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Black and African Theology After Apartheid and After the Cold War - an Emerging Paradigm

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Black and African Theology After Apartheid and After the Cold War - an Emerging Paradigm BLACK AND AFRICAN THEOLOGY AFTER APARTHEID AND AFTER THE COLD WAR - AN EMERGING PARADIGM Tinyiko Sam Maluleke 1. Introduction The twenty year period (1980 - 2000) during which I have learnt, practised and taught theology has been one of change and transition. It is an era in which the demise of Apartheid was accelerated, culminating in the installa- tion of Nelson Mandela as South Africa's first democratically elected president to head the first democratically elected government in the country's s history. But we cannot forget that one of the most repressive and most gruesome periods in the history of South Africa can also be located in the same twenty year period. Therefore, I bear in my soul and psyche, the scars of the repression that swept South Africa from 1976 (when I was secondary school student in SOWETO) through to the violent darkness of the mid- eighties and early 1990s. For this reason, while I have been unable to avoid South African White Contextual or Liberation theology-what student of theology in South Africa during the past 20 years could avoid David Bosch and John De Gruchy?- the deeper influence on me has been from the passionate and critical South African Black Theology. But I am also informed by and respectful of the scholarship and the Christian `Africanism' of the likes of Mbiti, Fashole Luke, Harry Sawyerr, Bolaji Idowu Gabriel Setiloane and others. The sharp and satirical tongue of Uganda's Okot p'Bitek in his 'songs' and essays touches my very gut, as does the articulation of African identity: its crisis, its tragedy, its incompleteness and its dreams encapsulated in the works of the likes of Achebe, Soyinka, N'gugi wa Thiongo, Ayi Kwei Armah, Eskia Mphahlele, Can Themba, Alex Laguma and others. I am also curious about the self-definition and 'success' of 'White African' writers, such as J.M. Coetzee (two times winner of the prestigious Booker Prize for English literature), Nadine Gordimer (the Noble Prize literature laureate) and others. When I read some of their works, I cannot help thinking that they are writing about and even for me also. I write as an Anglophone Protestant from a largely Anglophone Protestant country. I write from the new South Africa - one of the world's youngest democracies. I speak as a theologian who is keen to understand and possibly help fashion out a role for Christian theology in the new South Africa and the "new" Africa. I am specifically interested in the possible role of theology in interpreting and enhancing the agency of Africans in the light of cultural, 194 religious and economic marginalization. After the euphoria of the end of Apartheid, it would be accurate to say that South African theology and South African Ecumenism is in some kind of recess if not a kind of disarray. Without being too presumptuous, it is fair to say that up until the early 1990s, South Africa has been one of the most theologically prolific places in the world, producing some of the best as well as the worst packages of Christian theology this side of the second world war, outside of Germany. Perhaps the apex of this creativity was the publication of the Kairos Document in 1985. But even the Kairos Document dismally fails to capture all of the theological creativity that emanated out of that country. It is therefore not difficult to observe the fatigue in ecumenical South African theology. The silence has been sudden and deafening. How have the cries of the poor majority been suddenly silenced by the shouts of the joyful minority? As a young theologian in post-Apartheid South Africa and post-Cold War Africa, I suddenly experience intense and acute spiritual and intellectual loneliness. This is both bad and good. Bad because I miss the defiant, passionate and humorous 'image of God' ubuntu theology of Desmond Tutu.' There is a huge gaping hole that has been left by my esteemed mentors and colleagues, Itumeleng Mosala, Takatso Mofokeng, Simon Maimela, Smangaliso Mkhatswa, Frank Chikane and others, all of whom have "gone secular" by becoming all manner of administrators and state functionaries. But my 'loneliness' may yet be a cause for joy. Perhaps my esteemed colleagues have responded to a 'higher' calling: those who criticize the abuse of power must be prepared to take and reshape it. Those who call for 'liberation' must take the liberation project to what they see to be its logical conclusion. Perhaps. Perhaps the South African Christian community must wake up from its dependency on the Tutus and Mosalas of this world and take up its prophetic calling with or without them. Fortunately, my 'loneliness' as a theologian and committed academic is not total. I hear encouraging voices from other parts of Africa and other parts of the world. I am speaking here of the voices of the likes of Jesse Mugambi' of Kenya, Kwame Bediako' of Ghana, Ka Mana of the Democratic republic 1 DesmondMpilo Tutu, "Wither African Theology", in Edward Fashole-Lukee.a. (eds) Christianityin IndependentAfrica, London: Rex Colings, 1978, 364-369; Idem, No Future withoutForgiveness. Johannesburg:Rider, 1909. 2 J.N.K. Mugambi,From Liberationto Reconstruction.African Christian TheologyAfter the Cold War. Nairobi: East African EducationalPublishers, 1995. 3 KwameBediako, Theologyand Identity. TheImpact of culture upon Christian Thought in the second century and modem Africa. Oxford: Regnum Books, 1992. Idem, Christianityin Africa. TheRenewal of a Non-WesternReligion. Edinburgh: University Press, Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995. .
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