06 March 2011
Andrea Muhrrteyn
Why We Are White Refugees
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The Reitz Four's 'Reconciliation' was conducted in accordance to the official defined “Reconciliation” policies of the University of the Free State's: International Institute for Race, Reconciliation and Social Justice; of whom Allan Boesak, former ANC provincial chairman is the dean.
For ignorant Reitz Four and/or Calvinist Christian readers: Please take note: Your Calvinist defintion of “Reconciliation” is not the definition of University of the Free State's: International Institute for Race, Reconciliation and Social Justice.
Their definition of Reconciliation is that of Black Liberation Theology. What is Black Liberation Theology and how do Black Liberation Theologists define “Reconciliation”?
Since they avoid defining what they mean by 'reconciliation' in the UFS International Institute for Race, Reconciliation and Social Justice constitution (PDF); the only option is to observe whom they appoint to implement their policies, and how they go about implementing their policies.
Alan Boesak is the Dutch Reformed Black Liberation Theologian, who instigated the World Alliance of Reformed Churches to declare apartheid a heresy. Mr. Boesak is the author of the Black Liberation Theology book: Farewell to Innocence: A Socio-Ethical Study on Black Theology and Black Power.
To observe the actions of how the International Institute for Race, Reconciliation and Social Justice implement the ANC, Tutu and Boesak's Black Liberation Theology “reconciliation” policy; see: Ubuntufied Legal Lynching: The Reitz 4 TRC Fraud Prostitution Circus.
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Boer Volkstaat 10/31/16 Theses: Petition to EU & Nato
Boer Volkstaat; or Jus Sanguinis EU Citizenship for African White Refugees
Boer Volkstaat Theses Briefing Paper
www.jussanguinis.com
Excerpt
3. Black Liberation Theology: Salvation/Liberation by Marxist Class Struggle, not Reconciliation / Forgiveness of Sins
Liberation Theology and the Marxism Leninism Worldview: Economic Salvation to replace Theological Salvation |
“The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods.” -- James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (p.62)
“While its true that blacks hate whites, black hatred is not racism” – James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (p15)
“There will be no peace… until whites begin to hate their whiteness, asking from the depths of their being: ‘How can we become black?’” – James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (Preface)
There is no place in this war of liberation for nice white people who want to avoid taking sides and remain friends with both the racists and the Negro.” – James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (p.15)
“Reconciliation to God means that white people are prepared to deny themselves (whiteness), take up the cross (blackness) and follow Christ (black ghetto).” – James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (p150)
“The black Christ is he who nourishes the rebellious impulse in blacks so that at the appointed time the black community can respond collectively to the white community as a corporate "bad nigger," lashing out at the enemy of humankind.” – James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (p.121)
“To be a disciple of the black Christ is to become black with him. Looting, burning, or the destruction of white property are not primary concerns. Such matters can only be decided by the oppressed themselves who are seeking to develop their images of the black Christ.” – James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (p.123)
Certainly if whites expect to be able to say anything relevant to the self determination of the black community, it will be necessary for them to destroy their whiteness by becoming members of an oppressed community. Whites will be free only when they become new persons-when their white being has passed away and they are created anew in black being. When this happens, they are no longer white but free, and thus capable of making decisions about the destiny of the black community. James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (p.97)
Black Liberation Theology provides further evidentiary argument clarifying how Black Liberation Theology’s perspectives to Forgiveness and Reconciliation are different to conventional Calvinist Christian perspectives to Forgiveness and Reconciliation. The importance of clarifying which concepts of Forgiveness and Reconciliation were being applied by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and how and why, under what Social Contract mandate negotiations, etc., demonstrate why it is imperative for provisions of legislation, to provide clear and concise definitions to clarify the meanings and perspectives of the abstract terms used, such as in this case ‘forgiveness’, ‘reconciliation’ etc. For in the absence of such sufficiently precise legislation people are unable to regulate their affairs with individuals from other cultures in accordance with the law.
In Liberation Theology on the Move in the United States, Bill McIlhany briefly explains the pre-cursor to the road to Liberation Theology, and Liberation Theologies perspective to Marxist dictatorships and the role of reconciliation and forgiveness:Throughout the 1960s, the major topic dominating the theological scene was secularization of the Gospel. Paul van Buren, author of The Secular Meaning of the Gospel, declared that the modern Christian must be a secular person with a secular understanding of existence. In other words, the world should dictate the content of the Christian message. With a secular savior, a secular mission, and a secular future, it was a short step to the “God-is-dead” theology of the later 1960s.
Then with a troublesome God out of the way, it was time to usher in Marx. So-called “theologians of hope,” like Jurgen Moltmann, called for a new understanding of the Kingdom of God where the future is shaped by the actions of men rather than the sovereignty of God.
.... In his book, A Guide to Liberation Theology for Middle Class Congregations, Charles H. Bayer, senior minister of the First Christian Church in St. Joseph, Missouri …. Argues that the Red Chinese despotism that has murdered an estimated 60 million Chinese since 1949 “has not only held out hope, but has significantly improved life for those who had been oppressed.”
.... The General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church (GBGM) has been a particularly ardent supporter of Liberation Theology. Bishop Roy I. Sano, President of GBGM, called it “blasphemous” for a United Methodist not to support Liberation Theology. He declared in 1984 that it is “profanity” in theology thinking when God’s salvation is seen only in acts of “reconciliation,” the forgiveness of sins, and rebirth in Christ.
Jesuit Origins of Liberation Theology
Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, O.P., a Jesuit Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest is regarded as one of the principal founders of liberation theology in Latin America.
In A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, Salvation (1971), Gutiérrez explains that true “liberation” has three main dimensions: First, it involves political and social liberation, the elimination of the immediate causes of poverty and injustice. Second, liberation involves the emancipation of the poor, the marginalised, the downtrodden and the oppressed from all “those things that limit their capacity to develop themselves freely and in dignity”. Third, liberation theology involves liberation from selfishness and sin, a re-establishment of a relationship with God and with other people.
Put differently, theological salvation took a back seat to economic salvations, thanks to the adoption of Karl Marx’s ideas and baptising Marxism with biblical stories and terminology. At its core, liberation theology is founded on Marxian economics, hence liberation theologians think to varying degrees exactly the same as Marxists. For them poor countries are not poor, because perhaps the people are involved in the population production of poverty, breeding beyond families financial capacities to care for the children, or because of corruption and incompetence, or because of a lack of focus and commitment on attaining an education and committed partner before procreating. To them poor countries have been made poor, and are kept poor and dependent, by capitalist oppressors.
 Vatican Assassins: The History of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), by Eric Jon Phelps [*Amazon*] [Vatican Assassins] [Eric Phelps: Answer to White Protestant Genocide in South Africa: Secession or Return to Europe] |
Jesus Christ all of a sudden is a guerrilla terrorist. They teach that radical political transformation is the central component of living out the Christian faith. Revolutionary action is the way to make Christian action effective for the poor. If Christians don’t get involved in the Revolutionary struggle and respond to the poor yearning for liberation, they become the oppressors. Since Jesus speaks to the poor, Christians not committed to the revolution have turned their backs on Christ. In Liberation Theology commitment to the revolution is essential to what it means to be a Christian.
In Vatican Assassins: Wounded in the House of my Friends: The Diabolical History of the Society of Jesus, Eric Jon Phelps says the following, quoting Murder in the Vatican, by Avro Manhattan about liberation theology in regards to the assassination of Pope John Paul I:“John Paul [1], had said that, the following morning he was going to read personally to Father Arrupe, the Jesuit General, a document which he had written himself. Although he did not reveal its nature, his companions guessed, it had something to do with Liberation Theology… the Jesuits, behind the whole movement of Liberation Theology, were supporting ever more openly, Communist guerrillas. Some of these movements, indeed, were even led by the Jesuit padres… Pope John Paul [1] had become perturbed about the whole problem… The new Pope, decided to start dealing with Father Arrupe. Perhaps with Father Arrupe’s dismissal.”
 The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church, by Malachi Martin [*Amazon*] |
In The Jesuits – The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church, Father Malachi Martin, a long time Jesuit and Roman Catholic in good standing describes how the Nicaragua people were the first guinea pigs on whom Liberation Theology was tested:[B]y the early seventies, at least seven years before their grab for power, the Sandinista leaders openly proclaimed their ultimate aim: to create a Marxist society in Nicaragua to serve as the womb from which Marxist revolution throughout Central America would be born. "Revolution throughout the Americas" was the slogan.
From their beginnings as a group, when they were nothing more than rag-tag guerrillas, bank robbers, and hit-and-run terrorists, the Sandinistas understood full well that they had no hope of installing a Marxist regime in 91.6 percent Roman Catholic Nicaragua unless they could enlist - in effect, inhale - the active cooperation of the Catholic clergy, together with suitably altered [Roman Catholic] Church doctrine and [Roman Catholic] Church structure.
Mere passive connivance on the part of the clergy would not be enough. If the Sandinistas wanted the very soul of the people, they knew the road: [Roman] Catholicism was inextricably bound up in the warp and woof of Nicaraguan culture, language, way of thinking, and outlook, and was integral to all the hope of the people.
Here, Fernando Cardenal, as [Roman Catholic] priest and Jesuit, was a towering influence.
For some time, certain [Roman] Catholic theologians in Latin America - principally Jesuits of the post-World War II period - had been developing a new theology. They called it the Theology of Liberation, and based it on the theories of their European counterparts.
It was an elaborate and carefully worked out system, but its core principle is very simple: The whole and only meaning of Christianity as a religion comes down to one achievement - the liberation of men and women, by armed and violent revolution if necessary, from the economic, social, and political slavery imposed on them by U.S. capitalism; this is to be followed by the establishment of "democratic socialism."
In this "theological" system, the so-called "option" for the economically poor and the politically oppressed, originally described as a "preferential" option by Catholic bishops in Latin America at their conference in Medellin, Colombia, in 1968, became totally exclusive: There was one enemy - capitalist classes, middle and upper and lower, chiefly located in the United States. Only the "proletariat" - the "people" - was to be fomented by the imposition of Marxism.
Liberation Theology was the perfect blueprint for the Sandinistas.
It incorporated the very aim of Marxist-Leninism. It presumed the classic Marxist "struggle of the masses" to be free from all capitalist domination. And above all, the Marxist baby was at last wrapped in the very swaddling clothes of ancient Catholic terminology. Words and phrases laden with meaning for the people were co-opted and turned upside down.
The historical Jesus, for example, became an armed revolutionary. The mystical Christ became all the oppressed people, collectively. Mary the Virgin became the mother of all revolutionary heroes. The Eucharist became the bread freely made by liberated workers. Hell became the capitalist system. The American president, leader of the greatest capitalist country, became the Great Satan. Heaven became the earthly paradise of the workers from which capitalism is abolished. Justice became the uprooting of capitalist gains, which would be "returned" to the people, to the "mystical body" of Christ, the democratic socialists of Nicaragua. The Church became that mystical body, "the people," deciding its fate and determining how to worship, pray, and live, under the guidance of Marxist leaders.
It was a brilliant synthesis, ready-made and just waiting for the activists who would set about erecting a new sociopolitical structure on its basis, as a building rises from a blueprint.
The Nicaraguan people were the first guinea pigs on whom the theory was experimentally tried. And the priests who were charter members in the Sandinista leadership - Jesuit Fernando Cardenal Ernesto Cardenal, Miguel D'Escoto Brockman of the Maryknoll Fathers, Jesuit Alvaro Arguello, Edgar Parrales of the Managua diocese - made the experiment doubly blessed and likely to succeed.
If such men, duly ordained as priests, could successfully get this new "theological" message across - that the Sandinista revolution was really a religious matter sanctioned by legitimate Church spokesmen - they would have both the [Roman] Catholic clergy and the people as allies in a Marxist-style revolution by armed violence.
‘Liberation Struggle’ Victimhood Handbook: Replacing Spiritual Theological Salvation with Marxist Socio-Economic Liberation
A short overview of Black Liberation Theology, also called Black Power Theology is available at: Know Your TRC-Reconciliation-Fraud History: Liberation Theology, Kairos, White Guilt, and Black Victimology Power, which includes lengthy excerpts from the founder of Black Liberation Theology, James H. Cone’s books:According to James. H. Cone and others, black liberation theology was the theological arm of black power seeking to relate the black struggle for freedom to the biblical claim regarding the justice of God. Black power itself was the political challenge to the non-violence preached by Martin Luther King. Decision making in favour of violence, was provided for within the tenets of black liberation theology.
Modern American origins of contemporary black liberation theology can be traced to July 31, 1966, when an ad hoc group of 51 black pastors, calling themselves the National Committee of Negro Churchmen (NCNC), bought a full page ad in the New York Times to publish their “Black Power Statement,” which proposed a more aggressive approach to combating racism using the Bible for inspiration.
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The Journal of Black Theology in South Africa was published by the Black Theology Project in Pretoria, from 1987 – 1994. It professed to be a scholarly publication dedicated to the exploration of African and Black theology and its growth and identity in relation to the national struggle for liberation in South Africa.
It was edited by Takatso A. Mofoken and Simon S. Maimela, with Contributing Editors of: (i) James H. Cone, Professor of Systematic Theology, UnionTheological Seminary, New York, the author of A Black Theology of Liberation, and Black Theology and Black Power; and (ii) Cornel West, Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Yale Divinity School, Conn.
As stated by Prof. S.S. Maimela in What do the Churches want and expect from Religious Education in Schools, as read from his speech on Religious Education in a Changing Society, at The College of Education, Pinetown, Natal in 1983:Put more pointedly, the question blacks are asking is not how do I have my life hereafter guaranteed but how de I find happiness, prosperity, security, employment a decent house and physical well being in a society in which I have no economic and sociopolitical power and role to play?
[..] In the light of the above questions, which are generated by a feeling of racial and socio-economic domination, it is obvious that for most members of our black churches liberation or a desire for a truly human freedom and realization of human worth through a meaningful participation in the structural changes of South African society is priority number one. And this raising of the question of human liberation from social oppression as priority number one should not be misunderstood as an indication that blacks have succumbed to the temptation of elevating the social and physical needs at the expense of the spiritual values. [..] Put differently, blacks do not for a moment believe that salvation is exclusively exhausted in the forgiveness of sins, because it also includes a reorientation of human life and the effecting of social liberation from all worldly powers that trample on human dignity. Therefore, if salvation is for the oppressed people and is to make them whole, it must be bound up with the institutions and structures than bind men and women of flesh and blood. Put in another way, without the transformation of this world into a new world, without the renewal of the sociopolitical conditions, blacks do not believe that salvation for individual souls is real and credible for people of flesh and blood. Indeed, the salvation of this world and salvation of individuals are so intertwined that salvation of one without the other is not really possible; unless one prefers to talk about salvation in the abstract.
As a result of Dutch Reformed Black Liberation Theologian Alan Boesak’s instigation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches declared apartheid a heresy. Mr. Boesak is the author of Farewell to Innocence: A Socio-Ethical Study on Black Theology and Black Power.
6. Black Consciousness & Fanon’s Handbook for Black Liberation: ‘Violence as a cleansing Liberating Force’
 Farewell to Innocence: A Socio-Ethical Study on Black Theology and Black Power, By Allan A. Boesak [*Amazon*] |
“Black theology will accept only a love of God which participates in the destruction of the white oppressor. With Fanon black theology takes literally Jesus' statement, "the last will be first, and the first last:" Black power "is the putting into practice of this sentence."" -- James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (p.72)
“I wish to be acknowledged not as Black but as white . . . who but a white woman could do this for me? By loving me she proves that I am worthy of white love. I am loved like a white man. I am a white man. Her noble love takes me onto the road of self realization—I marry white culture, white beauty, white whiteness. When my restless hands grasp those white breasts, they grasp white civilization and dignity and make them mine.” (1952:188) -- Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
“Victimology condones weakness in failure. It tacitly stamps approval on failure, lack of effort, and criminality. Behaviors and patterns that are self-destructive are often approved of as cultural or are presented as unpreventable consequences from previous systemic patterns.” -- Anthony Bradley, Liberating Black Theology
This chapter provides further evidentiary argument to the ANC’s lack of argument for their alleged Just War principles of Last Resort and Right Intention. As detailed in Fanon’s Handbook for Black Liberation, violence was not considered a last resort, but the essential ingredient to be achieved for ‘liberation’ to occur. Liberation was not possible, for the ‘colonized mind’, without violence.
Additional evidence is provided for the argument that proponents of Black Liberation Theology have an entirely different meaning for concepts of Forgiveness and Reconciliation, than for example: citizens who are Calvinist Christians, or Radical Honesty Futilitarians. If it is true that Legal Oppression is maintained by vague definitions, it is even more true that legal oppression can be maintained by no definitions for key concepts. In a multi-cultural society the rule of law requires that legislation must be sufficiently precise in its meanings and definitions for citizens to be able to regulate their affairs thereto in accordance to law.
In 'Frantz Fanon': The Doctor Prescribed Violence, Adam Shatz, writes:When the third world was the great hope of the international left -- three very long decades ago, in other words -- no book had a more seductive mystique than ''The Wretched of the Earth.'' Its author, Frantz Fanon, was a psychiatrist, originally from Martinique, who had become a spokesman for the Algerian revolution against French colonialism. He was black, dashing and, even better, a martyr -- succumbing to leukemia at the age of 36, a year before Algeria's independence in 1962. Fanon was hardly alone in championing the violent overthrow of colonialism. But his flair for incendiary rhetoric was unmatched.
If ''The Wretched of the Earth'' was not ''the handbook for the black revolution,'' as its publisher boasted, it was certainly a sourcebook of revolutionary slogans. (Eldridge Cleaver once said that ''every brother on a rooftop can quote Fanon.'') ''Violence,'' Fanon argued most famously, ''is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.'' This was mau-mauing with Left Bank panache. Not to be upstaged, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in his preface, ''To shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time.''
[He concludes] In Algeria, as in most of Africa, independence was no sooner achieved than it was confiscated by generals, bureaucrats and economic elites. Although Fanon remains indispensable for his writings on race and colonialism, his utopian program for the third world has gone the way of the colonial empires whose doom he foretold.
Handbook for Black Liberation by Cleansing Violent Revolution: What did Frantz Fanon Say in The Wretched of the Earth:Decolonization is the veritable creation of new men. But this creation owes nothing of its legitimacy to any supernatural power; the "thing" which has been colonized becomes man during the same process by which it frees itself…..
The native who decides to put the program into practice, and to become its moving force, is ready for violence at all times. From birth it is clear to him that this narrow world, strewn with prohibitions, can only be called in question by absolute violence.
.... The settlers' town is a strongly built town, all made of stone and steel. It is a brightly lit town; the streets are covered with asphalt, and the garbage cans swallow all the leavings, unseen, unknown and hardly thought about.[…] The settler's town is a well-fed town, an easygoing town; its belly is always full of good things. The settlers' town is a town of white people, of foreigners.
The town belonging to the colonized people, or at least the native town, the Negro village, the medina, the reservation, is a place of ill fame, peopled by men of evil repute. They are born there, it matters little where or how; they die there, it matters not where, nor how. It is a world without spaciousness; men live there on top of each other, and their huts are built one on top of the other. The native town is a hungry town, starved of bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of light. The native town is a crouching village, a town on its knees, a town wallowing in the mire. It is a town of niggers and dirty Arabs. The look that the native turns on the settler's town is a look of lust, a look of envy; it expresses his dreams of possession—all manner of possession: to sit at the settler's table, to sleep in the settler's bed, with his wife if possible. The colonized man is an envious man. And this the settler knows very well; when their glances meet he ascertains bitterly, always on the defensive, "They want to take our place." It is true, for there is no native who does not dream at least once a day of setting himself up in the settler's place.
.... In the colonies, the foreigner coming from another country imposed his rule by means of guns and machines. In defiance of his successful transplantation, in spite of his appropriation, the settler still remains a foreigner. It is neither the act of owning factories, nor estates, nor a bank balance which distinguishes the governing classes. The governing race is first and foremost those who come from elsewhere, those who are unlike the original inhabitants, "the others."
The destruction of the colonial world is no more and no less that the abolition of one zone, its burial in the depths of the earth or its expulsion from the country.
In the colonial context the settler only ends his work of breaking in the native when the latter admits loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white man's values. In the period of decolonization, the colonized masses mock at these very values, insult them, and vomit them up.
For the native, life can only spring up again out of the rotting corpse of the settler. This then is the correspondence, term by term, between the two trains of reasoning.
.... But it so happens that for the colonized people this violence, because it constitutes their only work, invests their characters with positive and creative qualities. The practice of violence binds them together as a whole, since each individual forms a violent link in the great chain, a part of the great organism of violence which has surged upward in reaction to the settler's violence in the beginning. The groups recognize each other and the future nation is already indivisible. The armed struggle mobilizes the people; that is to say, it throws them in one way and in one direction.
The mobilization of the masses, when it arises out of the war of liberation, introduces into each man's consciousness the ideas of a common cause, of a national destiny, and of a collective history. In the same way the second phase, that of the building-up of the nation, is helped on by the existence of this cement which has been mixed with blood and anger. Thus we come to a fuller appreciation of the originality of the words used in these underdeveloped countries. During the colonial period the people are called upon to fight against oppression; after national liberation, they are called upon to fight against poverty, illiteracy, and underdevelopment. The struggle, they say, goes on. The people realize that life is an unending contest.
We have said that the native's violence unifies the people. By its very structure, colonialism is separatist and regionalist. Colonialism does not simply state the existence of tribes; it also reinforces it and separates them. The colonial system encourages chieftaincies and keeps alive the old Marabout confraternities. Violence is in action all-inclusive and national. It follows that it is closely involved in the liquidation of regionalism and of tribalism. Thus the national parties show no pity at all toward the caids and the customary chiefs. Their destruction is the preliminary to the unification of the people.
At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.
In Fanon and the Concept of Colonial Violence, Robert C. Smith argues that Marxist critics of Fanon’s “fanatical” advocacy of violence and terrorism fail to understand that both Fanon and Marx were seeking “by whatever means necessary” to ‘end the exploitation of man by men’, and that Marx’s analysis had a Euro-centric bias, by overemphasising the socio-economic at the expense of the psychological. He concludes that Fanon is more of a Marxist than any of his Marxian critics, who “are more bourgeois in “outlook” than the bourgeoisie”:Fanon departs most sharply from Marx in his understanding of the functions of violence in the revolutionary process. Violence was not key to Marx’s analysis of revolution; he agreed that violence would probably be necessary because the bourgeoisie would in all likelihood resist its demise violently; however, he did admit the possibility of nonviolent revolutionary change in certain advanced industrial societies, notably the United States and Britain.
Thus, although Marx expects violence to be a part of the revolutionary process, he does not consider it historically necessary nor does he make the concept central to his analysis. For Fanon, the exact reverse seems to be the case. He argued that violence was indispensable in the decolonization process, a categorical imperative, without which one could not talk of revolution—or at least one could only talk of it.
In his essay, “Toward the Liberation of Africa,” he writes: “Violence alone, committed by the people, violence organized and educated by its leaders, makes it possible for the masses to understand social truths and gives the key to them. Without that struggle, without that knowledge of the practice of action, there is nothing save a minimum of readaptation, a few reforms, at the top, a flag waving: and down there at the bottom an undivided masses still living in the middle ages, endlessly marking time” (1967:118).
To understand Fanon’s insistence on the absolute necessity of violence, one has to understand that violence is more than a mere political method or tool to force the removal of the European oppressor; for Fanon, it is a vital means of psychic and social liberation. He writes, “Violence is man recreating himself: the native cures himself through force of arms.” Thus, unlike Marx, Fanon seems to imply that even if the colonialists peacefully withdraw, the decolonization process is somehow aborted, that liberation is incomplete—the native remains an enslaved person in the neo-colonial social system.
The native’s inner violence remains pent up, unexpressed and is likely to explode in renewed inter-tribal war, civil war, coups or other forms of post independence civil violence, deprived of its only viable outlet—the settler. Thus, the function of violence is only incidentally political; it’s main function is psycho-social. He writes: “The native’s weapon is proof of his humanity. For in the first days of the revolt you must kill—to shoot down a white man is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: (1963:71).
Fanon seems to have reached this conclusion from generalizations drawn from case studies of the psyches of the oppressed and the oppressor in Algeria. From this psychoanalytic work he “desired” certain assumptions about the nature of colonialism, and liberation. First, he assumed that colonialism, by nature, is violent.
Fanon writes: “Colonialism . . . is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence. The policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action, maintain contract with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. It is obvious here that government speaks the language of pure force. The intermediary does not lighten the oppression nor seek to hide the domination; he shows them up and puts them into practice with the clear conscience of an upholder of peace; yet he is the bringer of violence into the home and into the mind of the native” (1963:91).
He further argues that colonialism creates in the native a perpetual tendency toward violence, a “tonicity of muscles” which is deprived of an outlet. Hence, the phenomena of “Niggers Killing Niggers on Saturday Night.”
Here he seems to imply that this violence is inevitable, that it must be expressed if the colonial personality and society is to be free. He argues that it is incorrect to view this violence as the effect of hatred or the resurrection of savage instincts. On the contrary, he suggests that, given the colonial context, it is the only way the “wretched of the earth” can be free.11 For Marx, violence served no such purpose; and here, Fanon is probably more Sorelian than Marxist.12 Indeed, Marx probably would have recoiled in horror at Fanon’s violence thesis. Yet, one must remember that Marx was dealing with an alienated personality, Fanon with a dehumanized one. At the level of colonized individual, Fanon writes: “For the native, life can only spring up again out of the rotting corpse of the settler” (1963:43).13
Black Liberation Theology and Franz Fanon’s role in Biko’s Black Consciousness
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In The Essential Steve Biko, Mandisi Majavu writes:In all Biko's work and statements, the Frantz Fanon influence can be detected. Even the concept of a black consciousness in liberating black people from their own psychological oppression is a cornerstone of Fanon's argument.
Be that as it may, Biko was undoubtedly the most articulate spokesperson for black people during the early 1970s. He could pinpoint problems black people were facing in this country at that time - their own feelings of inferiority and self-hate.
This argument is supported in Frantz Fanon and Black Consciousness in Azania (South Africa), by Thomas K. Ranuga:The black is a black man; that is, as a result of a series of aberrations of affect, he is rooted at the core of a universe from which he must be extricated. The problem is important. I propose nothing short of the liberation of the man of colour from himself. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
The emergence of the Black Consciousness philosophy in the late 1960s is one of the most important ideological developments ever to take place in the evolution of African political thought in Azania. This philosophy surfaced at a time when above-ground black political activities were virtually nonexistent in Azania following the banning of the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) by the white racist government in 1960. It was at this critical historical juncture that the alienation of black youth from dominant white society found concrete expression in the categorical rejection of white liberal leadership by the newly formed all-black South African Students Organisation (SASO) which laid the foundation for and became the cradle of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) of Azania. The founders of SASO advocated the adoption of a radical political ideology which, in addition to its deep roots in orthodox African nationalism, borrowed major elements from the revolutionary writings of Frantz Fanon. It is the purpose of this analysis to show the dynamic link between the radical ideas of Frantz Fanon and the philosophy of Black Consciousness as propounded and effectively articulated by Steve Biko, the black militant who has come to be known as the father of Black Consciousness in Azania. The major ideas to be focussed upon pertain to political consciousness, the role of white liberals in black liberation movements and the crucial question of total liberation.
The Colonized Mind
Partly because of his training in psychiatry and partly because of his personal involvement in revolutionary activities, Fanon was greatly preoccupied with and deeply distressed by one major legacy of colonialism and imperialism, the paralyzing inferiority complex of blacks and their abject idolization of whites as their role models. His writings were aimed principally at galvanizing the physically and mentally colonized people of the Third World to rise up and retrieve their self-esteem, dignity and freedom and thus resume their rightful place as respectable members of the World community. His major analytical focus was the mind or consciousness as the repository of crippling fears and debilitating complexes. Blacks had to realize that the fear of whites and the attendant inferiority complex were direct products of the colonized mind.
According to Sweden and National Liberation in Southern Africa: Solidarity and Assistance by Tor SellströmBlack Consciousness Before Soweto [Uprising]
Largely inspired by the 1960’s black power movement in the United States – but also by the writings of Frantz Fanon and the policies of Julius Nyerere in Tanzania – the philosophy of black consciousness was developed towards the end of the decade by Steve Biko, Barney Pityana and other young black university students of the post-Sharpeville generation. As stated by the former BCM activists Mokoape, Mtintos and Nhlapo,
[t]he cornerstone of Biko’s thinking was that black people must look inwardly at themselves, reflect on their history, examine the reasons for past failures and ask themselves […]: ‘What makes the black man fail to tick?’
Emphasising assertiveness and self-esteem, under the slogan ‘Black man, you are on your own!’ black consciousness maintained that the oppression of blacks was both psychological and physical, respectively described as ‘Phase One’ and ‘Phase Two’. During an initial period, the efforts focused on the psychological aspects…… While it was relatively uncomplicated to address ‘Phase One’, it was considerably moredifficult – and in the longer term divisive – to approach ‘Phase Two’. This required a clear strategic objective and definite tactics with regard to alliances and methods of struggle. Mokoape, Mtintso and Nhlapo have recalled how
The questions relating to ‘Phase [Two]’ went largely unanswered […] in BC[M] circles. [I]t was often stated that when the time came, ‘the people will decide’. However, within informal sessions there was a strong recognition of the need for armed struggle. Yet, even those who agreed that this was an absolute necessity were still baffled by the ‘how’.
[Steve Biko makes numerous attempts to schedule meetings with the PAC and ANC, to give military training to BCM members]
As Pityana later noted: “Steve Biko would have come out of South Africa to try to bring some order into the situation and encourage people to have a creative relationship with the ANC.. […] [E]specially the situation among BC[M] people in Botswana was very bad. There were lots of factions and it was necessary that those who really did want to get involved in armed combat could be trusted. Steve would have explored the possibility of BCM engaging in open political struggle internally in South Africa and of letting those who wanted to be involved in armed struggle do so through ANC. Essentially that is what he was going to explore.(Interview with Barney Pityana, pp. 188-89)
Finally, a third – for the apartheid regime potentially much more ominous – meeting was in utmost secrecy planned to take place in Gaborone, Botstwana, in early September 1977. It was not only to involve Biko and Tambo, but also Olof Palme, the leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. It would have brought together South Africa’s foremost internal black politician, representing the post Sharpeville generation; the head of the strongest liberation movement, commanding a sizeable military force; and the representative of a leading donor country, also acting on behalf of a powerful international political community. As later stated by the South African security officer Craig Williamson: “That was bad news”
In May the Black God Stand Please! Biko’s Challenge to Religion, Professor Tinyiko Sam Maluleke Executive Director: Research, University of South Africa and President: South African Council of Churches, describes Steve Biko’s views on Christianity and Black Liberation Theology:[Biko] saw black Theology as the only way to salvage Christianity for the black masses. Otherwise Christianity would remain an imposed religion whose role was the maintenance of subjugation – always making Blacks feel like the ‘unwanted step children of God’. Therefore, Black Theology was seen as ‘a situational interpretation of Christianity [meant to restore) meaning and direction in the black man’s understanding of God’. He therefore advocated waging an intellectual and theological battle within Christianity because ‘too many are involved in religion for the blacks to ignore... the only path open for us now is to redefine the message of the Bible and to make it relevant’. Central to the making of the Bible relevant was the reimagination and reinterpretation of Jesus as a ‘fighting God’ – the beginnings of a search for a Black Christology.
In SA Students Organisation (SASO) September 1970 edition, in I Write What I Like: “We Blacks”, Steve Biko writing under his ‘Frank –Talk’ pseudonym has the following to say about Black Liberation Theology:What of the white man’s religion – Christianity? ..[..] To this date black people find no message for them in the bible simply because our ministers are still too busy with moral trivialities. They blow these up as the most important things that Jesus had to say to people. They constantly urge the people to find fault with themselves and by so doing detract from the essence of the struggle in which the people are involved. Deprived of spiritual content, the black people read the bible with a gullibility that is shocking. [..] Obviously the only path open for us now is to redefine the message in the bible and to make it relevant to the struggling masses. The bible must not be seen to preach that all authority is divinely institute. It must rather preach that it is a sin to allow oneself to be oppressed. The bible must continually be shown to have something to say to the black man to keep him going in his long journey towards realisation of the self. This is the message implicit in “black theology.” Black theology seeks to do away with spiritual poverty of the black people.
The August 1971 edition published the findings of The Commission on Black Theology, whose investigations on Black Theology in S. Africa “were geared towards Black Consciousness,” and the “role of theology in the Black man’s struggle.” It proceeds to reprint Resolution 57/71 on Black Theology
The September 1971 edition included Black Theology: A Re-Assessment of the Christ, by Vic Mafungo , which once again focussed on the importance of “solving the political and social problems of the Black people and an ability to see this as an essential aspect of the meaning of salvation.” It also included, Black Consciousness and the Quest for True Humanity, which was the text of an address given by Steve Biko, the 1969/70 President of SASO to a Black Theology seminar in Maritzburg on 18 August, 1971. Biko sets out what he calls “the case for Black theology”, and his justification for why Black theology “wants to describe Christ as a fighting God and not a passive God who accepts a lie unchallenged”, for “an important part of Black Consciousness” is relating God and Christ once more to the Black man and his daily problems.
In the May 1972 edition Jayaprakashen Terwaran provides a Review of Essays on Black Theology, describing it as “much a book on theology as the Bible is on Politics,” which “exposes the western oriented lie that religion and politics are separate entities.” In James H. Cone’s essay he says “Black Theology puts Black identity in a theological context, showing that Black Power is not only consistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ it is the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
In the November 1972 edition, Rev. E.N Bartman address at the 1972 Methodist Conference is published, The Significance of the Development of Black Consciousness for the Church.
In the March 1973 edition, Black Theology Conference: An Assessment details the discussions held from 13-16 February at the YMCA in Edenvale, Pietermaritzburg, which among others called for an independent, viable and dependable Black Theology Agency in SA, to take over from the Black Theology Project of the University Christian Movement. An interim Committee was elected, consisting of: Dr. Manas Buthelezi (Natal Regional Director, Christian Institute), Rev. M. Makhaye (Rector, St. Johns’s Anglican Parish, Umtata); Mr. B.A. Khoapa (Director, SPROCAS 2, Black Community Programmes); Rev. Maquia (President, African Independent Churches Association). The edition also contains an interview of James Cone, the leading Black American exponent of the Black Theology Movement, by Mervyn Josie – Our Acting Vice-President, International, titled James Cone – Mervyn Josie.
Journal of Black Liberation Theology in South Africa
Inconvenient Truth: Black Racism and White Guilt |
The Journal of Black Theology in South Africa was published by the Black Theology Project in Pretoria, from 1987 to 1994 and was dedicated to the exploration of African and Black theology and its growth and identity in relation to the national struggle for liberation. Editor was Mr. Takatso A. Mofokeng, and Contributing Editor: James H. Cone, Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary, New York, U.S.A, author of A Black Theology of Liberation and Black Theology and Black Power:
In the November 1989 edition of Journal of Black Theology in South Africa, a brief history of Black Liberation Theology in South Africa is provided, documenting the arrival of Black Liberation Theology in South Africa as 1968:It is now twenty one years since the first conference on Black Theology was held in South Africa. It is therefore proper for us to pause for a moment, look back in the corridors of theological history again. We also need to refresh our memory of the greatest theological development ever to take place on this southern most tip of Africa. When we think back to the early days of Black Theology in South Africa, we can remember many names of black theologians who had a hand in its formation. All these names are important to us to remember because they are milestones on the long and glorious track of Black Theology in our search for liberation and theological self-expression. Among the names which need to be remembered is that of Steve Bantu Biko who, though not a theologian, was able to make theological history with his philosophical contribution. In his speech entitled Black Consciousness and the quest for true humanity, Steve Biko linked Black Consciousness and Black Theology in a way in which no one in South Africa had done before. Ever since he made that linkage many theologians, social scientists and philosophers have debated and discussed Black Theology within the context of Black Consciousness and Black Consciousness within the context of Black Theology. That debate still rages even today. In this issue of our journal we include one article that continues this discussion within our changed situation in which confusion reigns supreme. In the next article the author takes us back again. This time to the history that, according to him, could explain the emergence of Liberation Theology. He takes us back to that theological movement which, though short lived, shocked the conservative theological world and excited those christians who had been searching for the relevance of the gospel in society. In this present article the author traces the link between Liberation Theology and the American social gospel movement. In our own time and on our continent, especially at this southern most tip of it, it is not possible to discuss liberation and avoid questions on the relevance of socialism, not only for the future of oppressed and poor people, but also for that of christianity. You will therefore find an article exploring the relationship between Christianity and socialism in this issue.
As a result of Dutch Reformed Black Liberation Theologian Alan Boesak’s instigation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches declared apartheid a heresy. Mr. Boesak is the author of Farewell to Innocence: A Socio-Ethical Study on Black Theology and Black Power.
» » » » [Excerpt: Boer Volkstaat 10/31/16 Theses]
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