Turn endless Africa talk into action

The toughest challenge facing the second Synod of Bishops for Africa in Rome this October is conference fatigue. Another meeting to discuss the continent gives very many people a big yawn. Our problems have created a multi-million-dollar talk industry. We are the subject of endless talk, especially in the conference halls of foreign capitals.

Our own bishops will be reflecting on how the Catholic Church, working with all the other actors, can help build justice, peace and reconciliation in Africa. That means: what to do about corruption, dysfunctional states, poverty and disease, gross human rights violations, famine, armed conflict, youth unemployment. The list is endless. Aren’t solutions to nearly all these problems already well known? Is it difficult to see the Church’s role?

A small example. Kenya’s extremely flammable Rift Valley Province is the ancestral home of the Kalenjin, but many other communities have settled there. Politically instigated violence targeting the “outsiders” has plagued the region since the early 1990s. It was the worst-hit area in last year’s deadly post-election violence.

Bishop Cornelius Korir of Eldoret recalls how in 1992 he was caught up in a violent confrontation between angry Kalenjin youth and the police: “As the Kalenjin youth sent about 20 men forward to draw fire and force the police to use their ammunition, I stepped between them and the police, putting my hands above my head and shouting, ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot.’ I do not know where I got the courage and I doubt I could do that again. After a tense stand-off, the youth agreed to retreat if I would escort them…”

There you have it. Talking justice, peace and reconciliation is good, but not enough. Step into the fire. Do not be afraid. Get your hands dirty. Risk your own life. That is the Church’s prophetic role.

One of the sharpest criticisms levelled at the Church in Kenya, which as well applies to all Africa, appears in a book published a few months ago. Church leaders, according to the book, seem content with issuing statements about this or that at press conferences in Nairobi. What’s the value of the well-meaning statements? “General exhortations to avoid corruption and promote justice have come to be seen as rather hollow, almost as evasions,” the book says.

Moreover, many times the Church is too soft with the errant state in Africa, despite its power of God’s grace, institutional strength and numbers. Archbishop Buti Tlhagale, the president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, put his finger on this point last year at an SACBC plenary meeting. He berated the Ghana-based Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), the Inter-Regional Meeting of the Bishops of Southern Africa (IMBISA) and the SACBC itself.

“Do we wish SECAM to support those who call for the arrest of [Sudanese] President Al-Bashir for the genocide committed in Darfur? The African Union has been going softly-softly on [Zimbabwean] President Mugabe. IMBISA, based in Zimbabwe, is a toothless bulldog. Our own conference has not done much beyond expressions of solidarity and occasional protest. Shouldn’t we be breaking ranks with the African leaders and openly support the positions of the USA and Britain, i.e. of applying smart sanctions on the Zimbabwean leadership?”

In other words justice, peace and reconciliation cannot be achieved by merely appealing to the consciences of politicians. Get tough! The greatest instrument of political change is an informed and impatient citizenry demanding action. Yet nearly everywhere in Africa, the Church has not done much to mobilise, sensitise and unleash the people on the intransigent state. Would a parish priest who organised his parishioners and other residents to demand water and sanitation from the town council fail to achieve this objective?

What is more useful: a Church statement decrying the shortages and begging for humanitarian assistance, or a plan to mobilise Christians in well-endowed dioceses to share their food with the hungry people of north and eastern Kenya?

My own country, Kenya, is prone to inter-ethnic violence. How many deaths and injuries would be avoided if the Church, present in every corner of the republic, established a conflict early warning system to draw public attention to the earliest signs of trouble? Perhaps Africa Synod II will come up with such action-oriented proposals.

What is urgently needed in Africa today is a Church leadership fully up on its feet walking the justice-peace-reconciliation talk every single day of the week.