Post by Onyango Oloo on Oct 20, 2005 8:24:53 GMT 3
The Church fails honesty test over the Constitution
Dr Reuben Indiatsi Nasibi, writing in the East African Standard, October 20, 2005
At the height of election rigging and corruption in the 1980s, I confronted the provincial administration with ballot papers from a neighbouring constituency in the counting hall in Kakamega. In intimidating hushed tones the DC, DOs and APs surrounded me and demanded that I surrender the papers to them. What ensued drew the attention of the Press. I could not "sell my conscience" I told them, by collaborating in that scheme of rigging and corruption (The Standard: 23rd 24th March, 1988)
I got widespread condemnation from politicians and became a pariah even among the closest of friends. The worst blow was a rejection by my church that traditionally supported all the schemes hatched by Kanu.
A pastor who showed love and sympathy towards me was demoted and transferred by an order from the DO to the headquarters of the Church of God.
I disagreeistant chief was interdicted and the family arrangement we had to put a cross on the grave of Rev Paul Mabwa were cancelled by the church in collaboration with the DO’s office.
At that time, very few church leaders could dare speak against the State.
Critics believe the relationship between the Church and State throughout Africa has been characterised by ambivalence, deception, hypocrisy and even tribalism.
The cordial relationship between the Catholic Church leaders with the Mobutu regime is a classical example.
Jeff Hynes quotes Joseph Malula, the Archbishop of Kinshasa, in a message to the president in which he says, "Mr. President, the church recognizes your authority comes from God. We will loyally apply the laws you establish … You can count on us". For many churches in Africa, Hynes shows that silence in the face of corrupt governments are due to perks and material benefits their leaders enjoy from the status quo. "Senior church leaders during Mobutu’s regime were all catered for. Cardinal Malula lived in a mansion that the president gave him ... The president gave a Mercedes to every bishop, protestant or Catholic in 1970s" (Mac Gaffey 1991) to support Le Mouvement Populaire de la Revolution (MPR) which was the ruling party in Zaire.
Mobutu was not alone. In Togo, similar benefits were accorded church leaders who in return gave assistance and influencing the laity to follow the ruling party Le Ressemblement du Peuple Togolais. Not to be left out, Bishop Mutale of Zambia was a commissioner to a body that declared the country a one-party state.
The worst of all these was the acquiescence of the Church to State machinations in Rwanda.
Before the massacre in Rwanda, the Catholic Archbishop of Kigali was co-opted to serve on the central committee of the single party Le Mouvement Revolutioinnaire National pour le Development.
Did these church leaders have a conscience? Isn’t there a conflict of interest between the "temporal" i.e. those activities of civilization that arise in the earthly city vis-a-vis the Church?
During the Rwanda genocide, the church became a slaughterhouse rather than the last sanctuary. The role the Hutu bishops and lay leaders played has dominated the genocide trials in Arusha and The Hague.
Thus, the Church in Africa as the case is in Kenya now, has not been a liberating enterprise in social, political and economic affairs.
How can the Church in Kenya abdicate its leadership responsibility at a critical hour? If conscience be in the mind, the Church leads the minds of people.
Did the Archbishop of Kinshasa have a conscience? Do we in Kenya have a conscience when 1.2 million Kenyans are facing starvation while we have 70 billion shillings stashed away in foreign accounts by our leaders?
The fundamental issue here is do the poor, the sick and the illiterate have a conscience to make a decision on the coming referendum?
The State has raised salaries for councillors, pledged jobs to chiefs, decided to resettle 10,000 Mau Narok evictees, given title deeds to the Ogieks, degazetted Amboseli Game Park, used of government vehicle for campaigners, rescinded orders to evict 3,000 squatters from Kipkurere and reversed the law barring the splitting the plots below half an acre.
The merits and demerits of these actions put our posterity in jeopardy. They are favours designed to influence just like in Zaire during Mobutu’s regime, Rwanda before the genocide and South Africa during apartheid.
The planned new districts in Nakuru and other areas are the height of gerrymeandering whose consequences to posterity are inestimable.
The Wako driven constitution is said to contain flaws to which the mainstream churches have turned a blind eye.
The Catholic Church praised it, the Anglicans indicated that some sections were bad, but remained numb and ambivalent letting people’s conscience be their guide. NCCK was no better sanctuary for the Kenyan masses.
Only Margaret Wanjiru of Jesus Is Alive Ministries came out emphatically declaring the Wako Draft irrelevant and not deserving a Yes vote.
One wonders what happened to former Archbishop Gitari or Dr. Njoya who used to crusade against the ills of the State during the Moi regime.
Why is the Church ambiguous about truth? Herein lie the evils of tribalism that was hatched and nurtured by the Church. The leaders of the mainstream church have tribal affinity with the governing elite and have been definitely compromised by perks and with promises of more.
I am surprised that even the resettling of evictees in Mau Forest did not provoke reaction from Hon. Wangari Maathai who was humiliated locally over her stand on Karura and Uhuru Park, but honoured by the Nobel Committee for her valour? In 1992, most of the Christian churches in Kenya were the vanguard for the political dispensation that the majority of Kenyans wanted.
Fifteen Catholic bishops and six leading officials from the National Council of Churches told former President Moi to his face in 1992 that the people had lost confidence in his regime and that changes to the one-party system should be made immediately. In the face of this confrontation, the Church of God timidly withdrew from NCCK.
The church in Kenya must immediately acknowledge that conscience is as a set of mind and there was no conscience the way we know it, in Kipling’s Jungle Book. Although born of humans, the child Maogli was brought up by animals and behaved like an animal.
During apartheid in South Africa, Scott-Crossley may not have been tried and jailed for life for feeding a black man, Nelson Chisale, to the lions any more than the Belgian courts could have tried King Leopold’s Belgium for atrocities committed by his agents such as cutting off the limbs of Africans in Congo or the queen of England for all the crimes committed in Kenya during Britain’s Gulag.
Falsehoods have been marketed in the name of the banana and the orange. Appearance and falsehood are the two products of the State for the people. According to Nietzsche, if there is anything at all that must be worshipped, it is appearance: that falsehood and not truth is divine. He concludes by saying that the individual who is strong has no craving for equality with other men, no yearning for antiquity and no stress for gregarious instincts (Fredrick Nietzsche).
This is the time when all the good people should stand and be counted against this Nietzschian fundamentalism that has overwhelmed the Church to be silent in a crisis.
The writer is a university lecturer