivity and even the monolithic attributes of faith. Christianity came into the continent with a burden of European history and as a divided movement with a variety of claims that reflected the conflicts and contradictions of colonial heritage. Our endeavor to create the ecumenical space in which churches reflect and respond in solidarity with one another and the people of Africa is not an attempt to repair that history, rather to live beyond it with a new rekindling vision of life.

The All Africa Conference of Churches, whose foundation stone was excavated from the most ancient site of human origins at Lake Elementaita in Gilgil near Nakuru, is now called to be the beacon of institutional memory for the ecumenical movement in Africa. We are on the threshold of new boundaries of global and local realities and we have the means to redefine who we are and even reclaim our place as Africans beyond that which has been lost by history. Our hope is anchored on the fact that we are not alone. So long as our commitment is connected to the transforming power of the grandeur of God in all creation we shall change the conditions of depravity and alienation that produce anguish and misery in Africa. Africa shall arise once again with the renewed vigor to reclaim her place in the world. And as Church we are an invaluable instrument in the investment of hope for the people of this continent, Africa.

Globalization and culture hermeneutics

The systematic programming of the African peoples by foreign cultural productions and values is, of course, a legitimate a concern. A call has to be made for vigilance against the angels of death lurking in the tubes of cable television. While television and the music industry shape entertainment tastes, foreign beverage and fast food franchises such as Coke, Pepsi, KFC and Mac Donald's are now dictating not only what we eat, but are telling us how to cook. Consumerism has affected everything from choices in clothing, food and entertainment. Through global tourism Africa has been reduced to a site of "sunshine" pleasure, not real places with real people, but goods to be bought, used and left or even discarded.

As the anthropologist Jonathan Friedman observes: Globalized structures are not new to the present global system. The mercantile companies from the fifth through the 18th centuries were globally institutionalized structures. The existence of such structures, including virtual diasporas of trade colonies employed by single companies, is, furthermore, a characteristic of most of the commercial civilizations dating back far into the ancient world. The great empires of the past were powerful, globalized organizations and just as often powerful globalizing cultures (Friedman, 202).

Cultural identity we now understand to be "production" as opposed to the representation of some fixed or "root" understanding of self. Cultures largely produce and therefore represent themselves via their artistic/creative productions which are also a matter of agency and power. In other words, cultural productions served as an essential mobilization arm of the struggle for political sovereignty, and in many ways preceded it. While cultures and identities have not escaped the social fragmentation and transformations of cross- confluence engendered by contemporary migratory movements, the fact remains that the centre of hegemonic power is still largely located in the economic, ideological and political power sites of the globe. After all, it is no news that American-controlled cable network produces reality for a significant percentage of the African people through CNN.

More than any other time in history there is greater uniformity as a result of Western capitalist dominance via trade and the media dissemination of metropolitan cultural norms. Secondly there is more insistent particularization as a counter-cultural resistance to the blurring of specificities in global sameness.

Globalization homogenizes as it hegemonizes. In the globalization discourse a lot has been said about the homogenization of production and consumption. However, the discourse and analyses of globalization have said a great deal less about another consequence of globalization, namely hegemonization or emergence of a hegemonic center. The evil of corruption associated with globalization has become entrenched and seemingly irreversible in public affairs, driven by the domination of a political elite, will never be broken unless its link to the global chain is busted. That corruption is a terrible thing is obvious, but we must unearth the global infrastructure and context that not only creates but also facilitates and sustains corrupt transactions. For instance sociologists tell us that just 2 percent of the global population control 70 percent of the wealth and all the political power. This for me points to a global ethic without a sense of morality and social justice.

The wounding of the continent through the ugly history of long suffering and fragmentation of her humanity must lead us to ask, what are the values of African culture and depth of humanity that made Africans survive? How do we invoke the hidden memories of survival in stories and songs that continue to nurture the spirit of the African people? Where is the value of African humanity to be found and how subtle is the expression of it even in the midst of great suffering and confusion? Such questions should guide our renewed desire to awaken not just what has been lost but rather what can be found in the encounter and struggles of the ordinary people in the continent.

The capacity for survival and the revival of the inner spirit beyond the features of an oppressing world was very much exemplified in the singing traditions of the people of South Africa during apartheid. They sang away their oppression to the amazement of those who tortured and treated them with great indignation. A people who have lived their history as if it is no longer their own, did not seek retribution as the basis for correcting that history. The idea that Africans must now find solutions for themselves based on the principles of resilience and self-determination are no longer feasible unless the continent comes to terms with its wounded past.

But the enduring dilemma is that in the prevailing situation the path to clarity and certitude in this regard is filled with ambiguities and uncertainties. One may not pose the more critical question: Which past do we have to come to terms with — that Africa is an extension of European modernity and sphere of influence from which she would never be relieved by history? Nor should one say that Africa is the crucible of human histories which must be celebrated as part of her heritage?

Then how can one define the ethical foundations upon which alternatives beyond an oppressive past or celebrated heritage can be imagined? To imagine an authentic and alternative future, it is of course necessary that such imagination is anchored in the living memories of a struggle that is no longer bound by the oppressive forces of yesteryears.

The question of spiritual authority for self discovery must continue to be made subject to theological reflection and merits the attention of the church. African theology must be not only be practical but also make the incarnation at the heart of Christian identity its priority. In Luke 4: 18 -19 and John 10:10, Jesus describes and defines his humanity in terms of bringing happiness and fulfilment to human life. He came that we might have life, and have it abundantly. It is this quest that the All Africa Conference Churches must endeavour to face with the churches of Africa.

In these struggles the mission and calling of the churches together is to usher in a new bountiful dispensation of abundant life. To restore the fragmented humanity of the African people will not only take alternative political institutions to the normative discourse of the market but also invite a new revolution of the heart. As we go through the healing from within, even the institutions to which we belong go through the same process of such healing. The ultimate goal of healing is to restore the distinctive identity and dignity of the African people. The running thread in the hegemonic contest for the soul of Africa can be fathomed not only in economic terms but also in the nomenclatures of the spirit. For historical reasons, theological discourse in Africa has largely been informed by the categories of Western rational systems. The challenge to find African categories and to restore these into a normative states is the heart of our challenge.

This opens up unique opportunities for healing of memories and rebuilding of broken communities. There are abundant moral resources in African traditional societies that provide a unique understanding of what it truly means to be human beyond the nomenclatures and categories of identity motifs that have migrated into our contemporary understanding of what it means to be church in the world. While striving to be self-governing and self-propagating, the church must be self-sustaining in her inner life. There can be no liberation without enculturation and no healing of memories without facing the negation of history.

While most local churches are increasingly dependent on foreign aid and the goodwill of our northern partners, this must also be understood as the historical stage in which the nation-state finds itself in Africa. The general milieu of experience in Africa and institutional expressions of identity can be described as undergoing the same struggle. The challenge for liberation cannot be confined political and economic variables alone. It must include the healing of the wounds inflicted by history and the imagination of an alternative world arising from Africa's struggles and legacy of spirituality and values which could not be destroyed.

African modernity, civil society and the church

The victories of Africa have to be reinforced by an uncompromising championing of Democracy as more than a mere political process. Democracy is the external expression of the value of consensus by participation. The sovereignty of the people is the ethical basis by which power is conferred to an individual or institution because it can be recalled. Spiritual teaching has got to highlight this. Participatory democracy is therefore normative as the means and method by which the agenda and choice of the people, especially the poor, become part and parcel of consent that leads to the creation of a larger community of peoples, namely, the nation-state. The idea of participation is in itself very African. When people participate they dignify each other.

As part of her mission and calling, the church is called not only to prepare citizens to participate in national elections but also to equip them with instruments of discernment and foresight on not only how to elect but also reject the kind of leadership that is oppressive. It is her mandate to ensure that people inform their collective behaviour and action, in the same way as they inform their individual actions and behaviour. Unless otherwise the church can no longer be the salt nor the guiding light on the hill.

Such a mandate should uphold the kind of affirmative action that reclaims the dignity of women in society as understood and valued by the African peoples and human rights charter. Hence feminist and womanist theology will inform a unique programmatic content of political pedagogy. The mandate must uphold the focus of justice for children since they have been victims of gross abuse of war under oppressive regimes in the continent. They have suffered more than any other group of weak and vulnerable persons.

The churches together must accompany all friendly legal institutions in their quest to protect the rights of the child. The pedagogy for a dignified participation in political process must integrate the rights of the child and responsibilities of the State to the child, especially the rights to free education and primary health care for babies. It is obvious that the space we occupy by virtue of our particular identity is itself an entity of moral memory that remains an objective reality of our past and present moment. All persons are called to celebrate the consensus of goodwill of the people of God. No one is to be left out. Even God accepts the people's choice of leadership but still warns them of the dangers ahead when they surrender their total sovereignty to human institutions.

In the final analysis and ultimately, total sovereignty belongs to God alone. Human authorities will always need instruments of restraint to curtail possible abuse of power! Only God alone who created the universe and humankind is responsible enough to guarantee power with LOVE. The church in her mission to proclaim the good news must therefore be guided not by the Love of Power but by the Power of Love. While rightfully chastising those in authority, she too must strive to live by the very standards of faith and virtue.

The re-birth and revival of any great nation will require the courage to face the outcomes and decisions of her own leaders and the led. In the midst of euphoria and jostling for political positions during times of transition, Africans must never forget that the road to freedom is long and calls for untiring commitment to the values of truth and justice. Such is the definitive moment we are faced with now and in the next few years in most emerging democracies in Africa. The people must not be misled to chase after mirages of positions of power in the name of change. The churches together must create and sustain the safe space outside political parties that constantly demands and obtain real change and liberation from apathy and oppression. The AACC is committed to the development of the Charter of Truth for Africa, and to unite the churches to use this as a basis for teaching and giving instruction on values that make for nations characterized by justice, righteousness and peace.

This quest for Truth cannot be limited only to the political arena. What drives the doctrine of globalization is economic domination. The church in Africa has got to raise fundamental questions. The question of land allocation is central to this discussion. Research indicate that 80 percent of most rural families in Africa live within arable and marginally arable lands where 95 percent of the parcels are smaller than 4 acres, while a few estates (owned by the rich) — no more than 3,000 — contain about 5 million acres. Large chunks of these estates are under-utilized, hence contributing to poverty and scarcity of land. The churches together must as part of her ethical social responsibility undertake dialogue on land reform with a view to convince the African state and those who influence African policies through grants of the need for settling thousands of rural families in need of land for housing and cultivation.

Furthermore more than 50 percent of African urban population lives in unserviced squatter settlements. The policies that allow the rich to monopolize land in Africa is not only unethical and corrupt, it is sin before God! Such settlements must be surveyed out into habitable plots of land and serviced for allocation to resident squatters who will be assisted to develop single-family dwelling units for occupation. The churches together ought to mediate the provision for resources for urban housing development with the aim of building small units every year as part of an integrated program to eradicate slums and provide shelter for the poor.

AIDS is increasingly becoming the disease of the poor in Africa. In 2001, 2.2 million persons died of AIDS in Africa. While accounting for 70 percent of all HI V/AIDS cases in the world, the continent is only 10 percent of the global population. The greatest scandal of all is that even if the drugs were freely available most of them would only be accessible to the rich and powerful people. At the top of the list of beneficiaries of the drugs are businessmen, politicians, doctors, technicians and military personnel. Hence the poor die not only of the dreadful disease but also of the injustice!

The Church in Africa has got to pick up the cudgels for the poor in this regard even more. Not only should the fight against HIV/AIDS be central in the mission policies of the Church in Africa, but the Church must lift high for all to see the injustice that has characterized the responses we see to this pandemic. The Church must do an intelligent assessment of what corporations draw from Africa, and draw a moral barometer for measuring their ethical response to Africa. The African Church must do moral accounting to help these corporations.

American oil companies such as Chevron investing in the oil-rich Niger delta export up to 450,000 barrels of crude oil from Nigeria daily. They have to show their response to African needs. Coca-Cola is the largest foreign private sector investor in Africa today. Over 100,000 persons produce and distribute the products of Coke in the continent. The operating margin of this company in Africa is twice that in North America. Every day about 44 million servings of Coca-Cola are sold through out Africa. How is this moral accounting when it comes to giving back to Africa? What do they give to genuine development in Africa? What do they give to the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa? Their obligations cannot be measured by what they give charitably to Africa, but by their response to this basic duty.

Last years Coca-Cola's revenue in Africa exceeded $620 million and is likely to increase at a rate of 12 percent every year! The overwhelming incursion of western profiteering institutions including the IMF and the World Bank is driven by a new doctrine of development. This doctrine is summed up in the growth of corporate markets and competitive politics. Whilst it is encouraging to hear these bodies redressing the failures of their policies, it is urgent for Africa to help articulate the alternative strategies. The Church must walk ahead of this search. The churches together with civil society must raise their voices anew, and be equipped with facts, figures and tools of analysis to promote a new understanding of the silent genocide facing the continent from the corporate world.

The churches together with the people of Africa have entered a new decisive and historical stage in the renewed struggle for freedom and human dignity. Such is the time for Africa in the age of a maturing global economic and political dispensation.

Africa has become not only the sphere of expansion of the market ideology but also its maturation. The rapid expansion and transfer of arms to developing nations by arms manufacturers has had the largest share of both new contracts and deliveries to the world for at least eight years in a row. Usually it is in Africa where armed conflicts are sustained with the need to rearm even at the expense of basic needs for the sake of national security. Let us find ways to think and plan with the African Union for this to be reversed by our nation-states.

Otherwise the national security doctrine becomes the predominant claim for self-preservation without due consideration of other national security related factors such as the rampant spread of HIV/AIDS pandemic. In fact the growing gap between the rich and the poor is itself one of the greatest threats to national security. There is a very clear and unquestioned link between the growth of crime rates in the inner cities and the incredible increase in the levels of poverty due to low income and unemployment. The AACC must lead churches to find or offer possible solutions.

Such solutions must also take into account the specific historical developments that have led to the contradictions that produce poverty. The solutions must also appropriate the political, social, economic and cultural benefits in terms of indigenous knowledge and strength of civil society. It seems that a swing to the left though desirable remains an overture of frustration without much critical assessment to the failures of bureaucratic socialism in Eastern Europe. The search must be for African initiatives.

The challenge facing Africa today is to creatively reinvent sustainable alternatives to the nomenclature of the market. However there is a dual dilemma here. Since the demise of communism, the survival of social democracy or socialism as a distinctive alternative has been thrown in disarray and its survival remain in question. Furthermore, market reforms designed to provide social security only have a numbing effect on the working poor. Time is now for us to identify African sages and restudy what they have sought to say to Africa. And then link this with a genuine desire to translate the values Christ endeavors to elucidate about the dawn Kingdom of God upon a new humanity.

The church, having been dethroned in all spheres of state-related temporal authority and delivery of public goods, still remains the beacon of hope for the poor and the oppressed. In response to the prevailing situation there is an urgent need for the resurgence of theological movements that provide an integrated vision of life based on the communitarian ethic of non-market values.

Hence every theological response must produce a new thinking and new radical discourse in the context of ordinary narratives of daily living rather than replicate contesting ideological tools of power. In other words theological articulation of alternatives must bring about rebirth of new organic communities of well being outside the logic of the market. The impact of globalization coupled with information and communication technologies create superficial expression for a new desire to humanize the world with a new spirit of modernity. The corporate world through "private" initiatives driven by the blind desire for profits guide and sustain the inner life of the market.

The church must find ways and means of engaging the corporate world into dialogue with regard to corporate social obligation. Overall macro-economic and fiscal policies must be guided by the needs of spurring economic growth, creating employment and enhancing social justice especially for the working poor.

Conclusion

The church is called not only to be the conscience of the society but also to be the yeast of change that gives and sustains abundant life. The church by virtue of her mission and calling is endowed with the moral burden in the search for a credible alternative to the logic of the market. The distinctive gifts and ministries of the church include that of discernment which opens the eyes of the people of God and invites them to a critical understanding and participation in changing the world as we anticipate the new reign of the Kingdom of God. It is this calling to the new mission frontiers that the Church must seek to fulfill with faith and gratitude.