The Sunday Mail
Umari Stambuli Holy Qur’aan Speaks —
THE African is more spiritual than he is religious and to talk about African Traditional Religion is to talk more about lived traditions as opposed to faith traditions.
In other words we are looking at an African as a spiritual animal as opposed to a religious animal who believes by and are in networking links with the Almighty God, universe and with each other.
In consequence when you look at ATR everywhere throughout Africa you don’t talk about ATR as it affects African countries but there are African Traditional Religions. But there is a confluence of ideas regarding the way Africans live in all African countries.
Religion as we know it we are looking at structures where people congregate. You can identify: these are Catholics, this is their uniform and they are set times they are supposed to meet. That is totally different with African religion.
There is no membership drive in African religion, we don’t canvass for support, we don’t convert people. We are not coercive in our approach. As a result when you look at ATR it propagates peaceful co-existence and promotes good relations with people of different religions that surround them.
When you read the Bible and hear people speak, especially given what is preached in various religions, they are against one thing: Pride.
But in practice you find that pride is what drives their motives. Even within the Christian fraternity elements of pride exhibit themselves very furiously.
For instance the SDAs claim to understand the Bible better than others. The Pentecostals look down upon all other religions. They are all Christians. But look at the way they criticise each other!
You do not hear anybody from ATR criticising any religion. They believe in living their life without being a nuisance to the next person.
Our religion is inseparable from culture.
Where else do you find people who can embrace a complete stranger for overnight accommodation, prepare him food, give him proper bedding than his own children and the following day they prepare meals for him? And because he was stranded and could not reach his destination, he is even accompanied and shown how to find his way to the proper destination.
What makes us comfortable with ourselves is the fact that we value life.
When anybody visits an African home, in the true sense of an African home, the immediate thing that strikes members of that family is that they must prepare food immediately.
They prepare whatever is available. This is because they don’t know how long that person has journeyed or what state he is in.
People from Mutoko, before saying anything to a visitor, present them with a bowl of water. Water is life. It’s part of African tradition. ATR is very security conscious. Whilst they can embrace a stranger they don’t just say it is night time let’s go to bed. They inform the neighbour. We have just received a visitor, come and see our visitor.
Lest, because this life doesn’t belong to us that visitor falls dead during the night you wouldn’t know what to say to the community or to the traditional leader. But they will always be someone to vouch for what happened.
Africa now has a triple religious heritage. It has become a legacy in the sense that three religions run concurrently in almost every African country. That is Christianity, Islam and ATR.
What is different with ATR is that it is home-brewed, it’s the type of religion we can own, command and which does as we expect it to do.
When you look at Christianity it came side by side with colonialism. While the Bible itself is a wonderful manual that anybody is advised to acquaint himself with as a guide for one’s day to day living, the way it was brought is such that it formed an unholy alliance with colonialism. Although Christianity espouses moral uprightness, it drives a canonical rigidity, ritual inflexibility. This is what we do, nothing else works. It cannot accept two things happening at the same time.
In the ATR much as Christianity espouses a philosophy where it is motivated by love as expressed in advancing the cause of justice and charity, one scratches his head when you look at the practical implementation of Christianity by so-called Christians.
For instance, some Christianity denominations tolerate what the Bible says should not be tolerated at all – homosexuality.
We even have gay priests and bishops operating under the Christian fraternity. We have paedophiles. It’s rampant within the Christian fraternity.
You don’t come across that in ATR. Not to say that it doesn’t happen but if it happens at all it’s condemned as something done by outcasts of society.
In other words, going back to what I said, ATR is more about lived traditions as opposed to faith traditions. You, therefore, cannot separate African religion from African culture.
And you cannot separate that religion and culture from African civilisation. The three are intertwined.
African religion has been associated with witchcraft, diviners, paganism and so forth. It’s treated as an archaic religion, or even an awkward religion.
ATR is not about witchcraft, diviners and enchanters. Such people exist but it is not ATR. We condemn them as evil.
As a traditional leader, I know that in the past when witches were identified they were restricted to a certain area. “Here is an area for you stay called Nzanga, during the night if you want to bewitch people bewitch each other. And if you cross the boundary we will kill you.”
We have a place called Gomorevaroyi where witches were killed. Those who would have strayed and gone to an area where there are no witches, they were caught, killed and buried in a certain hill.
The religion was strongly averse to evil practices, which unfortunately are being wrongly identified as our culture.
