BiAS 7 – The Bible and Politics in Africa
the pan-African ideology. It sounds weird that pan-Africanism struggles
could be fought using the Bible, the same Bible that has been used and
continues to be used as a weapon against African values, culture and
African memory-the values that pan-Africanism seeks to preserve. Yet, it
is precisely upon the realisation that the Bible has great influence in the
lives of the people of Africa that to ignore it is to risk being irrelevant
that Mahoso cites it. This realisation has of late seen politicians either in
the MDC or in ZANU PF addressing major political, economic or social
issues appealing to the Bible. Mahoso’s approach therefore is well justi-
fied. In a society such as Zimbabwe where the population seems to be
intoxicated with the Bible, the only way to appeal to them convincingly is
to cite a verse or two from it.
Second, I have argued that to understand Mahoso’s radicalism against
the Western narrative in his pan-African philosophy, as he exegetes the
Bible, one needs to understand the context from which he is writing.
Mahoso, together with other pan-Africanists, are surrounded with a
reality that the Western world may not know or purposely choose to
ignore. The context of Africa is that of poverty in the midst of plenty.
And the cause of this poverty has been a contested area. For the West,
Africa is poor because, it lacks young democratic leadership and the
leaders stay long in office. But the reality on the ground shows that even
in nations where leaders are very young and where leaders have the
most possible shortest time in office, poverty is ravaging the masses, the
black people. But as poverty runs amok in the black communities, white
people, most of whom former colonizers, are not affected. They almost
live on an island. It is this stark reality that pan-Africanists expose for all
to see, the structural sins of colonisation. But the West does not seem to
bother to expose this in their narrative.
Third, the article has offered as much as possible the broader back-
ground to understanding pan-Africanism in general and Mahoso’s bibli-
cal exegesis in particular. I have argued that history of the West from the
days of slavery to colonisation and now globalisation as understood by
pan-Africanists seems to evidence a consistent trend to look down upon
Africans if not utter racism. The relationship between Africa and the
West is still as it was during slavery and colonialism; that of master and
slave, horse and rider. The West has for the pan-Africanists discredited
itself by being inconsistent in responding to world affairs. The West
seems to be more concerned about their political and economic interests