Two leaders who believed Africans should be drivers of their freedom

SIBUSISO MASONDO

It has been widely reported that South Africa is the most unequal society in the world. Most of us growing up during the apartheid era were told to pursue education to pull ourselves out of the situation of poverty.

Dr John Langalibalele Dube, the founding president of the ANC, believed that the African continent would be developed through education, Christianity and commerce.

Prophet Isaiah Mdliwamafa Shembe (Umqaliwendlela), the founder of Ibandla LamaNazaretha (Nazareth Baptist Church), though he did not have formal Western education, believed in the transformative power of education. Shembe sent his children, Johannes and Amos, to school.

JG Shembe, his son and successor, graduated with a BA and UED from the University of Fort Hare, and at the time of his father’s death in 1935 he was a teacher at Adams College, one of the prestigious black schools in the then Natal.

These two leaders lived in the same vicinity and established a deep friendship. There were high levels of trust between them, to the extent that Shembe allowed Dube to write a book about him and AmaNazaretha. It is fascinating that they built institutions, Ohlange Institute and Ibandla LamaNazaretha, that positively affected the lives of millions of black people.

The two leaders believed that Africans, through their efforts and initiatives, should be drivers of their total liberation and freedom. The thinking and practice of African American intellectual Booker T Washington and the Tuskegee School were the major influences in Dube’s decision to establish Ohlange Institute.

The core philosophy of Tuskegee School was black self-upliftment and advancement through education. For the plan to be realised, industrial schools and institutes were established. Dube borrowed this idea and applied it to his community at Inanda. He was of the view that progress and development in Africa would be realised through education and Christianity.

The idea of self-advancement and self-love was further advanced by Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. All these initiatives were a critique of a system that dehumanised and relegated black people to second-class citizens.

Dube argued for an inclusive Pan-Africanist approach in the struggle for the liberation of Africa from the colonial powers. He believed that it did not make sense for Africans to pre-occupy themselves with ethnic divisions; rather Africans must embrace each other.

Interestingly, missionary teachings on brotherhood in Christ might have played a role in his thinking and conceptualisation of what it means to be human and African in particular. He embraced Christianity and sought to use it to liberate Africans from colonialism and what he perceived as ignorance due to outdated beliefs.

For Shembe, total liberation was to be achieved through the restoration of Zulu pride, respect and morality. Shembe was able to earn respect among his followers more than some of the local chiefs. It is reported that one local chief visited Shembe to learn how to make people respect him.

Shembe also borrowed values such as hard work, diligence and self-reliance from the missionaries in developing his religion. He went as far as to say that laziness was a sin. People who lived at Ekuphakameni soon learned that they had to earn their living through involvement in projects that had been started, especially the agricultural project. Ekuphakameni was Shembe’s version of a mission station.

Shembe’s movement was a powerful critique of the mission of Christianity for insisting that Africans should become European before becoming Christian. The revolutionary aspect of Shembe’s thinking was that the Christian faith should not remove people from their culture and ways of doing things.

Bongani Mthethwa, a member of Ibandla LamaNazaretha, pointed out that Shembe believed that it was not proper for people to be forced to divorce themselves from their culture upon becoming part of AmaNazaretha.

He believed that people should be allowed to experience Christianity within their culture. In other words, people should be able to worship God with the resources of their culture because, for him, Christianity was a matter of the heart.

People should be able to experience the reality of God within their culture, employing an array of resources that their culture presents to them. People should also be able to describe and communicate to God in their language and idiom. Zulu people were expected to conduct their prayers in their language for effective communication with God through their ancestors. As a result, Shembe promoted Zulu forms of cultural expression such as dress, dance and singing. These aspects were incorporated into the worship practices of AmaNazaretha.

Shembe aimed to bring healing and well-being to his people through the gospel that is relevant to the experiences of the Nguni or Ngoni people. While it is a fact that Shembe’s teachings and doctrine now extend to other African countries in the sub-region, its original objectives and focus, especially during the days of Prophet Shembe, was to Nguni people with the AmaZulu being the dominant group.

So, it had a narrow approach and audience. It also had a narrow form of spirituality that focused on health and cultural issues. The movement had a political orientation but it was not prominent due to the oppressive regime. In recent decades, the contemporary teachings of Shembe have extended to political, economic and educational objectives.

Shembe, like most church traditions in the African continent, seems to have realised that the links between religion, culture and political inclusivity create a powerful intersection – one that, when overlooked or discounted, can threaten the survival of the very same people you are seeking to liberate.

In advocating for black students to have a separate organisation, Steve Biko argued that black people need to know who they are first before they engage with others. Unfortunately, the current moment is characterised by several negativities. Young black people are taken up by the dominant Euro-American culture and mimicking aspects of that culture.

There is a lack of accountability by elected officials and government officials resulting in service delivery protests. There is a lack of hospitality and dehumanisation of African people from other African countries. There are serious problems in the education sector, especially in black areas, and the slow pace of transformation in institutions of higher education.

Sibusiso Masondo is an Associate Professor of African Religion, Culture and Philosophy in the School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics in the College of Humanities at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

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