acknowledgment of the African spirit of resistance
to oppression. It is therefore imperative to make a
careful distinction between the moral ideals of
African spirituality and the deplorable behavior of
individuals throughout history. Careful studies
of religion will not recklessly identify the spiritual
ideals of Hinduism with Sati and the caste system.
Hindus readily point to Brahman and the virtues
of Ahimsa and Yoga. Likewise, when asked to
define Christianity, Christians point to Jesus’
teaching on “loving the enemy” and turning the
other cheek, rather than crusades, inquisition,
colonialism, and persecution of women and mem-
bers of other religions. The same hermeneutical
principle should be applied to Africa. African spir-
ituality is to be found in the ideals of genuine
personhood (Bumuntu) and in the numerous
examples of resistance, rather than the lapses of
someubuesquetyrants and caligulan dictators.
From time immemorial, religion as the soul and
hope of hopeless people has always functioned as
the ultimate source of liberation. This is particu-
larly the case with a continent that for centuries
has been trampled underfoot by all forms of
oppression. Africans on the continent and in the
diaspora have always turned to the ancestors and
Shakapanga, the creator, to find refuge and the
power to resist enslavement.
In 1791, enslaved Africans led a successful rev-
olutionary war that propelled Haiti to become
the first “black republic,” that is, the first black
country to gain independence by throwing off
successfully the yoke of chattel slavery. Eighty-
five years before this Haitian revolution, a young
African lady named Kimpa Vita was burned at
the stake in 1706 by Christian Portuguese author-
ities in the Kongo Kingdom for waging a resis-
tance movement against the slave trade and for
challenging the racist theological underpinnings
of the Catholic Church and its complicit involve-
ment in the slave trade. These acts of defiance
and rebellion were not an imitation of foreign
ideals of democracy, but a genuine expression of
traditional ideals of the good life. Indeed, Kimpa
Vita’s revolution occurred 70 years before the
American Revolution and 83 years before the
French revolution, at a time when Western pow-
ers and their Christian missionaries were engaged
in oppressive colonial ventures legitimized by the
civilizing mission ideology. Both the Haitian and
Kongolese rebellions were steeped in a liberation
theology profoundly shaped by African tradi-
tional religion. African traditional spirit of
Bumuntu (liberty and human dignity) has crossed
the Atlantic carrying the torch of liberation strug-
gle into the Americas. It is now widely held in
academic circles that the Haitian revolution was
stimulated and sustained mainly by Vodu, a reli-
gion of African origin. It is also largely under-
stood that the most prestigious leaders of the
Haitian revolutionary war, such as Toussaint
L’Ouverture, Dessalines, Christophe, Boukman,
and Makandal, were all steeped in Vodu rituals
and philosophy. In fact, the plans for a war of
liberation from slavery and colonialism were laid
by the Vodu priestesses Mambo Mariesaint Dede
Bazile and Cecile Fatiman and the Vodun priest
Houngan Boukman during a religious service
held on the night of August 14, 1791, at Bois
Caiman in the northern part of Haiti.
Vodun, an African religion, had crossed the
Atlantic carrying with it that revolutionary spirit
that in Africa led the prophetess Kimpa Vita,
Simon Kimbangu, and many others to articulate a
liberation struggle that challenged slave traders
and French, British, Belgian, German, Portuguese,
and Italian colonial regimes as well as the colonial
bourgeois Christianity that lent moral and spiri-
tual legitimacy to foreign tyranny. The extra-
ordinary role played by Vodu in the Haitian
revolution is to be understood as the culmination
of a liberation movement firmly rooted in the eth-
ical vision of African traditional religions.
In fact, all over Africa, many charismatic lead-
ers steeped in traditional spirituality rose to lead
resistance movements against the slave trade and
colonial enslavement. The Maji Maji uprising
resorted to the power of African religion. In so
doing, it became the most serious challenge to
colonial British rule in East Africa. In the colony
of Tanganyika, Germans had to contend with the
powerful prophet Kinjikitile Ngwale, who
resorted to African religious practices and world-
view to fight the colonial regime. He preached
that the war of liberation was ordained by God
and that the ancestors would return to life to
assist the African people in this war. God and the
ancestors, he added, want the unity and freedom
of all the African people and want them to fight
the German oppressors. This war waged for more568 Resistance to Enslavement