BiAS 7 – The Bible and Politics in Africa
Although the linkage of Shembe and Moses and the Exodus is vague, it
illustrates how important the story of the Exodus and the figure of
Moses as the liberator from slavery are for the amaNazaretha and for
Shembe. Interestingly, the Boers used the same texts as Shembe and his
followers. Their aim – liberation – was the same, but their oppressors
were different, and their yearning for freedom was of a contrary quality.
- Musa W. Dube (1990s)
Besides those readings which mainly identify with the Israelites’ per-
spective, there are other readings – the so called postcolonial readings –
which emerged in the 1980s. The Palestinian Edward Said is one of the
founders of postcolonial theory. In 1986, he wrote a review of Michael
Walzer’s book Exodus and Revolution. In a following discussion between
Said and Walzer in the journal Grand Street, Said wrote: “There is no
Israel without the conquest of Canaan and the expulsion or inferior
status of Canaanites – then as now” (Walzer and Said 1986:255). The
perspective taken by Said – the Canaanite one – is also taken by Musa
Dube, Professor for New Testament at the University of Botswana.4
Dube’s dissertation has the title Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the
Bible. It has become a standard work for postcolonial and feminist read-
ings of the Bible. In chapter 4, Dube develops a postcolonial reading of
the Exodus and Joshua; this will serve as our third example.
Dube’s reading is very close to the text and, because she is a biblical
scholar, her reading is “critical”^5. This distinguishes her readings from
the readings of Paul Kruger and Isaiah Shembe.
Chapter 4 of Dube’s dissertation is titled “Method in Ancient Imperi-
alizing Texts” (Dube 2004:57). Her aim is to analyze imperializing litera-
ture in order to show how imperialism is literarily-rhetorically legiti-
mized. The chapter is organized according to four questions presented
in the introduction:
(^4) This perspective was also taken by scholars from other continents. One article strongly
referring to the Exodus was written by the Native American Robert Allen Warrior
(Warrior, Robert A, “A Native American Perspective. Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indi-
ans.” Pages 277–85 in Voices from the margin. Interpreting the Bible in the Third
World. Ed. by Rasiah S. Sugirtharajah. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1997.)
(^5) “Critical“ is meant here according to the distinction “ordinary” and “critical” readers as
it is used by Dube herself and other scholars like Gerald West. Cf. Dube, Musa W. and
Gerald O. West, “An introduction. How we have come to ‘read with.’ Semeia 73 (1996):
7–17.