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| THE WORLD SOCIALIST MOVEMENT |
Charismatic and evangelical African churches and “pastors”
have become astonishingly profitable businesses, cashing in from ordinary
Africans’ disillusionment with the mainstream churches, politics and
traditional institutions. Failures by mainstream churches to find answers to
the causes of African angst have pushed people into the hands of more avaricious
churches.
Church leaders such as Nigeria’s TB Joshua, founder of the
Synagogue Church of All Nations in Lagos, Nigeria, are cleverly exploiting a
deep sense of “existential insecurity”, the pervasive, deep-seated and persistent
feelings of anxiety or angst, insecurity and vulnerability felt by many
ordinary Africans across the continent. He exploits the spiritual poverty and
brokenness of people. Day-to-day life for most Africans is a struggle to make
sense of a world that has disappointed them in every sense imaginable. How does
one raise children, have relationships and earn a living when life is
precarious, the future uncertain and where loved ones can be killed on a whim
at any moment by authorities, bandits or criminals? Collectively, colonialism,
apartheid and African post-independence misrule since World War II have plunged
millions of Africans into spiritual poverty.
The continued legacy of the terrifying, destabilising impact
of slavery, colonialism and apartheid, which destroyed the “familiar and
trusted social benchmarks” that anchored individuals, communities and societies
and gave individuals a sense of self-worth. For many Africans, slavery,
colonialism and apartheid have induced the “feeling that the self has no
foundation” any more. These terror regimes left generations of broken
individuals, with a destroyed sense of self. The post-independence chronic
poverty, insecurity and persistent and violent threats to individuals, families
and communities – persistent threats of genocide, arbitrary official violence
and family destruction – under African governments reinforced the angst. Rapid
mass industrialisation and technological change to which many African societies
reinforced the process of “dislocation” – whether cultural, individual or
social, and compounded the African sense of “existential insecurity”.
African political movements and leaders have ruthlessly
exploited such “existential insecurities” to enrich themselves, stay in power
for life, and brutalise individuals and communities, by creating “bogeymen”,
such as the threat that former colonial regimes – the cause of “existential
insecurity” – could return. Or they have often climbed the greasy pole by
mobilising their “own” ethnic group to support them politically on the basis
that “other” ethnic groups are the new post-independence source of potential
insecurity or “threat”.
African traditional institutions and leaders have also
failed the continent – and have mostly, like their political peers, also
exploited the feelings of “existential insecurity” of their “subjects” to
enrich themselves and entrench their control over them. Some have achieved this
by pushing for a nostalgic return to a mystical African pre-colonial cultural
nirvana, based on selective African “traditions, customs and cultures” that
often conveniently reinforce their power over their “subjects”. Many African
post-independence leaders have used morphed parts of African culture to
entrench their rule, oppress their people, attack critics and enrich themselves
just as colonial or apartheid powers did.
President Jacob Zuma says Zulu culture dictates you can see
by the way a woman sits that she wants sex. This is a despicable insult to Zulu
culture and all African culture and is typical of the use by many African
leaders of invented African “culture” to entrench their rule, whether it be
Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe or Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh. Aspects
of African “custom” have become irrelevant to the modern and complex problems
faced by Africans – and ancient ones, such as “ubuntu” (kindness to others) and
“lekgotla” (consulting widely before making decisions) are often discarded by
supposedly vocal political supporters of African “culture” who are happy to
enrich themselves at the expense of the poor.
There has been a failure by mainstream churches – of Western
origin and indigenous African ones – to provide relevant answers to the causes
of African angst. Not surprisingly, many Africans have sought refuge in
religious fundamentalism, whether Islam or evangelical, to overcome their
angst. Unscrupulous fundamentalist leaders – Christian and Muslim – have
exploited this. African evangelical pastors, such as Joshua, has been to
understand this pervasive African spiritual poverty and to make money out of
it. His net worth in excess of $15 million.
Africans need a new sense of purpose. One way to achieve
this is for Africans across the continent to work for the common good, to
strive for common ownership and to pursue democratic socialism. A land that has
been dry for long will reject water. But small drops of rain will give it
moisture, we are the droplets, and we are already witnessing a trickle. In time
there will be a flood of us.
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