I. Introduction
There has been a flurry of debates around the origins and race of Jesus, in a major way because President Putin revealed recently an iconography from the Russian national archives depicting central biblical personalities, most of whom, including Jesus, Mary, Moses and others, are depicted as NOT white. Jesus being the central personality here, I am not sure Putin literally said Jesus was black. Neither would he have said he was white, but most of the biblical personalities he showed to his nation and for all to see were not white nor Caucasian[1]. That raised a debate rich with views, in a manner that challenges fundamentally, profoundly, philosophically, historically and even theologically the established narrative of “white is right, black stand back”.
But of course the dominant press did not join the fray, for fear of validating, not just the theory, but the debate itself. Surprised?
Jesus in this case is the summary expression of a whole biblical essence and the bible being part of an information theological (read ideological) industry that has been built and is perfected by a colonial and neocolonial machinery that keeps us focused on religion, while they are focused on our resources. I know, because I lived in Europe and went to church regularly. It is not their thing anymore. Gas for winter on the other hand, is existential for them. And where is gas located? How in this did they appropriated Jesus? It being understood we all know who “they” are.
You may have heard about the Ethiopian bible[2]. Today overshadowed by the King James bible. Many of the bible versions were burned by the Catholic church[3]. And have you heard of the Index Librorum prohibitorum[4]?
You may have heard about the Crusades[5]
You may have heard about the Treaty of Tordesilhas[6]
I invite you to know this in order to grasp the complexities of the politics of religion. You of course by now know the nature of the colonial occupation of various continents, the Opium wars, the genocides of the Namibian and Biafran peoples, the wars of Vitenam and Iran, the continuous suppression of the Haiti African people. A long chain that never ends. Why: because we are part of a resource inventory for countries of Europe and America.
Did African presidents visit Ukraina and Russia to plead for peace? Did they previously try to plead for peaceful solution to the Libyan crisis? The Presidents that wanted to go to Tripoli to solve an African problem were prevented from going, because a plan had already been under way to destroy a country that threatened the established financial hegemony. Gold was taken away, the same way as gold reserves of Iraq were carted away by the occupying forces.
By the way, after the visit of the African Presidents to both Ukraine and Russia, wheat that had been blocked by the Russia/Ukraina conflict was released through UN negotiations, but Africa received the shortest end of the negotiated wheat (17% it is said). Where did the rest go? To Europe in fact. But I digress.
Then there is the current Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinians. All the dominant press has been trying to convince us that the story of conflict between the two peoples started in October 2023, when Hamas raided Israel and killed hundreds of peaceful Israelis enjoying some leisurely open-air concert, and hijacked another several hundred.
The story of conflict between these two peoples does not start here. It starts with Balfour[7] and the continuous land dispossession, the territorial discontinuities, the daily humiliation of a people by a government that claims to represent the Jewish community, the fake peace processes, where the peace-broker is self-imposed, the better to defend the interests of Israel above all. It is a long and painful history for both Palestinians and Israelis. And in my narrative, I deliberately distinguish Israelis from Jews. Jews are a people and Israel is a country with undefined borders.
All of this is rationalized, justified and explained by a powerful media industry that wants to force us into a unilateral narrative, a uni-culture. The same industry that wants to normalize and wants us to also accept homosexuality sub poena of sanctions, but does not accept polygamy! With the support of some Christian churches (including mine now?). Using concepts such as “democracy”, “fighting terrorism”, “international community”, “international norms” and other terms of an oppressive and dictatorial narrative designed to keep us down, they have confused us: which are after all these international norms by which we all should live? Do international rules apply uniformly or they are relative to some status?
II. Politics and Religion are inseparable
Anyways, the most important issues that President Putin of Russia is raising for us and which our leaders should pay urgent and close attention to are four:
1. Who owns the global narrative and who gave it that ownership agency,
2. Who spins the narrative and is it balanced,
3. What has been the role of religion in the whole process, and
4. Who should own whose narrative or, should your story be told without your participation.
Most of us who lived under colonial occupation before our countries became independent (not necessarily free), have adopted and live by the religions brought and imposed by the colonial powers. Religion has been a tool of colonial occupation and exploitation. In the place of the departed colonial master, the neocolonial lobbies bring new versions of the religious industry, so we can continue praying. We have not owned the initiative; we continue imitating and following. As stated by late Desmond Tutu, himself an Archbishop: they brought the bible and we had the land. They made us close the eyes to pray. By the time we opened the eyes, they had taken possession of our land and we had their bible in exchange. We let go of the land, to catch the bible, as it were.
I could write a whole treatise around all these issues, but let me just share what I think President Putin is telling us, using the religious symbolism. He is of course defending the interests of his country and his people, not those of Africa. But by the same token, he is opening a query book and inviting us to set in it our own interpretation of our history.
III. Our own narrative
The war in Ukraine demonstrates that the dominant media is defending a neocolonial order of superior/inferior. The crude discourse of good guy/bad guy is unfortunately the base language around which they want to classify and regiment the world. It demonizes whoever is not in agreement and in step and does not share their values, which they have worked hard to make universal through multilateral institutions they fund and dominate.
President Putin is saying that the dominant press is waging a war of space, to crowd out any divergent views and outlaw differences (demonize Tucker Carlson). The results on the ground in Ukraine are showing that the self-attributed superiority is not really it.
Still they feel entitled to come to Africa and tell our leaders who they should trade with and whom they should not befriend. It is up to us now to shape the narrative, in fact, to define it.
President Putin is saying also that there should be no self-entitlement tutelage over other national entities, that the history of his country does not start with the events in Ukraine. Neither does it depend on NATO. And therefore, there should be respect for the space, history and peoples of Russia.
The story is always told by the stronger person, not by the one who has been conquered. Our history has been written for us. The time may be upon us to tell the real history, to research and invest in our historical past, rewrite and teach it with no apologies due. Including our own religious practices[8]. Because they are as much religious as they are cultural. Culture and religion are also inseparable. He who knows not his past cannot know (own) his future.
IV. Deceptive Narratives at other levels
Narratives are multi-faceted and supported by big money. Money is also creating other spaces: buying land in Africa while governments dispossess and forcefully displace their own native peoples from coveted land. Foreign interests are sitting in our territories and firmly using money to dispossess and cater for their own security at our expense. What is the narrative? Conservation, carbon trading, the environment, green energy.
This narrative is a weapon of exploitation. Is it really about Carbon, or about land? If we follow President Ruto’s various speeches, we get the impression we (Africa) are finally having a voice. But when we look beneath, we see huge tracts of land being traded and local peoples being dispossessed. We see genetically modified seeds being fostered and our natural seeds being replaced. Soon food sovereignty will be no more. Whoever owns the GMO seed controls you. So, the whole annual climate pilgrimage is a march towards being cornered into selling our sovereignty. Through a narrative that is prepared and curated for us and interspersed with the illusion of billions of dollars coming our way (which the hoi-poloi would never see anyway). Without our owning the power to lead the process, it is an illusion to think that we own the outcome. President Ruto is after all not our voice, he has already proved to be talking on both sides of his mouth.
V. Concluding with specifics/Bringing the narrative home
The narrative says for instance that Mozambique’s GDP in 2023 was an impressive $67.5 billion (not comparatively but in absolute terms). In that year, Mozambique registered a GDP growth of 5%, according to the reports of World Bank and IMF. They however avoid linking data in an organic whole to show how Mozambique is benefitting from this growth. I can ask those questions because people are being displaced by war in Cabo Delgado, there is cholera and severe widespread conjunctivitis throughout the country, bridges falling all over because of heavy rains, students in classes under trees, and so on and so forth. Therefore, they do not tell us the other coin of this reality, which is:
Considering that to this GDP agriculture contributes 27%, industry contributes 23% and services 40%, the story of that GDP needs to be unpacked. And unpack we shall attempt, in our own layman’s way:
Agriculture: little is being exported, with the exception of cashew, which for the purposes of balancing with the other three elements, we can subsume under domestic-oriented revenue. So, we can say that the contribution of agriculture (27%) is real for Mozambique.
Industry represents essentially the extractives, with the full production being exported/able. The few that are consumed internally are the usual suspects: beverages (negligible, subsumable). The 23% industry contribution to the GDP is exported growth. And
Services (contributing 40% to the GDP): Consider for example the biggest contributor to services: Cahora Basa Hydroelectric centre: 90% of the electricity generated in Mozambique is exported. Banking: the banks are serving international capital more than help the farmer or the local small cottage industry, if it ever existed. Tourism, transport and the hospitality industry are small. Let me speculate that 70% of the 40% that services contribute to the GDP are exported.
What then should be the real story, the real narrative?
It is closer to the following speculation: that at least 51% of the GDP in financial terms is exported raw. It means that of the $67.5 billion produced, a whole $34.4 billion is exported. If the GDP growth is 5%, it means that 3 of these 5% (66% of the 5%) represent exported growth, for other countries and economies, mostly already developed. Our real GDP domestically-retained growth is actually 1.7%. Would anyone wonder that the railways in Mozambique are directed to the sea, and do not link the South and North of the country? These foreign-owned billions need an outlet.
Whose narrative is that on the World Bank and IMF reports on Mozambique? Whom do they serve (the narratives and the Bretton Woods duo)?
Owning the narrative is much more than just the narrative, it is about our coming out of an inferior position.
We need to escape the stranglehold. That is the message of President Putin to us.
Whichever country comes to sign contracts and conventions with us, is not to serve our development purposes or to solve our problems, it is to solve theirs. We should own our development; our problems are for us to own.
VI. Religion, culture and politics
But then, we have not settled the original issue: was Jesus black?
We will never win this debate because Jesus was captured long ago by an uncanny and convoluted narrative. As far as I am concerned, Jesus could’a’been Indian. I still remain catholic because I was raised in that culture by my father and I raised my children the same way. If I had been born in Iran, I know I would be Muslim and by now my queries would be entirely different. We are a product of the environment and some things cannot change at age 68.
But things do change for the younger generation and they require attention because they represent to-day 82% of the peoples of Africa.
Take my 32-year-old boy: he called from far away to say that he just wanted to share a thought and that he is not in a rush to change things now: but he wanted to hear me about changing his religion. He said he read history and understands now that the catholic church was an important tool of colonization. And we talked frankly.
My other 36-year-old boy came with a beautiful child and the mother to visit us. I asked whether he thought about getting officially married in the church, to give the child some spiritual direction and for the social stability of the family. He said he was not even contemplating, that they are fine as they are. The child will enter baptism at her own volition, with no parental influence! I insisted that they needed societal acknowledgment of their union. He conceded that he then may celebrate a civil marriage but he was in no hurry. And there goes my Christian work in the family.
Allow me finally one last digression: we also need to get out of this slavery: the bible is translated in all our national languages. But books of science, mathematics, chemistry, engineering, biology, do not exist in any of our languages. Still they exist in Chinese, Russian, Indian, English, Portuguese, French, Finnish, etc. Are we still wondering how come they are developed and we are not? We are guarding our resources for the one who owns industries, comes to visit, under the protection of our local elites. That is all we do.
Maybe the order should change, if only because our youth will soon demand that from the old liberation guards who still behave as permanently entitled to power, just by virtue of age and party belonging.
1. The order can only change if we own the narrative.
1.1. We can only own the narrative if we are strong (between the lion and the antelope, the story is told of the lion).
1.1.1. We can only be strong if we work hard and with discipline to develop ourselves and if we understand that no one owes us development.
1.1.1.1. We can only develop if we have industries.
1.1.1.1.1. We can only have industries if we resist oppression and its tools – financial, military, technological and ideological (the media, the narrative).
Jose,
Tete, April 2024
[2] https://borkena.com/2016/06/30/ethiopian-bible-is-the-oldest-and-complete-bible-on-earth-ancient-origine/
[3] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-christians-were-denied-access-to-their-bible-for-1000-years_b_3303545
[6] https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/papal-donations-and-colonization
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