Counseling and Pastoral Care in African and Other Cross-Cultural Contexts

Mucherera

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498283441
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Counseling

The coming of Colonization and Christianity to Africa and other indigenous cross-cultural contexts was a "mixed bag" of pros and cons. The impact of the advent of the two has had a lasting effect being felt even today. It created issues of bi-culturalism and bi-religiousness in personal and religious identities that counselors and the church need to address when working with people from these contexts. There is the existence of deep cultural trauma (including psychological and spiritual scars) needing healing for those living in most of these post-colonial contexts. The Western counseling approaches and Christian rituals need contextualization. A counselor or pastoral caregiver with an integrative consciousness is required to address the psychological and religious identity conflicts existing in African and other indigenous cross-cultural contexts.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

Religio-Cultural Refugees: Changing, Yet Rooted in History

Ziva kwawakabva is a Shona saying which translates as, “Know your history, your roots, or from where you came. Only a foolish generation forgets its history. Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it. Worse still is that generation which not only forgets but mutilates its heritage.”1

You shall always remember and declare before the Lord that: A wondering Aramean was my Father (Deuteronomy 26:5).

The Shonas believe that one’s history influences who one is and who one becomes, making the above statement important for them. They believe that one’s blood relations (extended family relations), as well as communal interpersonal relations and place of origin, have a great impact on one’s life.

Due to arbitrary boundaries imposed by the British in the 1800s, the Shona people are mainly found in Zimbabwe, and in some of its neighboring countries; the Shona are part of the Bantu African group. Bantus are known as such because of their similar history of origin and some common meanings of words in the Bantu languages. Zimbabwe is located on the southern central part of the African continent. Its independence was gained from White (British) minority rule in 1980. Zimbabwe, colonized by the British in 1890, was formerly named after Cecil John Rhodes, and was known as Rhodesia.

This book addresses issues within counseling, care and pastoral theology in the African context, specifically in the urban Shona context. The main argument of this book is that: in order for counseling, pastoral care and pastoral theology to be relevant in the contemporary Shona Christian context, counselors and pastoral caregivers serving in this context must be equipped with a psychodynamic and pastoral theological understanding of integrative consciousness.

The focus is on the contemporary African people, particularly on the upper middle class Shona. The contemporary Shona context requires new and relevant paradigms in counseling and pastoral theology of care to address problems experienced by those living in such a context. One of the main tasks of a counselor or pastoral caregiver is to help people self-define and claim an identity, partially marred by colonization and urbanization.

Intergenerational Cultural Trauma: The Works of Colonization

From the time when Zimbabwe was colonized as Rhodesia (1890), fears arose among the Shona people concerning the impact of colonization on their freedom, culture, and religious tradition. The British colonization of Zimbabwe was not achieved without resistance. Native indignation (from both Shona and Ndebele people) at the colonization of Zimbabwe resulted in rebellions in 1896 to 1897, formation of political parties, and ultimately a war of liberation (1965-1979), which led to independence in 1980. Mungazi, a Shona historian, notes:

The first two administrators of colonial Zimbabwe [Rhodesia], Leander Starr Jameson (from September 10, 1890 to April, 1896), and Earl Grey (from April 2, 1896 to December 4, 1898), shared the views of their mentor and financier Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1901), who expressed his belief in the first stage of colonizing all of Africa and bringing it under British rule for at least a thousand years. But it was the rest of the colonial officials . . . from William Milton, who served from December 5, 1898 to October 31, 1914, to Ian Smith, who served from April 1,1964 to March 3, 1979 . . . who lived and functioned by the Victorian views of the Africans and thereby set the two racial groups on a collision course.2

The Victorian view or belief held that Europeans were superior to Africans and Africans were less human than the Europeans. The Europeans were to be lords over the Africans.3 Wherever colonization appeared, it had an ugly side to its face. Martin Brokenleg, writing for the North American context, says:

At first glance, colonization might seem like a positive process for creating common interests, fostering cooperation, and harmonizing the diverse populations that have come together . . . Colonization could seem like a laudatory dynamic, but the law of unintended consequences mutates this simple idea into a big mess. Colonization by the dominant culture was a central goal of school, church, and government. These social institutions gave us an interpretation about what has happened to us, why we are the way we are, and what we should become.4

In other words, as much as the initial appearance of colonization seemed positive, it resulted in oppression and dehumanization of the Native peoples. Brokenleg goes further to say that the impact of colonization on the Natives in North America (similar to colonization in Africa), has caused intergenerational cultural trauma. He says:

Traumatic experiences are cumulative. If one generation does not heal, problems are transmitted to subsequent generations. In some form, this cultural trauma affects every Native person. It sculpts how we think, how we respond emotionally. It affects our social dynamics and, at the deepest level, impacts our spirituality. Intergenerational trauma has wounded us deeply. Not a day that goes by in which I do not think about some dynamic related to intergenerational trauma. There were times in my life that I wondered, “Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with us? What did we do to cause all of this to happen?” The truth is there is nothing wrong with Native people; we are perfectly normal people responding to an abnormal history . . . Because trauma has shaped society, there is no escape. It has been hanging around just outside my normal range of vision all my life. Only if I am aware of the deep dynamics of trauma can I cope.5

Lambo, a former Deputy Director-General of the World Health Organization in Geneva, stated that the general African social emotional and economic situation exacerbates the problem of personal identity conflict:

Within our societies there are presently the following symptoms: collision (and fusion in some cases) of two or more cultures; the disrupting effects of industrialization; the emotional and social insecurity and isolation of the individual who is transplanted from the rural to the urban environment; the assumption of new roles, for example by young politicians, with consequent erosion of authority of the traditional elders. All this is coupled with the accompanying switch in moral and social values in the process of shedding off tribal life, thereby creating what may be termed existential frustration and existential vacuum. But there can be little doubt, unfortunately, that the cultural mingling and imposed or forced acceptance found in Africa now and in the past can often be adverse to painless evolution and have brought in their train psychopathological upheavals and severe conflicts, only too familiar to some of us.6

Although Lambo is addressing the general African situation, this is also true of the Zimbabwean context. In the contemporary urban Shona Christian context, the younger and middle aged generations struggle, caught between the Western and the traditional cultures. The “upheavals and severe conflicts,” to which Lambo refers, result in personal identity conflicts brought about by the clash between Westernization and the traditional African cultures. Further, as Lambo notes, the problem of living in two or more cultures creates an “existential frustration” and “existential vacuum” in the lives of the Shonas. This generation has become that which I would call “a generation of religio-cultural refugees.” What this means is that the Shona African vacillates between two religio-cultures day in and out, and has no roots in any one of the particular religio-cultures. It is a “salad generation,” a mixing cultures and/or with no specific culture.

Muphree, a Methodist missionary and scholar who taught at what was known as the University of Rhodesia, quotes an anonymous statement he says was made in London on February, 17, 1962, by someone who was then the leader of the largest nationalist party from Zimbabwe:

“We do not want to be Europeans; we want to be Africans. The Whites thought that they could destroy our African culture, but they failed; it has only gone underground. It is still there, and we shall resurrect it. We shall take from the European culture that which can help us, but we shall blend it with African culture, and the end result will be African.”7

In today’s urban Shona context, it appears that the indigenous culture has not been fully “resurrected,” but is going deeper “underground,” as the present generations are becoming more and more Westernized. Among scholars of African literature, African cultural studies, and some of the older generations, there was a fear that the Shona culture was disappearing. The expressed fear by the leaders in 1962 is increasingly becoming a reality; the blending for which the older generation had hoped seems to be occurring at the expense of the Shona culture. The younger generation is taking more from the European foreign culture than from the indigenous Shona culture. As will be expounded later, becoming caught between the Western and Shona traditional cultures creates confusion for the younger generation with regard to what it means to be a Shona, resulting in lack of clarity in terms of personal identity.

Gelfand, a medical doctor and professor fro...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Introduction: Religio-Cultural Refugees: Changing, Yet Rooted in History
• Chapter 2: Colonization and Christianity: Impact on the African Religio-Cultural Identity
• Chapter 3: Interpersonal and Religio-Cultural Identity Conflict
• Chapter 4: Shona African Traditional Relational Theology
• Chapter 5: Marriage and Family in the Contemporary Shona African Context
• Chapter 6: Integrative Counseling and Pastoral Care: Implications for Theory and Practice
• Bibliography