I am a White
African. I was born in Zambia 63 years ago and moved to Zimbabwe when I was
four. My grandparents went from Pennsylvania to Zimbabwe in 1921, so my father
also grew up there. I have lived in Zambia and Zimbabwe for 22 years of my
life—including the first 15. At the core of my identity I am a White
Zimbabwean, who now lives as an American and Canadian in Manitoba.
What does it
mean to be a White African? At one level, it is simply to be human. What I say
of myself all of us may be able to say. To be an African is to be human, like
Asians and Europeans and Australasians and Americans. We are all sinners, and
we are all created as God’s images in the world. At another level, this is my
particular version of the human story.
1. To be a White African is to be broken.
Zimbabwe is a
broken country today. The past five years have stabilized somewhat, but the
first decade of this century saw inflation rise to several million percent a
year—such numbers are almost meaningless: they mean that the price of anything
would double every day. The present government is filled with corruption and
violence. Politically and economically we are broken. I am a White Zimbabwean, which
means also that I am a White Rhodesian. About 120 years ago White Settlers
moved into Zimbabwe and took over the country. Over the next five years the
indigenous people of Zimbabwe fought two wars to throw the settlers out; but
the outcome was over 80 years of White rule.
When I was seven
years old, I went to boarding school with the children of White commercial
farmers in Rhodesia. The settlers had many good qualities, but they were also deeply
racist. I imbibed that racism freely until I was 15 years old. To a great
extent I have learned new ways of thinking, but I know that deep down all of us
live with a personal story that shapes us in ways that we can’t even see. When
I refer to the problems of the present, I know that I belong to the White
Settler history that created the conditions for today. I grew up with people
who assumed that Black people were children, and that they needed White
people’s help to grow up. The problems of the present have roots in the past,
and I am part of that past.
Zambia’s history
is different, but the White contribution to its history is similar. The two
countries were known as Northern and Southern Rhodesia, and the White minority
ruled both countries. Northern Rhodesia received its independence in 1964 and
took the name Zambia; Southern Rhodesia had to wait another 16 years for
independence in 1980. Zambia is further down the road to economic and political
health, but it has had its own share of problems from the colonial past. To be
a White African is to be broken, to know that the evil I condemn has its roots
in my own being.
2. To be a White African is to be proud of
my country.
Zambia and
Zimbabwe share many cultural themes with the rest of southern and south-central
Africa. One of the best known of these themes is the concept of Ubuntu. Roughly translated Ubuntu means
Humanness. A common proverb in Zimbabwe says, “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”:
roughly paraphrased as “a person becomes fully human only in and through
community.” I need you to make me a real person. You need me to make you a real
person. The individual is not the centre of society; people in community are
the centre.
Some years ago
our nine-year old son expressed a desire to move back to Zimbabwe, which we had
left when he was five years old. I asked him, “What’s the difference between
Zimbabwe and Indiana?” He replied, “Well, in Zimbabwe they treat people like
people.” Wow! He nailed it.
In North America
we live in isolation, and sometimes we help others. We can be very generous,
but in the end we are a calculating culture. In Africa we live in community.
When someone we know needs help, we don’t ask how we can help; we just help. I
asked a friend how you know when to stop helping. He said, “You don’t ask. You
just keep helping out, and when they refuse your help you know they no longer
need it.”
I have a
Zimbabwean friend in Winnipeg. More precisely, my parents and his parents were
good friends, but that ties us together. His wife died a week and a half ago.
Last week I went in to visit, while they make plans for the funeral. The
difference between how we face death in Africa and in North America strikes me.
In Africa, we face death together. When someone dies, you do not leave the bereaved
person alone; we all grieve together. When the one who died is buried, we lower
the casket into the grave and fill up the grave ourselves, each one taking
turns. Here we leave the bereaved alone with their grief—we say, “They need
their space.” And at the graveside we commit the body to the grave and leave,
so that the professionals can lower the casket and fill in the grave.
Both North
America and Africa have their strengths and their weaknesses. One strength of
being an African is our emphasis on the person in community. Our orientation to
the importance of person over the importance of task is a valuable lesson for
task-oriented Western culture; just as the West’s preoccupation with procedures
can help Africa overcome systemic corruption.
I could draw out
other themes, but this is enough to say: To be a White African—to be an
African—is to be proud of the people and place I call home.
3. To be a White African is to know that
our real home is in Heaven.
A well-known song
in Zimbabwe goes like this: “We are pilgrims on this earth. We are going to our
home in Heaven. Even if our life on this earth is full of trouble, we are going
to our home in Heaven.” One of the implications of this truth is that we can
live by the standards of Heaven, we can live in God’s reign here and now on
earth, because we know that Heaven is the ultimate reality, and the violence
and oppression of this world is only temporary. This is a profound truth—that
pilgrims of God walking through our earthly homes can live well regardless of
the trouble around us.
You see, all of
us from Africa are Africans—Black Africans indigenous to the continent; Asian
Africans who came down the east coast; White Africans who came from the West;
Lebanese Africans who came from the Middle East. We are what Johnny Clegg calls
“Scatterlings of Africa”, gathered together on this continent and now scattered
out across the earth to all the continents of the world. And scattered across
the world we bear the gifts of Africa—especially the gift that we become truly
human when we are bound together in community.
This is a
reality that comes to fullness in the church, in the family of God, the body of
Christ. That’s why I asked for Ephesians 2 to be read earlier—out of the two
people of Zimbabwe (Black and White) God has made something new and united: the
People of God. This is our reality on the most Christian continent in the
world.
I think of the
church that I come from in Zimbabwe. Our name in English is “Brethren in
Christ”, taken from Paul’s greeting in Colossians 1: “To the faithful brethren
in Christ in Colosse” (KJV). But in Ndebele this name takes on deeper meaning:
Abazalwane bakaChristu”. Literally, “Brethren in Christ”, but this word
“abazalwane” means more than just BIC. If I call someone umzalwane, I mean that
this person who comes from the same womb as I do. Abazalwane: “people from the
same womb”—in Christ.
You look at my
skin and at the skin of a Black Zimbabwean, manifestly from different mothers.
But we are from the same womb in Christ. We are truly brothers and sisters,
bound together at the deepest most fundamental level possible—in Christ.
You see, I met
Jesus in Zimbabwe in 1962, in a White Baptist Church in Bulawayo among people
who loved the Lord but were racist to the core. I was baptized into the church
in Bulawayo in 1964, in a Black BIC Church with 30 some other Black young
people. In 1974 I grew greatly in the presence and filling of the Holy Spirit
as I knelt with over 100 black brothers and sisters as we sang, “Woza Moya
oyingcwele”: Come Holy Spirit. Four years later one of those black brothers (S.
Ndlovu) stood beside me as one of the groomsmen at my wedding.
I became a
pastor in Bulawayo in 1988 in a Black BIC Church with my brothers and sisters
there. In 1992 we returned to the USA to stay, which meant that I was leaving
home. It was the preaching of Shadrack Maloka, a Black South African, at our
General Conference that helped me to lay aside my desire to stay in my
Zimbabwean home, as we sang together words from the Lord’s Prayer, “Mayenziwe
intando yakho”—Let your will be done in my life.
Conclusion
To be a White
African is not the same experience for every White person from Africa. For me,
it is to be broken, to be aware of great good in the people around me, and to
be brought into the presence of God’s healing power that makes all of us one
family, children from the same womb. It is really, then, simply to be
human—because all of us in every country and culture are broken, aware of
goodness, and needing God’s healing. I thank God for healing me and giving me
himself through Africa.
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