2. the World of Augustine

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The WORLD of AUGUSTINE:

A F R I C AFr. Leons N. Maziku


A F R I C A



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INTRODUCTION!

“

Africa is a continent of wide varieties anddiversity of situation of both church andsociety. One common situation withoutdoubt is that Africa is full of problems. In aworld controlled by rich and powerfulnations, Africa has practically become anirrelevant appendix, often forgotten andneglected by all. The Church is part of thissociety in distress.

”

These were the words

of Cardinal Hyacinthe Thiandsum, theArchbishop of Dakar Senegal, during theopening speech at the Special Assembly forAfrica of the Synod of Bishops in Rome,April 1994.

INTRODUCTION!

The problems of Africa are historicalproblems. Ignorance of history,

racial prejudice and bias had

weakened the efforts and the

struggles of Africans in explaining

and liberating their once classicalcivilization like the Egyptian

Civilization, the Mali and SonghaiEmpires and the formidable

Mwananuitapa Empire of Zimbabwe.



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INTRODUCTION! The writer is an African priest, scholar of

the Augustinian Sisters of Our Lady of

Consolation at the University of Regina

Carmeli, Malolos, Bulacan. In his efforts

of thanking the OSA Sisters, he is writing

a brief background of North African

History, the birth place of Saint

Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo.

AFRICAN HISTORY!

There is a movement of changes globally and

Africa is not an exception from the Evolution.

This turning point of African History reached

climax due to two factors.

1. The Independence of Namibia ending the colonial

occupation in Africa since the Berlin Conference of

1884-85 which divided Africa into European Major

powers by then namely, the British, the French, the

Germans, and the Portuguese.



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AFRICAN HISTORY2. The end of Apartheid in South Africa, apeculiar country in the civilization ofmankind, for having social, political andeconomic services offered according to theracial aspects.

2.1 The white, the first class

2.2 The coloured, second class

2.3 The black, third class

!

These two factors were resurrection, thePassover of Africa and African peopletowards a journey in the

“

desert”

to thepromised land of freedom, peace andequality.

AFRICAN HISTORY! The history of Africa which is now being

re-written and reshaped with African

flesh, covers the struggles for their

liberation and this history is not familiar

to the majority outside Africa. The

reasons are very clear. There is an

“

Africa”

– the Dark Continent, full ofviolence, malnutrition, famine and

drought which have been imprinted in

the minds of people for centuries.



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AFRICAN HISTORY! The ready-made African History is

crumbling into pieces giving way to

Africa as the product of African struggles

towards liberation. I, personally, admit

there is a long way to go, but Africa is

already on the move. Sad to say, Africa

has no CNN, CBS, ABC to tell the world

in a voice loud and clear,“

We are on theshift.

”

AFRICAN HISTORY! Renato Constantino once said,

“

An

individual has no history apart from

society, and society is the historical

product of people.”

Meaning to say, you

cannot know the real Saint Augustine,

unless you know his society. In this

case, the African society of the fourthand fifth Century of Roman North Africa.



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AFRICAN HISTORY! The Society which shaped, moulded and

gave St. Augustine his identity as an

African has not been given due research

and study due to racial prejudice.“

For

history, though it is commonly defined

as the History of Man, it is not the man –

the individual, but man – the collective,

that is, the associated man. Withoutsociety, there can be no history. There

are no societies without men.”

AFRICAN HISTORY

! The History of Africa and African

Spirituality is based in the light of the

Second Vatican Council which had opened

the doors for dialogue with other faiths and

cultures. The African who was printed for

centuries in the minds and books of so

many scholars was inspired by the theology

and spir i tua l i ty of be l iev ing that

Christianity alone had the truth, and that the

Church was the unique path to eternal

salvation. In other words,“

outside the

church, there was no hope for salvation.”



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AFRICAN HISTORY

!

Once Professor Hans Küng said,

“

NOT that everything that is true,

good and beautiful can only be

found in the Church. A decent life

and salvation can be found also in

other groups outside the Church,

since God is greater than the

Church.”



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THE PEOPLE

!

The first effort in re-examining the

History of Africa is to know that Africans

are a mixture of different races

composed of different complexion,

culture, languages and religions. This is

one of the most important characteristic

features of Africa, which has a significant

bearing on economic and political affairs

because of the variety of races, not only

in the Continent as a whole but also in

individual countries.

NEGROES!

They constitute the largest racial group.

They occupy most of the continent

south of the Sahara. They are dark

skinned. The Negroes can be roughly

divided into two great groups.

1. A Southern Eastern group

2. A Northern Western group speaking a

variety of languages

!

Nigritic

!

Serdanic

!

West African

!

Negroids



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NEGROES! Majority and most of the time, when

people refer to Africans, they referto Negroes. This is a big family.They are different. Most of them aretall, brown, broad nose and curlyhair. The smaller tribe which canbreak from here are Zulu fromSouth Africa and Bantu from Eastof Africa. Most of the Negroes were

taken into tribe in America. Thoseof Michael Jordan and the rest ofthem belong to this race.

BUSHMEN / SAN PEOPLE!

They survive in the remote and aridlands of Southern Africa. They have

thin lips and hair tightly spiraled to

form tufts. If anyone of you have

watched the movie“

The Gods Must

Be Crazy”

, those are Bushanoids.They are short, light yellow in color,

broad nose and kinky hair.



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PYGMIES

!

They are confined mainly to the

Equatorial forests of the Zaire Basin.

Hunters, trappers and collectors, they

are dark skinned, shy people with an

average of only about 142 cm. (4 ft. & 8

inches). They are short, medium brown

in color, broad nose and kinky hair. Most

of them are living in at the Central part of

Africa in Zaire, Angola, Congo and

Gabon.

CAUCASOID / ARMENOIDS!

They are pale-skinned people whohave entered Africa from time totime over thousands of years.

Among the earliest arrivals were theBerber speaking people of North

Africa. They are tall, slender, lightcomplexioned, long haired. St.Augustine belonged here. That s

why I don t look like St. Augustineeven though we both come fromAfrica. The major tribes, the major

families are Berbers which is thetribe of St. Augustine and Bedoins.

Most of them are found alongSahara Desert, Morocco, Algeria,Libya and Egypt. They got lighter

complexion and long hair.



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ARABS! Scarcely distinguishable from the

Berbers. The Arabs invaded Egypt and

the rest of North Africa in the seventh

century AD and brought with them

Muslim religion. Originally, traders or

nomadic pastoralists, many of them have

settled down to become sedentary

cultivators.

CAUCASOIDS / EUROPEANS

! The majority of the Caucasoids/

Europeans live in the Republic of South

Africa. More than half of them who

mostly speak Afrikaan descended from

Dutch and German settlers at the Cape in

the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries, and the remainder largely

descended from British immigrants whohave arrived over 180 years ago.



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INDONESIANS!

They came across the Indian Ocean intoMadagascar over a thousand years ago. And

Madagascar has trade links with Indonesia

and Malaysia. That

s why, they look like you.

So you can see how hard it is to ask what is

the language of Africa.

LANGUAGES



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LANGUAGES

1.AFRO-ASIATIC with 5 coordinatebranches:

!

Semitic – in Asia as in ancient Egypt

! Berber – in Northwestern Algeria

!

Cashitic – in Ethiopia

!

Chadic – in parts of present-day Chad

and Nigeria

3.KHOISAN – spoken in Southern Africaand East Africa

LANGUAGES

3. CONGO-KORDOFANIAN

with 2 families:!

Niger-Congo Kordofanian in West Africa,

grasslands of Cameroons and Central

Africa Republic

4. NILO-SAHARAN – spoken in South

of the Sahara or in the desert of

Northeast of Lake Chad



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LANGUAGES

5.AUSTRONESIAN – in Madagascar,

Southeast Asia –

AFRIKAANS – language of the overseas

European minority in South Africa; also of

the colored people of Cape province.

–

CREOLES – the blend of original alien

languages (English, French, Portuguese) with

African tongues as now the home language

for scattered significant elements of the

population.

SOCIETY



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SOCIETY!

The typically African society is based onkinship, the network of relationship woven

by descent and marriage.“

The unity ofsocial organization is the family not just a

man, his wife and their children, but the

extended family embracing three or fourgenerations and including cousins.

”

SOCIETY

! The family as a basic unit differs from

place to place but essentially Africans

are family-oriented. It was the glue that

blended the society and maintained

peace as Chief Awolano of Nigeria once

said.“

There was peace because the

people lived closely together, and there

was peace because the family wascorporate, integrated and well-regulated.



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SOCIETY

!

The traditions which held Africanstogether were de-stabilized and eroded

by the slave trade. It was the time when

Africans lost their course of civilization,

development and spirituality because the

unit-family – that put them together was

robbed from them and they fell apart. It

was the key which ignited an endless

chain of disasters of colonialism,

exploitation, neo-colonialism and

perpetual poverty.

North Africa



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North Africa!

North Africa, west of the Nile Delta was occupiedfor as long as 6000 years by Pastoralist people

who occupied not only the Magreb but also most

of what is now the Western Sahara.

! When the Phoenicians from what is now known

as Lebanon founded Carthage about 800 BC,

they found there were people speaking a

language called TAMAZIGHT.“

Later on Greek

traders and colonists regarded aboriginal

inhabitants of North-West Africa as Barbariansand called them – Berbers.” Though primarily

Pastoralists, they were also cultivators, growing

tree crops and cereals on terraces.

North Africa!

“

Carthage was overwhelmed by Rome in 147 BCand by Cleopatra

s Egypt in 32 BC.”

This was

the beginning of the formal colonial occupation

of North Africa, including Algeria. For the next

five centuries, North Africa, including Egypt,

formed a part of either the Western Roman or the

Eastern Byzantine Empire.

! St. Augustine was born in 354 AD during the

Roman occupation in North Africa. It was already

after the Edict of Milan in 312, and Christianitywas the Religion of the Empire.“

Many of the

townspeople of Roman Egypt and North Africa

were converted to Christianity. Augustine of

Hippo was one of them.”



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!

In order to be a good citizen who obeyed the

Emperor, there was forced conversion and

resistance which led to persecution. For Augustine,the case was different. It was a personal conversion.

The Roman Empire was the pillar which supported

Christianity. When the Empire fell, Christianity had

no support and became vulnerable.

!

“

But at the end of the period of several centuries of

European rule in North Africa, there came suddenly

and dramatically the Arabs who invaded Northern

Africa in the seventh century AD.”

The invasion

drove a wedge into the falling Christian Empire.“

The

Berbers, as they have always done, resisted the newinvaders and succeeded in retaining the ancient

tribal structure by retiring to the mountains.”

North Africa!

Apart from the collapse of the Roman Empire,Christianity in North Africa had no deep roots

because of persecution and forced conversion.

It had been weakened by theological disputes,

Donatism and Pelagianism which created

confusion and chaos.“

Within a century, the

majority of the population had adopted Islam,

and the Arabic language and customs.”

! The Berbers felt more comfortable with Muslim

Arabs than Christian Romans because of itssimilarity with their culture, language and

race. Christianity was the religion of a colonialMaster who brought freedom.



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North Africa

Islam brought relief through the followingfactors:

! Monotheism: By solving the Arius

Nestorius Problematic Heresy

!

“

Salama”

submission to God alone

brings peace: Not Grace or good works:

Pelagian Heresy

!

Umara-ful – Islam fitted squarely with theBerbers

culture of Al Jamaa

! Islam had a room for Polygamy

COMMENTS



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COMMENTS !

History is irrelevant and boring if it is achronology of events, names of heroes which

took place long time ago and had noconnection with the present. The History of

North Africa is only relevant if it becomes a

unifying thread of the present problems ofAfrica and the Church of the Poor.

“

We

therefore need to re-examine our History, ourTheology, Spirituality and pastoral activities to

discern where and how Christians wentwrong.

”

1. Inculturation!

Christianity in North Africa died because it had nodeep roots in African culture which was regarded

as inferior compared to European.

!

I am afraid the Missionaries are repeating the

same mistake.

!

Bishop Kenneth Cragg had said it rightly,“

Our

first task in approaching another people,

another culture, another religion is to take off

our shoes, for the place we are approaching isHoly. Else, we may find ourselves treading on

people

s dream. More seriously still we may

not forget that God was there before our

arrival.”



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2. EITHER CHURCH OF, AND FOR THE

POOR OR NO CHURCH AT ALL

!

I do not have better words than those of the

former President of the United Republic of

Tanzania, Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere:“

I am

suggesting that unless we participate actively

against the social structures and economic

organization which condemn man to poverty,

humiliations and degradation, then the Church

will be irrelevant to Man and Christian religion

will degenerate into a set of superstitionsaccepted by the fearful.

”

3. THE CHURCH THAT EMPOWERS

PEOPLE OF GOD FOR LIBERATION ! History of Salvation is the History of oppressed

slaves who struggled to free themselves from

the yoke of oppression, and from foreign idols.

!

“Unless the Church, its members and its

organization express God

s love for man by

involvement and leadership in constructive

protest against the present conditions of man,

then it will become identified with injustice and

persecution. If this happens, it will die andhumanly speaking, deserves to die – because it

will serve no purpose comprehensible to modern

man.”



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CONCLUSION

Conclusion ! The African who had produced St. Augustine are

tooth and nail struggling to reclaim their lost glory

and dignity. In solidarity with the Church of the

Poor, we are revisiting the past to see what went

wrong, when and why. In recognition of the

Mission and Vision of the Augustinian Sisters of

Our Lady of Consolation, there is a uniting thread

of struggles of people not only in the Third World

Countries but globally to build the Church as the

community of believers in the model of theJerusalem Community where they,

“

remained

faithful to the teaching of the Apostles, to the

brotherhood, to the breaking of the bread and to

the Prayers.”

Acts 2:42.




A F R I C AIn Christ,

Fr. Leons N. Maziku

Nkosi Sikeleli Africa

Mungu Ibariki Africa

God Bless Africa!

2. the World of Augustine

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