'AFRICAN REDEMPTION': BLACK NATIONALISM, AND END OF EMPIRE IN AFRICA

Ronald Nathan

The Colonial presence in Africa, especially the British, should be viewed as a civilising influence, which merely exercised a degree of trusteeship over the continent (Professor Roberts, SOAS, February 2000). What do I care about death in the cause of the redemption of Africa? ...I could die anywhere in the cause of liberty: a real man dies but once; a coward dies a thousand times before his real death. So we want you to realise that life is not worth its salt except you can live it for some purpose. And the noblest purpose for which to live is the emancipation of a race and the emancipation of posterity (Marcus Garvey, Negro World Newspaper, 28 April, 1923).

This article brings three issues to the forefront of the deliberations in respect to Missions, Nationalism and the end of Empire. It first, highlights the influence of Black Nationalist theory and practice towards the end of the European colonial rule in Africa. Second, it establishes the role of black from the Caribbean and the United States of America on the continent of Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Third, it reveals how Black Nationalist thought was reworked in the black religious movements. In order to achieve the above I explore some aspects of the African experience of missions in Africa, Garveyism, as a religious movement, and its underlying missiological concept, 'African Redemption'. Through this exploration I establish a correlation between an embryonic 'black theology of liberation' and Africa's struggle to free itself from the tyranny of colonialism. These Pan African responses took on a variety of forms social, econ- ' omic, cultural and religious. All committed in principle and practice to the undermining of colonial and oppressive structures placed upon 'Africa's children at home or abroad'. 'African Redemption' has therefore to be perceived as a holistic attempt to rid Africa from colonialism, and imperi- alism, by Africa's distant children, who themselves were earlier products . of European colonial and imperial shenanigans.

British Colonialism

The first British Empire was a mercantile one. Until the nineteenth . century its primary purpose was to facilitate the acquisition of as much 126 foreign territory as possible, both as a source of raw materials and in order to provide real or potential markets for British manufacturers. The empire extended throughout the , , China and North America. During the nineteenth century Imperialism was refashioned not as an economic or strategic policy but in order that primitive peoples, incapable of self-government, could, with British guidance, eventually become civilized (and Christianised). Some accepted naively the truth of this doctrine, others hypocritically so, but it served in any case to legitimise Britain's acquisition of portions of Central Africa.' As late as 1864 James Hunt, the celebrated anthropologist claimed that the physical and mental differences between blacks and whites were substantial enough to classify the Negro as a different species from the European. He therefore claimed "the Negro is more humanised when in his natural subordination to the European, and can only be humanised and civilised by Europeans".2 These views were bolstered by the late Victor- ian acceptance of the validity of craniometrical and physiognomic data, which gave rise to ideas on racial temperament, and differential adaptation of races to particular environments. Whereas colonialism can be deemed a gradual process, empire building was the inevitable outcome of the colonial project.

Between 1880 and 1920 most of Africa was brought under the direct rule of European colonial powers. The injustices of this illegal occupation were demonstrated in the economic exploitation of black labour, the confisca- tion of land from the natives, the destruction of the indigenous cultures and social systems, and the imposition of boundary demarcations with little or no regard to the peoples they affected. Privilege was at the heart 3 of the colonial relationship.3 With few exceptions, European explorers and missionaries assessments of Africans were that they were depraved creatures, who had been brought to that state by their environment, the slave trade, and adherence to 4 mistaken religious dogma, but they were not beyond redemption.4 As to the missionaries, Thomas Prasch noted that during this period the Anglican Church Mission Society (CMS) position was, that the Slave Trade was largely responsible for the poverty of the African Coast as well as the increase in tribal warfare. 5

1 Available in http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/history/empire/Empire.html 2 Thomas Prasch, 'Which God for Africa: The Islamic-ChristianMissionary Debate in Late-Victorian ." VictorianStudies 33:1 (1989), 52-73, quote from p. 66. 3 Albert Memmi, The Colonizerand the Colonized,Boston: Beacon Press, 1965, xii. 4 Edward H. Berman (ed.), African Reactions to Education, New York: Teachers College press, Columbia University and Centre for Education in Africa Publications, 1976:6). 5 Prasch, "Which God for Africa." p. 66.