The Ubuntu God

Deconstructing a South African Narrative of Oppression

Paul

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781630878207
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In 1948, the Afrikaner Nationalist Government became the ruling party in South Africa and instituted the brutal system known as apartheid. To maintain their power, Afrikaners drew on Christian scripture and traditions to create self-justifying religious narratives that supported their oppressive ideologies, prohibiting inclusion and suppressing pluralism. In time these Afrikaner-Christian narratives began to unravel as counter-narratives within the Christian tradition influenced the Black church to demand equality and democracy. This socio-political and cultural transformation is best understood and interpreted through the vision of ubuntu: a mode of thought in African culture that places a value on humanity in community and shifts the focus from singularity to plurality in South African society. In The Ubuntu God, Samuel A. Paul traces how the dismantling of apartheid led to recognition of the religious other, the recovery of alternate narratives, and the reappearance of ubuntu perspective and practice in the political and public sphere. After the peaceful transition to a democratically elected government, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission created a platform for multiple voices, stories, and religious narratives to be shared in a public political context. This multiplicity of voices resulted, ultimately, in the formation of a new constitution for South Africa that sought to uphold African values of community and inclusion in its institutions. While South Africa's apartheid system and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are both rooted in the biblical narrative, the former used its theology to enforce an iron rule while the latter combined Christian and African concepts to create a pluralistic and open society. Such a society is characterized by a culture that emphasizes communality and interdependence.

1

The Biblical Basis of Apartheid

A Narrative Analysis of a Community of Believers Struggling to Make Sense of Faith

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and hard work of those who are willing to take the risk of fighting for freedom, democracy, and human dignity.

—Allan Boesak1

Historical Background

The Afrikaners’ narrative was shaped around a strong conviction that they were the chosen people of God, or volk. With roots deep in the colonial period, their self-justifying mythology entered the twentieth century aimed at preserving this volk and choseness with meta-narratives of racial segregation of the Black South African. This chapter explores the origins of this self-justifying mythology, in particular the Dutch Reformed Church’s appeal to scripture and its eventual support of the laws of apartheid. But here I also treat counter-narratives to this mythology, addressing Christian voices that were opposed to apartheid and the National Party in the twentieth century. The chapter concludes with an analysis of one of the fundamentalist Pentecostal churches of South Africa namely the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) which was divided into the four race groupings, the White, Black, Indian, and the Colored group.

After decades of attempts by the Black section of the church, the AFM finally decided to unite and operate as one body in 1990. This was a demonstration of Ubuntu at work in that one of the most theologically conservative churches became the first denomination to decide to unite and work as one multiracial entity. This was symbolic of the fact that the church in South Africa was responsible for setting the momentum of the country as a whole and was prophetic of what was to be experienced by all South Africans four years later, Ubuntu working together in a new Democracy.

In the spirit of the theme of narrative that anchors this project both theoretically and methodologically, I offer a fable from Joseph Barndt’s Dismantling Racism that illuminates the South African struggle with a powerful light:

Once upon a time there was a kingdom of people who pursued happiness. Nothing was more important to them than being happy. The happier they became, the happier they wanted to be. The source of the people’s happiness was a magic Happiness Machine. Whenever the people felt unhappy they would pour their troubled feelings into the Happiness Machine. The magic machine would melt their feelings down and purify them. The residue of their troubles became dross, and the dross was drained away and dumped into a distant part of the Kingdom. The people would take their purified feelings and go away singing and feeling happy again. The years and centuries went by, and the happy people became happier and happier because of the wonderful effects of the Happiness Machine.

There was only one problem. Another group of people lived in a distant part of the kingdom where all the dross was dumped. The dross made them very unhappy. And the more dross that was dumped, the unhappier they became. Unfortunately, these poor, unhappy people were not permitted to use the Happiness Machine, because the one thing the magic machine could not do was purify its own dross.

The unhappy people complained to the happy people about the problems they had with the dross. But the happy people ignored their complaints. When they were confronted with the terrible results of their happiness, these happy people simply took their troubled feelings to their Happiness Machine and it made them happy again. It was easy to believe that it was not the dross of their own troubles that made other people unhappy. Rather, they convinced themselves that the unhappy people were just incurably unhappy and they had nobody but themselves to blame for their unhappiness.

It was not long before the unhappy people began to protest more insistently about their situation. They organized marches and demonstrations. They demanded that the dross be removed from their part of the kingdom. And they demanded a fair share of happiness for their people. But the happy people turned a deaf ear to their protests, which only served to make the unhappy people angrier, and they protested all the more.

Finally, the happy people could no longer ignore the protests. They used force to put down the protesters, and arrested and jailed the leaders. They passed laws and organized military force to control the unhappy people. Many of the unhappy people were killed. This only made the others angrier and unhappy. They began to plot and plan how they could destroy the Happiness Machine.

The conflict and tension caused a severe drain on the happy people’s happiness. In addition to everything else, many of them were becoming uneasy about the way the unhappy people were being treated. All these new troubles made the Happiness Machine work even harder, and consequently, even more dross was produced. They had to build an even bigger and better Happiness Machine to take care of the happiness needs of the people; consequently, the dross was piled higher and higher and spread farther and farther into other parts of the kingdom, which made more and more people unhappy and angry. It was not long before the unhappy people were in a constant state of rebellion.

Then a new and even greater danger arose. The Happiness Machine became so large and productive that there was no place on earth left to put the dross. The piles of dross crept closer and closer to the homes of the happy people and to the place where the Happiness Machine was operating. Now the happy people were threatened not only by the rebellion of the unhappy people, but also by their own Happiness Machine.

The new danger caused even greater internal conflict and tension among the happy people. Some wanted to build an even bigger Happiness Machine in order to deal with the crisis they were facing. Others began to see that the Happiness Machine was not the solution to their problems, but the cause. They wanted to reduce the size of the machine, or even dismantle it altogether. Some even began to wish that they could join together with the unhappy people to find solutions to the problem and build a new society together.2

This is the story of South Africa until 1994, when for the first time in its history both the happy people, (White people), and the unhappy people, (Black people), joined together to find solutions to their fractured community. Together they combined to build a new society, working toward a unified community that would live together harmoniously.

The chapter begins by offering a historical background of Dutch origins in the Cape. Next, it discusses the church’s role and involvement in the struggle for human rights, with reference to, and in light of, the historical foundation previously lain. It specifically deals with the struggle against the policy of Apartheid and the Afrikaners’ justification for it biblically. Finally, through an examination of the National Conference of churches in South Africa in 1990, and the subsequent changes implemented by the Apostolic Faith Mission Church of S.A., the current move toward a harmonious community is explored.

The Khoisan Presence and the Dutch Invasion of the Cape

The Afrikaners directly narrated their historical experience in light of Biblical texts and stories in which they understood themselves as God’s chosen people. This engagement with biblical texts lent them a framework from which they interpreted both their experience as voortrekkers and the battle at Blood River. To begin with, there is a long-standing narrative among White South Africans that the iron-working Bantu crossed the Limpopo River into southern Africa sometime during the 17th century. This belief supports the idea that Whites were the first to settle South Africa. This is the foundation of the belief that White settlers entered an “empty land” in the 17th and 18th centuries, scattered with just a few Khoikhoi pastoralists.3 The settlers commonly referred to the Khoisan as “Hottentots” or “Bushmen.” “Hottentot” is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as, “a person of inferior intellect or culture,” and in the Dutch dictionary as, “a rough, unmannerly person.”4 This derogatory labeling helps define the intellectual climate of Europe during that era, an era in which a “Hottentot” was a widely accepted symbol for “irredeemable savagery and the very depths of human degradation.”5 This perspective suited the ruling White minority, and helped justify the unequal ownership of the majority of South African lands. However, this White version of history is more myth than fact. Archaeological and historical research has evidenced an ancient history of Black civilzation in southern Africa.6

During the 16th century, European sailing-ships, comprised mainly of Dutch and English traders, made regular voyages around the southern tip of Africa to facilitate trade in India, Southeast Asia, and Indonesia. Europeans commonly knew these lands as the “East Indies.” Since the Cape was midway between Europe and Asia, by the 17th century Table Bay had become a regular port for traders. There they paused in their journeys to replenish fresh water and supplies. Meat was bought from the local Khoisan farmers. By the mid-17th century almost 50,000 Khoisan pastoralists were estimated to be living in the region, southwest of the Olifants and Breede rivers. Clans living nearest Table Bay initially welcomed the opportunity to trade their surplus, as well as their sick and old livestock in exchange for copper, iron, beads, and tobacco. Trading goods with the passing ships was easier for the Khoisan than taking part in long distance trading with neighboring clans to the north.7

Since the Khoisan were the only suppliers of fresh meat to the Europeans at the Cape, they were able to demand a high price for their livestock. At the same time they were not willing to sell as many livestock as the Europeans wanted. Eventually this led to conflict between the European traders and the Khoisan. European sailors began to attack the Khoisan and seize their animals. They then sailed off with no concern as to how the Khoisan might re...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Biblical Basis of Apartheid
• Chapter 2: Deconstructing Oppressive Narratives
• Chapter 3: Discovering an African Meta-Narrative
• Chapter 4: Impact of a New Narrative
• Chapter 5: From Apartheid’s Christian Hegemony to Religious Pluralism
• Conclusion
• Afterword
• Bibliography