GodZuma and Black Theology

Few things are more hateful than the self-righteous, arrogant and deliberate manipulation of the minds of the broken and destitute in the name of liberation.

We well know how the logic of apartheid greed encouraged its religious ministers to read the bible to suit the needs of the regime. The defence of the preposterous idea that the bible is compatible with apartheid is what occasioned the heroic rebellion of people like Beyers Naudé. The reading is so absurd that one can quite rightly wonder whether those allegedly endorsing this interpretation were in full command of their faculties. I doubt they were and I think it is a fair to describe apartheid as a whole – including its representatives of God on earth – as a regime of collective white-supremacist insanity. Evidence for this is the impossibility faced by an impartial outsider to explain the working of the regime without having to make rich appeal to psychological mechanisms deployed by psychologists to explain the workings of dysfunctional minds.

This brief speculation about mental distortions on the oppressor’s side of injustice complements Black Consciousness views. Black Consciousness supporters thought that black and white minds must be liberated from their respective inferiority and superiority complexes. And, crucially, they thought that black people could only be liberated by struggling for liberation rather than by waiting for some kind of saviour, be it God or, one could speculate given the current ANC election campaign, Jacob Zuma.

He and his party are being portrayed as the representatives of God on earth. Indeed, Zuma himself has audaciously claimed that to vote for the ANC is to vote for God.

As apartheid benefited from the pathology of white supremacy and the deep inferiority complex widespread among the black population due to centuries of humiliation, so too is our current government benefiting from the brokenness of the poor, marginalised and, centrally, psychologically oppressed. Disgracefully, they are benefiting, for their own selfish advancement projects, from the brokenness of the poor, who are waiting, as the broken tend to, for divine deliverance rather than taking it upon themselves to be the makers of their own destinies.

I have never heard an affluent man call me ‘master’. But, in addition to being called ‘master’ on a regular basis by the poor and broken, I have recently been called ‘Jesus’ after delivering a public lecture on the importance of popular rebellion for re-establishing hope among the poor. If I was black and poor, I would not have been thought of as Jesus. I was seen as a liberator of the poor, a master that has finally come to release the poor from the chains of unspeakable suffering.

It is those who think of people like me as ‘masters’ or potential saviours who are currently being targeted by the ANC campaign to gain votes, for it is to a large extent them who keep the ANC in power (the lack of credible alternatives is another). And, given that the logic of greed is guiding them, as evidenced by innumerable cases corruption, police brutality and lack of delivery, one cannot be blamed for suspecting that having a large proportion of the electorate in a state of brokenness can do nothing but benefit the regime. It is not the meek who are taking to the streets today and rebelling against the crushing power of the state and the financial interests that it represents. They, rather, are waiting sheepishly for a second coming; for someone to liberate them as opposed to fighting for liberation. For this reason, they are ideal election fodder for the ANC: Placid, compliant, half-starved, broken shells of humanity.

And it seems that a new sort of theology, which contrasts markedly with the teaching of Black Theology, is taking hold of our current crop of ANC plunderers. It seems not only that the ANC has acquired the power to extend Madiba’s life, but that it is the embodiment of the Holy Trinity. When we vote for the ANC, we are being told, we vote for God. Either those making these incredible pronouncements believe them and hence are unfit to rule or they are lying for votes in which case they are unfit to rule.

The second interpretation is far more likely than the first, and if it is the correct one, what follows is chilling. For it shows to what extent our rulers are using the living legacy of apartheid – embodied in the servile desperation of many of the poorest of the poor – to their advantage. It is chilling because it involves the overt exploitation of minds that have been crushed by apartheid and by the unremitting destructive power of poverty. And it is doubly chilling because it is being done in the name of liberation.

Basil Moore, one of the founding leaders of Black Theology recently gave an eloquent lecture at Rhodes University as part of this year’s graduation ceremony. One of the important things he highlighted was the intimate relationship between Black Theology and Black Consciousness. In addition to founding SASO, Steve Biko was a member of the organisation that developed Black Theology, the University Christian Movement (UCM). Indeed, the formation by Steve Biko of the black caucus during the second meeting of the UCM in Stutterheim in 1968 is what led to the formation of SASO (South African Students' Organisation).

According to Moore, advocates of Black Theology rejected the idea of God as an authoritarian figure which, in his words, locked ‘human beings into a permanent childhood’ and instead they proposed a much more active role for the black majority. They conceived of human beings as potential liberators of themselves, no longer waiting for an omnipotent god to save them. God, for them, is not a ‘person’. Instead, in Moore’s words, ‘God is love, peace and justice’.

In a curious move on the part of the ANC’s spin-doctors, the conception of God as king is being appropriated for the purposes of political gain. As is the case during apartheid, the poor are being treated as children. And the ANC is posing as the god that will save them, the almighty father on earth.

It is this servile conception of humanity that Black Theology fought against, and it is this servile conception that the ANC is now exploiting for the purposes of keeping a large percentage of those who vote for them in a state of permanent infancy. It is far easier to manipulate children than it is to manipulate adults. By appealing to the image of God as saviour to describe itself, the ruling party is contradicting its basic claim that it is the party of the liberators.

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* Professor Pedro Alexis Tabensky is in the Department of Philosophy, Rhodes University, South Africa.
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