By Darlington Chiluba
ONE of the greatest manipulations of man is to re-create consensus on what is right or wrong, what is worthy of justice and what isn’t. In this manipulation, neither religion nor history is safe from misrepresentation.
For instance, colonialism will never be a colossal crime of humanity against entire continents because history imposes a narrative that expunges guilt and creates a pompous pitying of the offended.
In other words, history posits colonialism as being almost synonymous with economic benefit and enlightenment of those lesser people while carefully disguising the enduring commercial benefit gained by the colonisers for generations.
Furthermore, despite the over-glorification of African slavery, no reparations will be paid because that slavery is portrayed as a superiority of one race over another, than a genocidal crime.
Because the honest detail of history was never written by (the children of) those enslaved and massacred, it can be changed at any point to achieve an intended narrative which most certainly absorbs the perpetrators of any offense.
In recent memory, the undertone that slavery happened because Africans sold each other for beads and gunpowder has become louder, and not by accident. This is the trouble with a history written for you – it is malleable.
As such, if the most ancient or earliest association of Africans is slavery, so that anything before that is wiped out of memory, then the historians have done their job well for generations to come.
It means that the identity of an entire people has been manufactured for them to an extent that no God, Spirit, or deity can be African. The reason God should not be African is not written by God but suggested and imposed in both subtle and covert ways by historians who co-opt faith into religions manufactured to suit racial and racist hierarchies.
Christianity, as a prime example, is presented as foreign to Africa even though its earliest text mentions Egypt, Libya and Ethiopia before it does other continents.
So, what becomes of a people who are defined by their captors and tormentors, given a carefully re-defined god who thrives on racial hierarchy?
What happens to a people whose land is dispossessed illegally (pre-and post-colonialism) and then returned under newly defined borders as countries?
What happens to a people who are told that their ancestors did not have skill to write their own history except in primitive cave drawings and songs?
There is no simple answer to these questions. The single most logical thread and possible answer is identity. Each country has its own identity which typically shows in its collective character and laws.
Therefore, those people and nations who identify with God genuinely do so from a point of spiritual identity than physical or political identity.
Politics is transient, its positions not permanent and most of all, genuine integrity is rare. Politics cannot be an identity because it is a resultant action or force: a means to channel purpose for a benefit to one or many.
Identity must be associated to something greater than politics. In Christianity, for instance, the book of John 4:24 calls on believers to identify with God from a spiritual standpoint.
The translation here is to anchor people or nations to an identity that supersedes other competing standards that change based on situation or circumstance.
A people that can identify with God from a point of character, of purpose and honesty will create a nation above others and hold their collective national interest as sacred. The Zambian constitution resolved this puzzle through the declaration of the country as a Christian nation.
This covenant calls the nation, government and the executive to identify with the character of God and do best to distance from human frailty in the business of governing a nation.
It is a covenant grounded in reflecting the identity of a perfect deity in the conscious of the nation and its people. Obedience to this covenant is another matter.
Saudi Arabia goes further than most countries because it grasps the balance of cultural, historical and religious identity to the extent that their god (Allah) is their own.
Allah is neither a colonial or economic creation, the people of that country – indeed most of the middle east, own their God. The constitution of Saudi Arabia, for instance, is the Quran itself.
It is such self-identity and awareness that makes countries like Afghanistan difficult to occupy and rebrand because the domestic heritage is owned by its people.
It is such awareness of identity that separates nations like Ethiopia from most because, again, the record of their history is written by their own hands.
It almost becomes tempting to suppose that Libya was torn apart because its collective identity was falsely recast to a single individual who was demonised and slaughtered.
The foreign re-imagination of that country is the foundation of the current chaos which has disunited a once single nation into a failed state. The worst crime here will happen if Libya does not take responsibility to write its history accurately in the aftermath.
It is even worse for nations that thrive on building monuments and statues that honor men, and spend time fighting.
In every religion, God (or gods) rank people as their foremost tools to use to achieve their grand intentions. Subsequent to this, we will hold sacred the agreement we have with that God as enshrined in the constitution.
A collective understanding of that covenant will restore the integrity of power to the people. Leaders who please God will please the people because they will be in one accord and most certainly their submission to God will dissuade them from navigating through the path of falsehoods that more frequently cause most leaders to lose the favour of the electorate.
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