•IliilliiiiiiiislssMliiiiiiii^
Turner/Bediako primal worldview Zahan/Apostel African Huntington Western characteristics124 philosophical principles
(selected) '
cultural characteristics126
• Kinship with nature: people, • Humanity as basically and • The Greco-Roman legacy plants, and animals universally religious • Catholicism, Protestantism
• Humanity as innately weak • Humanity, rather than God or • European languages
and finite the spirits, at the center of the • Separation of spiritual and
• The world as populated by universe temporal authority
spirits and beings more • Religion as concerning • Rule of law powerful and lasting than matter: earth, sky, and the • Social pluralism
humans material universe • Representative bodies
• Humanity in relationship • A person is a person only by • Individualism with the protective spirit way of relationship with
world ancestors and family
• Belief in an afterlife • A person is made human by connected to or mediated the decisions of others
through the ancestors • Time as basically cyclic
• No sharp dichotomy between • Knowledge as acquired the physical and spiritual through initiation and ritual worlds; the entire universe is
a unified and spiritual system
Recognizing the intellectual pitfalls posed by over categorizing and designating, it should be clearly understood that the primary purpose of a case study closely examining African thought and experience is not to say anything definitive about that. Rather, it is to augment and illustrate the themes raised here about discrepancies in the ways that different people experience everyday life.
• From the Western perspective, this is symptomatic of certain ways of intellectual thinking but also involves theological concerns heavily influenced by certain economic categories of thought.
• When perceptual disparities occur in international development policymaking and practice, part of the problem involves divides between how we understand the spiritual and the material.
• To more thoroughly explore this situation, insights from the sociology of knowledge will constitute the main theoretical framework by which a specific case study is analyzed.
1.5 The Copperbelt case
As just noted above, the present work examines issues raised in this chapter through study of a particular case or setting. I originally encountered discrepancies in viewpoints within the context of a Church-related setting and began theoretical pondering in terms of Christian missiology. It soon began to appear, however, that the problem was bigger than a focus on the Church could warrant or that current American missiological thinking seemed capable of accommodating. The second vignette recorded at the beginning of this chapter confirmed these viewpoint discrepancies as being vastly more pervasive than I had originally considered. Ultimately that incident is what inspired a case study in the mining communities of the Zambian Copperbelt. The rich history of mining in Southern Africa; the importance of the industry to the country's economy since the 1930s; the mine privatization program as having been a World Bank driven initiative; and mining's powerful, metaphorical imagery all corroborate the importance of studying perceptual disparities in this arena. And, although a mining-based case study does not immediately appear relevant to theological concerns, it
should not take too long for the theological consequences of that environment to become apparent.
1.5.1 Earlier studies
This study is not the first to look at work relationships in Zambia or the Zambian mining community. But it is, so far as I can tell, the most thorough examination of the situation within the last 20 years and the only extended cultural analysis following full re- privatization of the mines in 2000.128 Further, while previous Copperbelt studies have touched on matters of religion, meaning, and reality, they have principally done so using anthropological and sociological analyses without directly engaging theological elements.
The present study appears to be the most theologically intentional of any to date.
Of the numerous works that have chronicled various Copperbelt matters over the past decades, the most influential on this effort are the following. Raymond Buell's 1928 work contains valuable historical information on the early years of the British South Africa Company.129 Walter Cline's late 1930s doctoral dissertation on metals and metal working techniques in the Copperbelt-Katanga (DRC) area records significant information about traditional mining and smelting practices before industrial mining had so completely taken hold.130 Andrew Roberts's historical work was particularly valuable for informing this study's review of Zambia's early Industrial Era developments.131
~ The term re-privatization is borrowed from the Zambian president under whom the World Bank led program unfolded. "I was really happy to preside over the period of re-privatization. I say "re-" because it was there before independence." Interview with President Frederick Chiluba, 2005. See the appendices for excerpts from this conversation.
Raymond Leslie Buell, The Native Problem in Africa (Cambridge, MA: Bureau of International Research of Harvard University and Radcliff Collge, 1928).
130 Walter Cline, "The Sources of Metals and Techniques of Metal Working in Negro Africa" (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1936).
131 Andrew Roberts, A History of Zambia (New York: Africana Publishing Co., 1976).
In the 1950s, Hortense Powdermaker's anthropological investigation recorded in her book, Copper Town: Changing Africa, documented much about African life as the shift towards independence was progressing throughout the continent. Around the same time, William Watson examined the effects of instituting cash economy values among
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communities of Africans who came to work on the mines. A. L. Epstein considered politics and urbanization trends on the Copperbelt for a number of years from the 1950s onwards, producing two books about the province and its people.134
During the 1960s, President Kaunda's speeches, letters, and essays described a clear philosophical vision for governance of the now politically independent nation. The mines inevitably played a prominent role in how the government went about its business and the record of his thinking on all this has lent a crucial dimension to the study.135
The business of the mines received particular attention from other quarters in the 1970s. Michael Burawoy produced The Colour of Class on the Copper Mines: From African Advancement to Zambianization, a study that examined the controversial process of
moving Zambians into mining jobs previously occupied by European expatriates.1 That same year, Antony Martin wrote Minding Their Own Business: Zambia's Struggle Against
Hortense Powdermaker, Copper Town: Changing Africa, The Human Situation on the Rhodesian Copperbelt (New York: Harper and Row, 1962).
133 William Watson, Tribal Cohesion in a Money Economy: A Study of the Mambwe People of Northern Rhodesia (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1958).
134 A. L. Epstein, Politics in an Urban African Community (Manchster, UK: Manchester University Press, 1958) and Scenes from African Urban Life: Collected Copperbelt Papers (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1992).
135 See, for example, Kenneth D. Kaunda, A Humanist in Africa: Letters to Colin M. Morris (London:
Longmans, Green, and Co., Ltd., 1966).
Michael Burawoy, The Colour of Class on the Copper Mines: From African Advancement to Zambianization, Zambian Papers No. 7 (Lusaka: University of Zambia Institute for African Studies, 1972).
Western Control describing a range of constraints the Kaunda government faced early in its
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administration.
Although published in the 1990s, James Ferguson's Expectations of Modernity:
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Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt is based upon fieldwork he
conducted in the late 1980s. Ferguson documented a time of decline in the mines' history just a few years before President Kaunda was voted out of office and the idea of privatizing state owned enterprises gained increasing prominence. From Ferguson's examination until now, the most detailed studies of the mines appear to be predominantly economically based and may be found in World Bank related documents and reports.
1.5.2 Organizational outline and thematic highlights
The case begins in chapter two with an historical narrative that attempts to highlight circumstances not widely known or recounted when the story of Zambia's mine privatization program is usually told. The next chapter, describing research methods used to conduct the case study, is placed where it is to represent a clear starting point for the present effort.
Additionally, the descriptions of research methods make more sense once some contextual background is known. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 contain the heart of the case. They are organized around basic points at which differences in perspective can so easily first appear. These points concern why, what, and who—questions typically asked as we attempt to make sense of circumstances encountered in our everyday lives. The final chapter will draw conclusions and suggest implications for revised theological thinking to inform development policymaking and practice. $
137 Antony Martin, Minding Their Own Business: Zambia's Struggle Against Western Control (London, Hutchinson & Co., 1972).
James Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999).
Chapter Two
The History Behind Zambia's Mine Privatization Program
Ask a geologist experienced in mining what skills are important for the job and the response may well concern an ability to think in a particular way.
[A]ny geologist worth his salt will know where he is underground in three dimensions...we've got to...be able to think in three dimensions. When you've got orebodies that are dipping and at varying angles, folds are forming...You've got to be able to think as you move, for example, from one level to another where that particular horizon—whether it be an orebody or something else you're looking at—where it's going to appear, reappear on the next level.1