The Church's test in tomorrow's Africa

WHATEVER the immediate outcome of the Rhodesian constitutional conference, conflict will continue in Southern Africa. Causing increasing problems on both sides of the dividing line between white-ruled and blackruled states. How is the Church prepared for this deepening crises?
The situation varies with the political and eccleciastical history of each country.
The modern Catholic missionary thrust in central Africa began when an area roughly corresponding to modern Rhodesia, Zambia and Botswana was committed to the Jesuits in 1879.
But they did not succeed in establishing themselves until 1890, when they entered Rhodesia with Rhodes' settlers.
The Church in Rhodesia developed through four phases: Initially identified with the interests of the existing power — the colonial administration: later Jesuits devoted more effort to educating the local population. helping to form an African elite.
By the late 1950s many missiontrained Africans were teachers or officials with influence among their people. There were many obstacles to the advance of this elite and in the churchmen's efforts Were diverted towards working for the rights of the people, perhaps with an emphasis the mission-trained upper strata of African society.
Increasing intransigence by the white settlers led in the 1970s to the present guerrilla war and led the Church to identify more with the ordinary people in their sufferings. Current priorities are the formation of basic Christian communities and informal education of the most deprived.
In Zambia, the Jesuits established themselves somewhat later and were never the only Catholic missionaries. llovvever, their emphasis on education left its mark. They ran some of the best schools and training colleges and educated many of the present ruling class — including the children of President Kaunda.
Thus the Church in Zambia is largely still somewhere between the first and second stages of the Rhodesian development.
The Church enjoys considerable government favour but sonic people do ask how Christian this ruling elite class really is. The professional and skilled workers on the Copperbelt live very comfortably, with the cheap servants and imported luxuries, While the real hardships are suffered by the large numbers of unemployed in the towns and those who remain in the largely depopulated countryside.
The Church presents a very "middle-class" image, typified by smart churches frequented by top people.
Voices of concern for the underprivileged are raised, but when you have played a large part in creating the Establishment, it is difficult to dissociate yourself from it.
In Botswana there was no permanent Catholic presence until 1929. and missionary work was only put on a sound footing with the arrival of the Irish Passionists after World War II. The emphasis was again on education and building a visible and influential presence, so two of Botswans's most prominent secondary schools are Catholic. The Church, though small, is well represented among government officials and the country's one bishop is well received in Cabinet circles.
The Church is very European in style, and one wonders how it appears to the ordinary people. The country is calm, but there are problems of urbanisation, unemployment and class divisions are growing.
Botswana will, because of its position. also stiffer from former disturbances in South Africa. Namibia, and Rhodesia, and the Church seems ill-prepared. It is weakest at the grass roots and rather remote from the problems of the ordinary people.
The development of the Church in Tanzania is completely different from these other countries. The first missionaries were White Fathers, who, being deliberately more international and with very few British members, did not feel any close tie to the colonial government.
Their approach was more village-based than school-based.
Later missionaries shared their emphasis and the average expatriate priest in Tanzania now is rather an old fashioned pastor in the style common in regions of strong peasant Catholicism — like Alsace or rural Ireland, — taking a benign if slightly distant interest in most aspects of life, but no more interest in politics than in other spheres.
The clergy, more numerous than in the other three countries, are more in tune with national policies and seriously concerned both to encourage the large amount of good in the government's policies and to help keep the policymakers responsibe to the ordinary people. Although the style of the cathedral in Dar es Salaam and the Cardinal's Mercedes (a more expensive car than the president ever uses) cause some wry amusement.
Some of the bishops are strong proponents of the attempt to express deeply Christian values in the ujamaa policy. At least one, Bishop Christopher Mwoleka of Rulenge. lives in an ujamaa village and takes as full a part in its life, doing his Full share of communal work.
A touchstone of how the Church respnds to the "Frontline" situation is its relationship to refugees from the south. In Zambia and Tanzania the Catholic secretariates are involved in Church and other relief agencies. Botswana is one diocese so it has no national secretariate. As for the parish and mission level, refugees do not appear as much of a problem in Tanzania because they are comparatively few. In both Zambia and Botswana many expatriate clergy (who still heavily outnumber local priests) identify with the educated classes who tend to feel the refugees are a threat to stability. The less privileged, possibly because they have less to lose, identify more easily with Zimbabwean and South African aspirations for freedom from settler rule, Suspicions are mutual: the Patriotic Front know well both the serious shortcomings of the organised Church in Rhodesia in the past and which priests now are identified with the people. The only priests who can get really close to them are those who have proved themselves.
In the future churchmen will have to face the fairly stiff demands of a life lived far more with the people in style and for them in more than a purely spiritual sense: a harder life, but one closer to the Gospel and one that will be demanded all the more to make up for failures in the past. It seems that the Church is now better equipped in Rhodesia for this task than in any of the neighbouring independent states.