NYTimes.com: Mission Schools Opened World to Africans, but Left an Ambiguous Legacy

[Toyin Falola]

From The New York Times:

Mission Schools Opened World to Africans, but Left an Ambiguous Legacy

The potentially subversive nature of Christianity’s teachings found expression in the education of a generation of rebels against apartheid.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/us/mission-schools-ambiguous-legacy-in-south-africa.html


Sent from my iPhone

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Nonsense. Sometimes "nuance" winds up being a thinly veiled apology for white supremacy. Next, we will see a "nuanced" interpretation of slavery. This is, in fact, repackaged racism from earlier era masquerading as scholarship.

kzs

[EB]

I read the article, followed the link and read Oliver Tambo's speech delivered at his inauguration as Chancellor of Fort Hare University. Both scholars cited in the piece. Richard Elphick an imminent historian of South African history and Christianity, and Olufemi Tiawo, a great African thinker, recognize the problems colonial missions created and faced. This is an old debate which early African theologians addressed in the 1960s. It was taken in a new and robost manner in Volume 1 and 2 of Of Revelation and Revolution by Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff; works in which they meticulously argued that Christian missionaries failed to live their own logic of a faith which prioritized individual freedom because in the case of South Africa the project of modernity was brutally compromised by apartheid, racism, and an unbridled capitalist project, even as it promoted modernity and its institutions in a system which the missionaries found themselves at odds, but were also collaborators and shared a similar world view of modernizing Africans; hence the numerous projects the missionaries started in education and "godly medicine."

Throughout my graduate school career, I was confronted with literature which articulated the link with colonialism and religion, and as some one studying theology and philosophy, it made me appreciate black theology and the theology of liberation. Yet I was also convinced that out of that negative praxis by missionaries, Africans were provided a space to stand, speak, strategize, and liberate themselves, even if that was the goal of missionaries. At the Parliament of World Religions in Cape  Town in 1999, Nelson Mandela spoke of the work religious communities did in South Africa and pointed out that when he grew up the only schools where blacks could get an education was in the mission schools.

Recognizing the ambiguity of these institutions is not an apology for apartheid and colonialism and I do not think those discuss these issues are interested making an apology for white supremacy of slavery, ideals and practices that are be definition indefensible. These discussions offer us an opportunity to probe the past and recognize how far we have come as a continent.

Elias Bongmba

[kwame zulu shabazz]

edit: from "opposed." read imposed.

On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 11:23 AM, kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com> wrote:

Brother Elias,

You said:

Africans were provided a space to stand, speak, strategize, and liberate themselves, even if that was the goal of missionaries.

This is the crux of the matter. The verb "provided" is passive and connotes, wrongly, in my view, the idea that it was the ambiguity within the colonial logics/systems/institutions that facilitated African agency. I have three responses to that claim. First, Africans were creating these liberartory spaces beginning with the very earliest encounters with Europeans well before missionary schools. And that process continued outside of and alongside of the schools during the colonial era. Why? Because Africans didn't need missionary schools to convince them of their humanity and their equality. Second, it was Africans themselves (not all of them elites, by the way) who opposed their will on colonial structures which led eventually to liberation. Perhaps part of the problem is that liberation is being invoked from the perspective of the outdated "Great Men" historiography that has severely critiqued and mostly abandoned by historians. Lastly, it is "colomentality," much of it derived from missionary education, that is holding Africa back.

kzs

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THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
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EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice!
I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

--
THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
---
EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice!
I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Brother Elias,

You said:

Africans were provided a space to stand, speak, strategize, and liberate themselves, even if that was the goal of missionaries.

This is the crux of the matter. The verb "provided" is passive and connotes, wrongly, in my view, the idea that it was the ambiguity within the colonial logics/systems/institutions that facilitated African agency. I have three responses to that claim. First, Africans were creating these liberartory spaces beginning with the very earliest encounters with Europeans well before missionary schools. And that process continued outside of and alongside of the schools during the colonial era. Why? Because Africans didn't need missionary schools to convince them of their humanity and their equality. Second, it was Africans themselves (not all of them elites, by the way) who opposed their will on colonial structures which led eventually to liberation. Perhaps part of the problem is that liberation is being invoked from the perspective of the outdated "Great Men" historiography that has severely critiqued and mostly abandoned by historians. Lastly, it is "colomentality," much of it derived from missionary education, that is holding Africa back.

kzs

On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 10:50 AM, EB <ebon...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[EB]

Dear Brother Kwame Zulu Shabazz,

Thank you. You are more careful with your prose than I am on email. I noticed that in the quick write up in one section I really wanted to say "even if that was not the goal of missionaries" but I left out "not." Towards the end I also left out the word "who" when I said those who discuss these issues are interested in making an apology" and even there I left out "in."

If I understand you correctly, you address in your response the issue of African agency, and I agree with you that much of what we have come to understand as freedom was not granted or given. Africans fought for it. I agree that Africans did not need missionary schools to teach them about what it means to be human, but those schools added materials to the took kit and ammunition for the fight.

I noted the discussion the other day about great people and happen to think that people like Soyinka, Mandela,and many others belong to that group and history seems to have given them a larger stage on which to shape their own as well as the destinies of others. My response had anything to do with that discussion. You are correct that discussing history from the point view of great men, especially great white men is passe. But stating as the NY Times article did that a Fort Hare, and we can add the existence of many such schools in Africa, helped produce leaders who as you rightly point out worked for liberation with the masses is an admission that in the midst of chaos, some small beautiful things happened.

Finally, I have never doubted the psychology of colonialism and its effect on Africa. But I think to claim as you do that it is "colomentality, much of it derived fro missionary education, that is holding Africa back" leaves a lot to be desired and ignores the critical studies that demonstrate that we share a lot of blame ourselves for what has happened in what I call the postneocolonial state. I doubt that I can change your position on this point which has been debated ad nauseam . It is something we all will have different views on, but find better ways of being part of change in Africa.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Elias Bongmba

[Akurang-Parry, Kwabena]

EB writes:

 

"Finally, I have never doubted the psychology of colonialism and its effect on Africa. But I think to claim as you do that it is "colomentality, much of it derived fro missionary education, that is holding Africa back" leaves a lot to be desired and ignores the critical studies that demonstrate that we share a lot of blame ourselves for what has happened in what I call the postneocolonial state.

 

Would EB care to explain the nature of the blame, is the blame devoid of European impulses in Africa,  how did we come to share the blame if we did not create it, and at what point do we separate the "postneocolonial state" from the effects of colonial rule, including the subtext of missionary education?

 

 

 

Kwabena 

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