PATHWAYS TO PEACE IN AFRICA:
A Reflection from the African Traditional Religious Perspective
By Chidi Denis ISIZOH
A Reflection from the African Traditional Religious Perspective
By Chidi Denis ISIZOH
Let me begin by introducing in a general way the religious context of African peoples. I am talking about what has come to be known today as “African Traditional Religion”— African, because it originated from Africa and Traditional because it is handed down from one generation to the next. I say in “a general way” because there are some variations with regard to the contents and the expressions of the religion in different parts of the continent.
MEANING AND CONTENTS OF AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION
The Religiosity of Africans
African Traditional Religion is a religion practised in Africa from time immemorial. It is not a religion that can be simply understood by analysing its system of beliefs. It is action-oriented religion, a way of life that pervades every aspect of human endeavour from cradle to grave. It is a way of living: way of giving birth, way of weaning a child, way of eating, way of dancing, way of working, way of growing up, way of praying, way of offering sacrifices and, even, way of dying. There is hardly any activity in life that is separated from its religious implications.
African Traditional Religion as object of study
African Traditional Religion became object of study when people from the northern hemisphere entered Africa many centuries ago. It began as an attempt to satisfy the curiosity and personal interests of sailors and explorers. It became an important subject for colonial administrators in order to understand the people they were to govern. Missionaries were also interested in African Traditional Religion. Their primary interest at that early stage was to collect as much information as possible in order to understand the worldview of the people to whom they had brought the “Good News of salvation”. Many of the publications by these foreigners have been described as inaccurate because they are, to a large extent, superficial external interpretations of deep spiritual realities. Unfortunately, these books are still in circulation and those who have not had any opportunity of or interest in reading new works with clearer insights remain tied to old ideas.
Today, there are people who still refer to the African Traditional Religion as “animist religion”, polytheism, ancestor worship — ideas long discredited. African Traditional Religion is not animism. The followers of the religion do not hold that trees and stones and hills have souls. They do not believe in the existence of another being on the par with the Supreme Being. This Supreme Being is known by various names in different languages. In Igbo language of Nigeria, the Supreme Being is known as Chineke – God the creator. There is no being that can have that title. I know this point to be also true among other ethnic groups.[1] So, African Traditional Religion is monotheistic. There are Spirits, good and bad. These have direct interaction with human beings. Sometimes sacrifices are offered to them to attract good ones and to ward off those which are bad. Ancestors are good people, who have fulfilled all that is required of them while on earth and, though now dead, they still intervene to help members of their families.
The social and the religious contexts of the African person
In this context, I would like to say something further about the African family. I have made this point on other occasions but I think it is important to emphasize it at this conference where I happen to be the only African voice among seven thousand participants from all the continents of the world.
Talking about the family, I have the feeling that it is here that we find the root of “individualism” evident in the Western mentality which is very different from the African communitarian way of life. When the French man Réné Descartes came up with the definition of the human person as a “thinking being”, referring to his famous phrase “cogito ergo sum”, he was praised. But, in my mind, that is not sufficient to define a human person. Africans would rather say “cognatus sum ergo sum”. I belong or I relate … therefore I am. It is in being “in relation” with other persons, in a family, in a society, that I am defined. I am a being in community/society. From this way of understanding a human being, it is easy to appreciate why most Africans have great devotion to their families. It is to be noticed that the idea of “old peoples’ home” has not gone well in many parts of Africa. The old and the young have their place in the large family. A child belongs to the whole society. If he or she is in difficulty anywhere, the nearest elder assumes the responsibility of the parents. There are many other values found in being close to the family: spirit of sacrifice for the other, sharing with others no matter how little a member has, understanding a difficult member of the family and trying to offer help, etc.
The number of the members of a family never decreases. It always increases. How? Let me explain it this way: Badejo is a man and Kemi is woman. Badejo marries Kemi. They have six children. The children marry and have their own children. Badejo dies. But in African Traditional Religion, Badejo does not really die. He changes location. He joins his ancestors. But he is still a member of his own family. As ancestor, he is a “living-dead”. He partakes of meals, though in a spiritual way. Libation is offered to him. New ones are born into the family. So, the family always increases in number.
I have already said that God is the creator. The entire universe, the whole creation, is his work. Human beings have been given the responsibility to create order and harmony in the world.
In African Traditional Religion, the Mother Earth is important. To her all human beings return. Since she is everywhere, she watches every human activity. In some cultures, she is invoked to bear witness: a person is asked to swear simply by stamping the bare soles of his or her feet on the ground that is not tarred or cemented. It is believed that calling Mother Earth as witness is enough to establish the veracity of a person’s statement. The Earth is, therefore, sacred.
Society formed by African Traditional Religion
I have said that Traditional African societies hold that God is the creator, all seeing, and all powerful; and that there are spirits, good and bad: good ones try to protect human beings and bad ones try to harm them. I have also said that there are ancestors who have shown good example while on earth and now, in some sense, they intercede for human beings; and that there is Mother earth, below. With this array of “super powers,” human beings are watched constantly. Every action attracts judgment or blessing. It is important to live a life of rectitude.
WAR AND CONFLICTS IN AFRICA
Personal Experience
I am speaking in this Forum as someone who has personally witnessed a war. Between 1967 and 1970 my country, Nigeria, was engulfed in what began as a war between Nigeria (that is, north and south-west of Nigeria) and the newly declared Biafra (south-east of Nigeria). But it ended as a civil war – since the “new country” was defeated.
I saw the war from the eyes of a child: my young mind could not understand any political explanation for the war. It made no sense to me why any human being would consider waging a war or supporting it as a way of gaining strategic importance for any country. What on earth would make a leader to decide not to impede a war simply because he or she did not want to offend an ally? All I knew about war was that it was a disaster that brought much suffering to a child like me.
It was a war in which I was a complete loser: throughout the period of the war, I could not go to school. It was a period (three whole years) that I was set back academically. Some of my friends as young as myself (10 years old and less) died. My family members were displaced several times, living in makeshift tents, and fed at some point by charitable organisations at feeding centres. Soldiers looted some of our belongings. They chased around teenage girls, intending to rape them if they succeeded in catching them. At the end of the hostilities, my side in the war was defeated.
I saw many soldiers wounded in the battlefield and left languishing in makeshift clinics without adequate drugs for treatment. Some of them lost their limbs and even their lives in a rather painful way.
Fortunately (should I really use the word “fortunately”?), it was not like the type of war we know today. There were no landmines, no cluster-bombs, no smart-bombs, no apache helicopters to comb the pathways of our villages, no kamikaze, only so-called “conventional” weapons were used. Yet thousands of people (a number of journalists say that up to a million persons) lost their lives.
No country that has experienced a war is ever the same. Nigeria, well over 30 years later, is still suffering the consequences of the civil war. This is the experience of many other countries in Africa that have witnessed wars and other forms of conflicts: increase in violence, loss of sense of value for human lives; armed robbery; etc. Most people are intimidated when a gun barrel, fully loaded, is turned towards them!
The experience of this war, which lasted for a short time (three years), was very traumatic for me. And yet there are countries in Africa that have had longer periods of war. The list is long. I would like to read out the entries which I have freely taken from the online publication by Africa United for Freedom.
Statistics of recent wars and conflicts that affected Africa
Internal Conflicts
Wars Between Countries
Inter-Continental Wars
SOME OF THE REASONS FOR CONFLICTS AND WARS ON THE AFRICAN CONTINENT TODAY
External Causes
a) Irrational grouping of peoples as nations
In United States of America, people came from different parts of the world. They sat down and decided on how they would live together. They drew a Constitution and chose freely to be bound by it. We know that there were and are still protests from the original owners of the land. But by and large, most Americans in United States, despite their varying backgrounds, live side and side with one another. The case with many of today’s African countries is quite different.
A group of people, curious and in love with adventure set off from their homelands and found themselves in a different part of the world. They found human beings different from themselves. They announced to their homelands that they had discovered a new place. The people they discovered had been living there from time immemorial. Some of these explorers were honoured for achieving a wonderful feat. Strangely enough I discovered Italy only in 1989 and, in the following year, I discovered England. Yet my discoveries were not celebrated! Why? I do not know!
The explorers, ignorant of the social organisation of the people, and lacking knowledge of their rich faith in God, declared them barbaric and pagan – meaning, according to their understanding at that time, people without knowledge of God. They set out reorganising their social structures. They began to “teach” them about God! What emerged from the social structures they established had a permanent damage to the lives of the people.
A seed of conflict was sown right from the beginning of the existence of many of modern African nations. The grouping of peoples that make up each country of Africa did not follow any clear logic, except, perhaps, logic of trade. Suppose a very powerful nation comes up and forces Germany, Italy and Belgium or France, Spain and Morocco to form one country, how peaceful would such a newly created country be? What language or way of life would they adopt? That is exactly what was done in Africa!
Africa is inhabited by over three hundred different ethnic groups. Elsewhere in the world, most of these groups would have been existing as independent nations. But this is not the case in Africa. The structure of the countries that make up the continent has people of the same language, culture, customs and traditions, divided by artificial boundaries drawn not by themselves but by those who had other interests: large market, access to vast natural resources, cheap labour, etc. The result is that one ethnic group is spread across two or three or more countries, separated not only physically by border control posts but also by the new colonial languages (mainly, English, French and Portuguese) as well as by the mentality and worldview of the colonising nations. For decades many African countries have been trying to create a sense of nationhood out of the mess made of them by the so called colonial masters. The debate on how to live together goes on in several countries of Africa.
b) International conspiracy
This is a forum of friendship where we look for what we can do together to make our world better. We cannot ignore some of the issues that stare us in the face every day. One has to be an African even at heart to understand what we, Africans, sometimes feel. A well-known company put up a billboard with a photograph of three smiling children. Of the three, only one was without two front teeth. That one, unfortunately, was black African. Most probably, the choice was not racially motivated. It is, however, easy to question the choice of children for the photos.
I do not know how non-Africans perceive news about Africa from some of the European television networks. From some news media, one must forget about seeing anything positive about Africa. If a journalist wants to conduct an interview in Africa, he or she chooses a background that shows anything but development.
When one hears about poverty, diseases, deaths, etc. one is shocked to receive fantastic statistics. How on earth do these experts obtain their figures? While for the Europeans, figures help to establish the criterion for the distribution of common resources and for assessing the popularity of policies, for most Africans who depend on self-help, calculating numbers would be useless, and a waste of time and money. Indeed among most ethnic groups, human beings are never to be counted.
It would seem that some people make gain economically by emphasizing difficulties in Africa. There are people who do not want any change in the status quo because of the gains they apparently make. Some NGOs stand accused. Some drug companies are not innocent. The people that make weapons of war want good trade. Sometimes it is suspected that they create hatred among peoples in order to have a market for their goods.
What we heard during the Nigerian civil war disturbed our young minds. We learnt that one country supplied jet-bombers to Nigeria and at the same time supplied anti-aircraft to Biafra. So, if Nigerians flew their jet-bombers, Biafrans shot them down. Both nations returned to the same supplier. In a number of wars in Africa, there are mercenaries that fly jet bombers and fighters. All these stand to gain as long as wars and conflicts are going on in Africa.
Internal Causes
I have mentioned some of the external causes of conflicts in Africa. Africans are also responsible for some of the hostilities.
a) Greed
One of the reasons given by almost all the military coup d’etat plotters was bad administration of the government overthrown. There is often a promise to correct the mistakes of the past. Only in very few cases do the military governments return the affected countries to good governance. Generally, a military coup d’etat is just a smart way of taking over government and getting access to the treasury of the state. Sometimes there is disagreement on how to share the proverbial “national cake” leading to counter-coup d’etat or even full blown war. Greed is one of the reasons for violent conflicts in Africa.
b) Exaggerated ethnic and religious affiliations
It is said in many African languages that “blood is thicker than water”. This is meant to emphasize the importance of blood-relationship in Africa. I have already spoken about “cognatus sum, ergo sum”. When ethnic affiliation is so emphasized that those outside this immediate relationship are discriminated against, it could breed problems in ethnically mixed societies as we have in some modern countries of Africa. When leaders are myopic, when they favour only those of their ethnic group, when they exclude others from participating in government, when they deny employment to people of different ethnic origin, and exclude them from placement in schools, treatment in hospitals, etc. the consequences are indeed grave. It often leads to civil war and violent conflicts. Some countries of Africa have had experiences of what is today called “ethnic cleansing”.
There have been leaders who exploited their religious affiliation to oppress and intimidate others who belong to different religions. In the pretext of religious zeal and piety, some government leaders have denied people of their legitimate rights. This has brought violence in more than one country of Africa.
c) Collusion with fraudsters
An Igbo proverb says: “it was the rat in the house that told the one in the bush that dried fish was inside the basket in the kitchen”. Those outsiders I mentioned earlier that help to cause conflicts in Africa can never penetrate the countries of Africa without the involvement of insiders. War machines cannot be imported into any country without some involvement of the locals. There are people who are so obsessed in becoming heads of government in their countries that they lobby international organisations to impose economic sanctions on their own country. They are willing to invite foreign troops to invade and destroy their own people. They are seen regularly on television programmes making unfortunate remarks against their countries.
APPROACHES TO PEACEFUL RESOLUTION OF CONFLICTS IN AFRICA
War Crime Tribunals-Approach
From recent experiences, the world has tried to resolve conflicts in Africa in several ways. Concerns have been expressed at the United Nations. Decisions have been taken even at the level of the Security Council. Intervention and Peace-keeping forces have been sent. Sanctions were occasionally put in place. Wars have sometimes been initiated in order to prevent war. More recently, International War Crime Tribunals have been set up. Selected people are put on trial. I do not wish to go into the implications of these. Many of you know more than me. But some of these efforts are and must be appreciated.
War Crime Tribunals are good. Some people, however, ask: Are they free from the manipulation of powerful countries? The problem is not declaring somebody guilty, (sometimes even when the accused person does not accept the jurisdiction of the trial judge), and throwing him or her into prison. No one is in doubt that it is good to show that justice has been done. But is there genuine healing? Are the parties reconciled? Is the wound healed? We know cases where a criminal has escaped being found guilty because of legal technical error. Wrong people have been thrown into prison. People have been killed even when they were pleading innocent.
Democracy-Approach
Some people say that helping Africans achieve democracy is the key to resolving conflicts and achieving peace in Africa. Some countries of Europe and America offer their models of democracy to Africans. One could ask a number of questions: What really is democracy? Are there not forms of democracy different from what is found in the “West”? Is the world really ready for the type of democracy that will allow Africans to take their destiny in their hands? How long will all those puppet governments not elected but selected by people who have other interests at heart than the good of African peoples remain in power?
African Traditional Religious-Approach
In the African traditional religious world, there is no dichotomy between the secular and the religious, the sacred and the profane, the visible and the invisible. Every human being is considered in his or her wholeness. Life itself is seen in its totality, not parts. Achieving peace must go beyond the physical to embrace the spiritual. Indeed it will involve the whole person in order to achieve true peace
Not long ago, South Africa set up a Commission to heal the wounds of the past. It was a model different from the War Crime Tribunals. The overall interest of the Commission was to see how harmony could be restored in the community. What is the need for a person to be declared as having committed a war crime, when some concerns for delivery of true justice are not properly addressed, and when every person knows that the last word of truth has not yet been said?
Bringing justice to the offender is not sufficient to achieve peace in Africa. The African traditional religious model includes reconciliation. There will be no true peace unless the warring parties are brought together and reconciled. Doing this is walking down the pathway to peace in Africa.
African leaders must expand their concept of the family to cover the entire country. Making every citizen feel as a family member of his or her own African country is creating a pathway to peace in Africa. Amadou Gassou, a Vodun Priest from the Republic of Benin, made the following declaration at Assisi:
I recognise in the first place that peace is a gift of God to us.
However, this gift is left to the responsibility of human being,
called by the Creator to contribute to the building up of peace in this world.
This is a universal responsibility which concerns all creation….
When there is no peace among people, neither is there peace between the rest of creation and human beings.
But when people work for peace in a nation, its land becomes generous
and the herds multiply for human beings’ greater good.
This is a key law of nature which comes from the Creator….
This is why it is good to invite people every year to a change of heart
by renouncing hatred, violence and injustice.
Leaders of world religions should neither forget nor neglect this practice.
It is a matter of making amends for the harm done to creation by human beings,
of asking forgiveness of the protecting spirits of regions affected by the violence
and the evil committed by human beings, and of asking forgiveness,
carrying out sacrifices of reparation and purification, and thus restoring peace.[2]
Understanding this responsibility entrusted to us human beings, as stewards given the task of bringing harmony to the entire creation, this is a pathway to peace in the whole world and in particular in Africa.
_________________________________
[1]The reader could visit my website: www.afrikaworld.net/afrel and look up God’s name in different parts of Africa.
[2] Cf. “Testimonies for peace: Day of Prayer for Peace in the World,” 24 January 2002, in www.vatican.va/special/assisi_20020124_en.html
MEANING AND CONTENTS OF AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION
The Religiosity of Africans
African Traditional Religion is a religion practised in Africa from time immemorial. It is not a religion that can be simply understood by analysing its system of beliefs. It is action-oriented religion, a way of life that pervades every aspect of human endeavour from cradle to grave. It is a way of living: way of giving birth, way of weaning a child, way of eating, way of dancing, way of working, way of growing up, way of praying, way of offering sacrifices and, even, way of dying. There is hardly any activity in life that is separated from its religious implications.
African Traditional Religion as object of study
African Traditional Religion became object of study when people from the northern hemisphere entered Africa many centuries ago. It began as an attempt to satisfy the curiosity and personal interests of sailors and explorers. It became an important subject for colonial administrators in order to understand the people they were to govern. Missionaries were also interested in African Traditional Religion. Their primary interest at that early stage was to collect as much information as possible in order to understand the worldview of the people to whom they had brought the “Good News of salvation”. Many of the publications by these foreigners have been described as inaccurate because they are, to a large extent, superficial external interpretations of deep spiritual realities. Unfortunately, these books are still in circulation and those who have not had any opportunity of or interest in reading new works with clearer insights remain tied to old ideas.
Today, there are people who still refer to the African Traditional Religion as “animist religion”, polytheism, ancestor worship — ideas long discredited. African Traditional Religion is not animism. The followers of the religion do not hold that trees and stones and hills have souls. They do not believe in the existence of another being on the par with the Supreme Being. This Supreme Being is known by various names in different languages. In Igbo language of Nigeria, the Supreme Being is known as Chineke – God the creator. There is no being that can have that title. I know this point to be also true among other ethnic groups.[1] So, African Traditional Religion is monotheistic. There are Spirits, good and bad. These have direct interaction with human beings. Sometimes sacrifices are offered to them to attract good ones and to ward off those which are bad. Ancestors are good people, who have fulfilled all that is required of them while on earth and, though now dead, they still intervene to help members of their families.
The social and the religious contexts of the African person
In this context, I would like to say something further about the African family. I have made this point on other occasions but I think it is important to emphasize it at this conference where I happen to be the only African voice among seven thousand participants from all the continents of the world.
Talking about the family, I have the feeling that it is here that we find the root of “individualism” evident in the Western mentality which is very different from the African communitarian way of life. When the French man Réné Descartes came up with the definition of the human person as a “thinking being”, referring to his famous phrase “cogito ergo sum”, he was praised. But, in my mind, that is not sufficient to define a human person. Africans would rather say “cognatus sum ergo sum”. I belong or I relate … therefore I am. It is in being “in relation” with other persons, in a family, in a society, that I am defined. I am a being in community/society. From this way of understanding a human being, it is easy to appreciate why most Africans have great devotion to their families. It is to be noticed that the idea of “old peoples’ home” has not gone well in many parts of Africa. The old and the young have their place in the large family. A child belongs to the whole society. If he or she is in difficulty anywhere, the nearest elder assumes the responsibility of the parents. There are many other values found in being close to the family: spirit of sacrifice for the other, sharing with others no matter how little a member has, understanding a difficult member of the family and trying to offer help, etc.
The number of the members of a family never decreases. It always increases. How? Let me explain it this way: Badejo is a man and Kemi is woman. Badejo marries Kemi. They have six children. The children marry and have their own children. Badejo dies. But in African Traditional Religion, Badejo does not really die. He changes location. He joins his ancestors. But he is still a member of his own family. As ancestor, he is a “living-dead”. He partakes of meals, though in a spiritual way. Libation is offered to him. New ones are born into the family. So, the family always increases in number.
I have already said that God is the creator. The entire universe, the whole creation, is his work. Human beings have been given the responsibility to create order and harmony in the world.
In African Traditional Religion, the Mother Earth is important. To her all human beings return. Since she is everywhere, she watches every human activity. In some cultures, she is invoked to bear witness: a person is asked to swear simply by stamping the bare soles of his or her feet on the ground that is not tarred or cemented. It is believed that calling Mother Earth as witness is enough to establish the veracity of a person’s statement. The Earth is, therefore, sacred.
Society formed by African Traditional Religion
I have said that Traditional African societies hold that God is the creator, all seeing, and all powerful; and that there are spirits, good and bad: good ones try to protect human beings and bad ones try to harm them. I have also said that there are ancestors who have shown good example while on earth and now, in some sense, they intercede for human beings; and that there is Mother earth, below. With this array of “super powers,” human beings are watched constantly. Every action attracts judgment or blessing. It is important to live a life of rectitude.
WAR AND CONFLICTS IN AFRICA
Personal Experience
I am speaking in this Forum as someone who has personally witnessed a war. Between 1967 and 1970 my country, Nigeria, was engulfed in what began as a war between Nigeria (that is, north and south-west of Nigeria) and the newly declared Biafra (south-east of Nigeria). But it ended as a civil war – since the “new country” was defeated.
I saw the war from the eyes of a child: my young mind could not understand any political explanation for the war. It made no sense to me why any human being would consider waging a war or supporting it as a way of gaining strategic importance for any country. What on earth would make a leader to decide not to impede a war simply because he or she did not want to offend an ally? All I knew about war was that it was a disaster that brought much suffering to a child like me.
It was a war in which I was a complete loser: throughout the period of the war, I could not go to school. It was a period (three whole years) that I was set back academically. Some of my friends as young as myself (10 years old and less) died. My family members were displaced several times, living in makeshift tents, and fed at some point by charitable organisations at feeding centres. Soldiers looted some of our belongings. They chased around teenage girls, intending to rape them if they succeeded in catching them. At the end of the hostilities, my side in the war was defeated.
I saw many soldiers wounded in the battlefield and left languishing in makeshift clinics without adequate drugs for treatment. Some of them lost their limbs and even their lives in a rather painful way.
Fortunately (should I really use the word “fortunately”?), it was not like the type of war we know today. There were no landmines, no cluster-bombs, no smart-bombs, no apache helicopters to comb the pathways of our villages, no kamikaze, only so-called “conventional” weapons were used. Yet thousands of people (a number of journalists say that up to a million persons) lost their lives.
No country that has experienced a war is ever the same. Nigeria, well over 30 years later, is still suffering the consequences of the civil war. This is the experience of many other countries in Africa that have witnessed wars and other forms of conflicts: increase in violence, loss of sense of value for human lives; armed robbery; etc. Most people are intimidated when a gun barrel, fully loaded, is turned towards them!
The experience of this war, which lasted for a short time (three years), was very traumatic for me. And yet there are countries in Africa that have had longer periods of war. The list is long. I would like to read out the entries which I have freely taken from the online publication by Africa United for Freedom.
Statistics of recent wars and conflicts that affected Africa
Internal Conflicts
- Egypt (coup d'etat), 1952
- Sudan (coup d'etat), 1964
- Ghana (coup d.etat), 1966
- Sudan (coup d'etat), 1968
- Somalia (coup d'etat), 1969
- Ghana (coup d.etat), 1972
- Madagascar (coup d'etat), 1972
- Ethiopia (coup d'etat), 1974
- Ghana (coup d’etat), 1975-1981
- Seychelles (coup d'etat), 1978
- Central African Empire (coups d'etat), 1979
- Guinea-Bissau (coup d'etat), 1980
- Central African Empire (coup d'etat), 1982
- Kenya (coup d'etat), 1982
- Uganda (coup d'etat), 1985
- Djibouti - (coup attempt), 2000
- Chad - Coup attempt 2001
- Nigeria is strangely missing on this list.
Wars Between Countries
- Chad-France, 1899-1900
- Ethiopia (civil war), 1914-1917
- Ethiopian-Italian War, 1935-1936
- Rwanda (civil war), 1959-1961
- Congo (civil war), 1960-1965
- Angola-Portugal, 1961-1974
- Mozambique-Portugal, 1962-1974
- Algeria-Morocco, 1963
- Kenya-Somalia, 1963-1968
- Nigeria (civil war), 1967-1970
- Ethiopia-Somalia, 1977-1978
- Ethiopia (civil war), 1975
- Tanzania-Uganda, 1978-1981
- Uganda (civil war), 1987
- Libya-United States, 1986
- Rwanda (civil war), 1990-1994
- Somalia-United States, 1992-1994
- Sierra Leone, 1995-Present
- Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, 1996-1998
- Eritrea, Ethiopia 1997-Present
- Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Chad, Burundi (war), 1998
- Rwanda – 1990
- Burundi – 1988
- Senegal (border clashes), 1989-1990
- Sudan, 1983-Present
Inter-Continental Wars
- World War I, 1914-1918
- World War II, 1939-1945
SOME OF THE REASONS FOR CONFLICTS AND WARS ON THE AFRICAN CONTINENT TODAY
External Causes
a) Irrational grouping of peoples as nations
In United States of America, people came from different parts of the world. They sat down and decided on how they would live together. They drew a Constitution and chose freely to be bound by it. We know that there were and are still protests from the original owners of the land. But by and large, most Americans in United States, despite their varying backgrounds, live side and side with one another. The case with many of today’s African countries is quite different.
A group of people, curious and in love with adventure set off from their homelands and found themselves in a different part of the world. They found human beings different from themselves. They announced to their homelands that they had discovered a new place. The people they discovered had been living there from time immemorial. Some of these explorers were honoured for achieving a wonderful feat. Strangely enough I discovered Italy only in 1989 and, in the following year, I discovered England. Yet my discoveries were not celebrated! Why? I do not know!
The explorers, ignorant of the social organisation of the people, and lacking knowledge of their rich faith in God, declared them barbaric and pagan – meaning, according to their understanding at that time, people without knowledge of God. They set out reorganising their social structures. They began to “teach” them about God! What emerged from the social structures they established had a permanent damage to the lives of the people.
A seed of conflict was sown right from the beginning of the existence of many of modern African nations. The grouping of peoples that make up each country of Africa did not follow any clear logic, except, perhaps, logic of trade. Suppose a very powerful nation comes up and forces Germany, Italy and Belgium or France, Spain and Morocco to form one country, how peaceful would such a newly created country be? What language or way of life would they adopt? That is exactly what was done in Africa!
Africa is inhabited by over three hundred different ethnic groups. Elsewhere in the world, most of these groups would have been existing as independent nations. But this is not the case in Africa. The structure of the countries that make up the continent has people of the same language, culture, customs and traditions, divided by artificial boundaries drawn not by themselves but by those who had other interests: large market, access to vast natural resources, cheap labour, etc. The result is that one ethnic group is spread across two or three or more countries, separated not only physically by border control posts but also by the new colonial languages (mainly, English, French and Portuguese) as well as by the mentality and worldview of the colonising nations. For decades many African countries have been trying to create a sense of nationhood out of the mess made of them by the so called colonial masters. The debate on how to live together goes on in several countries of Africa.
b) International conspiracy
This is a forum of friendship where we look for what we can do together to make our world better. We cannot ignore some of the issues that stare us in the face every day. One has to be an African even at heart to understand what we, Africans, sometimes feel. A well-known company put up a billboard with a photograph of three smiling children. Of the three, only one was without two front teeth. That one, unfortunately, was black African. Most probably, the choice was not racially motivated. It is, however, easy to question the choice of children for the photos.
I do not know how non-Africans perceive news about Africa from some of the European television networks. From some news media, one must forget about seeing anything positive about Africa. If a journalist wants to conduct an interview in Africa, he or she chooses a background that shows anything but development.
When one hears about poverty, diseases, deaths, etc. one is shocked to receive fantastic statistics. How on earth do these experts obtain their figures? While for the Europeans, figures help to establish the criterion for the distribution of common resources and for assessing the popularity of policies, for most Africans who depend on self-help, calculating numbers would be useless, and a waste of time and money. Indeed among most ethnic groups, human beings are never to be counted.
It would seem that some people make gain economically by emphasizing difficulties in Africa. There are people who do not want any change in the status quo because of the gains they apparently make. Some NGOs stand accused. Some drug companies are not innocent. The people that make weapons of war want good trade. Sometimes it is suspected that they create hatred among peoples in order to have a market for their goods.
What we heard during the Nigerian civil war disturbed our young minds. We learnt that one country supplied jet-bombers to Nigeria and at the same time supplied anti-aircraft to Biafra. So, if Nigerians flew their jet-bombers, Biafrans shot them down. Both nations returned to the same supplier. In a number of wars in Africa, there are mercenaries that fly jet bombers and fighters. All these stand to gain as long as wars and conflicts are going on in Africa.
Internal Causes
I have mentioned some of the external causes of conflicts in Africa. Africans are also responsible for some of the hostilities.
a) Greed
One of the reasons given by almost all the military coup d’etat plotters was bad administration of the government overthrown. There is often a promise to correct the mistakes of the past. Only in very few cases do the military governments return the affected countries to good governance. Generally, a military coup d’etat is just a smart way of taking over government and getting access to the treasury of the state. Sometimes there is disagreement on how to share the proverbial “national cake” leading to counter-coup d’etat or even full blown war. Greed is one of the reasons for violent conflicts in Africa.
b) Exaggerated ethnic and religious affiliations
It is said in many African languages that “blood is thicker than water”. This is meant to emphasize the importance of blood-relationship in Africa. I have already spoken about “cognatus sum, ergo sum”. When ethnic affiliation is so emphasized that those outside this immediate relationship are discriminated against, it could breed problems in ethnically mixed societies as we have in some modern countries of Africa. When leaders are myopic, when they favour only those of their ethnic group, when they exclude others from participating in government, when they deny employment to people of different ethnic origin, and exclude them from placement in schools, treatment in hospitals, etc. the consequences are indeed grave. It often leads to civil war and violent conflicts. Some countries of Africa have had experiences of what is today called “ethnic cleansing”.
There have been leaders who exploited their religious affiliation to oppress and intimidate others who belong to different religions. In the pretext of religious zeal and piety, some government leaders have denied people of their legitimate rights. This has brought violence in more than one country of Africa.
c) Collusion with fraudsters
An Igbo proverb says: “it was the rat in the house that told the one in the bush that dried fish was inside the basket in the kitchen”. Those outsiders I mentioned earlier that help to cause conflicts in Africa can never penetrate the countries of Africa without the involvement of insiders. War machines cannot be imported into any country without some involvement of the locals. There are people who are so obsessed in becoming heads of government in their countries that they lobby international organisations to impose economic sanctions on their own country. They are willing to invite foreign troops to invade and destroy their own people. They are seen regularly on television programmes making unfortunate remarks against their countries.
APPROACHES TO PEACEFUL RESOLUTION OF CONFLICTS IN AFRICA
War Crime Tribunals-Approach
From recent experiences, the world has tried to resolve conflicts in Africa in several ways. Concerns have been expressed at the United Nations. Decisions have been taken even at the level of the Security Council. Intervention and Peace-keeping forces have been sent. Sanctions were occasionally put in place. Wars have sometimes been initiated in order to prevent war. More recently, International War Crime Tribunals have been set up. Selected people are put on trial. I do not wish to go into the implications of these. Many of you know more than me. But some of these efforts are and must be appreciated.
War Crime Tribunals are good. Some people, however, ask: Are they free from the manipulation of powerful countries? The problem is not declaring somebody guilty, (sometimes even when the accused person does not accept the jurisdiction of the trial judge), and throwing him or her into prison. No one is in doubt that it is good to show that justice has been done. But is there genuine healing? Are the parties reconciled? Is the wound healed? We know cases where a criminal has escaped being found guilty because of legal technical error. Wrong people have been thrown into prison. People have been killed even when they were pleading innocent.
Democracy-Approach
Some people say that helping Africans achieve democracy is the key to resolving conflicts and achieving peace in Africa. Some countries of Europe and America offer their models of democracy to Africans. One could ask a number of questions: What really is democracy? Are there not forms of democracy different from what is found in the “West”? Is the world really ready for the type of democracy that will allow Africans to take their destiny in their hands? How long will all those puppet governments not elected but selected by people who have other interests at heart than the good of African peoples remain in power?
African Traditional Religious-Approach
In the African traditional religious world, there is no dichotomy between the secular and the religious, the sacred and the profane, the visible and the invisible. Every human being is considered in his or her wholeness. Life itself is seen in its totality, not parts. Achieving peace must go beyond the physical to embrace the spiritual. Indeed it will involve the whole person in order to achieve true peace
Not long ago, South Africa set up a Commission to heal the wounds of the past. It was a model different from the War Crime Tribunals. The overall interest of the Commission was to see how harmony could be restored in the community. What is the need for a person to be declared as having committed a war crime, when some concerns for delivery of true justice are not properly addressed, and when every person knows that the last word of truth has not yet been said?
Bringing justice to the offender is not sufficient to achieve peace in Africa. The African traditional religious model includes reconciliation. There will be no true peace unless the warring parties are brought together and reconciled. Doing this is walking down the pathway to peace in Africa.
African leaders must expand their concept of the family to cover the entire country. Making every citizen feel as a family member of his or her own African country is creating a pathway to peace in Africa. Amadou Gassou, a Vodun Priest from the Republic of Benin, made the following declaration at Assisi:
I recognise in the first place that peace is a gift of God to us.
However, this gift is left to the responsibility of human being,
called by the Creator to contribute to the building up of peace in this world.
This is a universal responsibility which concerns all creation….
When there is no peace among people, neither is there peace between the rest of creation and human beings.
But when people work for peace in a nation, its land becomes generous
and the herds multiply for human beings’ greater good.
This is a key law of nature which comes from the Creator….
This is why it is good to invite people every year to a change of heart
by renouncing hatred, violence and injustice.
Leaders of world religions should neither forget nor neglect this practice.
It is a matter of making amends for the harm done to creation by human beings,
of asking forgiveness of the protecting spirits of regions affected by the violence
and the evil committed by human beings, and of asking forgiveness,
carrying out sacrifices of reparation and purification, and thus restoring peace.[2]
Understanding this responsibility entrusted to us human beings, as stewards given the task of bringing harmony to the entire creation, this is a pathway to peace in the whole world and in particular in Africa.
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[1]The reader could visit my website: www.afrikaworld.net/afrel and look up God’s name in different parts of Africa.
[2] Cf. “Testimonies for peace: Day of Prayer for Peace in the World,” 24 January 2002, in www.vatican.va/special/assisi_20020124_en.html
