mail&guardian | For much of this week, our roads will overflow with cars, buses and
minibuses full of pilgrims en route to African Zions and Jerusalems.
Many local rivers will become Jordans in which the recently converted
will be born again.
Country valleys will echo with songs of gratitude from wretched souls
singing: “Jo, ke mohlolo ha ke ratwa le nna [what a miracle it is for someone like me to be loved].”
Innocent villagers will be battered with amplified sermons
on loudspeakers in all manner of fake American accents. With their
stomping feet, the dancing masses will convert ordinary mountains and
hills into sacred spaces. And the goats will catch hell on several
fronts – they will be slaughtered either in celebration or in libation.
For more than 170 years, Karl Marx’s brief reference to
religion as the opium of the people has proved hard to forget and harder
to forgive. He probably did not have Africa in mind when he made the
statement, but nowhere is this Marxist “dictum” in sharper focus. This
is the continent whose people respected scholar and academic John
Mbiti’s described as “notoriously religious”.
Nothing captures the tragedy and the wonder of the African
continent better than the coexistence of poverty and religiosity, both
in their most extreme forms imaginable. The question is whether the
coincidence is merely casual or causal – and in which direction. Are
Africans poor because they are religious, religious because they are
poor, or religious in spite of being poor?
