The Sacrifice of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa.

Phiri, Isabel Apawo

The Sacrifice of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa by Emmanuel Katongole. Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011, 203 pages. Paperback. ISBN 978-0-8028-6268-6

This book is about a search for a new future for Africa in a context where: a) Christianity is the dominant religion; b) there is history of plunder, violence and poverty in colonial and post colonial Africa and c) the church has failed dimly to solve the problems of Africa. Emmanuel Katongole, a Roman Catholic Priest from Uganda and a theologian teaching at the Duke Divinity School, locates his study in the field of Christian social ethics in Africa. Within this field, Katongole is asking for a paradigm shift "from the external formalities of nation-state politics to its inner workings or logistics, from skills and technical strategies to myths and visions, from a preoccupation with fixing a broken institution to imaging new experiments in social life in Africa" (61). The central questions that Katongole is addressing in this book are: "Does Christianity have the power to save Africa? How? And what would that salvation look like?" (20). Katongole has sought to answer the question in three sections, namely: Sacrificing Africa; Daring to invent the future and the Sacrifice of Africa.

In the first section, Katongole has engaged with African and western scholars and made three following significant points as follows:

a) He argues that the problems of Africa should be understood in the context of the damage made by colonialism to the people of Africa. He gives the example of the plunder of the current Democratic Republic of Congo by King Leopold of Belgium who sacrificed the lives of many Africans as he plundered the country of its resources. This plundering and sacrificing of African people was repeated by different colonial governments in African to varying degrees. In post colonial Africa, the same pattern has continued because the nation-state is a project of the western countries. It is not owned by the people to make it work to the advantage of the African people.

b) The African people lack confidence in themselves because they were treated as a people without a history. They have been told a lie that their history only began with the coming of the missionaries and the colonial governments. This has created insecurity in the African people as a people without a past from where they can draw from in order to shape their future. He strongly argues that "thus the most decisive critique of the nation state politics in Africa is not its failure to provide even basic services such as water, health care, infrastructure and security- though this shortcoming is telling in itself. The real issue is not so much what the state has failed to do for African men and women, but what it is doing to them ... framing their lives within a telos of "nothing good here" (hopelesslessness) and thus shaping expectations of mere survival, while producing the very same hopelessness and desperation it assumes" (83).

c) Katongole goes further to analyse critically the attempts of the Church to reverse the situation of the African people's social history. He has divided the responses of the church into three paradigms namely: deeper evangelization: the spiritual paradigm; development and relief: the pastoral paradigm and mediation, advocacy and reconciliation: a political paradigm. In his assessment of the three paradigms, he argues that the Church in Africa has failed to make a difference in solving people's social problems because it operates with a western paradigm that separates religion and politics. He then argues that "Christian social ethics needs to resist the prescriptive temptation in order to recover the unique social contribution the church can make in the search for a new future in Africa. For the most determinative contribution Christianity can make in Arica is not in terms of advocacy for nation-state modalities, but instead fresh visions of what Africa is and can be" (50).

In the second section one sees Katongole begins to articulate the framework of social imagination of Africa which is rooted in the Genesis story of creation. In addition to theory, Katongole begins to use effectively the methodology of narrative in order to show some Africans who have dared to dream and implement their case for an alternative Africa. He draws the reader into the heroic story of Thomas Sankara (1949-1988), who was a revolutionary president of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1988. The point of telling this story is to show that when Africa has political leaders who dare to invent a new future of Africa where the concerns of the people are at the centre of government reforms, a new Africa is possible. Drawing from interviews with people who knew Thomas Sankara, he concludes that while his intensions were good, for the people of Africa, he wanted to do too much too soon and ended up being assassinated by one of his own leaders. The second story he shares is of Jean-Marc Ela, a Catholic theologian from Cameroon, who chose to live with people on the margins of society to transform their lives. Based on his lived experiences he wrote theological books in which he was proposing that it is possible to create a different world right here on earth if the people were put at the centre of social reforms. Katongole, then retells the story written by Chinua Achebe from Nigeria in a popular book which is used as a text book in most African universities entitled, Things fall Apart. The strength of this story is in its depiction of the coming of Christianity and colonial administration to an African community and how both sides used power to evoke violence and marginality. Katongole summarizes this section well when he states that "the discussion in this second part of the book highlights the need for a fresh start for politics in Africa. It points to the need for grounding story to sustain the revolutionary madness that the invention of a new future in Africa calls for, and points to the church as a community that is uniquely called and gifted for this task" (131).

In the last section of the book, Katongole tells compelling stories of Bishop Paride Taban of the Sudan, Angelina Atyam of Uganda and Maggy Barankitse of Burundi to show how individual Christians drew from their faith and chose to live a life against the tide to bring transformation to people on the margins of society, where the nation-states were not able to bring solutions. The methodology used in telling the stories include: a passage from the bible, the political context of violence of the three countries and actions of the three individuals which, against all odds of pain, tribalism, civil war, they demonstrated a social critique of their context and chose a different paths against the vices to create an alternative community whose foundation is rooted in their faith in God. On one hand, their actions were described by their communities as madness because they could not discern the driving force. On the other hand, the three could only acknowledge the power of God taking over their lives completely to fight against tribalism, poverty, civil war with love, forgiveness and obedience to the call from God.

While I agree with Katongole's basic analysis of the issues that scholars of Social Ethics in Africa needs to be paying attention to, there are three points, which also need to borne in mind.

1. Going back to the central question: "Does Christianity have the power to save Africa? How? And what would that salvation look like?" Katongole's response of social imangination as presented in sections two and three of his book cannot be the only way in which Christianity can save Africa. The salvation of Africa is complex and therefore needs multiple approaches. The three paradigms of Christian involvement cannot be excluded from finding a solution to the problems of Africa because each one of them has a legimate place in the solving of Africa's problems. A closer analysis of the three stories given in section three of the book show multiple layers of actions informed by Christian faith to bring transformation to the lives of ordinary Africans. Just as the case studies are small scale attempts to grapple with the mammoth problems of Africa, the other three paradigms, which he dismisses, are also making small attempts to contribute to the solving the problems of Africa. It is a holistic approach informed by faith in the God of creation that can work for Africa. The work cannot be done by Christians alone as shown from the stories. It also requires an inter religious dimension, which cannot be underplayed in the context of Africa.

2. It is also important to note that Katongole is not raising the issues of nation state and social imagination for the first time in this book. These are themes that he has grappled with over a number of articles, which accumulated into the publication of his third scholarly book A Future for Africa: Critical Essays in Christian Social Imagination. (University of Scranton Press, 2005). What one finds in the 2011 book is a matured and sustained theoretical and practical engagement with the themes of nation-state and social imagination. While in the 2005 publication he takes time to define both concepts, in the 2011 he only defines how he is using social imagination. He is therefore assuming that his readers are already familiar with his 2005 publication or they understand the concept of nation-state, which is not always the case.

3. While Katongole has engaged scholars from Africa and Europe on the problems of Africa and has included the stories of two women in section three of the book, he has completely sidelined the contributions of African women theologians. African women have used the methodology of story telling to reveal patriarchal injustice in the lives of African women. Thus readings from African women could have shade more light on what it means for women's bodies to be abused in cases of civil war as exemplified by the story of Angelina Atyam's daughter. What did it mean to be a single and childless and yet the mother of so many children as in the story of Maggy Barankitse of Burundi?

In the same vein, Katongole just mentions in passing the problems of patriarchy in Africa as the same as civil war, tribalism, corruption and plundering the resources of Africa. What he does not engage with is the meaning for Maggy Barankitse to choose to remain unmarried in a society that values marriage. Thus, the stories of Angelina Atyam and Maggy Barankitse could have been told differently if Katongole had applied a feminist hermeneutics of suspicion to their search for an alternative life right here on earth. Issues of gender injustice are real in Africa. Any search for a meaningful transformed future of Africa cannot afford to be gender insensitive.

My comments should not devalue the power of this book. It is one of those books which when you start reading you do not want to put down until you come to the end. It is also not just one of those feel good books, but one that calls for in-depth reflection of the contexts he is describing and the analysis that he is calling for. It is a book that motivates one to action knowing that whatever bit that each one of us does to create a new future for Africa can actually make a difference. It is to all students of theology on the African continent that I recommend this book. It should also be read by all those who are interested in discussions on ecclesiology as Katongole argues that the solution to the social history of Africa is an ecclesiology one.

DOI: 10.1111/erev.12015