Strengthening commitment to decolonization

“When I was born, I was given a traditional name, which has meaning. But before I was baptized, I was told to choose a Christian name … but they are not Christian names. They are Latin or English or Greek names … When we preach how we like, we are told we are making too much noise. All of these rules and judgements are unnecessary burdens put on Christianity.”

These are examples of colonialism that Dr. Musuto Chirangi, who is active in the Tanzania Mennonite Church and an executive director of a public hospital in Tanzania, shared with people who attended a Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Africa-LACA Encounter in late February.

All 56 participants of African descent are leaders of MCC partner organizations, including churches, or MCC staff. They came from 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LACA) and Africa to meet in Kigali, Rwanda, with their own histories and experiences to share. Together they planned a way forward. 

Serving as area director for MCC’s work in South America and Mexico, I have seen how the legacies of colonialism continue to shape communities. I, along with area directors for Central America and Haiti, East Africa and Southern Africa were grateful to bring such a wide range of people together to talk about what this means for MCC. 

We explored what it means for MCC, as an organization focused on “relief, development and peace in the name of Christ,” to strip away any unnecessary burdens within our work that have been placed on development and peacebuilding, as well as on Christianity, through centuries of colonialism. 

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Colonialism has been the nonconsensual, nonmutual control of land, resources and people by external forces. “We were kings and queens, doctors and teachers. … We were not slaves; later we were enslaved,” one participant said. It was a sentiment expressed by many.  

Mighty kingdoms were erased. African lakes and waterfalls were named after British or Belgian monarchs. Incan and Aztec temples were toppled and imposing Catholic churches built on top. “We were told to hate our own culture,” said participant Ruth Joseph, who works with Solidarite Fanm Ayisyèn (SOFA; Solidarity of Haitian Women), an MCC partner.

Silvia Regina Lima da Silva, who is an Afro-Brazilian theologian and serves in the Evangelical Mennonite Conference of Costa Rica, added that colonialism affected the identity of people with African heritage. “The hardest for us has been to have our identity defined from the outside. The colonizers decided who we are. … We have assimilated values, systems, structures that were not ours.”

That impact on identity was not only spread by leaders of a country but also reinforced through other institutions, including churches. Elisama Wani, director of Association of Christian Organizations Serving Sudan, lamented, “My parents were ‘born again Christians.’ I was told that I should never go to a traditional dance or have traditional drums. As a 59-year-old man, I don’t know how to dance my own dances.”

Repeatedly, participants talked about colonialism’s primary strategy – divide and conquer. African diaspora participants, including Talibah Aquil, MCC East Coast staff member, mourned the loss of identity and separation from family and roots because of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. 

Divisions remain today. “They created borders between us, even dividing families,” protested the Rev. Joao Damiao, General Secretary of the Christian Council of Mozambique. “Now I need to apply for a visa to visit my brothers and sisters in a neighboring country; I need to use a European language to talk to them.” 

Similarly, Richard Makuza, former program officer with MCC Rwanda, said, “We don’t believe in ourselves as a group, and so we don’t work together. … The rest of the world comes to solve our problems and continues to divide us.”

Behind these strategies was the ultimate goal of looting African, Latin American and Asian lands of their natural resources. Parallel to extraction of resources, the land and workforce were repurposed for exporting crops to benefit white European economies and masters. 

For example, France claimed Haiti’s sugar cane as its own. “There were no sugar plantations in France during the colonial era, but France was the ‘top producer of sugar’ in the world,” said Elifaite St Pierre, from Haiti’s Institut de Technologie et d’Animation (ITECA; Institute for Technology and Animation), an MCC agricultural partner. 

This is no different from the current world where everyone has heard of Swiss or Belgian chocolate but ignores that 70% of this cacao comes from Western African countries. The origin of chocolate among the Mayan and other Indigenous peoples of Latin America is forgotten.

These economic systems have dramatically altered traditional values and community norms. As an example, Moses Monday, director of MCC partner Organization for Nonviolence and Development in South Sudan, noted, “When our first parents (ancestors) got their first harvest, they wouldn’t eat it alone. They would take a basket or two of their crops to their neighbors. Nowadays, the spirit of competing over resources is prevalent. This is why people fight.”

Participants in this encounter eagerly take up commitments for transformation. They do not just passively blame Canadian, European or U.S. powers for their suffering. Georgine Bikwaga, a Congolese staff member working with MCC in Burkina Faso, led a profound reflection based on the story of Joseph and his brothers (Genesis 37) and how this mirrors participants’ own story of betrayal between brothers, separation from ancestral lands and, also, resilience, healing and reconciliation. 

MCC’s motivation to address the pain of colonization and to encourage decolonization in its programming grows out of the teaching and example of Jesus, who consistently related to people who had been oppressed. Part of MCC’s purpose, as identified in “Principles and Practices,” says, “We follow Jesus as Jesus proclaims good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind; and sets the oppressed free.” 

MCC partners actively work to decolonize – focusing on local production for local needs and preferences, recuperating ancestral seeds, replanting trees where colonial powers and mining companies have deforested, even processing locally grown cacao into chocolate and packaging it for market. Not everything has to be shipped to European- or U.S.-based companies to come back beautiful.

Community organizing, which includes local leaders training young people, helps recuperate traditional values and identity, while also introducing innovative ways to protect the environment. Every community process seeks to increase social cohesion, peacebuilding and the dignity of each person.

Beyond specific projects, these local partner organizations and community leaders commit:

•  to working toward transformation and healing, even knowing that the foundation of peace includes painful truth-telling.

•   to naming racism, rather than normalizing it, as they recuperate ancestral values.

•  to building their faith in harmony with their local context and culture, so that faith unites rather than divides. 

Indeed, they want to be ambassadors against all the forces of divisiveness. They take responsibility for doing all they can in decolonizing minds, cultures and action.

As one discussion group declared, “We need to move past the era of lamentations and go to the book of Acts.” They committed to pray and to seek God’s miraculous hand in all these necessary transformations. 

Rev. Philip Okeyo from Kenya Mennonite Church affirmed, “When we seek the face of God, we will find solutions.” 

At MCC, staff continue to learn, change and enact programming in a way that supports decolonization. Bringing leaders of African descent together is a small step toward joining together what colonization has divided. 

Words cannot adequately reflect the energy, inspiration and profound emotion shared together during the MCC Africa-LACA Encounter. The shared tears and joyous dancing freed up space for transformation.

We believe profoundly in connecting people. Let us continue to build bridges. We can become a safer space for healing and inclusion, connecting in love and truth across legacies of pain.