MASILO LEPURU

Since the passing of Queen Elizabeth and the ascendency of King Charles to the imperial throne, there have been calls by Indigenous people across the world, including in Canada, for the repudiation of the international law of colonialism, the Doctrine of Discovery.

Recently, a Christian figure who embodies the Doctrine of Discovery, decided to visit Africa. Pope Francis is a “holy” heir to a centuries-old unholy history of criminal campaigns euphemistically known as the “journeys of discovery”. Several countries in Africa, as white settler colonies, are products of the barbaric Christian history of invasion, conquest and domination by savage Christian soldiers.

The soldiers were marching to plunder Indigenous people and their lands, with the blessings of the popes. The savage marches of conquest and invasion can be traced to the so-called Crusades beginning in 1096. There is a dirty laundry list of the popes who blessed the marches of gangs of Christian soldiers who invaded and conquered indigenous people classified as non-Christian, thus enemies of Christ.

The disastrous intrusion into the cultures and lands of people outside Europe by the “friends of Christ” has resulted in white settler colonies such as Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada and, most importantly, South Africa. What is this Doctrine of Discovery?

According to Robert Miller, in The Doctrine of Discovery: The International Law of Colonialism, the Doctrine of Discovery is an international law which regulated the imperial and colonial competition between European countries as Christian nations in their “journeys of discovery”. This international law facilitated European colonisation of Indigenous people by justifying the looting of their lands and wealth in the name of Christ and the popes as representatives of Christ on Earth.

The colonising trailblazers of the international law are Spain and Portugal. In their colonial and imperial competition to dominate the world, they were later joined by Holland, Britain and France. The doctrine was relied on to legitimise racism since the violent and conquering Christian nations resorted to the delusion of a superior white skin and culture to loot the lands and wealth of the Indigenous people.

Robert Miller says the doctrine consists of 10 elements. The elements include first discovery, conquest, Christianity, civilisation, native title, pre-emption, contiguity, actual occupancy and possession, limited indigenous sovereign and commercial rights and terra nullius. When the Portuguese, through colonising conquerors like Vasco da Gama, arrived in Africa south and gave the countries there different names, they were relying on the first discovery element of the doctrine.

Da Gama’s invading successor, Francisco de Almeida, was ignominiously defeated by the indigenous people during the Battle of Salt River in 1510 which prefigured the Battle of Isandlwana of 1879. De Almeida was relying on the element of conquest to attempt to invade independent Azania on behalf of the Portuguese. While white settler colonial history, in its many guises in South Africa, states that Van Riebeek wanted to establish a refreshment station at the Cape for the Dutch East India Company.

Based on the history of the Doctrine of Discovery, it is clear that Holland wanted to conquer Azania (by relying on the element of occupancy and possession), the same way it had conquered Brazil. In other words, when the Dutch arrived during that horrible date of 1652, they were participating in the colonial and imperial competition regulated by the Doctrine of Discovery. It is in this sense that the “refreshment station myth” is a white settler colonial forgery of memory to the detriment of the Indigenous people conquered in wars of colonisation.

During one of the barbaric wars of colonisation waged by Van Riebeek and his gang of European criminals, the Indigenous people attempted to restore their land and cattle, but the conquerors absurdly claimed that Azania belonged to them due to a military victory. Of course, steeped in the atmosphere of the Doctrine of Discovery, they were relying on the element of conquest to justify land dispossession.

Due to the land dispossession, which eroded the native title of the Indigenous people (reducing them to mere tenants to this day) and limited their sovereign title to Azania, the indigenous people did not have a say in the Treaty of Amiens between the British and the French. This Treaty of 1802 was a racial contract between white men who handed over Azania to other white men in the Netherlands in 1803.

The Dutch settlers, as conquering descendants of Van Riebeek who, after polluting conquered Azania for a while, began to have delusions of indigeneity and called themselves “Afrikaners”. In the 1830s, ridiculously claiming that the British had conquered them in spite of being the pioneering conquerors themselves, decided to leave the Cape into the interior of conquered Azania.

Relying on the element of Christianity, they absurdly believed that the interior of Azania was their promised land, promised to them according to their Calvinist superstitions. They also used the element of terra nullias to make a racist claim that the interior of Azania was an empty land.

The element of an empty land is the core of white settler colonial historiography embraced by the likes of Helen Zille and AfriForum. In 1852, the barbaric Christian children of Van Riebeek laid the foundation of the “new” South Africa by creating Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek or the South African Republic. This South African Republic was consolidated into a racially exclusive union of South Africa in 1910 by the racist founding father, Jan Smuts. It is in light of all the elements discussed above that South Africa is a racist white settler colonial product of the Doctrine of Discovery.

Therefore, the Doctrine of Discovery is not a relic of the outdated history of the so-called journeys of discovery. What Mogobe Ramose calls “conqueror South Africa” traces its origin to the issuing of Romanus Pontifex in 1455 by Pope Nicholas V. It is in this sense that Pope Francis is a symbol of the religious origins of the Doctrine of Discovery.

Just like many Indigenous people across the world who are calling for the repudiation of this international law of colonialism, the indigenous people must wage a Chimurenga to eliminate the doctrine and its beneficiaries in conqueror South Africa.

Masilo Lepuru is a junior researcher at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation.

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Pope Francis and the Doctrine of Discovery in South Africa