The Sunday Mail
Chief Donald Kamba Tracing African Roots —
I believe Africans are driven by a value called humanism, hunhu, ubuntu, untu. As an African who goes to church, do you still have good moral values? If you are educated and become a doctor, do you remain a morally upright human being?
Culture and civilization are the flagship of African religion. We can even look at Africa as a continent that was all colonized and Ghana became the first to gain independence in 1984. I would like to quote Kwame Nkrumah, the first President and Prime Minister of Ghana.
“Ghana is not free unless every square inch of Africa is free.”
The philosophy of a one party state should be looked at the point of view that Africans looked at themselves as one country and as one people. This is why the liberation of each country meant that other countries were prepared to help each other to be free.
One party means we are one and the only way to be free is to be one and operate as such. If one were to look on what is happening in Africa with democracy which is as it were a fallacy, Ghana would have been free without the involvement of other countries.
At independence, if Ghana had decided to be democratic with opposition parties, someone would have opposed the government’s every move, but there was no such opposition.
In other words, I am not looking at the merits and demerits of a one party state or the so-called democracy. I am looking at merits, history and facts in relation to what they have brought to our fall.
If for instance in this nation we believed we travelled the same road, experience the same pain, entertain the same hopes, desires and have certain interests to be fulfilled by virtue of the road being one, we wouldn’t be talking about factions.
We sing together, we die together, that is the African philosophy. This is the African philosophy that I am talking about, not to restrict God to a pet individual. The African philosophy has nothing to do with the statement that says one man for himself and God for us all.
The God of the African says we live for each other, we die for each other and that was demonstrated during the armed struggle. We lived and died for each other, and not one man for himself and God for us all. That is a selfish attitude. That is what informs the African Traditional Religion (ATR).
We seem to know nothing except guess about everything, which is very unfortunate and it won’t make us a people with a history, culture and a philosophy with which to identify.
It is a pity we are one race loved by God but we don’t even see ourselves as blessed. Just to indicate how close we are as an African people to God, look at Moses when there was no food and manna from heaven came.
We are able to demonstrate that in our ATR.
We could gather and cry to God to have mercy upon us and food would be made available immediately. It used to happen when people prayed to God honestly, not deviously. People used to gather and say we have no seed and it would be provided.
When there was a drought people would gather together and cry to the Lord, and rain would come right there.
The gathering would displace as the rain would be falling, that is how close we were to God. In our ATR it’s a celebrated truth. There are African religions of various shades, but we meet somewhere, we understand each other because the values and the principals are literally the same.
As a result I look at an African renaissance as aimed at making Africans open their sight, see that they travel the same road, that they experience the same pain and to become a dignified, independent and proud.
African renaissance as a movement says don’t forget were you come from. We have always been together and this identifies us as Africans. We must be a people who own their ideas. That’s what pan-Africanism is all about. That is what ATR is all about.
We are not offended by someone who has got a different religion as ours. We do not canvass for membership. It’s a spiritual movement, it is the spirit that matters more than the structures you see. This is why there are no ATR churches.
The African does good because it is good to do good, it feels good and it is good before the eyes of the Lord. This is why I say when you look at the Bible, the principals and the values espoused therein, one would think that the Bible was written by the African.
We cherish the same principals, this is why Africans warm up to Christianity very easily. It’s like we were walking with Jesus in the spirit without actually knowing that we were walking with Him. And without calling ourselves Christians, yet we have always been with Jesus.
The Jesus we know is spiritual and the Jesus being talked about today is secular. But there is one script that cannot be denied.
The colonization of Africa was evil in the sense that way back in 1883, when King Leopold III of Belgium was sending ‘mercenaries’ (missionaries) to the Democratic Republic of Congo, his message to them was very clear:
“Don’t talk to the natives about God, they know God. Don’t talk about the good things, they all know about the good things. What you are going to talk about are the beatitudes.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. In other words the natives must endear themselves in poverty. They should celebrate poverty.”
And to reinforce that view, they all looked on another aspect in the Bible:
“It’s very easy for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” (Mark 10:25).
The African told himself the surest way to have eternal life is to be rich. That was a mistake.
The motive behind that was very clear. If you teach the African native that they should work hard, honestly and God will bless them, they will start understanding how rich they are.
Let the black people fight each other but the moment they know how sweet it is to be rich they are going to fight us. So from that point of view one would say missionary wasn’t the correct word, but mercenary.
We have been taught to hate each other. Nobody taught us to love each other. It was within us. We helped each other. It was in our blood.
We need an originality driven by our ancestral genes, not driven by genes of outsiders.
Vision is about driving original ideas not copying and pasting other people’s ideas.
Let’s invent an African will. Africa is the cradle of civilization. Education started in Africa. The first ever university was built here in Africa. Nobody wants to know that but that is the truth.
