Nyasa Leaders, Christianity and African Internationalism in 1920s Johannesburg.pdf - 1 views
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Over the decade of the 1920s, four Christian men from colonial Nyasaland (modern-day Malawi) stood at the forefront of urban South African society, reimagining Africa’s past and future in cosmopolitan, internationalist terms. They each, however, envisaged very different transformational processes and very different new dispensations. These differences were, above all, grounded in their divergent Christian beliefs. Clements Kadalie and George Wellington Kampara on the one hand were both Ethiopianist Christians, who believed that humanity had an obligation to usher in a ‘truly’ Christian and democratic society in the here and now. If necessary, this would mean toppling secular colonial authorities. On the other hand, John G. Phillips and J.R. Albert Ankhoma, as Zionist and Pentecostal Christians, believed that earthly society was fundamentally doomed until Christ’s eventual return. They closely aligned themselves with Britain’s ‘god-sanctioned’ imperial project in their pursuit of spiritual self-perfection and theocratic rule.
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nonjabulorsxabar on 26 Apr 23Four Christian men from Nyasaland in the 1920s reimagined Africa's past and future in cosmopolitan terms, but each had divergent Christian beliefs. Clements Kadalie and GeorgeWellington Kampara believed humanity had an obligation to create a Christian and democratic society, while John G. Phillips and J.R. Albert Ankhoma believed earthly society was doomed until Christ's return
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themselves within 1920s Johannesburg, but their Christian-informed beliefs meant their different visions of the future were diametrically opposed. While Kampara no doubt followed UNIA doctrine to herald Marcus Garvey as his modern-day Moses, anticipating that, either by boat or plane, ‘the Americans were coming!’, Ankhoma declared that the leader of his ‘British Israeli’ Pentecostal church was the world’s ‘Moses of the day’. 4 R ejecting Pentecostalism and Garveyism, Kadalie in contrast believed ‘that the salvation of the Africans in this country will be brought about through their own sweat and labour’. Adopting the Swahili name for Moses as his pen-name, he became Clements ‘Musa’ Kadalie. 5 Working through the intellectual biographies of these Nyasa men, this article demonstrates that whereas Phillips and Ankhoma worked within, and endorsed, existing logics of empire because of their Christian beliefs, Kampara and Kadalie rejected ‘ethnic’ and ‘nativist’ national identities to position themselves at the forefront of a future ‘New Africa’. In many ways, it is innately conservative to frame these men as ‘Nyasas’. All four men were born in the state that became Malawi in 1964, and each contested colonial categories in important ways. 6 Despite their common Tonga parentage, however, being a Nyasa was crucial to how these men were understood in 1920s Johannesburg. And, more importantly, it was central to how they consolidated and radically transcended state-based modes of identification. Each brief biography sets out who these Nyasas were, how they reimagined Africa’s past to integrate the continent within world history, and how their differing understandings of the international and the imperial influenced their politics of the future. Central Africans have generally been marginalised in the historiographies of black South African nationalism and black internationalism.
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The four Nyasa men, Kampara, Ankhoma, and Kadalie, were born in Malawi in 1964 and contested colonial categories in important ways. Despite their common Tonga parentage, being a Nyasa was crucial to how these men were understood in 1920s Johannesburg and how they consolidated and transcended state-based modes of identification. Their differing understandings of the international and imperial influenced their politics of the future. Central Africans have been marginalised in historiographies of black South African nationalism and black internationalism.
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A New Babylon at the forefront of modernity in Southern Africa, 1920s Johannesburg was a motley metropolis of international immigrants and transnational Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu networks. 8 Large numbers of Afrikaners, Zulu, Xhosa, Eastern European Jews, Britons, Basotho, Americans, Mozambicans, Chinese and Indians were already living and working in the city from the 1890s, and by the mid1920s mission-educated Nyasas were increasingly prominent as clerks, medicine men and domestic servants. In 1927, the Chamber of Mines-sponsored newspaper Umteteli wa Bantu complained that Nyasas had monopolised the city’s domestic service industry – a lucrative sector previously dominated by Zulu and Pedi. 9 In addition to well-known Nyasa leaders in black trade unions, Garveyite associations, and Ethiopianist, Zionist and Pentecostal churches, ‘[a]ll adherents’ of Johannesburg’s Watch Tower movement were also ‘from Nyasaland, Rhodesia and Northern Transvaal’– though, in marked contrast to the movement in Central Africa, the church in urban South Africa did little to trouble government officials. 10
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Johannesburg was a city of international immigrants and transnational Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu networks, with mission-educated Nyasas increasingly prominent as clerks, medicine men and domestic servants. All adherents of Johannesburg's Watch Tower movement were from Nyasaland, Rhodesia and Northern Transvaal.
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