What we talk about when we talk about “Africa”

On December 24, 2013December 24, 2013 By Jesse ZinkIn SudanLeave a comment

About a year ago, there was this excellent satirical video that encouraged Africans to send heaters to Norway to help address the cold.

If all you knew about Norway was what you saw in those clips, you would think it was pretty awful, right?

I have been thinking about that video as I read coverage of the unfolding disasters in South Sudan and the Central African Republic. The conflicts exemplify the two ways that international media have to report on conflict in sub-Saharan Africa.

First, there’s the Christian-Muslim frame. The violence is seen as the result of hostility between followers of two great faiths. We have seen this in the last month in reporting on the Central African Republic. The archetype for this reporting is the ongoing violence in Nigeria.

Second, there’s the “ancient tribal hatreds” frame. This is the theme that has dominated coverage of the violence in South Sudan. (This Guardian story, for instance.) The Dinka and the Nuer are said to be at each other’s throats as they always have been. There is little analysis of just how “ancient” these “hatreds” are and how real a construct the “tribes” are. The archetype for this reporting is the Rwandan genocide, which usually, before long, gets invoked in this kind of reporting.

There are many problems with these frames. “Tribes,” as is now widely recognized by scholars, were frequently a creation of colonial governments. Prior to the arrival of the British in southern Sudan, for instance, the lines between Dinka and Nuer were permeable and fluid. The British wanted to firm up these boundaries to facilitate their policy of indirect rule. This is not to say that people do not now identify as Dinka or Nuer, but it is to say that the reason for the violence is not lost in some pre-historic “mists of time” but is the result of actual decisions made by outsiders.

The other major problem with both frames is that it encourages the reader to throw up their hands and walk away. If you read the comments after some of these articles, count how many times people say something like, “Well, if they’ve just been killing each other for so long, why should we intervene and risk our own lives in a never-ending conflict?” That would be a good question—if it were based in reality.

Moreover, these frames neglect the actual voices of people on the ground. No reporters that I have seen appear at all interested in interviewing people who do not fit into their “tribal” schema. Yet if you listen to church leaders in South Sudan speaking across the Dinka-Nuer divide or follow the Twitter hashtag #MyTribeIsSouthSudan, you can see that there is a lot more complexity here than gets reported.

What none of this reporting seems to acknowledge is the real reason for these conflicts: leadership. What is happening in South Sudan right now, is in large measure, the result of the inability of the country’s leaders to address their differences without resorting to violence. Time and again in these last days, I have thought back to Chinua Achebe’s famous opening to his book The Trouble with Nigeria: “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.”

Another way of saying this is that the conflict in South Sudan is a political conflict. And political conflicts between leaders have solutions: create institutions that can credibly address conflict; educate and raise up other leaders; reduce the huge number of weapons that are present in situations like this so that if violence happens it is less destructive; create opportunities for people from different backgrounds to come together in peace. None of these are easy tasks. All of them take huge amounts of energy and time. None are guaranteed to succeed. But that doesn’t mean we should not continue to try them.

The one thing, above all, that would change how we think about “Africa” is if we would simply listen to the voices of Africans. This would challenge our listening abilities in many ways. But there is simply no substitute for listening to how people experience, perceive, and understand what is happening to them.

Christians around the world are preparing to celebrate the Feast of the Incarnation, in which God came to share human existence in a deep, intimate, and loving way. How can we begin to learn about, understand, and share the experiences of our sisters and brothers around the world?

(And, of course, if you haven’t, you should read, “How to Write about Africa” by Binyavanga Wainaina.)

Disaster and Displacement: Sudan’s exilic church

On December 22, 2013 By Jesse ZinkIn Sudan4 Comments

In the last fifty years, the great shaping force for the church in southern Sudan has been displacement. This week, as some southern Sudanese have once again been displaced, I find myself wondering what the impact will be on the church.

During Sudan’s first civil war, from 1955 to 1972, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced from their homes in the Equatoria region in the far southern part of the country. Some ended up in refugee camps in Uganda, Zaire, and the Central African Republic. But most were displaced within the country. They fled away from the unsafe roads and deep into the bush. Whether externally- or internally-displaced, one thing these refugees did was re-create the church in their new homes. Towards the end of the war, one Sudanese pastor wrote to his British bishop from the bush: “Do not be sad for us. We are still going on with our work, and the Church is still growing in this area. We have no leader or bishops to help us but here we have our great Bishop. He is leading us in the great difficulties of our work.” When the war ended, people began to return home. They interpreted their experience in Biblical terms. The picture on the left shows returning refugees with a banner quoting Jeremiah: “Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them. The returnees.”

Sudan’s second civil war, from 1983 to 2005, similarly displaced hundreds of thousands of people, though many were from the middle band of the country, places like Jonglei, Lakes, and Bahr el Ghazal. Again, whether displaced in refugee camps in Ethiopia, Kenya, or Uganda, or within Sudan, these people re-created the church where they were. In the Ethiopian refugee camps in the late 1980s, there were multi-day services where thousands of people were baptized. In Kenya in the 1990s, one bishop confirmed several thousand over the course of a three-day service. In Ugandan refugee camps, a committee laboured to create a new hymnal to share with others some of the huge number of hymns that were being written by new converts during the war. (I wrote about this in an earlier post as well.)

A church service at Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, c. 1995

Many people were displaced within the country. In the centre of the country, some Anglicans founded a Bible school at a place deep in the bush called Dhiaukuei. It became a place where Christians came for Bible training, literacy education, and mutual support. Every year between Christmas and New Year’s, thousands of internally-displaced southerners would gather for a giant celebration of the nativity. It was a chance to be strengthened by the bonds they shared as one people in Christ before returning to their villages and the uncertain future that awaited them.

A quiet moment at Dhiaukuei Bible School, c. 1995

I know this because this is the area of research for my doctoral dissertation. These are stories that I have been privileged to hear in the course of my oral history interviews. But there’s also another theme I have heard repeatedly: when displaced, these church members felt like the rest of the church around the world had forgotten about them. Time and time again I have seen in the letters that survive from this period the theme, “We are all members of the body of Christ. But how come you Christians around the world are ignoring us?” For instance, between 1983 and 1991 over 400,000 southern Sudanese sought refuge in camps in Ethiopia. In that time, a single British pastor—a man named Tim Biles—came to visit Anglicans there. In April, I interviewed the southern Sudanese pastor in charge of one of the camps. Out of the blue, he asked me if I knew Tim Biles. I said I did. The Sudanese pastor looked straight at me: “You tell Tim Biles we still remember him. Of all the world, he was the only one who remembered us when we were suffering in Ethiopia.” Tim Biles visited the camp for one day twenty-five years ago. By embodying the reality of the body of Christ, he had an incredible impact on the church.

When he was archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey visited Dhiaukuei. I have spoken to many people who remember that visit. It is clear the memory of it has not dimmed one bit in the intervening twenty years. One woman told me that when he came, “We thought, ‘OK, if part of our body from a different part of the world came to visit us, then the message of Jesus Christ which said, “We are all parts of the same body,” is true.'”

As I have read the news in the last week from South Sudan (not to mention in the last month from the Central African Republic), I have been struck—and disturbed—by how similar it is to reports from Sudan’s two previous civil wars. This week, I have been trying to contact Daniel, the priest who translated for me on a recent visit to South Sudan, but have learned only that he is one of many people who have fled into the bush. Those of us who rely on computers for communication know little about what is going on. But if past experience is any guide, we can be sure of one thing: the church is there, interpreting the experience for its members and, in turn, being shaped by the experience.

To use the Biblical term, the church in South Sudan is an exilic church. It is a church whose members know both what it is like to wander in the wilderness and what it is like to have been driven from their Jerusalem and into foreign lands. I wish it weren’t so. I wish that Sudan had known more peace in the last fifty years. But exile is part of life in our fallen world, though its burden falls more heavily on some than on others. For those of us who do not share the experience of exile, the question is: how do we embody the reality of our relations as one body in Jesus Christ and help bear the burden of exile?

(Some of the photos in this post have been collected from private individuals in the course of my doctoral research. Please do not use them without first contacting me. The themes in this post are adapted from my chapter in the forthcoming Oxford History of Anglicanism and from my new book, Backpacking through the Anglican Communion.)

Bor and Jonglei, the church and state—a history of deep inter-connection

On December 21, 2013December 23, 2013 By Jesse ZinkIn Sudan9 Comments

As violence continues in South Sudan, attention has come to be focused on Bor and Jonglei state. It is not surprising. This is a region that has played a key role in the history of the country—and the church. As events continue to unfold there, they are sure to continue to shape the country and the churchThe region that is now Jonglei state has long had a variety of ethnicities—Dinka, Nuer, Murle, and others. While it is tempting for outsiders to see these as fixed, concrete, “tribal” identities, it seems more likely that before the colonial period the boundaries between ethnicities were fluid and shifting. Dinka and Nuer, for instance, had much in common in terms of religion, language, etc. It was the British colonialists who insisted on fixing identities more firmly because it made them easier to rule.

Sudan’s second civil war more or less began with an army mutiny at Bor in 1983. In 1991, the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army, which had grown out of that 1983 mutiny, split. The leader of the breakaway faction was Riak Machar, who has become a key player in the confusing events of the past week. In November 1991, with the support of the Khartoum government, his forces unleashed what became known as the “Bor Massacre,” in which several thousand Dinka around Bor were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced into an international Dinka diaspora that persists to this day. This event, more than any other, politicized ethnic identities in Jonglei and resulted in factional violence that was the most catastrophic part of the civil war.

Nathaniel Garang Anyieth, first Anglican bishop of Bor, c. 1992

The church has been present in the midst of all this history as well. The first Anglican mission station in southern Sudan was founded about six miles south of Bor, at a place called Malek, in 1906 among the Dinka. For a variety of reasons, the missionaries didn’t have much success. It wasn’t until 1984 that an Anglican bishop was consecrated for Bor. His name was Nathaniel Garang Anyieth and shortly after his consecration, Bor was attacked by the Khartoum government. Bor essentially emptied, as its residents fled for safety to their home villages or into the deep and inaccessible marshes along the Nile River.

Bishop Nathaniel was among those who fled. For the next five or six years, he moved among his people in these rural areas, cut off from the world but ministering all the same. At Lambeth 1988, he was referred to as the “Lost Bishop” because no one knew what had happened to him. Finally, in 1990, he was able to re-establish contact with the outside world—and he had quite the story to tell. The Dinka had turned to Christianity in great numbers and he had been baptizing, training, and ordaining just about as fast as he could.

In the 1990s, the church began what was known as the People-to-People peace process. Only the church was trusted to bring together grassroots Dinka and Nuer leaders to address conflicts and work towards reconciliation. These conferences are widely recognized as significantly reducing inter-communal violence and setting the stage of Riak Machar’s eventual reconciliation with the SPLA and his integration into the government of the new country.

All of this is background to the events of the past week. I spent much of April in Bor and Jonglei and have this week been trying to call people I know—with little success, as cell phones batteries appear to have run out. I have, however, managed to speak with people not in Jonglei but who have heard from those who are there. People are reported to be fleeing Bor to their villages and across the Nile—just as they have done in the past.

Ruben Akurdit Ngong, bishop of Bor, April 2013

Bishop Nathaniel’s successor, Ruben Akurdit Ngong, is reported to be in the UN compound just outside Bor. He, along with an unknown—but large—number of other people are seeking refuge there. Again, this is what bishops in this part of the country do. They go to where the people are and stay with them. During the civil war, some bishops were forced to seek refuge in Juba, Khartoum, or abroad. I once asked Nathaniel Garang why he went into the bush with his people, rather than to a city. He looked at me like the answer was the most obvious thing in the world: “Because I was there with the people. If I leave them, the church would not happen. My staying with the people, that’s how they received the gospel.”

What we desperately don’t want is another civil war with Bor at its centre. The Anglican archbishop, Daniel Deng Bul (who is from Jonglei), this year was appointed to chair a national peace and reconciliation commission. Shortly before this week’s violence broke out, that commission released an exciting update on their work. Given the church’s history of peace-building, it seems like they have ever chance of succeeding—if supported and given the opportunity. But South Sudan’s leaders seem intent on ruining the chance for reconciliation before the work can even begin.

Just as I was finishing this post, I came across this video from the UN compound in Bor.

It is situations like these that are the setting for the profoundly incarnational ministry of the church in South Sudan.

(Some of the photos in this post have been collected from private individuals in the course of my doctoral research. Please do not use them without first contacting me. My new book, Backpacking through the Anglican Communion, contains much more about the history of the church in South Sudan. I have followed this post up with a second with more gleanings from South Sudan’s history relevant to the current moment.)