Jacob Zuma blames Christianity for breakdown of South African traditions

Originally posted by qonone

Jacob Zuma blames Christianity for breakdown of South African traditions

www.guardian.co.uk

Zuma said Christianity – introduced by European missionaries mainly in the 19th century – had destroyed the safety net for orphans, elderly people and the poor

"As Africans, long before the arrival of religion and [the] gospel, we had our own ways of doing things.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.timeslive.co.za

I think Zuma is correct about culture being lost when Christianity came on the scene, many many cultures can attest to what he is asserting. Someone mentioned religion is about control of the people but don't forget the control of the natural resources as well. So in a nutshell the main core of any religion is to make everyone walk, talk, and think alike by erasing their cultural beliefs and traditions.

Originally posted by GLontra
And in the end, the huge majority of the people of South Africa will still be Christians.

Just pointless nonsense cheap talk...

Well now once the people are separated from their culture and traditions they will lean heavily on that which took its place, Christianity. It don't mean Christianity is better for them it just means it has successfully gave the people blindness to what made them unique on this planet, their traditions and beliefs. Is it pointless nonsense cheap talk by Zuma? I don't know if it is or not but rest assured somebody reading what he said won't see it as pointless nonsense and may start a cultural renaissance in South Africa as a means of preservation for their people. Zuma's job may be to spark the desire for cultural preservation.

Zuma speaks with a forked tongue on Christianity, as he tries to use it to please both his liberal donors and ideological global support, as well as a local constituency that sees itself as morally conservative.
He has long peppered his speeches with Christian metaphors, such as that the ANC will rule until Jesus returns, or that an ANC membership card is a ticket to heaven.

Otherwise his point here has merit, but is very selective with the truth.
His Zulu ancestors stole the land of the indigenous Khoisan in the 17th century, when they invaded SA from the Great Lakes region.
His Zulu ancestors also started the crushing wars (Mfecane) that reduced the black population in SA to 3 million, and reduced others to starvation and cannibalism. Many fled to the missionaries, while other invited white missionaries for protection, education and diplomatic contact with white settlers.
The Sotho king Moeshoeshoe, for example, took in may refugees from the crushing wars, and asked traders to bring him a missionary, who arrived in the form of Eugene Casalis.

The English missionaries were often regarded with suspicion by the Boers, who regarded their philanthropic meddling on behalf of the blacks as bothersome and detrimental.
They found their first converts to be outcasts from the local tribes.
African traditions (that are still practiced to this day in their tribal areas) can be extremely unpleasant, and to link to some of them, or describe them in detail would amount to gore and pedophilia.
Witchcraft beliefs and "witch hunting" have always been widespread. Suspected witches may be hacked to death and have their homes burnt to the ground. In Limpopo province there are "witch villages", filled with mainly impoverished women and girls who fled their homes after having been accused of witchcraft. In the past decade some American-styled charismatic pastors have exacerbated local superstitions, by adding Christian spiritual warfare superstitions to an already dangerous situation, as one can also find in Nigeria, where Christian charlatans exploit local beliefs. I was astounded to see that there have been American Christians on ATS who take these Nigerian charlatans seriously, but suffice to say that they now run several mega-churches in SA.

In the 19th century the missionaries discouraged the witchcraft beliefs, and some Africans formed churches that mixed Christianity with African cosmology, and these remain widely popular today (like the Shembe church).
The missionaries formed the first collages for blacks (such as Lovedale and Fort Hare, where many black revolutionaries studied, including Mandela and Mugabe).
They first documented the black languages in written form, and facilitated black newspapers and literature.
They facilitated the first black middle class (the amakholwa) and were thus often a thorn in the eye of the racist administrations, who wanted to keep the Africans uneducated and ignorant migrant laborers.
All this makes it quite sad to think about what is happening to education in SA under the ANC.

reply to post by PoeteMaudit


I refer to absolute objective morals, but you're lucky to receive that reply: I don't engage with satanists.

Originally posted by chocise
I'm sure it probably has... as it did to the native traditions in the Americas, but I don't think that's really 'news'.

FWIW I blame the rise of materialist atheism for the moral collapse we're witnessing in western societies today, and see that as far more damaging.

Meterialsit atheism? How about materialist christainty? Or materialist anything.

The christian prophets for years now over here preach "prosper! prosper! prosper! You can hardly hear a peep from them about the economic savaging that went on. They have become like the taskmasters of Egypt keeping the sheep in line according to their higher calling of obying government! The words "In God We trust" on our money has become like scripture to them! They have altogether become fornicators with man kind. (not the pro wrestler)

I came across this music video months ago and I saved it in my favorites. I put the lyrics below the video. No offense intended to anyone. I think the lyrics in this song are relevant to the subject of this thread.





Missionaries.
Floyd Red Crow Westerman and Trevy Felix

Spread the word of your religions
Convert the whole world if you can
Kill and slaughter those who oppose you
Its worth it if you save one man
Take our land to build your churches
It's a sin to tax the house of god
Take the child while he is innocent
Spoil the mind and spare the rod


Go and tell the savage native
That he must be Christianize
Tell him end his heathen worship
And you will make him civilized.
Shove your gospel, force your values
Down his throat until he’s raw
And after he is crippled
Turn your back and lock the door

Missionaries, Missionaries
Go and leave us all alone.
Take the white God to your white man.
We have a way of our own.
Missionaries, Missionaries
Go and leave us all alone.
Take the the souls of the white man.
We have a way of our own.


Like an ever circling vulture
You descend upon your prey
Then you pick the soul to pieces
As you watch them as they decay
‘Cause religion is big business
As your bank account will show
And Christ died to save all mankind
But that was long ago


Missionaries, missionaries
go and leave us all alone
Take your white god to your white men
We have a way of our own.
Missionaries, Missionaries
Go and leave us all alone.
Take the the souls of the white man.
We have a way of our own.

Originally posted by chocise
reply to post by PoeteMaudit

 

I refer to absolute objective morals ..

The former an impossibility, being that identical acts cannot actually exist, the latter a contradiction in terms, as "morals" are formulated as imperatives, thus without truth value, prohibiting actions based in the valuation of these actions by a subject, whether that subject be you or your almighty "God" himself, which leads to judging them as "good" or "evil", where any appeal the "good" or "evil" of an act being objective is an absurdity since an "act" is a mere abstraction which cannot possess the existential qualities of an object - hence the term objective.

Originally posted by SurrealisticPillow
reply to post by Klassified

 

A follower of Judaism is a Jew.

Thank you for mentioning this. It is a good point. The word Jew originally referred to those of a nationality, not just a religious belief. And most people who use the word Jew, are speaking and thinking of a race of people who follow certain religious ideologies. In other words, it is used in a derogatory manner toward that race of people. And in truth, most of those people are of a given race.

That is why I think threads and posts get deleted at times. Because the word Jew is being used as a racial slur rather than toward a belief system such as christianity.

Originally posted by PoeteMaudit

Originally posted by KlassifiedI don't recall any other religion in history persecuting the world as a whole more than christianity has.

Try Communism.

Interesting thought. It might be a close tie.

Originally posted by PoeteMaudit

Originally posted by chocise
I'm sure it probably has... as it did to the native traditions in the Americas, but I don't think that's really 'news'.

FWIW I blame the rise of materialist atheism for the moral collapse we're witnessing in western societies today, and see that as far more damaging.

The collapse of what morals? Christian ones? The irony ...

He just has a major problem with Atheists. I think hoards of Atheists gave him the Hex sign or something.

Apparently - - not aware of what thread he is in.

Here is the story of the oldest mission station in SA, Genadendal:
www.viewoverberg.com...
www.encounter.co.za...

The colony at the Cape was founded in 1652, and the fist mission station was only founded in 1738.
By that time the Khoi were already dispersed, and their lifestyle and language was disintegrating.
Possibly because the Cape colony was founded by a private company, rather than by an empire with an official church, missionizing the natives and slaves was not high on the agenda, and the work at Genadendal was met with stiff opposition from the church and the settlers.
Especially baptism was thought to confer certain rights, which the settlers were not keen to spread.
A lot of missionary and educational work in the Colony was actually done by the Muslims, who were political dissidents brought as slaves from Indonesia.
This pretty much set the scene in SA, where the official policy was one of segregation (or separate development), rather than assimilation, and while the missionaries did frown on certain customs and some lands did become missionary land, they also offered protection and education.

Gedadendal is still a beautiful place to visit, and the Khoi identity remains strong.

Of course what Zuma said also repeats the constant hammering in SA on the land issue.
The idea is that the whole of SA was taken by all whites from all blacks.
However this disregards historical factors, and a black population that continued to explode under colonialism and apartheid, as infant mortality dropped and life expectancy increased.
The black population increased to 40 million within a century, and their life expectancy became 65 (although under Thabo Mbeki's AIDS denialsim it dropped to 47).
Some statistics put the black population actually interested in farming as low as 9%, and even in the former tribal areas (or former independent "homelands", along the fertile eastern coast of SA) there is underused black-owned land.
The main and attractive option is urbanization (now in competition with black immigrants to SA from across Africa).
Nevertheless the ANC presents land as the major grievance and cure-all to SA poverty.
Sometimes it's the "evil whites" who stole the tribal lands, and now it's the missionaries!

Land redistribution in SA has had some success (and we still have two independent black states in SA, Lesotho and the autocratic African-style monarchy in Swaziland), but most of it has been fueled by sheer corruption, lies and incompetence. Funds have been plundered, land is resold to squatters, and many productive farms have been left in ruin.

So let's take some historic missionary land, which was acquired on false pretenses by opportunists after 1994, and see what Zuma's party made of it.
Read here in Chapter 2 about "Botshabelo" (Place of Refuge) in Philip Du Toit's The Great South African Land Scandal:
greatsalandscandal.blogspot.com...

As to the missionaries and Christianity in SA in general: there was never a sense that the missionaries ran puritanical labor camps or kidnapped people, as I've read about the Americas or Oceania.
Perhaps they came from a more recent, liberal stock.
They spoke up for black people, and our new street names are rich with white priests from many denominations who opposed apartheid. Often they were the only white people to see the conditions in the black camps.

The Boers were never really interested in changing the black people, and tried to form treaties to get their own republics.
The discovery of gold changed all that, and the British conquered both the black nations and the Boer republics by 1902, and they initially treated the Afrikaners and Boers little better than the black tribes.
Only under their empire did missionary work begin in earnest, but it was largely to the benefit of black peoples.
From my experience most nominal black Christians are only partly missionized until this day, and the missionaries interfered little with some customs, like initiation schools or polygamy for the chiefs.
Most of black SA still visits the local "sangoma" ("witchdoctor", or rather a shaman and traditional healer), even in urban areas.
It's also not been a one-way process.
Many whites not only visit sangomas, but there is an increasing numbers of bona fide white sangomas.
We have a white sangoma from Malawi who is training three black apprentices as a neighbor.

For anti-apartheid white clergy see for example:
- Father Trevor Huddleson (Anglican)
- Beyers Naudé (Dutch Reformed)
- Bishop Denis Hurley (Catholic)
- Father Michael Lapsley (who had both his hands blown off by a letter bomb from apartheid operatives).

But where were the US evangelical fundamentalists?
They already had mega-churches in SA at the time?
Why have they never presented us with a political activist?

Not that I want to take sides on anything, but "apartheid" became a football in the Cold War, and might have been abolished sooner if the liberation forces didn't align themselves with Moscow and Cuba.
Some argue that only the Christian influence kept them from doing so completely.
And a lot of Second World countries (aligned to the USSR) did significantly worse than SA on human rights and developmental issues.
So many of the right-wing evangelical Christians (with connections and audiences in the US) think they did the right thing by opposing Marxism, even if it meant supporting undemocratic countries.

But what astounds me is that the black middle class is flocking to these evangelical churches today, almost as if they had no history in SA, or spreading pro-apartheid propaganda abroad.

For the lesser heard right-wing voice of evangelical Christian fundamentalism in SA (and their take on history) here is Peter Hammond from Frontline Fellowship.
It's a bit difficult for me to post as a gay person, since he interchanges "gays" with "perverts", but I do think it's fair in this discussion (part 2 follows on Youtube):

ive said it a thousand times and ill say it again... the world would be a better place without religion

Father Michael Lapsley, who had his hands blown off by a letter bomb sent by apartheid operatives, and later testified at our Truth and Reconciliation Commission, often with an emphasis on peace and forgiveness.

He was famous for saying that they tried to kill him, but they could not take his most important weapon - his tongue.

Of course the liberation movements Lapsley seemed to defend also used terrorism, but by 1990 negotiations were already underway, and this was so unnecessary.



He also later said that the various religions should not only tolerate each other, but indeed cherish one another.

History never stops moving, and the irony is that when Fr. Lapsley spoke in the 1990s, SA was considered a basket case that needed healing, while Zimbabwe was touted as the great hope of post-colonial Africa.
(I'm not sure why this was the case, since Mugabe had at least 20 000 civilians executed in the early 1980s in Matabeleland under Operation Gukurahundi - by his North Korean trained Fifth Brigade - but the Western media virtually ignored this.)

However, things soon reversed, as Mugabe's rampant corruption and policy changes in Britain led to his violent campaigns against productive white farmers, a free press, and the political opposition.

Soon Mbeki adopted an "open door policy" to African migrants, mainly to ease pressure on Mugabe, and SA was flooded with immigrants.

The Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg became the first stop for hungry and desperate refugees, fleeing a socialist regime in Zimbabwe that was starting to show its true nature:



Here is some rare footage of the Gukurahundi, and many say that tribalism between the Shona and Matabele played a part under a political pretext.
Others argue that only PW Botha and a tough Christian-ruled SA kept Mugabe from realizing his psychopathic tendencies on a larger scale sooner, and that liberal Christians simply do not understand Africa.

Whatever the case, here is some rare vintage footage of the Fifth Brigade and their Korean trainers:

Missionizing in reverse?

Two white sangomas from SA.
Perhaps to add, it is not easy becoming a sangoma, and it's not some New Age fashion trend (at least not yet).
The "ukutwala" (or calling) is often seen as a curse (in the sense that it involves suffering and giving up lucrative careers), yet the calling becomes so strong that people eventually feel they have no option but to become healers. Although much is made of muti and millionaire sangomas in the press, the majority are well-meaning people, with little economic status, practicing a kind of holistic medicine.
Especially for white sangomas it also means learning another language and culture, and being faced with hostility until you prove yourself.

Training usually begins by moving to a rural homestead of a sangoma in an initiating lineage.
Training may take years and involves serving the master sangoma, and fasting and taking herbs that make you vomit, as well as exhaustive drumming sessions that lead to contact with the ancestors.
So this is not something that people do lightly.

Originally posted by PoeteMaudit

Originally posted by KlassifiedI don't recall any other religion in history persecuting the world as a whole more than christianity has.

Try Communism.

Last time I checked, Communism hadn't decided I can't marry my bloke.
Communism didn't deny my mother the right to die with dignity.
Communism didn't force me to study fantasy stories and sing mindless songs to invisible overlords all through my school days.
Communism isn't raised by my elected as reasons to financially support other communists instead of me.
Communism hasn't spread the propaganda of unsafe sex throughout Africa, leaving millions exposed to AIDS.
Communism wasn't the reason for the USA and its allies to invade several nations, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
Communism wasn't responsible for supporting slavery across America...

Communism is a relatively new phenomena in Humanity, compared to the 2000 years of Christian (and other religions) persecution of anyone who doesn't follow their belief system.

reply to post by detachedindividual

I'm not entirely sure I can agree with all your positions. If I may discuss some of them?

Homosexuality

In the 1930s under Joseph Stalin, homosexuality and abortion were recriminalised in the nation. Article 121 explicitly criminalised male same-sex intercourse and with five years of hard prison labor as a penalty. The law was condemned by several communists operating in Britain. The law remained intact until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union; it was repealed in 1993.

In 1993 you could get five years of hard labor for homosexual acts in Russia? They seem less homosexual friendly than the US or Europe.

Communism didn't deny my mother the right to die with dignity.

I have no idea what the Communist position is, but I'm glad Christianity holds the sanctity of life to be so important. By the way, even the Catholics say you don't have to take extraordinary measures.

Communism didn't force me to study fantasy stories and sing mindless songs to invisible overlords all through my school days.

Nor does the US.

Communism isn't raised by my elected as reasons to financially support other communists instead of me.

It was, that's how Cuba survived for years, they were funded by the Soviets. And the Soviets spend tons to guard against Capitalism as the West does against Communism.

Communism hasn't spread the propaganda of unsafe sex throughout Africa, leaving millions exposed to AIDS.

Nor have they spent billions of dollars fighting AIDS in Africa.

Communism wasn't the reason for the USA and its allies to invade several nations, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

Neither was Christianity, I can't remember when, if ever, the US fought a war to spread Christianity.

Communism wasn't responsible for supporting slavery across America...

Because there wasn't any Communism them. But Christianity was responsible for stopping it.

Communism is a relatively new phenomena in Humanity, compared to the 2000 years of Christian (and other religions) persecution of anyone who doesn't follow their belief system.

Pleas don't say that communism doesn't persecute people who don't follow their belief system. The world knows that kind of persecution is far more prevalent in Communist sytems than in Christian ones.

This is good!
Religion is what's holding them back.
As a black person, religion has been basically crowned upon the black community.

They need an enlightenment period.

I hope they don't turn out like some racist black panther organization though.