than 2 years, from July 1905 to August 1907.
Although Kinjikitile was captured and hanged by
the Germans, his brother picked up his mantle,
assumed the title of Nyamguni, one of the three
divinities in the region, and continued to adminis-
ter the Maji, a religiously blessed water aimed at
rendering the warrior invulnerable. This practice
of blessed water is widespread in Africa. Among
the Baluba, it is referred to askoya kisaba(taking
a bath in a magical water blessed by the ancestors
to gain extraordinary strength and invulnerability
on the battlefield).
It is worth noting that the traditional role played
by women in African religion brought them to the
forefront in resistance movements. In the Zambezi
valley, the Shona mediums instigated the famous
rebellions of 1897, 1901, and 1904. In the Congo,
the notorious case remains that of the Christian
independent church of Dona Beatrice, Kitawala,
and Simon Kimbangu. Kimpa Vita’s struggle for
freedom in the Kongo kingdom was so passionate
that historians have Eurocentrically called her
“Jeanne d’Arc du Congo” in reference to the spirit
of French revolution. But Beatrice is not an isolated
case. In Congo-Brazzaville, the priestess Maria
Nkoie instigated the Ikaya rebellion, which lasted
for 5 years, until 1921. Many other women have
played a crucial role in the struggle for freedom.
Almost all wars waged against forces of domi-
nation and oppression were backed by religious
belief in justice and just cause. It is worth noting
the role played by African “abolitionists,” espe-
cially those famous “enlightened kings.”
In 1526, Affonso, King of Kongo, sent a letter
of protest to the King of Portugal (Dom Joao).
The letter first describes in detail the evils of the
slave trade and then concludes with a decision
to abolish it. “It is our will,” he wrote explicitly,
“that in these Kingdoms there should not be any
trade of slaves nor outlet for them” (Hoschild,
1998, p. 4). It is remarkable that King Affonso did
not wish to abolish only the enslavement of noble
people, but rather wanted to see the whole slave
trade come to an end. He made it clear that he did
not want his kingdom to be crossed by slavehold-
ers and their caravans of victims. Affonso’s analy-
sis of the impact of the slave trade on Kongo
contradicts also the argument often used by
some scholars who claim that Kingdoms of Africa
flourished because of the wealth gained by African
kings through the slave trade. But this phenome-
non of enlightened Kings is not unique to Central
Africa. Another notorious case is reported in West
Africa in the 18th century by the Swedish traveler
Wadström. In a report to the British Privy Council
Committee of 1789 on the political chaos caused
by the slave trade in Africa, Wadström evokes the
case of the enlightened King of Almammy, who,
in 1787, enacted a law that no enslaved person
whatever should be marched through his territo-
ries. Angry French merchants remonstrated and
attempted to corrupt the King with gifts. But the
King returned the presents that had been sent
to him by the Senegal (French) Company and
declared that “all the riches of that company
should not divert him from his design (to end the
slave trade)” (Isichei, 1978, pp. 474–475). This
case sheds a splendid light on the notion of moral
character in traditional Africa. This same passion
for moral rectitude led the Asantehene of Ashanti
(Ghana) to reject a European demand for
enslaving people. In 1819, he replied to a
European visitor that it was not his practice “to
make war to catch slaves in the bush like a thief.”
Such are the traditional roots of the resistance
spirit that animated Simon Kimbangu, Patrice
Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, and the African
Nobel laureates such as John Luthuli, Wangari
Matai, Nelson Mandela, and Desmond Tutu.
This is an eloquent illustration of the pervasive
spirit of resistance to oppression and enslave-
ment that has characterized Africa since time
immemorial. As Tutu’s focus on the traditional
virtues of Ubuntu shows, even those Africans
who converted to Christianity and Islam have
turned to the ancestral spirituality of human dig-
nity in their struggle against local and foreign
forces of enslavement. In a world where
Christianity and Islam were often complicit in
European and Arabic systems of domination and
exploitation, the importance of ancestral spiritu-
ality in African resistance movements can
scarcely be overstated. The fact that millions of
Africans find meaning not in Christianity and
Islam per se, but rather in “Africanized”
Christianity and Islam, points to the centrality of
ancestral spirituality as the fundamental moral
guidance of the African people.
Like many other world religions, African religion is
based on the notions of Bumuntu, justice, purity, andResistance to Enslavement 569