Panafa Blog

Thursday 6 May 2010 / by Ernest Harsch

Dossier : Africa Renewal

Africa is getting tougher on tyrants, as the African Union responses to the upheavals in Guinea, Niger and Madagascar show. But according to many observers there is still a long way to go.

Not long ago, Africa’s coup makers and autocrats felt confident they could get a pass from their fellow rulers. In recent months, however, as military officers and authoritarian presidents from Guinea to Niger and Madagascar are discovering, Africa is saying “no” — and starting to mean it.

That stance is notable. For decades, most African countries were ruled by military or one-party regimes. In response to popular agitation, much of the continent shifted to multi-party systems in the 1990s. Yet many of Africa’s newly elected leaders were reluctant to criticize less democratic peers.

‘Respect constitutions’

Now that is changing. When the Organization of African Unity transformed itself into the African Union in 2002, the new organization included among its principles “condemnation and rejection of unconstitutional changes of government.”

“Today the norm is that people should respect constitutions,” the UN special representative on West Africa, Said Djinnit, told Africa Renewal. “Whoever makes a move that is unconstitutional should be condemned. And not only condemned, but subject to sanctions.”

But he acknowledges that progress along that road has not been easy or straightforward. Parliaments, political parties, court systems, civil society organizations and other institutions that could defend democratic practices remain weak.

For their part, Africa’s continental and regional bodies are also struggling with the question of how to uphold the principles of democracy. The recent upheavals in Niger highlight the challenges.

Niger: Coup against a coup

In Niger, the initial turn to unconstitutional rule came from within an elected civilian regime. President Mamadou Tandja was first elected in 1999, and then re-elected in 2004, providing a decade of relative stability after years of turbulence.

According to Niger’s constitution, Mr. Tandja should have stepped down when his second term expired in November 2009. But early that year he claimed that he needed a three-year extension, prompting an outcry from the opposition. The Constitutional Court ruled that any change in the presidential term limit would be illegal.

Mr. Tandja reacted by arbitrarily dissolving the court and the National Assembly and arresting many critics. With opposition suppressed, a referendum approved his new constitution, extending his term by three years, and allowing him to run for yet another term. In October the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) suspended Niger, the AU demanded a return to the previous constitutional order and several key donors cut financial aid.

Amidst a tense stalemate, military units detained Mr. Tandja and most of his cabinet and assumed power on 18 February. Thousands of citizens hit the streets to express their support for the new authorities. ECOWAS and the AU condemned the coup on principle. But together with the UN, they also promptly sent a joint delegation to Niger under the leadership of Mr. Djinnit to press the officers to follow through on their pledges to restore democracy.

Within days the soldiers had appointed a civilian prime minister and began consultations on a new constitution and elections. Seeking to reassure the sceptics, the de facto president, Salou Djibo, signed into law a ban on any member of his junta running for office. “The era of autocratic regimes,” he said, “is well and truly over in this country, which has no other wish but to be democratic.”

‘Unfinished business’

As an unconstitutional change of government, Niger seems relatively straightforward: a president arbitrarily scrapped a constitution in defiance of existing institutions. But other situations are less clear, where ruling parties use repression or fraud to influence elections as in Gabon, Togo and Zimbabwe. In such cases, other African leaders have not always agreed on how to respond.

One common target of manipulation has been the presidential term limit. According to H. Kwasi Prempeh, a Ghanaian expert in constitutional law, the adoption of such limits was an important gain for Africa’s pro-democracy movements, designed to prevent incumbents from using their power and wealth to stay in office indefinitely. By 2005, 33 African constitutions contained provisions limiting the number of presidential terms.

Some leaders tried to modify those limits but were defeated by intense domestic opposition. Some succeeded, however, including in Chad, Cameroon and the Congo Republic.

In 2007, an AU summit approved a new African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance. Once it comes into force it will shift Africa further in the direction of “the universal values and principles of democracy and respect for human rights,” the charter’s basic objective. Among other provisions, it recognizes “the supremacy of the constitution” and stipulates that constitutional changes be based on “national consensus.” It prohibits any “perpetrators” of unconstitutional changes from participating in subsequent elections and even warns that coup makers may be tried before an African court.

So far 29 African governments have signed the charter. But only three (Ethiopia, Mauritania and Sierra Leone) have ratified it, notably short of the 15 ratifications needed to bring it into force.

A number of African pro-democracy activists and commentators have expressed skepticism about the ability of the continent’s official organizations to push forward on their own, noting that the gains so far have taken considerable popular mobilization.

Given the number of sitting leaders in Africa who have violated basic democratic norms, commented Adama Ouédraogo Damiss in L’Observateur Paalga, an independent daily in Burkina Faso, “One can legitimately ask whether the AU is really able to face up to this repeated problem of constitutional fiddling.” In West Africa, remarked Senegalese economist Mamadou Ndione, a democratic revolution will not likely come from official bodies like ECOWAS. “It must come from the people.”

Wichtiger Hinweis: Diese E-Mail kann Betriebs- oder Geschaeftsgeheimnisse oder sonstige vertrauliche Informationen enthalten. Sollten Sie diese E-Mail irrtuemlich erhalten haben, ist Ihnen eine Kenntnisnahme des Inhalts, eine Vervielfaeltigung oder Weitergabe der E-Mail ausdruecklich untersagt. Bitte benachrichtigen Sie uns und vernichten Sie die empfangene E-Mail. Vielen Dank.

By John Thynne
Producer, The Real Winnie Mandela

She was known to many as the Mother of the Nation, but Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the once celebrated heroine of the anti-apartheid struggle, is no stranger to controversy.

Now it seems that film-makers on both sides of the Atlantic have seen the dramatic potential.

Jennifer Hudson has been lined up to play the lead role in a Hollywood film of the revolutionary firebrand’s life, and the BBC has filmed its own drama, Mrs Mandela, with Sophie Okonedo in the lead role.

Winnie Mandala at Women’s day conference, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in typical form

But which Winnie Madikizela-Mandela will we see? The central drama in Winnie’s life is whether her heroism can outshine her crimes.

Among South Africans today, this is still a deeply divisive issue. To understand why, you need to understand the full story of Winnie’s journey from young social worker to fearless leader of the struggle.

Winnie first came to international attention at the Rivonia trial in 1964 – when Nelson Mandela and seven other anti-apartheid campaigners were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Joe Thloloe lived near the Mandelas in Soweto at the time and was deeply impressed by Winnie’s defiance.

“Her husband has just been sentenced to life imprisonment, but she’s still strong enough to say: ‘I will continue the struggle.’

“She knows that she faces exactly the same fate as her husband. It was tremendously courageous of her.”

Interrogation and banishment

Left alone to bring up two small children, the apartheid regime made her the target for a campaign of harassment.

Joyce Sikakane worked with Winnie, printing and distributing ANC literature until they were arrested together in 1969.

Winnie Mandela talks about her husband’s life sentence after the Rivonia trial

In jail, they were both interrogated by the notorious apartheid torturer, Theunis Swanepoel.

“He ordered me to stand on bricks, he took a pistol from a drawer, pointed it at me and said: ‘If you don’t talk, you’ll be gone.’

“And I remember saying to him: ‘What kind of a human being are you… to do this to me?’” Ms Sikakane said.

For Winnie, there was no turning back. In the aftermath of the Soweto Riots in 1976 she began to emerge as a leader in her own right.

Sensing her rising popularity, the apartheid authorities hit upon a new punishment for Winnie – they banished her to a small township, hundreds of miles from her home.

Out of control

But banishing Winnie did not tame her. In exile, her politics grew increasingly radical.

When the BBC interviewed her in hiding in 1981, she spoke of plans to mobilise the country around the growing realisation that black workers were crucial to the economy.

Stompie Seipei
Stompie, 14, was killed during the struggle against apartheid.

This was as big a bomb as Hiroshima for the South African political psyche
Mathatha Tsedu

“We are the power of this land, these black hands are what has made this country what it is… We can bring this country down to its knees.”

By 1985, she had had enough. As unrest gripped the townships, Winnie openly defied the regime and moved back to Soweto.

Increasingly, her rhetoric played to the mob, as when she made her most infamous speech in Munsieville, saying: “With our necklaces we shall liberate this country.”

That reference to the gruesome township method for dealing with police informers (burning people alive using petrol-filled tyres) showed how far Winnie had travelled since she too was betrayed by informers in 1969.

Many viewed her as out of control. The innocent-sounding Mandela United Football Club, her personal bodyguard, was terrorising the neighbourhood in Soweto.

In 1988, rumours started to circulate that on Winnie’s orders, they had kidnapped, tortured and killed a 14-year-old activist, Stompie Moeketsi.

Thandeka Gqubule was a cub reporter on the Weekly Mail at the time. An ANC activist herself, she had long admired Winnie as a leader of the struggle.

She broke the news that Mandela’s wife may have been involved in a murder.

“On the one hand I was frightened of the enormity and the implications of the story, and on the other hand I knew that I was a journalist and I was committed to telling the truth,” she said.

Winnie’s alleged involvement in a murder was political dynamite.

“This was as big a bomb as Hiroshima for the South African political psyche… Is Mandela’s wife now a monster that can actually participate in the murder of a child?” recalls Mathatha Tsedu, the political editor of The Sowetan newspaper.

‘Complicated’ personality

Nelson Mandela’s release from jail in 1990 momentarily took the spotlight away from Winnie. Ironically, his release was to signal the start of her downfall.

Their marriage did not survive, as details of Winnie’s adultery emerged.

Nelson and Winnie Mandela

But Winnie did not quietly fade away. Despite convictions for kidnap and fraud, she remains on the political stage.

Last year, at the age of 73, the ANC placed her fifth on their MP list for the general election.

So how does Winnie manage to survive?

RW Johnson, the veteran South African commentator, summed up her popularity.

Winnie and Nelson Mandela divorced in 1996, after 38 years of marriage

“She’s scary, attractive, powerful, wealthy, an international celebrity – there aren’t many people that you can say all those things of… and people respond quite powerfully to that magic,” he said.

South Africans seem genuinely split on whether she can be forgiven for her role in the events surrounding Stompie Moeketsi’s death.

“Those were extraordinary times and extraordinary behaviours took place, and for those reasons I hope that history judges her kindly and takes the composite contribution of her efforts to the struggle as her legacy,” Thandeka Gqubule said.

But others are not so forgiving. Mathatha Tsedu cannot ignore her behaviour in Soweto in the late 1980s.

“I think history will view her as a complicated personality with a streak of leadership… who had a flawed personality that resulted in an atrocity being committed, that became a shame on every one of us occupying any position of leadership in this country.”

The Real Winnie Mandela will be broadcast on BBC Four on Monday 25 January at 2230 GMT.

The film Mrs Mandela, starring Sophie Okonedo premiers on BBC Four at 2100 GMT, before the documentary.

Or catch-up afterwards on BBC iPlayer (UK only).

Nubische Pharaonen regierten einst das mächtigste Reich auf Erden. Doch sie wurden aus der Geschichte Ägyptens verbannt. Jetzt finden Forscher ihre Spuren im Sudan

Es war einer der ersten Präventivschläge der Kriegsgeschichte, zu dem der ägyptische Pharao Psammetich II. vor 2600 Jahren ausholte. Gerade waren ihm aus Nubien Anzeichen von Aufmüpfigkeit zugetragen worden. Also verstärkte er seine Truppen mit griechischen Söldnern und scheuchte sie den Nil hinauf. Die Übermacht aus dem Norden fegte das Heer des Kuschitenkönigs Aspelta hinaus aus der Ebene von Dongola – und es war Ruhe im Reich.

Aber der militärische Triumph genügte dem tobenden Psammetich nicht: Am liebsten hätte der ägyptische Herrscher den Widersacher Aspelta und seine Ahnen, die verfemten schwarzen Pharaonen, aus der Geschichte getilgt. Keine Erinnerung sollte Bestand haben: Aspeltas Palast wurde niedergebrannt, die Insignien seiner Dynastie wurden demoliert. Psammetich II. nutzte die Gelegenheit, um eine 170 Jahre alte Rechnung mit den Kuschiten zu begleichen: Die frechen Nubier, diese „Sandfresser“, hatten sich einst erdreistet, auf dem Pharaonenthron Platz zu nehmen. Ägyptens empfindlicher Nationalstolz war verletzt.

Ägyptischer Bildersturm

Knapp ein Jahrhundert lang, von 750 bis 660 vor Christus, hatten Schwarzafrikaner das mächtigste Reich der Erde beherrscht – bis die Assyrer sie vom Thron verjagten. Doch erst Psammetichs Vernichtungsfeldzug stoppte den Expansionsdrang der Kuschiten endgültig. Sie trollten sich in die südliche Savanne, zurück zu ihren afrikanischen Wurzeln. Mit ägyptischer Gründlichkeit verbannte Psammetich die schwarzen Pharaonen aus dem Gedächtnis seines Volkes: Er ließ ihre Namen aus königlichen Inschriften brechen und durch seinen ersetzen.

Ironischerweise ist es der ägyptische Bildersturm, der Archäologen nach langem Rätselraten auf die Spur der schwarzen Pharaonen brachte. Anfang Januar dieses Jahres ist das Grabungsteam des Schweizers Charles Bonnet in Kerma oberhalb des dritten Nil-Kataraktes auf das bisher eindrucksvollste Zeugnis der ägyptischen Invasion gestoßen: eine Grube mit sieben tonnenschweren Granitstatuen. Sie zeigen Taharka, den mächtigsten der schwarzen Pharaonen, und seine vier Nachfolger bis hin zu Aspelta. In einem martialischen Ritus hatten Psammetichs Schergen die Steinkolosse geköpft, ihre Gliedmaßen verstümmelt, Nasen und königliche Abzeichen abgeschlagen. „So demonstrierten die Ägypter, dass Taharka und die Seinen für alle Zeiten besiegt waren“, sagt Bonnet. Jahre später sammelten Aspeltas Untergebene die Stücke ein, deponierten sie auf dem Lehmboden einer Grube und verscharrten sie. Aspelta selbst entwischte den ägyptischen Häschern, aber aus Sicht Psammetichs war er erledigt. „Die Ägypter glaubten, mit der Zerstörung seiner Bilder auch den Menschen zu zerstören“, sagt Dietrich Wildung, Direktor des Berliner Ägyptischen Museums.

Bonnets Fund krönt drei Jahrzehnte zäher Geduldsarbeit. Seit 1973 gräbt er in Kerma, 500 Kilometer nördlich von Khartum, die versunkene Hauptstadt des ersten Königreiches Kusch aus – er förderte Mauern, Tonscherben und bröselige Sandsteinreliefs zutage. Nun jedoch sei Bonnet „die wichtigste archäologische Entdeckung der letzten Jahrzehnte im Sudan“ geglückt, gratuliert Wildung.

Zwar hatte George Reisner von der Harvard University, ein Pionier der Sudan-Archäologie, 1916 am Gebel Barkal (am vierten Katarakt) eine ähnliche Trümmergrube ausgehoben. „Aber die Funde aus Kerma sind von viel höherer künstlerischer Güte und besser konserviert“, sagt Bonnet. Im lehmigen Schoß des Schwemmlandes hat sich sogar der Anstrich auf dem Gestein gehalten. Mit schwarzer Farbe hatten die antiken Bildhauer die weißen Adern des Granits retuschiert. Goldüberzogener Stuck an den Köpfen stammt von Kronen oder Helmen, vermutet Bonnet, vom Ornat sind rote und weiße Farbreste übrig. Sämtliche Granitstücke wurden geborgen, sodass Bonnet und seine Mitarbeiter die Bildnisse komplett rekonstruieren können.

3000-jährige Hassliebe

Besondere Bedeutung haben die sieben Statuen für die Kunstgeschichte, denn sie schlagen eine Brücke zwischen ägyptischen und innerafrikanischen Stilen. „Man erkennt deutlich, wie sich die nubischen Bildhauer über hundert Jahre hinweg Schritt für Schritt vom ägyptischen Vorbild lösten“, sagt Bonnet.

Die Psammetichsche Strafexpedition war die Eskalation einer 3000-jährigen Hassliebe zwischen Ägypten im Norden und seinem schwarzafrikanischen Nachbarn im Süden. Erst durch ihren Kontakt zu den Ägyptern tauchten die Nubier im späten 4. vorchristlichen Jahrtausend aus dem Dunst der Vorgeschichte auf. Bei den ersten Schritten zur Zivilisation waren die Schwarzafrikaner den Weißen allerdings vorangegangen, wie Funde feiner Keramik aus dem 6. Jahrtausend vor Christus belegen. „Damals wussten die Ägypter noch nicht einmal, wie ein Topf geht“, sagt Wildung.

Die Nubier selbst scherten sich wenig darum, ihr Image für kommende Generationen zu pflegen: Sie haben nur wenige Aufzeichnungen hinterlassen. Drei Jahrtausende lang entwickelten sie keine Schrift – „einzigartig für Hochkulturen“, sagt der Duisburger Schriftexperte Florian Coulmas. Wildung sieht in solcher Schreibfaulheit einen typisch afrikanischen Zug: „Die mündliche Überlieferung hatte Vorrang vor der schriftlichen.“

Wenn man sich im frühantiken Nubien doch einmal herbeiließ, etwas dauerhaft festzuhalten, dann tat man es in den Hieroglyphen und der Sprache der Ägypter. Erst in der Mitte des 3. vorchristlichen Jahrhunderts, nachdem sie ihre Hauptstadt nach Meroë verlegt hatten, entwickelten die Nubier ihre eigene Schrift: Sie ersetzten die 800 ägyptischen Hieroglyphen durch 23 Kursivbuchstaben – und wurden damit vollends unverständlich für heutige Historiker: Die meroïtische Schrift ist erst in Ansätzen entziffert, die Sprache dahinter rätselhaft. Deshalb stammt das meiste Wissen über die damaligen Verhältnisse von den Assyrern, Griechen und Ägyptern. „Wir sahen das antike Nubien lange durch fremde Augen“, sagt Wildung.

Die Ägypter blickten meist mit der gleichen Verachtung nach Süden, die sie auch für die Libyer im Westen und die Assyrer im Osten hegten: Ihre Darstellungen zeigen die Nubier gern mit übertrieben wulstigen Lippen und niedriger Stirn, am liebsten gefesselt vor stolzen Ägyptern im Staub liegend. In der Gruft Tutanchamuns lagen Sandalen, in deren Ledersohlen Bilder von Nubiern geprägt waren. Man trampelte auf seinen Nachbarn herum – nicht nur auf ihren Bildern: Schon die ersten ägyptischen Chronisten um 3000 vor Christus erzählen von brutalen Raubzügen nach Nubien. Dort deckten sich die Pharaonen mit Vieh, Sklaven, Ebenholz und Elfenbein ein – und stampften nebenbei ganze Königreiche nieder. Die größte Attraktion indes lag in der gehaltvollen nubischen Erde: „Nub“ ist die Hieroglyphe für Gold. „Ein großer Teil der ägyptischen Goldschätze stammt aus Nubien“, sagt der Münchner Geologe Dietrich Klemm.

Umgekehrt nutzten Nubiens Herrscher jede Schwäche Ägyptens, um ihren Einfluss nach Norden auszudehnen. Sobald sich Libyer, Assyrer oder andere vorderasiatische Völker mit den Ägyptern anlegten, stießen die Nubier nach Norden und nutzten das entstandene Machtvakuum. Nachdem das ägyptische Neue Reich unter der Last seiner wuchernden Bürokratie und schließlich unter dem Ansturm der Seevölker zusammengebrochen war, bezogen die schwarzen Pharaonen sogar Residenz in Theben und Memphis, den Hauptstädten Ober- und Unterägyptens. Sie gingen als Dynastie Nummer 25 in die Liste der ägyptischen Herrscher ein.

Aber Ägypten und Nubien rieben sich nicht nur aneinander auf. „Wohltuende Schübe afrikanischer Lebhaftigkeit“ (Wildung) drangen von Süden in das starre Pharaonenreich. Gerade unter den schwarzen Pharaonen erlebte es eine kulturelle Renaissance: Seine Kunst knüpfte nach Jahrhunderten des Niedergangs an den Glanz des Alten Reichs an. Der Gebel Barkal (der „reine Berg“), eines der höchsten Heiligtümer der Ägypter, lag in Nubien. Dort nahm auch Amun, der ägyptische Hauptgott, seine Widdergestalt an – vermutlich nach dem Vorbild einer vergessenen altnubischen Gottheit.

Noch augenscheinlicher war die Ägyptisierung der Nubier. Sie übernahmen Schrift, Kunsthandwerk und die Sitte, stilisierte Hügel über den Toten zu errichten: Der Sudan zählt mehr Pyramiden als Ägypten, mehr als 100 in der Nekropole von Meroë. Dennoch stießen lange Zeit nur wenige Europäer in die Gebiete südlich von Abu Simbel vor. Nicht nur Gluthitze und Gelbfieber bremsten die Entdecker: Sie übernahmen die Missachtung der Äypter für deren staubigen Hinterhof.

Sinfonie für den Pharao

So lockte eher Abenteuerlust als Forschergeist frühe Ausgräber in den Sudan. Als Erster legte 1834 der Italiener Giuseppe Ferlini Hand an die Ruinen. Im Goldfieber schliff Ferlini die Pyramide der Königin Amanishakheto in Meroë bis auf den Stumpf – um schließlich festzustellen, dass die Meroïten ihre Herrscher nicht in ihren Pyramiden bestattet hatten, sondern darunter. Den prächtigen Grabschatz Amanishakhetos schmuggelte Ferlini nach Europa und verscherbelte ihn unter anderem an Ludwig I. von Bayern. Erst die preußische Expedition von Richard Lepsius zehn Jahre später näherte sich der nubischen Antike mit wissenschaftlichem Interesse.

Heute wacht der Berliner Architekt Friedrich Hinkel über die Pyramiden von Meroë. Seit 1976 löst er die Puzzles, die ihm Ferlini und die Jahrtausende aufgaben: Er trägt die bröckelnden Monumente behutsam ab, zeichnet und nummeriert die Steinquader und setzt sie auf neuen Fundamenten exakt so zusammen, wie sie einst standen.

Wie die ursprünglichen Baumeister arbeitet er mit einem Urkran, dem Schaduf. Die Meroïten verankerten Stämme libanesischer Zedern im Boden und hängten einen Hebelarm an die Spitze des simplen Holzgestells. Mit dieser Konstruktion wuchteten sie die schwarzen Steinblöcke übereinander. Wegen der begrenzten Länge von Stamm und Arm seien die meroïtischen Pyramiden kleiner und spitzer als die ägyptischen, die mittels Rampen errichtet wurden, vermutet Hinkel. Er belässt seine Rekonstruktionen im Rohbau: Einst waren die Pyramiden verputzt und – wieder im Kontrast zu Ägypten – mit bunten Ornamenten bemalt.

Bei den Sudanesen erregte Hinkels archäologisches Geduldsspiel bis vor kurzem wenig Aufsehen: Besuch kam überwiegend von ausländischen Touristen. Doch jetzt besinnt sich auch der Sudan auf seine glorreiche Vergangenheit. „Inzwischen kommen sogar Schulklassen“, freut sich Hinkel.

Vor knapp drei Wochen durchbrach gar ein kulturelles Großereignis die Stille der Totenstadt von Meroë: das wohl erste Sinfoniekonzert auf sudanesischem Boden. Staunend verfolgten Hinkel und 300 Gäste, wie die schwarz gewandeten Musiker des Deutschen Akademischen Orchesters zwischen den Pyramiden Platz nahmen, die Partituren mit Wäscheklammern vor dem Wüstenwind schützten und Werke von Mozart, Beethoven und Friedrich dem Großen intonierten. Das Benefizkonzert zur Rettung der maroden Denkmäler, organisiert von der deutschen Botschaft in Khartum und gesponsert von der Lufthansa, war als Weckruf für das sudanesische Geschichtsbewusstsein gedacht – den die aus Khartum angereisten Kabinettsmitglieder auf ihre Art interpretierten: Unter dem Einfluss der fremden Klänge visionierte Tourismusminister Abdulbasit Abdulmajid sogleich Großhotels und Schnellstraßen inmitten der Wüste.

Multikultureller Außenposten

Der sudanesische Staat forciert die Grabungstätigkeit mittlerweile auf breiter Front: 25 internationale Archäologenteams arbeiten im Land, darunter sieben deutsche. Seit 1995 schält das Team von Dietrich Wildung 135 Kilometer nordöstlich von Khartum die Meroïten-Stadt Naga aus dem Savannensand – und hat dabei den südlichsten Außenposten der mediterranen Antike gefunden: einen kleinen Pavillon aus dem 3. Jahrhundert nach Christus, in dem hellenistische, ägyptische und meroïtische Elemente kombiniert sind.

Dennoch: Der größte Teil des Sudan ist archäologisches Niemandsland. Zwar haben Wildung und Kollegen auch im Süden antike Stätten gesichtet. Doch graben konnten sie dort bisher nicht – es herrscht Bürgerkrieg. Der dort tobende Konflikt müsste Altertumsforschern bekannt vorkommen: Zwar geht es nicht mehr um Gold, sondern um die riesigen Ölvorkommen, die vor 20 Jahren im Süden des Sudan entdeckt wurden. Aber das Muster ist das gleiche wie vor Jahrtausenden: Eine weiße Regierung im Norden kämpft mit militärischer Gewalt gegen schwarze Rebellen im Süden. Vier Millionen Flüchtlinge irren heute durch den Sudan – mehr als durch jeden anderen Staat der Erde. Es kracht immer noch, wenn der Nil die Kulturen Schwarzafrikas und des Mittelmeers gegeneinander führt.

Jeune Afrique.com
N°2555-2556
27 déc. 2009 au 9 janv. 2010
Et voilà 
« Jeune Afrique »!
Sénégal
31/12/2009 11:41:49 | par Tshitenge Lubabu M.K.

L’antagonisme qui oppose l’égyptologue Cheikh Anta Diop au chef de l’Etat Léopold Sédar Senghor est révélateur des tensions qui traversent la société sénégalaise lors des premières années d’indépendance.

Le 9 janvier 1960, l’égyptologue Cheikh Anta Diop soutient à la Sorbonne une thèse dans laquelle il compare les systèmes politiques et sociaux de l’Europe et de l’Afrique, de l’Antiquité à la formation des États modernes. Le jury lui attribue la mention honorable. En clair, cela signifie qu’il ne sera jamais professeur à l’université. Et il rentre au Sénégal où Léopold Sédar Senghor, son ennemi intime, est président.

“Destruction de la vraie culture africaine”

Tout oppose les deux hommes. Senghor parle de négritude alors que Diop prône la renaissance africaine à partir de l’héritage de l’Égypte pharaonique et la promotion des langues négro-africaines. Il traite Senghor et ses amis d’« écrivains africains de langue étrangère ». Et doute que leurs écrits soient la « base d’une culture africaine ».

Quand Senghor affirme que « l’émotion est nègre, la raison hellène », Diop dénonce « l’aliénation » de « nègres d’une haute intellectualité […] qui cherchent à codifier ces idées nazies d’une prétendue dualité du Nègre sensible et émotif, créateur d’art, et du Blanc fait surtout de rationalité ». Selon lui, Senghor se sert de la négritude « pour procéder à la destruction de la vraie culture africaine ». Et il s’assigne une mission : « Combattre l’inculture qu’entraîne la désinformation servie dans un pédantisme nourri et entretenu par le chef même de l’exécutif, un certain Léopold Sédar Senghor. »

Attaques politiques et… syntaxiques!

Senghor, qui qualifie cet antagonisme d’« opposition crypto-personnelle », le lui rend bien. Il lui ferme les portes de l’université et le confine à un poste de chercheur au sein d’un laboratoire de l’Institut fondamental de l’Afrique noire (Ifan). Sur le plan politique, il recrute les militants du Bloc des masses sénégalaises (BMS), le premier parti de Cheikh Anta Diop, qui se désintègre, et dissout également son deuxième parti, le Front national sénégalais (FNS).

Lorsque l’égyptologue fonde le Rassemblement national démocratique (RND), il ne reçoit pas l’agrément parce que « sans aucune identification aux courants politiques autorisés ». Senghor attaque Diop sur le plan syntaxique en suspendant la parution du journal Siggi, créé par ce dernier. Il affirme que le mot wolof siggi s’écrit avec un seul « g » et exige la correction de la faute. Mais Diop préfère changer de titre. Il en sera ainsi jusqu’au départ de Senghor du pouvoir, en 1980.

Par Tshitenge Lubabu M.K.

By Audrey Brown
Focus on Africa Magazine

A jubilant man in the crowd holds a newspaper aloft announcing Mandela’s release from custody
Audrey Brown’s memories of the day Nelson Mandela was released are still vivid

Nothing prepared me for the exhilaration that would begin bubbling through my blood, and explode into my soul, on 11 February, 1990.

Just a week earlier South Africa’s last white president, FW de Klerk, had announced to the world that Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela would walk free from jail.

At the time, I was a cub reporter for the crusading anti-apartheid newspaper Vrye Weekblad. And I was breaking up with my long-term boyfriend and consolidating a relationship with someone else.

But my love-life took a back seat as one of the most exciting events in my personal and professional life began to unfold.

It may sound lofty now – but this political event was personal.

Everything my family and comrades had held to be true – that we would defeat apartheid, that all the authentic leaders of the people of South Africa would be freed and that our true aspirations would finally be realised – was about to come true.

“We marched through the streets of Johannesburg, taunting the police with our victory chants. They chased us and beat us up.”

I laughed with delirious joy because everything was suddenly possible, just like we knew it was when – as singing children – we threw stones at the staggering giant that was apartheid.

I cried because so many of my friends and family had died trying to make this happen, waiting for it to happen.

I so wished that my maternal grandfather was alive to witness the day.

My paternal grandfather had gone into exile in the 1950s and this meant we would finally meet him – and the aunt, uncles and cousins we did not know.

My father and his siblings would see their father again after 31 years.

My grandmother would be reunited with the man who had left her with their four children to go into exile.

I would find out what had happened to my friends who had disappeared across the borders, to go and fight to bring this day closer.

My family – and my country – would be whole again.

We marched through the streets of Johannesburg, taunting the police with our victory chants. They chased us and beat us up.

The old beast tried hard to put the joyous genie of victory back into the bottle of repression.

One of my colleagues – a white Afrikaner – ended up with a bloodied face, dazed from a policeman’s club – on the cover of the magazine Index on Censorship.

But nothing felt like pain and nothing felt like work that week as we started putting together a special edition of our newspaper.

And then it was Sunday.

Nelson Mandela walks free from prison holding his fist aloft in the Black Power salute
Mandela raises his fist as he walks free from prison in 1991

With a new boyfriend and old friends – and a towering joy – I sat in front of the television, waiting to see the man whose release was key to ending the political crisis in South Africa.

I know it sounds a bit silly but it did feel a bit like waiting to see the bride’s dress at an important wedding; or waiting to see a beloved and long-awaited newborn baby for the first time.

We did not know what he would look like or what he would be like.

In a way we did not care, because the very fact of his release represented the sum total of our achievement. Apartheid was finally defeated.

It had stumbled under the words of disgust and condemnation from the whole world, and the sacrifice of millions inside and outside South Africa.

Mr Mandela’s release was proof that it had finally fallen. We had won.

Nothing could be better than this. I was thinking all those things as I waited to see him.

The world had stopped to watch with us and everyone was subjected to the same stolid commentary from the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s anchorman.

Then the moustached presenter – so typical of the old South Africa – said: “There he is now…” or words to that effect; and a tall, upright man in a suit walked slowly out into the sunshine, holding his beautiful wife’s hand and raising the other in a black power salute.

That is when the very centre of my soul suddenly flamed and melted into a burnished joy that has flared and faded over time as South Africa went through, and continues to suffer, a painful rebirth.

As I think of that day now, I feel that molten-core flame again and I know that – whatever happens to my country and my continent – it will never really be extinguished.

Audrey Brown is a presenter at the BBC World Service

This article appears in the January – March 2010 edition of BBC Focus on Africa Magazine.

A string of attacks by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in and around Mali has hurt the tourism mecca of Timbuktu. The popular Mali Festival au Desert was moved closer to the city yesterday for safety.

Concertgoers attend last year’s Festival au Desert in Essakane, Mali. Fears of an attack by Al Qaeda militants have moved this year’s music festival to the outskirts of Timbuktu.

By Scott Baldauf Staff Writer / January 8, 2010
Timbuktu, Mali

In a normal December, the streets of Timbuktu are crawling with Western tourists. They take tours of the local libraries full of 12th-century manuscripts, ride camels into the desert to spend the night under the stars, and in early January, attend the Festival au Desert, a kind of Saharan Woodstock, where Tuareg and Malian guitarists trade blues riffs that would bring a smile to the face of John Lee Hooker.

But this past December was no normal one. A series of kidnappings of Western tourists and aid workers – claimed by a group calling itself Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – has prompted most Western embassies in Bamako to urge Western tourists to stay away from northern Mali this year.

Typical is this recent warden message sent out by the US embassy. The US embassy in Bamako, “continues to recommend against all travel to the north of the country due to kidnapping threats against Westerners,” a recent message said. “U.S. citizens are specifically reminded that the restricted areas include Essakane, site of the popular ‘Festival au Desert’ musical event…”

The festival, which opened Thursday, was moved from its usual expansive Saharan desert locale of Essakane to the outskirts of Timbuktu for safety concerns. But that hasn’t eased all fears. France issued a warning on Wednesday advising its citizens not to attend – to the consternation of Mali, which says it has ensured the festival’s safety, according to the BBC.

The embassy warnings in general related to tourism, coming from the British, French, American, and even Swiss embassies, have been persistent, and effective, essentially leaving Timbuktu – one of the most remote, exotic, and historically preserved corners of the earth – virtually empty, hammering a region that depends on the winter tourism season for its very survival.

“You know that the Bronx is more dangerous than Timbuktu,” says Manny Ansar, the head organizer for the Festival au Desert who is based in Timbuktu. “My problem is that I can’t say there is no Al Qaeda in northern Mali, because Al Qaeda is everywhere. They do their attacks in London, in New York City, in India, in Spain, but nobody says don’t go to Madrid or London because of Al Qaeda. Why only to us?”

“We are one of the most popular events in Africa, but we are struggling, because it is difficult to succeed when the biggest customers – America and Britain – are telling their citizens ‘don’t go’,” he sighs. “We will lose 60 to 70 percent of the people who would like to come. But we will be here. The festival will go on.”

String of attacks around Timbuktu

Locals say the threat of Al Qaeda in northern Mali is overstated, but there have been a worrying string of attacks against Westerners in all the countries around Mali, and in Mali itself. Al Qaeda in the Maghreb has taken credit for the following ones:

• In December 2008, the kidnapping of two Canadian nationals working for the United Nations in Niger.

• The kidnapping of four European tourists along the Mali-Niger border, in which one British hostage was killed in June 2009.

• The murder of a US citizen in Mauritania in June 2009

• The suicide-bombing of the French Embassy in Mauritania on Aug. 8, 2009

• In November, the kidnapping of four Spanish aid workers in Mauritania, and the kidnapping of a French citizen living in the Malian city of Menaka, some about 500 miles (800 kilometers) from Timbuktu. Al Qaeda has taken credit for both of these recent kidnappings.

Local people in Timbuktu say the embassy warnings are an overreaction to the problem – most of which occur far from the Timbuktu region – and that the warnings have effectively killed the tourist season this year.

“I have a hotel with 16 rooms, but right now I have only two or three of them filled,” says Alhous Ag Tajoli, a hotelier in Timbuktu. “In a normal year, I am crazy right now, on the phone, making bookings, but this year, I have no one. It’s a catastrophe.”

Mohamed Alhassane, another tour operator in Timbuktu, said: “Last year, during the Festival, I had 700 tourists booked in hotels. Two years ago, we had 400 tourists booked. This year, because the Americans say, ‘Don’t come,’ no one has come.”

Secretary: ‘We are the victims of misinformation’

Tuareg nomads have always come to the Timbuktu region for trading, and they have always gathered at Essakane – about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of here – to trade goods, and camels, and stories of their travels. The Festival au Desert, started in 2001, six years after a major Tuareg rebellion, brings together musicians from the Tuareg region who carry on ancient traditions of story telling. When Timbuktu was at the height of its power and influence, it was a center for trading in salt and gold and slaves, and the music one hears at the Festival carries with it the DNA of a music that Americans call the blues.

Mali’s tourism industry, and its politicians, are not taking the problem lying down. Early in December, they held a splashy extravaganza at a Timbuktu hotel to open the tourist season, with top local and national musicians giving a taste of things to come at the Festival au Desert. At a press conference, Manny Ansar and a panel of Malian leaders promised to combat Mali’s sudden image problem.

“A few years ago, we were victims of a drought and famine,” says Nana Haidara, Mali’s secretary for food security. “Now we are the victims of misinformation and exaggeration. Nobody will come to our rescue. We must help ourselves first.”

While Western tourists have been canceling their Festival plans this year in droves, few Western artists have, and a number of top Malian musicians – including guitarist Vieux Farka Toure, son of the late world-music sensation Ali Farka Toure – have made a point to say they will continue to perform at the Festival, no matter what.

“I am from Timbuktu. I was born here. I know the people here, and I don’t believe we have Al Qaeda here,” says Thiale Arby, a top Malian singer. “For me the Festival is very important. It is good for people to come here in the middle of the desert and to meet people from all different countries. This is a city that has always welcomed everybody, no matter what religion or nation, and that is never going to change.”

Of course, the kind of tourist that comes to Mali – an incredibly poor country rich in history and the arts – is also the sort of tourist who tends to have a high tolerance for discomfort and danger, and there are a few tourists in Timbuktu who have come despite, or perhaps because of, the warnings.

“That’s actually why I’m here,” says Martijn Munneke, a young backpacker from Erm, Netherlands. “Maybe I’m naive, but I want to see the world. When the swine flu struck Mexico, that is when I bought a ticket to go to Mexico. I figured it’s a good time to go to Chichen Itza when there are no tourists there.”

Anupama Sud, a photography student from San Francisco, working on a photojournalism project, says she had read all about the travel warnings, but decided to come to Mali nonetheless. “It’s the final frontier. When you think of Timbuktu, you think of the end of the world. I feel safe here. People from the Third World would rather feed a guest first, which is totally different from what you get in the West.”

Christianity first arrived in North Africa, in the 1st or early 2nd century AD. The Christian communities in North Africa were among the earliest in the world. Legend has it that Christianity was brought from Jerusalem to Alexandria on the Egyptian coast by Mark, one of the four evangelists, in 60 AD. This was around the same time or possibly before Christianity spread to Northern Europe.

Once in North Africa, Christianity spread slowly West from Alexandria and East to Ethiopia. Through North Africa, Christianity was embraced as the religion of dissent against the expanding Roman Empire. In the 4th century AD the Ethiopian King Ezana made Christianity the kingdom’s official religion. In 312 Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

In the 7th century Christianity retreated under the advance of Islam. But it remained the chosen religion of the Ethiopian Empire and persisted in pockets in North Africa.

In the 15th century Christianity came to Sub-Saharan Africa with the arrival of the Portuguese. In the South of the continent the Dutch founded the beginnings of the Dutch Reform Church in 1652.

In the interior of the continent most people continued to practice their own religions undisturbed until the 19th century. At that time, Christian missions to Africa increased, driven by an antislavery crusade and the interest of Europeans in colonising Africa. However, where people had already converted to Islam, Christianity had little success.

Christianity was an agent of great change in Africa. It destabilised the status quo, bringing new opportunities to some, and undermining the power of others. With the Christian missions came education, literacy and hope for the disadvantaged. However, the spread of Christianity paved the way for commercial speculators, and, in its original rigid European form, denied people pride in their culture and ceremonies.

Listen to The Coming Of Christianity, the sixth programme in the BBC landmark radio series The Story of Africa, presented by Hugh Quarshie

North Africa was an early cradle of Christianity. Indeed Christianity’s links with Africa started nearly two thousand years ago, just weeks after the birth of Jesus when according to the bible, the holy family fled the wrath of King Herod.

“An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream saying: ‘Arise, take the young child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word, for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.

When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, ‘Out of Egypt I called my Son.”
St Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 3, verses 13-15.

Listen to St Mathew’s Gospel, Chapter 3, Verse 13-15

Christianity spread to North Africa less than 150 years after the death of Christ. Christian beliefs were introduced by missionaries from Jerusalem and spread among the Jews of Alexandria, on the Egyptian Coast, some time in first century AD or second century. There, the new faith was adopted by the Greek community from the Jews. Christianity spread west, and was taken up across North Africa. It reached as far as modern-day Morocco, where it was enthusiastically embraced by the Berber people. It is quite possible that Christianity came to Africa before it came to Britain and other regions in Northern Europe.

CHRISTIANITY AS DISSENT

Under the Greeks and during the early years of Roman rule, Egyptians had worshipped their traditional gods as they had during the time of the Pharaohs. Some historians believe that there were elements within such traditional religion that made people receptive to the Christian message.

“Consider how the pharaoh Akhenaton more than one thousand years before Christianity taught and preached how there was one creator for the universe. Look at the statues in ancient Egypt…there is the sign of the cross which was engraved upon it. It was called the ankh – the sign of life, of life after death.

Even the idea of the trinity…in Memphis there was the trinity of Isis, Osiris and Horus, all combined into one. So many of the teachings of Christianity were not foreign at all.”
Fouad Megially, former Assistant Professor at the universities of Alexandria and Cairo.

Listen to a Coptic mass, recorded at the eleventh century Church of St Mary in Cairo, also known as the Hanging Church

The branch of Christianity that developed in Egypt was named after the language spoken by the mass of the Egyptian population – Coptic. Two thousand years later it is still used in Church liturgy.

The early Christian fathers in Egypt developed a strong monastic tradition. There were hundreds of monasteries throughout the country as well as cells and caves occupied by hermits. An anonymous fourth century writer observed:

“There is no town or village in Egypt that is not surrounded by hermitages as if by walls and the people depend on their prayers as if on God himself, through them the world is kept going.”

Christianity was embraced as the religion of dissent and opposition to oppressive Roman rule. It was also, under the teaching of the theologian Origen, a religion emphasising wisdom and physical hardship. Martyrdom became a feature of Christian communities.

One of the earliest documented martyrs was Perpetua, a twenty-year-old wife and mother born in Carthage near Tunis. In 203 AD, she was sentenced to death for her beliefs and her refusal to make a sacrifice to the Roman gods.

“We walked up to the prisoner’s dock. All the others when questioned admitted their guilt. Then, when it came to my turn, my father appeared with my son, dragged me from the step, and said: ‘Perform the sacrifice – have pity on your baby!’

Hilarianus the governor…. said to me: ‘Have pity on your father’s grey head; have pity on your infant son. Offer the sacrifice for the welfare of the Emperors’.

‘I will not’ I retorted.
‘Are you a Christian?’ said Hilarianus.
And I said: ‘Yes, I am’…
Then Hilarianus passed sentence on all of us; we were condemned to the beasts, and we returned to prison in high spirits.”
Perpetua’s account of her last days, taken from Acts of the Christian Martyrs.

Listen to a BBC dramatisation of the martyrdom of Perpetua

From the early fourth century, under the Roman Emperor Diocletian, the attacks became more widespread and violent. Churches were destroyed, bibles burned, and Christians faced imprisonment, torture and death.

DIVISIONS WITHIN CHRISTIANITY
Persecution of the Christians ceased in 312, when the Roman Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Empire. By now, different forms of Christian belief were beginning to emerge and diverse groups of worshippers were beginning to congregate. The most long lasting split over doctrine centred on the nature of God and developed in 451. The Church in Constantinople (modern Istanbul), from where the Roman Empire was now administered, held to the idea that God was both human – in the form of Jesus – and divine. In contradiction to this, the church in North Africa said God was one indivisible unity and wholly divine. This Monophysite belief became the central tenet of the Church in North Africa, which subsequently became known as the Coptic Church.

DONATISM
In the Western regions of North Africa, a more militant, rigid form of Christianity grew up. It was unforgiving of those who collaborated with Roman persecutors. This form of Christianity was known as Donatism and it became identified by the newly Christianised Byzantine authorities as a heresy and equated with dissent and rebellion. It was outlawed by St Augustine of Hippo in his capacity as Bishop of Hippo (in modern Algeria). When Islam came to North Africa in 639, Christian communities were weakened by these divisions and so were less able to resist conversion to the new faith.

Ethiopia & Nubia
AKSUM
The Ethiopian branch of Christianity first emerged in the kingdom of Aksum in the northern corner of the Ethiopian highlands. The person who introduced Christianity to Aksum is said to be Fremnatos – known as Frumentius in Europe, later a saint. He is variously described as a trader, philosopher and theologian.

The story goes he was on his way to India when he was kidnapped in Aksum. He obviously made a good impression, because he ended up being the tutor to the future King Ezana. The King adopted Christianity as the official religion in 333 AD. Fremnatos was rewarded for this by being consecrated Bishop of Aksum at a ceremony in Alexandria. When the Aksum dynasty collapsed the Ethiopian centre of power moved south and east, taking the Christian tradition with it.

QUEEN OF SHEBA
The most popular story connected to the region is the ancient account of the Queen of Sheba. As told in the Old Testament, she travelled from Aksum to Jerusalem to meet the famed King Solomon (King of the Israelites) in Jerusalem.

Click here to listen to a dramatisation of the story of the Queen of Sheba’s seduction by King Solomon

“And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions. And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones; and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart.”
1 Kings, 10, v.1-2, Old Testament.

Although there is no evidence that the Queen of Sheba did come from Aksum, it has become part of the Ethiopian church’s central tenets.

“The Ethiopians say she travelled from Aksum across the Red Sea…and visited Solomon there. It was said they had romantic relations and she had a son…and she came back and he was born to the north of Aksum.

When he was old enough, she sent him back to his father to get his blessing and his father blessed him and sent him back to Ethiopia…and this son established a new dynasty…the Solomonic dynasty. The name of the son was Menelik I…

Like all legends they serve the question of establishing an identity, very strong identity. I myself believe this is a post Christian legend…it developed only after the Ethiopians started to have direct contact with the books of the Bible, from about the middle of the 6th Century…

And then it became a very important constitutional device and an act of faith. I cannot publicly speak against it in front of the patriarch of the orthodox church, for example, because then he would say, you are no longer an Orthodox Christian.

In the days of Emperor Haile Selassie you couldn’t speak against the tradition because it would be treasonable to talk against it.”
Professor Tadesse Tamrat, Professor of History, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.

Tesfay Berhane offers a guided tour of Axum and the Queen of Sheba’s Palace

Listen to a mass, recorded at the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Axum

SPREAD OF ISLAM
In the 5th and 6th centuries the scriptures were translated into Ge’ez. The ancient forerunner of the Ethiopian language Amharic. With the spread of Islam in the 7th century the Ethiopian Church fell into something of a decline, although there was a revival in the 13th century. In 1621 the Ethiopian Emperor Susenyos became Catholic. With his abdication however, links with Rome were abandoned and Jesuit priests were banned.

Although autonomous in its rulings, the Ethiopian church remained connected to the Coptic Church until the mid-20th century.

THE NUBIA
Christianity spread South from the North of Egypt to Nubia (modern day Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan) some two hundred years after the collapse of the powerful Nile Valley kingdom of Meroe in the 4th century AD. It was brought by traders from Egypt and by travelers from Aksum.

Archaeological remains suggest that Christianity was a religion of the poor people to begin with and only later became popular with the elite. A missionary who came to Nubia from Constantinople found everybody well versed in Christian doctrine in 580. Initially the Nubian Church developed under the control of the Egyptian Coptic church. When Islam swept through the North of the continent in the 7th century, the Nubian rulers sought help from the Christian Emperor in Constantinople.

The Arab forces did their best to conquer Nubia but were forced back by the skills of the Nubian archers.

“One day they arrayed themselves against us and were desirous to carry on the conflict with the sword. But they were too quick for us and shot their arrows, putting out our eyes. The eyes they put out numbered 150. We at last thought the best thing to do with such a people was to make peace.”
The Arabic writer al-Baladhuri.

The Arabs agreed a peace treaty with the Nubians, which allowed the Nubian kingdoms to flourish as a Christian state for 700 years. The two northern kingdoms, Nobadia and Makuria merged into one – Dongola. Dongola entered something of a golden age; the bible was translated from Greek into Nubian and beautiful churches were built throughout the Nile Valley.

The Church in Nubia finally yielded to Islamic conversion in the 14th century and the massive Cathedral in Dongola was converted into a mosque in 1317.

While the Nubian church dissolved, with only a few architectural remnants to recall its former glory, the Ethiopian Church not only persisted but acquired great significance outside the Horn of Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The ancient nature of the church, combined with the Ethiopian defeat of the Italians in 1896, gave hope and inspiration to the anti-colonial movement in South Africa, and the Gold Coast, as well as to African-Americans suffering from prejudice and segregation.

Early Missionaries

THE KONGO
In 1490 the first missionaries came to Sub-Saharan Africa at the request of King Nzinga of Kongo (also known as the Manikongo). They came with craftsmen who rebuilt the Manikongo’s capital in stone at Mbanza Kongo (in the North of modern Angola), and baptised the King. King Nzinga’s son Afonso (born Nzinga Mbemba) was sent to Portugal to study and amazed the catholic hierarchy with his intelligence and intense piety.

“It seems to me from the way he speaks as though he is not a man but rather an angel, sent by the Lord into this kingdom to convert it; for I assure that is he who instructs us, and that he knows better than we do the Prophets and the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and the lives of the saints and all the things concerning out Holy Mother the Church…For he devotes himself entirely to study, so that it often happens that he falls asleep over his books, and often he forgets to eat and drink in talking of the things of Our Lord.”
The Franciscan missionary, Rui d’Aguiar, writing to King Manuel of Portugal about the piety of the Mani Kongo, King Afonso of the Kongo, 25th May 1516.

Afonso’s son, Henrique, subsequently became the first black African bishop in the Catholic church. But the kingdom of the Kongo was ruined by the slave trade, which caused a massive drain on manpower.

THE SOYO
The Soyo people were initially junior partners in an alliance with the Manikongo, but this changed in the 17th century. The Soyo traded with the Dutch from whom they bought firearms in exchange for slaves, ivory and copper. The Soyo eventually usurped the Manikongo and laid waste Sao Salvador, the Kongo seat of power. The Soyo set up their capital in Mbanza Soyo (now modern Porto Rico on Zaire river in northern Angola). By 1665 the Kongo empire had largely disintegrated.

THE SOYO ELITE
Capuchin missionaries from Portugal established themselves as crucial intermediaries between the Soyo and Europe. They were helped by eight or ten interpreters, many related to the ruler, bound by a vow of secrecy and governed by many rules. The interpreters were a privileged group and did not pay tax or do military service. Their job was to translate during confession, prepare the altar and teach. By the late 17th century the ruler of Soyo was attending mass three times a week, carried in a hammock, wearing a cross of solid gold.

However, there was conflict between the Capuchins and the Soyo over the issue of monogamous marriage and traditional religious practices. The Capuchins did not want the Soyo to sell baptised slaves to the English or other non-Catholic traders. They insisted that baptised slaves could only be sold to the Portuguese.

POSSESSION
At the beginning of the 18th century there was an attempt to revive the fortunes of the Kongo empire. In 1704, Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita, a young Kongolese woman, born to a noble Catholic family, claimed to be possessed by the spirit of St. Anthony. Inspired by this visitation she set about fighting to reestablish the preeminence of the old Kongo empire. She led a crusade of a thousand followers to Sao Salvador in 1704. Two years later she was burnt at the stake for heresy.

Christianity persisted in the region, although it evolved in its own way, specific to the area. Missionaries who turned up in the 19th century, expecting to convert the local population, found people practising their own Africanised form of Christianity. All Souls Day had merged with the veneration of ancestors (a fusion repeated in many other parts of Africa), and the Virgin Mary had become something of a fertility symbol.

In the rest of Africa, Christianity made little headway in the 18th century. Rulers in West Africa were mildly interested at first, seeing Christianity as something to add on to their own religions. But they grew hostile when told they had to make a choice: it was either Christianity or traditional religion. South Africa was the site of greater Christian missionary activity. The Moravian Brethren (closely linked to the Lutherans) of Eastern Europe, established a mission in 1737. In 1799 the London Missionary Society (LMS) followed suit.

19th Century White Missionaries

At the beginning of the 19th century, very few people in Africa were practising Christians, apart from Ethiopians, Coptic Egyptians and people living in the remnants of the Kongolese Empire (modern Congo Brazzaville and western DR Congo).

In the 1800’s, Catholic missionary expeditions were launched with new vigour to the West, in Senegal and Gabon. Protestant missionaries took up work in Sierra Leone in 1804. The missionaries represented a big spectrum of denominations or churches: Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, many of them in competition and conflict with each other.

The abolition of slave owning in 1807 and slave trading in 1834 throughout the British Empire proved to be two important turning points. Outlawing the slave trade and converting freed slaves became a powerful motive for setting up European Christian missions. Human compassion in Europe for the plight of slaves meant that money could be raised to fund the considerable expenses of setting up a mission.

The Protestants spread the Christian gospel through the slaves who were liberated from slaving ships along the West Coast after 1834. The application of Christian doctrine was much stricter than it had been in previous centuries. The success of Christian missionary programmes can be linked to the education they offered. Many people in Africa wanted education; and missionaries taught people to read, in order that they might understand the word of God.

RESCUED FROM SLAVERY
The missionary traveler David Livingstone (1813-1873) believed that the slave trade could only be suppressed by a combination of Christianity and trade. He travelled extensively from east to west in southern Africa dedicated to bringing Christianity to all, but never staying very long anywhere. He was most successful among the Tswana people (in modern Botswana), even though conversion to Christianity upset the status quo of this community.

Neither Livingstone nor other missionaries had much impact on the slave trading which went on between the interior and the East coast. They failed to convert any significant numbers of Muslims to Christianity. Livingstone’s well-intentioned call for colonisation as an antidote to the horrors of slavery, paved the way for a host of missionaries and speculators to follow in his footsteps and cause immense hardship for the people of southern Africa.

DEDICATION AND DECEIT
Many European missionaries worked extremely hard running their missions, risking their lives and good health in the process. They varied enormously in their ability to contribute to the quality of life of those they lived with. Some remained dedicated but contemptuous of those they claimed to be converting. Others developed deep affection and respect for those they worked with and made a long lasting impression.

The Scottish factory worker, Mary Slessor was one such missionary. She spent over 40 years in southern Nigeria, in Calabar. She learnt the local language and lived a life of total simplicity. She dealt head-on with some of the customs of the region, such as throwing twins into the bush to die, and negotiated an end to this. Today she is still revered and loved as a local figure.

Listen to a description of Mary Slessor’s missionary life and work

Among the least admirable missionaries in history is reckoned to be the Reverend Helm of the Christian Missionary Society (CMS) who deliberately mistranslated a document drawn up between King Lobengula of the Ndebele and the British South Africa Company of Cecil Rhodes. This resulted in King Lobengula giving away all his land to speculators, thinking he had only signed away a limited mining concession. He was one of the rulers of southern Africa who had consistently refused to convert to Christianity.

Another runner up for the title of villainous missionary is the Catholic priest, Friar Anthonio Barroso, who persuaded the illiterate Dom Pedro V, King of the Congo to sign a note in 1884. He believed it was a thank you letter for a gold-backed chair; in fact it was an oath of loyalty and submission to the King of Portugal.

Portuguese missionaries in Angola and Mozambique in the late 19th century and 20th century were renowned and feared for their willingness to work hand in glove with the Portuguese colonial authorities. As a result of this alliance between church and state, Protestant missions proved very popular and many of Angola and Mozambique’s leading nationalists were educated in Protestant missionary schools.

TWO STAGES IN THE CONVERSION OF CHIEF SECHELE OF THE BAKWAIN
LITERACY & OBESITY
“As soon as he had an opportunity of learning, he set himself to read with such close application, that from being comparatively thin, the effect of having been fond of the chase, he became quite corpulent from want of exercise.

Mr. Oswell gave him his first lesson in figures, and he acquired the alphabet on the first day of my residence at Chonuane.

He was by no means an ordinary specimen of the people, for I never went into the town but I was pressed to hear him read some chapters of the Bible. Isaiah was a great favourite with him; and he was wont to use the same phrase nearly which the professor of Greek at Glasgow, Sir D.K. Sandford, once used respecting the Apostle Paul, when reading his speeches in the Acts: ‘He was a fine fellow, that Paul!’”
BAPTISM & DIVISION
“Seeing several of the old men actually in tears during the service, I asked them afterwards the cause of their weeping; they were crying to see their father, as the Scotch remark over a case of suicide, ’so far left to himself.’ They seemed to think that I had thrown the glamour over him, and that he had become mine.

Here commenced an opposition, which we had not previously experienced. All the friends of the divorced wives became the opponents of our religion. The attendance at school and church diminished to very few besides the chief’s own family.”
Description of Chief Sechele of the Bakwain or Bakuena, a group within the Bechuana people (of modern Botswana) taken from Missionary Travels and Research in South Africa by David Livingstone, 1857.

19th Century Black Missionaries

At the beginning of the 19th century very few people in Africa were practising Christians apart from Ethiopians, Coptic Egyptians and people living in the remnants of the Kongolese Empire (modern Congo Brazzaville and western DR Congo).

The abolition of slave owning in 1807 and slave trading in 1834, throughout the British Empire proved to be two important turning points. Outlawing the slave trade and converting freed slaves became a powerful motive for setting up European Christian missions. Human compassion in Europe for the plight of slaves meant that money could be raised to fund the considerable expenses of setting up a mission.

FREED SLAVE COLONIES
Sierra Leone and Liberia, both colonies set up by freed slaves, became important centres of Christian practice in West Africa by the 1830’s. The freed slaves who arrived in these colonies, who came from America, were already Christians when they arrived. Liberia’s first President J. R. Roberts was a man of Christian piety as well as enterprise.

“…The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. He works in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform, though it seems hard at this time, God does all things well for them that love and fear him.

You cannot tell what cause he had thought proper to remove your husband from this world of bustle and confusion, for his part, he is gone to the realms above, he is gone to Abraham’s bosom and expects to meet you there.”
Joseph Roberts’ letter to Mrs. Colson, the widow of his great friend and business partner, Mr. Colson, on the occasion of that man’s death in 1836.

THE FIRST AFRICAN BISHOP
Christian missionaries knew that if Christianity was to flourish, Africans would have to be ordained. Samuel Ajayi Crowther was one of the most famous African representatives of a European church (in this case the Anglican Church).

He was the first African Bishop in the Anglican church. And he was a formidably able man. He had been taken as a slave around 1822, but the slave ship in which he was held was intercepted and he was taken to Freetown. He was educated and baptised and sent to London for further instruction. He kept his own name Ajayi, but also took the name Crowther from a member of the Church Missionary Society (CMS).

He was commissioned by the CMS to set up the Niger Mission; the first expedition to do so resulted in the death of a third of the party, all of which Crowther carefully documented in his journal. He supervised the setting up of a mission in Badagry, and later Abeokuta, (both in the south west of Nigeria), steering a difficult path between rulers in the region, some hostile to Christianity, some of whom were in conflict with each other. He later met Queen Victoria and read the Lord’s prayer to her in the Nigerian language of Yoruba, which she described as soft and melodious. His missionary work expanded outside Yorubaland in south west Nigeria, founding a mission station in Onitsha, in the East of the territory.

He published many works including the first written grammar of the Yoruba language and first Nupe grammar. In 1864, against considerable opposition from jealous fellow missionary Henry Townsend (another Niger Mission missionary), Crowther was made Bishop of ‘Western Equatorial Africa’ beyond the Queen’s Dominions.

A generation after Samuel Crowther, another formidable African churchman emerged in Nigeria: the Anglican priest, the Reverend J. J. Ransome Kuti. He carried out his ministry in defiance of the traditional priests with total confidence, as vividly described by Wole Soyinka in his autobiography Ake.

“… Rev J.J. was away on one of his many mission tours. He travelled a lot, on foot and on bicycle, keeping in touch with all the branches of his diocese and spreading the Word of God. There was frequent opposition but nothing deterred him.

One frightening experience occurred in one of the villages in Ijebu. He had been warned not to preach on that particular day, which was the day for an egungun outing, but he persisted and held a service. The egungun procession passed while the service was in progress and using his ancestral voice, called on the preacher to stop at once, disperse his people and come out to pay obeisance. Rev J.J. ignored him.

The egungun then left, taking his followers with him but, on passing the main door, he tapped on it with his wand three times. Hardly had the last member of his procession left the church premises then the building collapsed. The walls simply fell down and the roof disintegrated.

Miraculously however, the walls fell outwards – anywhere but on the congregation itself. Rev J.J. calmed the worshippers, paused in his preaching to render a thanksgiving prayer, then continued his sermon…”

PERSECUTION
In East Africa, Christianity was carefully considered by the Kabaka Mutesa, who started out favouring Islam but turned to Christianity in old age. His son Kabaka Mwanga was at first favourably disposed towards Christians, but under pressure from factional intrigue among his chiefs he constantly changed his mind about religion. He ordered the murder of Anglican Bishop Hannington, who was on his way to see him, and had a number of Christian pages murdered – the pages are sometimes referred to as ‘readers’ because they learnt to read when they became Christian. He was ousted from office for some years by his own chiefs, later reinstalled and finally sent into exile by the British.

PROTESTANTS & CATHOLICS IN BUGANDA
“…Mwanga (Kabaka or King of Buganda in exile) sent us a written proposal, saying, ‘I wish to return to my throne,’ we invited him and he ran away from the Catholics and returned to us and we restored him to the throne.

Further we assigned to all the Catholics a district of Uganda, viz. Budu, and there they lived apart. We told them, ‘we do not wish to mix with the Catholics again.’

At the present time we Protestants have possessed ourselves of a very large district and all the islands; and now the Mohammedans (Muslims) are applying to us to assign them a district, where they may settle and cease fighting with us: but the terms are not yet finally agreed upon…”
Letter from Anglican missionary, Henry Wright Duta Kitakule, to a missionary in Zanzibar, April 1892.

BLURRING THE BOUNDARIES
The line between Christian and African religious practice was not always very clearcut. In West Africa, a broad spectrum of religious beliefs emerged – traditional beliefs, Islam and Christianity flourishing side by side, sometimes in the same family. Nigerian politician, Chief Awolowo Obafemi, recounts the religious beliefs of his parents in the early 1900’s. Of his mother he says,

“After her marriage to my father, even though she attended church regularly with my father and discharged all her financial obligations as well as rendering voluntary services to the church, she remained unbaptised, and a mere proselyte at the gate.

It was a condition precedent to the consent to her marriage with father, stipulated by her parents, that she should not be baptised, and admitted to the Christian fold. Her mother worshipped the river god (Oluweri, i.e. Owner and Ruler of the Rivers).

When she gave birth to my mother, she had dedicated her to this god of the rivers, and she was not going to break her vow under any circumstances. Though mother, after her marriage, learnt to read in the vernacular and was, thereafter, able to read the Bible, the Prayer Book, and to sing hymns, and though she continued to attend church after father’s death, it was some years after her own mother’s death that I succeeded in getting her to break her mother’s vow to the river god, and become a baptised Christian.”

The first African Catholics Bishops were not appointed until 1939 – Joseph Kiwanuka in Uganda and Joseph Faye in Senegal. Elsewhere African missionaries were appointed by the Presbyterian Church in Cameroun in 1896. Many people went to study in America and came back to preach the word of God. Often, like John Chilembwe, branching out on returning home to set up an independent African church.

Contrasts And Parallels

TENSIONS
Christianity was taken up enthusiastically by large numbers of people from the 1880’s in West, South and parts of East Africa. But many missionaries who came from Europe from the 1800’s onwards were disapproving of how Africans worshipped. They demanded monogamy where polygamy was central to the health and wealth of the community; they disapproved of some traditional dress, and dances. They wanted all the objects or animals which people worshipped, destroyed.

There were also tensions between missionaries and Africans when they converted to Christianity. It was not long before African Christians wanted to worship without any European intermediaries, and, to the distress of many missionaries, in their own style.

PARALLELS
There were aspects of Christianity which were quite familiar to people coming across it for the first time: the idea of a supreme power; the idea of the material world – this world; and another world – the spiritual world; and the idea of revelation and prophesy, through dreams and through visions. These were all present to a greater or lesser extent in traditional religions. Redemption through Christ’s sacrifice had its echo in sacrificial rites of traditional religions.

Missionaries had, from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, been tolerant of African religious practices merging with Christianity. So for a time, polygamy was not considered adultery but assigned the lesser sin of concubinage. In Europe the same thing had happened: European pagan practices had been adapted to Christian ones when Christianity first spread in Europe.

African Churches

RACE, CUSTOM AND CHRISTIANITY
In the colonial administration, the senior positions of power were held by Europeans. This racial divide was not so easy to justify in the church. What was attractive about Christianity, and Islam for that matter, was that these religions offered something to everyone; they did not only serve the rich, the powerful, or those of a certain race or from a certain region, clan or people. In practice, however, the prejudices of Europeans led to double standards.

NIGERIA
In Nigeria, in Lagos, in the 1930’s one of the churches was reserved for Europeans only. The only Nigerian allowed in was the composer, musician and organ scholar Fela Sowande. For obliging the Europeans by playing the organ there, on several occasions he incurred criticism from fellow Nigerians. The Sowande family were typical of the Christian educated elite in Lagos; they put up with these racial slights because they had their eyes set on prizes further afield. Fela ended up composing music for the BBC and his brother became a London based barrister.

Listen to Tunje Sowande describing a religious Sunday

THE GOLD COAST
In the neighbouring Gold Coast, Akans expelled from the Methodist Church reacted by setting up their own church with its own heavenly language, Musama Christo Disco or the Army of the Cross of Christ. The Akan lay preacher and composer Ephraim Amu broke with Methodist convention when he was refused ordination because he wore African cloth in church. AMU, who died a few years ago in his nineties, also composed music and lyrics for many hymns, as well as the national anthem.

Listen to composer Ephraim Amu speaking about the creation of hymns

SOUTHERN AFRICA
In southern Africa, the increasingly segregated Dutch Reform Church and the growing exclusion of Africans from social and political life, led to a huge number of churches springing up, many of them going under the name of Ethiopian (a tribute to Ethiopia’s ancient church).

Among these Ethiopian churches was Nehemiah Tile’s founded in 1882 and Mangena M. Mokone’s Tembu National Church established in 1892. The other important Christian movement was the Watchtower Movement, a precursor of the Jehovah Witnesses. Their followers believed in the end of the colonial rule and the end of the world. They were prominent from the late 19th century onwards in Nyasaland (modern Malawi) and Northern Rhodesia (modern Zambia).

The assertion of African identity was a driving force in many churches, for example, The Church of Christ for the Union of the Bantu and Protection of the Bantu Customs. The African-American Christianity also had great weight in southern Africa, the main church being the African Methodist Episcopal (AME). It was very influential in Zimbabwe, and South Africa, as well as Liberia and Sierra Leone. Local churches continue to flourish and be founded today; in times of war or famine their role becomes particularly important.

THE HOLY SPIRIT
In East Africa a number of churches sprung up. After the First World War, Ruben Spartas Mukasa, formerly with the King’s African Rifle, formed a church for ‘the redemption of all Africa’.

In Kenya the concept of the Holy Spirit played a big role. Speaking in tongues was a regular feature of the services of the Holy Ghost Church, Dimi ya Roho, founded in 1927 and the Joroho Church, founded in 1932.

The Watu wa Mngu (People of God) were a Gikuyu religious group founded between the World Wars. Their mode of praying inspired the title of Jomo Kenyatta’s social and anthropological book, Facing Mount Kenya.

“Their prayers are a mixture of Gikuyu religion and Christian; in these they add something entirely new to both religions. They perform their religious duties standing in a picturesque manner.

In their prayer to Mwene-Nyaga (God) they hold up their arms to the sky facing Mount Kenya; and in this position they recite their prayers, and in doing so they imitate the cries of wild beasts of prey, such as lion and leopard, and at the same time they tremble violently.

The trembling, they say, is the sign of the Holy Ghost, Roho Motheru, entering in them. While thus possessed with the spirits, they are transformed from ordinary beings and are in communion with Mwene-Nyaga…

Some of their shrines were closed down by the Government, on the assumption that they were used for secret meetings of a political character…It was also stated that very offensive and unedifying attacks were made, in the name of Christ, on the Christian neighbouring missionaries.”
Taken from Facing Mount Kenya by Jomo Kenyatta.

In Tanzania the African National Church of Tanganyika was founded in the 1930’s. One of its attractions was that it tolerated polygamy.

PERSECUTION IN CONGO
In the Congo, the church had a strong anti-colonial strand. Along with the Eglise des Noirs (Church of the Blacks) was Simon Kimbangu’s EJCSK (Eglise de Jesus sur la Terre par le Prophete Simon Kimbangu), or Church of Jesus on Earth through the Prophet Simon Kimbangu. The latter was founded in 1921 and its followers refused to pay taxes and witheld their labour. Simon Kimbangu died in prison in 1951, but his church spread in the Congo and Oubangui-Chari (modern Central African Republic).

A CHURCH FOR AFRICA
“We must seek to bring into the Native Church the Chiefs and other men of influence. Do not expect of them the perfection, which a narrow philanthropy exacts. Consider the conditions under which Europe received the Gospel.

Had the hard conditions now imposed upon African Chiefs been required of European sovereigns and chiefs, Christianity might never have been permanently established on the West of the Bosphorus.

The first Christian Emperor, Constantine, was half a pagan to the end. He erected in his new capital, Constantinople, a statue of himself. At the base of this statue, it is said, he placed a fragment of what he believed to be the true Cross.

In the same place he deposited the Paladium, the cherished relic of Pagan Rome, which Aeneas was said to have rescued from the flames of Troy, and which Constantine himself stealthily removed to his new capital. This was his fetish, brought over from heathenism.”
Liberian thinker and writer, Edward W. Blyden. Excerpt from Proposals for a West Africa Church.

INDEX

Forces For Change

LITERACY
The promise of literacy is what made Christianity very attractive to many people. Most of sub-Saharan Africa had no form of writing until the arrival of Europeans.

There were however a number of different scripts in the north of the continent. Ethiopia developed its own script for religious purposes in the 5th century.

Arabic script came to sub-Saharan Africa some time in the 11th century. Nobody knows the origin of the Vey script which was used on the border of Sierra Leone and Liberia. It was translated in the late 19th century by a member of the Church Missionary Society.
SACRED WORDS IN NIGERIAN PIDGIN ENGLISH

“For de first time, noting been be – only de Lawd He be. An’ de Lawd, He done go work hard for make dis ting dey call um Earth.

For six days de lawd He work an He done make all ting – everyting He go put for Earth. Plenty beef, plenty cassava, plenty banana, plenty yam, plenty guinea-corn, plenty mango, plenty groundnut – everyting.

An for de wata He put plenty fish, an for de air, He put plenty kinda bird. An’ after six days de Lawd He done go sleep an’ when He sleep, plenty palaver start for dis place day call ‘um Heaven.”
From The Book of Genesis in Pidgin English. Quoted by H. W. Bolden in The Times, London, October 2001.

Christianity Timeline

29, 30 or 33 - Crucifixion of Jesus
100 – 2nd Century - Christianity comes to Alexandria from Jerusalem
180 – 12 Christians executed for beliefs in Carthage
181 – In Carthage Perpetua refuses renounce Christianity and is sent to the lions
182 – Emperor Diocletian launches great persecution against Christianity
4th Century - Collapse of Meroe kingdom
5th-7th Century - Scriptures translated into Ge’ez in Ethiopia
311 – Donatist split
312 – Constantine makes Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire
333 – Ethiopian King Ezana makes Christianity official religion
451 – Schism (divide) with Rome on nature of God, marks the beginning of separate Coptic Church I in North Africa (taking Monophysite line, i.e. Jesus is not human as well as the son of God)
6th Century - Christianity comes to Nubia
639 – Islam comes to North Africa, displacing Christianity on a large scale
1317 – Nubia turns Muslim; Dongola cathedral converted to Mosque
1490 – First missionaries come to Kongo from Portugal
1621 – With the abdication of Emperor Susenyos, the Ethiopian Church is restored as the official church, after a period of Catholicism
1652 – Dutch settle in the Cape; beginning of Dutch Reformed Church
1706 – Emperor Susenyos of Ethiopia becomes Catholic; Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita, of Kongo, is burnt at stake having claimed to be possessed by spirit of St. Anthony
1737 – Moravian Brethren set up in South Africa
1799 – London Missionary Society (LMS) set up in South Africa
1804 – Protestant mission in Sierra Leone
1807 – British declare abolition of slave trade
1839 – Pope Gregory XVI issues Papal Bull condemning slavery
1840 – David Livingstone arrives in Africa
1865 – Samuel Ajayi Crowther became first black Anglican Bishop in Nigeria
1868 – White Fathers Mission Society established by Lavigerie, Archbishop of Algiers. Dedicated to mission work in Africa
1882 – Nehemiah Tile’s Ethiopian church founded in South Africa
1892 – Mangena M. Mokone’s Tembu National Church founded in South Africa
1886 – Execution of Christian pages in court of Buganda by Kabaka Mwanga
1921 – Simon Kimbangu founds EJCSK (Eglise de Jesus sur la Terre par le Prophete Simon Kimangu) or Church of Jesus on Earth through the Prophet Simon Kimangu
1927 – Dimi Ya Roho (Holy Ghost Church) founded in Kenya
1939 – 1st African Catholic Bishops: Joseph Kiwanuka of Buganda, and Joseph Faye of Senegal
1960 – Dutch Reformed Church expelled from the World Council of Churches

FURTHER READING

Journal of an Expedition up the Niger and Tsadda Rivers undertaken by MacGregor Laird in 1854. By Samuel A. Crowther. International Specialized Book Service, December 1970.

Facing Mount Kenya. By Jomo Kenyatta. Random House, June 1962.

Ake: The Years of Childhood. By Wole Soyinka. Vintage Books, November 1989.

Awo, The Autobiography of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Cambridge University Press.

UNESCO General History of Africa 1880-1935. Edited by A. Adu Boahen. University California Press, June 1993.

The Colonial Moment in Africa. Edited by Andrew Roberts. Cambridge University Press, November 1990.

Staying Power. By Peter Fry. Pluto Classic

Black Spokesman, Selected Published Writings of Edward Wilmot Blyden. Edited by Hollis R. Lynch. Cass.

Themes in the Christian History of Central Africa. Edited by T. O. Ranger and J. Weller. London.

Christianity in Tropical Africa. Edited by C. G. Baeta. London.

Seit der Unabhängigkeit von Großbritannien 1966 demokratisch regiert, Mehrparteiensystem, Gewaltenteilung mit unabhängiger Justiz, 40 Jahre kontinuierliches Wirtschaftswachstum, laut Transparency International das am wenigsten korrupte Land Afrikas: Botswana ist eine afrikanische Erfolgsgeschichte.

Doch dieser Erfolg kommt bei genauer Betrachtung alles andere als selbstverständlich und ist durchaus nicht problemlos. Botswana ist eines der am dünnsten besiedelten Länder der Erde. Ca. 85% der Landfläche werden von der Busch- und Baumsavanne der Kalahari eingenommen. Als Binnenstaat mit einer Entfernung von mehr als 500 km zum nächsten Hochseehafen und einem kontinentalen semi-ariden Klima verfügt Botswana über schwierige geographische und klimatische Bedingungen, um eine erfolgreiche Entwicklung zu nehmen.
Geschichte und Politik

Vermutlich bewohnen seit über 2 Mio. Jahren Menschen Teile des heutigen Botswana. Älteste Werkzeugfunde sind ca. 130 000 Jahre alt. Seit etwa 2000 Jahren siedeln in dem Gebiet die Vorfahren der heutigen San („Buschleute“), einem Nomadenvolk, das vom Sammeln wilder Früchte und der Jagd lebte. Heute leben noch ca. 40 000 San in Botswana.

Bantu-sprachige Völker wanderten ab etwa 200 n. Chr. aus Zentralafrika und Transvaal in das Gebiet ein und lebten in flächenmäßig großen Königreichen parallel zu den San. Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts existierten die Tswana-Königreiche, die von der neu gegründeten Burenrepublik in Südafrika bedrängt wurden. 1885 wurde das Gebiet zum britischen Protektorat „Betchuanaland“ erklärt. Die Erhebung von „Hüttensteuern“ durch die Kolonialherren zwangen jeden Haushalt, über Bargeld zu verfügen. Dies wiederum konnte für viele nur durch Lohnarbeit in den umfangreichen Gold- und Diamantenminen Südafrikas beschafft werden und führte zu einer großen wirtschaftlichen Abhängigkeit von Südafrika.
Unter dem Druck schwarzafrikanischer Führer begann in den 1950er Jahren die Unabhängigkeitsbewegung, die schließlich von Seretse Khama 1965 ohne bewaffnete Befreiungsbewegung auf friedlichem Weg zum Erfolg geführt wurde. Khama blieb bis zu seinem Tod 1980 unangefochten Präsident Botswanas.

Den ganzen Artikel finden Sie im Heft Nr. 30 von AFRICA POSITIVE

(Infosplusgabon 30/12/2009)

LIBREVILLE – Rich in oil, mining and forestry, the Economic Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) is one of the regions of Africa where poverty affects the majority of the population. Covering an area of 3 million square kilometers – from Congo-Brazzaville in Equatorial Guinea through Gabon, Cameroon, Central African Republic and Chad – CEMAC is a small market of 32.1 million inhabitants.

According to data from the global report on human development published by the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP), 33.4% of Cameroon’s population live on less than a dollar a day and these figures are 66.6% Population of Central and around 70% in Congo.

The intra-trade community is still low due to the lack of basic infrastructure such as roads and rail services, and delays in the process of regional integration.

“We’re organizing ourselves to accelerate regional integration. This is our first priority, “assured the Executive Secretary of CEMAC, Jean Nkuete at a press conference on the sidelines of the launch of negotiations between CEMAC and the European Union (EU) for an Economic Partnership Agreement in 2007.

The intra-regional trade is about 2% for imports and 1% for exports. According to Mr. Pascal Lamy, trade between CEMAC and Nigeria alone – the economic giant of West Africa – is “superior to intra-regional.” Bilateral trade between the EU and CEMAC associated with Sao Tome and Principe is just a flow of 7 billion euros per year (2007 figures).

The main exports to the EU consist mainly of petroleum products which account for 48% of these exports, wood (18.4%), cocoa (4%), bananas (3.8%), cotton (2 , 2%), aluminum (1.5%), diamonds (3.8%), coffee (1.1%) and manganese (1%).

Oil is the leading resource export of most CEMAC countries and, according to the Development Bank of the States of Central Africa (BDEAC) based in Brazzaville, “the main determinant of the evolution of the CEMAC” .

In one of his reports, the CASDB indicates that during this year’s global oil production was 41.4 million tons for four of the six CEMAC countries: Cameroon, Congo, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.

CEMAC must “begin by building a common market to properly accommodate regional integration”.

FIN/IPG/JRN/2009
Publication date: Tuesday, December 29, 2009.

© Copyright Infosplusgabon

Les richesses en Afrique centrale contrastent avec la pauvreté
(Infosplusgabon 30/12/2009)

LIBREVILLE – Riche en ressources pétrolières, minières et forestières, la Communauté économique des Etats de l’Afrique centrale (CEMAC)est l’une des régions d’Afrique où la pauvreté affecte la plus grande partie de la population. D’une superficie de 3 millions de km² – allant du Congo-Brazza à la Guinée équatoriale en passant par le Gabon, le Cameroun, la République centrafricaine et le Tchad – la CEMAC est un petit marché de 32,1 millions d’habitants.

Selon des données du rapport mondial sur le développement humain publié par le Programme des Nations unies pour le développement (PNUD), 33,4% de la population du Cameroun vivent avec moins d’un dollar par jour et ces chiffres atteignent 66,6% pour la population de Centrafrique et près de 70% au Congo.

Les échanges commerciaux intra-communautaires sont encore faibles en raison de l’absence d’infrastructures de base, comme les routes et dessertes ferroviaires, et des lenteurs dans le processus d’intégration régionale.

« Nous sommes en train de nous organiser pour accélérer l’intégration régionale. C’est notre première priorité », avait assuré le secrétaire exécutif de la CEMAC, Jean Nkuete, lors d’une conférence de presse en marge du lancement des négociations entre la CEMAC et l’Union européenne (UE) pour un accord de partenariat économique en 2007.

Le commerce intra-régional est de l’ordre de 2% pour les importations et de 1% pour les exportations. D’après le M. Pascal Lamy, le commerce entre la CEMAC et le seul Nigeria – géant économique de l’Afrique de l’Ouest – est « supérieur au commerce intra-régional ». Le commerce bilatéral entre l’UE et la CEMAC associée à Sao Tomé et Principe représente à peine un flux de 7 milliards d’euros/an (Chiffres 2007).

Les principales exportations vers l’UE sont constituées essentiellement de produits pétroliers qui représentent 48% de ces exportations, de bois (18,4%), de cacao (4%), de bananes (3,8%), de coton (2,2%), d’aluminium (1,5%), de diamants (3,8%), de café (1,1%) et de manganèse (1%).

Le pétrole est la première ressource d’exportation de la plupart des pays de la CEMAC et, selon la Banque de développement des Etats de l’Afrique centrale (BDEAC) basée à Brazzaville, « le principal déterminant de l’évolution de la CEMAC ».

Dans un de ses rapports, la BDEAC indique qu’au cours de cette année, la production pétrolière globale a été de 41,4 millions de tonnes pour quatre des six pays de la CEMAC : Cameroun, Congo, Gabon et Guinée équatoriale.

La CEMAC doit « commencer par construire un marché commun pour bien asseoir l’intégration régionale ».

FIN/IPG/JRN/2009
Date de parution : mardi 29 décembre 2009.

© Copyright Infosplusgabon