IN THE MAKING OF THE CHURCH
4. The Missions’ Relations with People of Other Religious Persuasions
4.1. Relations with African Traditional Religious Believers
According to Edward Kihala and Ernest Chambo, conversion to Anglicanism in some places was not perceived by many people as conversion to Christianity because people knew no other missionaries than those who came to them.236 Lusega who held a different view pointed out that this was not the perception held by many missionaries.237 In Lusega‘s view, many missionaries considered conversion as a way of denying one‘s own past,238 (the African Traditional Religions as practiced in the ujamaa villages),239 and in turn joining the mission (Christianity as practiced in the Christian villages).240 According to Willis, who preferred the use of the word
‗marginal‘ in place of converts, the missions at its earliest days tended to recruit the outcast, vulnerable and young members of the royal clans241 who in turn, as Giblin put
234 Matt. 28:19-20, New International Version, Emanuel J. Kandusi, Taarifa ya Semina ya Jimbo Kuhusu Umoja iliyofanyika katika Ukumbi wa CCT Dodoma, Tarehe 21-25 Agosti 1995, pp. 28-29.
235 Michael Doe, Saving Power: The Mission of God and the Anglican Communion, London: SPCK, 2011, p. 40.
236 Edward Kihala, interview conducted by Maimbo W. F. Mndolwa on 05 January 2011 at
Kwamkono, Ernest Chambo, interview conducted by Maimbo W. F. Mndolwa on 10 January 2011 at Muheza.
237 Manase Lusega, interview conducted by Maimbo W. F. Mndolwa on 27 August 2011 in Dodoma.
238 Lusega, same interview.
239 This emphasis is mine. The use of the word ujamaa with its lower case denoted the traditional life from which Nyerere drew his emphasis of African Socialism. Therefore, this word is not to be confused with the ―Ujamaa‖ which became popular after 1967.
240 Kihala, same interview.
241 Justin Willis, The Nature of a Mission Community: The Universities' Mission to Central Africa in Bonde: the Mission in African History - Bonde in what is now Tanzania, London: Oxford University Press, 1993.
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it, had a long term impacts on the ujamaa villages which were close to the mission villages and to which some of these converts had returned as local agents.242 Kihala noted that those who were baptised were given new names which normally were either found in the Bible or were the names of heroes of the faith known to the missionaries.243 This stood as an indication for a total rejection of the converts‘ past.
Willis has shown that a mission village would include dozens of schoolchildren, cooks, builders, teachers, priests and messengers.244 Gibbons stated that this composition had some effects on the ujamaa villages too as those who went on a visit to the mission stations in search of jobs, education and medical treatments were frequently told to abandon their past which included their ancestors.245 Those who accepted these conditions were received by the missionaries who in many cases married them to people of other clans or tribes after they had been baptised.246 By marrying people of different tribes, the missions brought about an integration of both tribes and ancestors. In this case, while colonialism divided the land and therefore divided tribal communities such as Jaruo and Maasai who were found both in Tanzania and Kenya, the missionaries imagined to destroy the extended families in the ujamaa villages and, instead built new extended families in their mission stations.
This new extended families acquired a new identity (the Waungwana) which, if translated into English, it meant the civilised people.247 Those who not converted to the Christian religion of the missionaries were identified as the Washenzi which denoted uncivilised persons.248 According to Kihala who listed a number of examples, there were other varieties of civilisation.249 Those who were not ready to abandon their African traditional beliefs were identified and praised by the elders of the
‗ujamaa villages‘ as the most civilised persons and, on the other hand, those who joined Islam were nicknamed Wastaraabu (lit: converts of Arabic civilisation).250 Both Ketto and Lusega explained that these kinds of relationships stated to change
242 J. Giblin, Famine, Authority and the Impact of Foreign Capital on the Handeni District of Tanzania, 1840-1940" Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1986, pp. 180- 189.
243 Kihala, same interview.
244 Willis, The Nature of a Mission
245 CMSA/MLMSS6040/63/1/Copy of letter from Dr. M. J. Gibbons, UMCA, Minaki, Dar es Salaam, to the General Secretary, 23 January 1950, Kihala same interview.
246 Kihala, same interview.
247 Mndolwa, Shambaa Culture and Christian Conversion, p. 16.
248 Mndolwa, Shambaa Culture and Christian Conversion, p. 16.
249 Kihala. Same interview.
250 Kihala, same interview.
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slightly during the struggle for independence following migration of people to different parts of the land.251 While some of these people were taken by the government and some by settlers as Manamba,252 others independently sought employment.253 The bishop of South West Tanganyika highlighted several challenges which were caused by these migrations:
[...] – the most serious social problems is the larger number of men who are away from the villages working on sisal plantations ... and so in some places the congregation seems to consist almost entirely of women and children. It is easy to imagine the disintegration of family life which this exodus causes.254
But in contrast to the changes which were happening in the mission stations, in the
‗ujamaa villages‘:
[...] – witchcraft never far below the surface – heavy drinking and in some places drunkenness, and bad dances, which are said to be on the increase along the lake shore [Lake Nyasa]. What is new to us is an outcrop of burglaries which have evidently been carried out by organised gangs, particularly on churches.255
Ketto noted that these indicated the missionaries‘ perception of the evils in the mission stations as compared to those in the ‗ujamaa villages‘.256 Actually, it indicated that an ‗ujamaa village‘ held the kind of life which needed to be changed.
The General Secretary of UMCA held this view:
[...] – indeed, no more than a symptom of an all-embracing servitude which held African[s] in bondage. Poverty and diseases, ignorance ...
false ideas of the world, of nature of man and of God, fettered and enthralled both mind and spirit.257
251 Ketto, same interview.
252 This is a Kiswahili word which slightly meant people who were given numbers. During this time, people were driven from as far as Kigoma and Tukuyu to Tanga where they were employed in different plantations. The settlers and the government used numbers to indentify the location where the person was taken from. Cf. Anneth N. Munga, Uamasho: The Study of the Proclamation of the Revival Movement within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania.Unpublished PhD Thesis, Lund University, 1998.
253 Ketto, same interview.
254 ASL/The Hope of Africa: A Review of the Work of the Universities‘ Mission to Central Africa for 1953-1954, June 1954, p. 60.
255 The Hope of Africa, p. 60.
256 Ketto, same interview.
257 RHL/UMCA-USPG/SF6/Prologue, General Secretary Papers, 1958.
49 This line of thought was also held by Jourdan:
The Africans only recently emerging from a primitive way of life have been flung into the bewildering world of international commerce and politics at a pace which is bound to produce confusion in their minds and sometimes undesirable ... violent reactions in their social actions.258
Mndolwa has shown that these perceptions and the convictions that Africans rather needed to ‗change‘ than ‗to be converted‘ had led the majority of Africans become nominal Christians.259 However, these perceptions continued to exist even after the independence. According to Chiwanga, it was the Arusha Declaration, through its policy of Ujamaa na Kujitegemea,260 which would destabilise it.261