May I hasten to say that this my article is neither intended to convert, nor to obtain concurrence with my spiritual perspective or outlook, but rather to convey social messages to a country that has many chiefs and few leaders.
In my human essence and in my education, in my family, especially my late father, and in the Mission of Fonte Boa, Tete, where I was educated at a young age and from where I inherited a certain discipline, I am a person who believes in a mysterious superior entity that is above everything and everyone. He created everything.
There are traditional rituals in our villages to express this faith, ceremonies that were first despised, then discouraged, then repressed and finally suppressed by Portuguese colonists and their missionaries. This is how they recruited us to the Christian, Catholic, apostolic and Roman faith. I got caught up in this faith, which I accept with no regrets. Nonetheless, I think that our African beliefs deserve in-depth anthropological research on our part, so we can use them to express our acquired faith; in other words, affirming ourselves in our faith and in our ancestral culture, so that faith and culture are not exclusive of each other in the same person.
Had I been born in Mali, or in Senegal, or in Zanzibar, or yet in the Comoros Islands, I am 99% convinced that my belief and my faith would have been Muslim. If I had been born and educated in India, I would be a Hindu, and mutatis mutandis. Essentially, I would still and always believe in a superior entity. Or in various superior forces, like my Indian brother. In my lifetime, I have come to believe that there are not many atheist human beings who do not believe in this/these superior being(s), this/these God(s), by whatever name they may be represented.
My first message is that human faith is universal and is expressed in different ways, mainly fashioned by local culture. There must be a broad public education about Respect for all faiths. Otherwise, we will continue to witness the burning of Al Qurhan as is still done in Europe today. These despicable gestures breed hatred and can promote war, bringing back the specter of holy wars, such as Jihad[1] and the Crusades[2].
In our times we must repudiate the lack of respect for other beliefs and faiths, so we can avoid conflicts in the world. It is enough already that the way we manage the migration of young people between countries obeys a foreign policy proposition and that goes against our interests as neighboring countries. This is because Europe is afraid of an inevitable human avalanche. This avalanche, like an unstoppable tsunami, is coming, whether we like it or not, because Africa is a human majority that is growing continuously. I was saying that they impose on us a migration management modality that criminalizes natural cross-border movements of people seeking to improve their lives elsewhere. Thus, while appearing different and unconnected, migration and religion as sold to us, constitute a mixture designed to beat us down, demonize and reject cultures that are not theirs, with the help of a subsidized press that is at the service of imperialist capital, with other elements. Let us be vigilant.
My second message is: Work. I believe in this superior being that we call God, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva and other names. But I also believe that this superior being left in us the seed that allows us to dominate the earth and survive, the strength and authority to use the nature he left us with, in order to improve our living conditions[3]. Much more than spending our lives asking for and expecting miracles and depending on those improbable events to bring us luck, work, health and prosperity while we abandon ourselves in desperate contemplation and vigil. This superior being endowed us with intelligence. In addition to intelligence, in his grace he decided to create an Africa full of resources that have no equal in other Continents: immense water resources (despite our misfortunes of lack of water in many houses, the city of Tete is traversed, divided and watered by two beautiful, large and perennial rivers), arable land that even Africa is selling out to other Continents to work on (in exchange for a few financial crumbs, promptly received and privatized), discovered and undiscovered minerals, and above all a population full of energy and ready to work.
It is said that Africa is one of the largest continents, contrary to what Western maps would have us believe by drawing a distorted map for us to adopt and consume.
Therefore, our misery must have another explanation and we cannot understand it. Even better, we understand it but time has passed for us to change our mentality, attitude and behavior. Discipline and hard work: who will take us to this state of mind and attitude? Africa continues to be the headquarters of poverty, of industrial backwardness and of begging. Decades after independence, Africa continues to live in a mind captured by international capital that has also taken to exporting to us a more modern God, making our Continent the one that prays the most to God. Countries such as China, India, Japan or Singapore are however more advanced than we are, and they are not Christians.
When will we become aware that our leaders are our impediment: despite the fact that God has given us so much natural wealth and we are unable to exploit it?
What kind of God is it that we believe in and expect him to continue to hold us by the hand after giving us all this abundance, including individual intelligence and discernment?
Our mentality is no longer critical and the talents that this God gifted us with, we do not use efficiently and fully. Perhaps we take refuge in the church because the political leader has closed the space for the young people to exercise initiative and invention and honest work. Instead, we return to the same God to ask for a shower of miracle: to ask for the land, the hoe, the rain, the food, the cooking, and while we are at it, to ask for the miracle of prosperity to be dropped down on us.
My third message is an iteration and reinforces the second: I am convinced that honest hard work is also an elevated form of prayer. A productive prayer because we ourselves as individual people are already the miracle we are looking for.
We must finally denounce this global industry that wants to make us believe that we are inferior and condemned
to be poor, miserable and beggars and a spectacle for benefactors who are waiting for natural disasters in our territories,
to suffering cyclical floods that we know how to predict and can prevent if inertia is overcome,
to cyclically and perpetually go asking for money to wage our own war, and asking for money to balance our national budgets,
and a whole long sorry stringsong litany entertained by international capital.
Who told or convinced us that we are small and poor? Instead of jumping around asking God to ship us some wealth, we don't know exactly from where, the believers in the video below should ask, even demand, from their leaders, not from God, for a farm and irrigation expert and non-exploitative financing to gainfully exploit the lands they are jumping on, crying out to God to drop something that justifies their belief! Is this not a sign of failed governments that make people run to God as the last resort for their miserable lives?
We would have enough wheat not to go begging to Ukraine, a country that is in a desperate and suicidal war of its own! I am not sure I would have the courage, as a leader, to go and ask for help from a dying person. Leaving behind a Zambezi Valley, a Limpopo Valley, an entire huge Zambézia Region, a Niassa Region and so many others! Whoever talks of Mozambique could easily transpose to many other countries in East and Southern, Central Africa. And what else is in the inventories of Mozambique as a territory?
A small diversion from the main message: Speaking of religion and culture, the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, for me, has a problem with continuing to call itself Roman. Our supreme leader, the Pope lives and works and leads us from Rome. The Catholic faith expanded from Rome for sure, but that was many centuries ago. Today, we would like to continue following the teachings of Rome (maybe except where it concerns new gender discoveries and experiments), but it seems to me that continuing to call our church Roman is a bit archaic, insensitive and contradicts the universal and apostolic character that the Church has achieved today. There are more Catholics in Africa than there are in Europe. It would make sense to drop the adjective Roman. An opportunistic digression that is beside the point of this lucubration.
And to underline this personal argument, I share the opinion, expressed in this media article about the nature of prayer that you can read/see by clicking HERE
Jose
Tete, Mozambique
29 April 2024
[3] https://mycatholic.life/bible/rsvce/ (Gen 1, 27-31)
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