BiAS 7 – The Bible and Politics in Africa
Europe needs more oil.”^3 While Africa may never experience coloniza-
tion the way it experienced it before, the continual presence of foreigners
on the African soil seeking its resources by hook and crock and at times
even by the use of force shows that Africa remains at a high risk of los-
ing almost everything to the bogus Samaritans. What remains question-
able, however, is the innocence of those countries covered under Mug-
abe’s look east policy. They too seem to have exhausted their resources
and are busy ripping off Africa of its resources. To come out of this
messy scenario there is need for Africa to come up with ways of outwit-
ting its enemies.
Since the Bible has become almost an African book due to its popularity
on the African continent and has on more than one occasion proved a
reliable source of intelligence it looks fitting that the manner in which
intelligence organisations and the Jesus movement appropriated the
Bible as a source of intelligence be developed into a full-fledged method
of reading the Bible which would help Africans defeat the plans of the
enemy. Paying due respect to the circumstances in which it arose, I
would term such a method as spy reading of the Bible or simply spy
exegesis. The term ‘spy’ should not be used here in its noun form but as
an adverb describing the kind of exegesis. The term ‘spy’ actually has its
roots from various older verbs such as the Latin “specere” or the Anglo-
Norman “espier” meaning "to look at or watch."^4
As a method of approaching the Bible spy exegesis begins with the as-
sumption or the actual existence of a problem or threat in the world of
the reader and one engages the Biblical text to acquire intelligence and
after carefully analysing that data vis-à-vis the problem at hand one
comes up with a decision on how to overcome such a threat. Part of the
exegesis involves the identification of some espionage tactics which were
used by some biblical characters to defeat the plans of their own ene-
mies. The Bible is looked at here in its canonical form. Spy exegesis is
actually the Jesus method of engaging the Scriptures. He employed it
during his fight with the Devil in the wilderness (Mt.4:1-11; Mk.1:12f;
Lk.4:1-13), at the start of his ministry (Lk.4:16-19) and continued to use it
(^3) R.G. Mugabe cited by M. Huni, Mugabe at African Union: Let us stand up to the West,
http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-860453.0.html#msg10096476 (accessed 03/
02/ 2012).
(^4) Cf. Grabianowski, How Spies Work, http://people.howstuffworks.com/spy.htm (acces-
sed 17/ 07/ 11).