RELIGIOUS INNOVATION AND POLITICAL CONFLICT IN ZAMBIA The Lumpa rising (Part III) Wim van Binsbergen |
We have now reached a stage where we
can assess the position of the Lumpa Church as a case of
religious innovation, against the general background of
superstructural reconstruction in Central Africa, and where we
can begin to analyse the conflicts this church gave rise to.
The story of Lenshinas first appearance as a prophet and of
the founding years of her church has been told often enough.[1] we can confine ourselves here to a
broad outline. Lenshina was born around 1920, as the daughter of
a Bemba villager who had fought against the Germans near the
Tanzanian border, and who had later been a boma messenger. Though
growing up near Lubwa mission, Lenshina was not a baptised
Christian when she received her first visions in 1953. Her
husband had been a carpenter at Lubwa mission but by that time
was no longer employed there. Lenshina referred to the mission
with an account of her spiritual experiences. The white
missionary-in-charge took her seriously, saw her through Bible
lessons and baptism (when she received the name of Alice), and
encouraged her to give testimony of her experiences at church
gatherings. When this missionary went on leave abroad, and Alice
began to develop ritual initiatives on her own, even receiving
money for them, the African minister-in-charge felt that she
could no longer be contained within the mission church .
From 1955 onwards Lenshina propagated her message on her own
behalf, thus founding an independent church. She collected a
phenomenal following around her, which by 1958 was estimated at
about 65,000.[2] Many of these were former converts of
Lubwa mission and of the neighbouring Roman Catholic missions. In
Chinsali district and adjacent areas the great majority of the
population turned to Lenshinas church, which was soon known
as Lumpa (excelling all others). An organisational
framework was set up in which Lenshinas husband Petros
Chitankwa and other male senior deacons held the topmost
positions. Thousands of pilgrims flocked to Lenshinas
village, Kasomo, which was renamed Sioni (Zion); many settled
there permanently. In 1958 the Lumpa cathedral was completed to
be one of the largest church buildings of Central Africa. Scores
of Lumpa branches were created throughout Zambias Northern
Province. In addition, some appeared along the line of rail, and
even in Zimbabwe. The rural membership of the Church began to
drop in the late 1950s from about 70 per cent to about 10 per
cent of the local population.[3] After various clashes with the chiefs,
local missions, the colonial state and the anti-colonial
nationalist movement armed resistance against the state
precipitated the 1964 final conflict which meant the end of the
overt existence of Lumpa in Zambia.
Against the background of previous religious innovations in
Central Africa, Lumpa offered a not very original combination of
recurrent symbolic themes. Lumpa laid strong emphasis on the
eradication of sorcery, mainly through baptism and the surrender
of sorcery apparatus. It displayed the linear time perspective
implicit in the notion of salvation, while eschatological
overtones became very dominant only in the few months preceding
the final conflict. Lenshina assumed ritual ecological functions
such as distributing blessed seeds and calling rain, but on the
other hand imposed taboos on common foods such as beer. The
Churchs idiom highlighted God and Jesus, while denouncing
ancestors, deceased chiefs and affliction-causing spirits as
objects of veneration. The Church aimed also at the creation of a
new, predominantly rural society - but this time not only by the
ritual means of witch-cleansing but also by experiments with new
patterns of social relations and even with new relations of
production and control which at least went some way towards
infrastructural change. In this last aspect lies the uniqueness
of Lumpa - as well as its undoing.
But before we discuss this aspect, let us try to identify the
position of Lumpa within either the urban on the
rural stream of superstructural reconstruction. The
class position of the Lumpa foundress and of the great majority
of Lenshinas adherents was that of the peasantry. Yet
Lenshinas background (particularly the labour history of
her father and of her husband), and Lumpas period of
incubation at Lubwa mission (1953-4), suggest the
importance of elements deriving from the intensive contact
situation. Negative views concerning the missionaries, the whites
and colonialism were initially quite strong in Lumpa.
Lenshinas first visions occurred around the time that the
Central African Federation was created, a controversial step that
had greatly enhanced the political awareness of the African
population, representing the first major defeat of Zambian
nationalism. There is, moreover, specific evidence of the
nationalist element in Lumpa in the early years (mid-1950s). Many
of the early senior leaders of Lumpa were nationalists who for
that reason had left the Lubwa mission establishment. Lumpa
gatherings were used for nationalist propaganda In 1954 even the
then leader of Zambian nationalism, Harry Nkumbula, had a meeting
with Alice to enlist her support for the nationalist cause.[4] Lumpa seemed to develop into a
textbook demonstration of Balandiers well-known view that
independent churches are at the origin of nationalisms
which are still unsophisticated but unequivocal in their
expression.[5]
Lumpas closeness to the nationalist movement was emphasised
by the authors of the most authoritative early studies of Lumpa.[6] on the basis of their field-work,
which took place in the late 1950s, these researchers were
entirely unable to predict Lumpas clash with UNIP in the
early 1960s.
From the very beginning, however, the symbolic idiom in which
Lenshina expressed her message belonged not to the stream of
proletarisation, but to that of peasantisation. This is clear
from Lenshinas emphasis on ecological ritual (which in the
1950s must be considered almost an anachronism within the
development of Central African religious innovation),
sorcery-eradication, and the construction of a new, exclusively
local, rural society. As the movement spread over north-eastern
Zambia, these peasant elements became more and more dominant.
Lumpa became primarily a means to overcome the predicament of
peasantisation. In its emphasis on the creation of a new, local
society, Lumpa was not interested in modifying and improving the
incorporation of that society in the wider structures of
capitalism and the colonial state (the frame of reference of the
proletarisation response, including nationalism); instead, the
entire reality of this incorporation came to be denied within
Lumpa. Whereas it could be maintained that Lumpa initially
straddled both the urban and the rural streams of superstructural
reconstruction, it gradually went through a process of
accommodation to the peasant outlook. This was rather analogous
to the rural transformation of Watchtower a quarter of a century
earlier. The constitution of the Lumpa Church, drawn up in 1957,
fore-shadows the outcome of this process: the Church is there
presented as non-racial, not a political party and not opposed to
the laws of the country, thus opting out of the nationalist
position.[7]
By becoming more and more specifically a peasant movement, Lumpa
could no longer accommodate those of its members whose
experiences at rural missions, bomas, and in town were more
deeply rooted in the proletarisation process. This partly
explains the decline of Lumpa in north-eastern Zambia since the
late 1950s. By that time many of the Lumpa adherents had returned
to their mission churches. Others heeded the call of the rapidly
expanding rural branches of UNIP. Entrenched in its exclusively
rural and local outlook, Lumpa was working out a form of peasant
class struggle quite incompatible with the nationalist emphasis
on wider incorporation and on the state. By the same token, the
urban branches of Lumpa became increasingly divorced from the
developments in the Church in Chinsali district. While their
relation to nationalism remains a subject for further study, it
is clear that the urban branches did dissociate themselves from
rural Lumpa in the latters final conflict with the state.[8]
If Lumpa gradually defined itself as a peasant movement aiming at
a radical reversion of the process of peasantisation, let us now
consider the non-ritual ways in which Lumpa attempted to achieve
this.
On the level of sorcery relations, the belief in the eradication
of sorcery created a new social climate where the very strict
moral rulings of the Lumpa Church were observed to an amazing
extent. This was, for instance, noticeable in the field of sexual
and marital relations.[9] In many respects, moreover, Lumpa
tried to revive the old superstructure, in which concern for the
land and fertility, protection against sorcery, general morality,
and political and economic power had all combined so as to form
one holistic conception of the rural society. However, the new
society was to be a theocratic one, in which all authority had to
derive from God and his prophetess, Lenshina. The boma, chiefs
and Local Courts, as they had no access to this authority, were
denounced and ignored. In the judicial sphere, cases would be
taken to Lenshina and her senior church leaders, who tried them
to the satisfaction of the Lumpa adherents involved. For some
years Chinsali district was in fact predominantly Lumpa. Very
frequent communication was maintained between the various
branches and headquarters, e.g., by means of pilgrimage and the
continuous circulation of church choirs around the countryside.
Under these conditions the creation of an alternative,
church-administered authority structure was no illusion, but a
workable reality. Two comprehensive studies of Lumpa[10] emphasise this aspect of the effective
reconstruction of the rural society.
These indications are already highly significant, as they
demonstrate Lumpas temporary success in functioning as a
focus of control independent from the state. The nationalist
leaders were not so far off the mark when they denounced Lumpa
for attempting to form a state within the state. For
while Lumpa implicitly denied the legitimacy of the colonial
state and its post-colonial successor, it attempted to create a
structure of control comparable to the state, if at a much
smaller scale geographically.
The superstructural achievements would have been meaningless,
even impossible, without some infrastructural basis. Did Lumpa
actually experiment with new relations of production which
counteracted incorporation of the local community into capitalism
and the state? As no primary data on Lumpa have been collected
with this specific question in mind, the evidence is scanty, but
does contain some interesting points. The very substantial
donations from Lumpa church branches, individual members, and
pilgrims, accumulated at Sioni. They were used not only for
Lenshinas household and retinue, but also towards the
creation of a chain of rural stores. Trucks were purchased both
to stock the stores and to transport church choirs between the
branches and headquarters. Without further information it is
difficult to say whether this represents merely the attempt of
Lumpa leaders to launch themselves as entrepreneurs, or rather a
move to create a self-sufficient distribution system as
independent as possible from outside control.
Further examples bear out Lumpas experiments with economic
relations that were widely at variance with capitalism and that
remind much more of the economic ideals of the old village
society. The huge Lumpa cathedral was built in 1956-8 by the
various church branches in a form of tribute labour, with no
outside assistance. The continuous circulation of pilgrims and
choir-members through the countryside of north-eastern Zambia
represented another interesting economic feature. These Lumpa
adherents had to be fed gratis by the local villagers, to whom
they were often strangers. They were not always welcome and were
likened to locusts. Yet this institution suggests the potential
of the economic network created by Lumpa.
The most significant move towards a new infrastructure revolved
on land and land rights, as befits a peasant movement. In this
context it is important to note that for the population of
north-eastern Zambia the process of peasantisation started not
with the imposition of colonial rule, but with the formation of
the Bemba state, in the eighteenth century.[11] Chiefs occupying various positions in
the Bemba chiefly hierarchy had assumed rights over the
allocation of land. The colonial state had largely reinforced
these rights, while claiming for itself the power to acknowledge
or demote the chiefs. Lumpas attempt to create a new rural
society and (to some extent) new relations of production,
inevitably called for a territorial basis on which a contiguous,
exclusively Lumpa population could pursue their new social,
economic and religious life. Lumpa adherents began to resettle,
primarily around Sioni, where apparently hundreds of them
concentrated. Accepting only theocratic authority, they did not
ask permission from the chiefs. In this way they challenged the
fundamental property rights on which their rural production
system had been based for two centuries or more.
That the issue was indeed vital not only in terms of my theory
but also for the Lumpa adherents, the chiefs and the colonial
state, is clear from the fact that this conflict of
unauthorised settlement led to the first violent
clashes between Lumpa and the police in 1959.[12] In the years that followed, land as a
key issue in rural relations of production continued to play the
role one would expect it to play in a peasant movement struggling
to create a new infrastructure. Soon, Lenshina tried to purchase
land, which was greatly opposed and resented by the chiefs and by
the increasingly non-Lumpa population. As UNIP/Lumpa tensions
mounted (see below), Lumpa adherents withdrew into a number of
exclusively Lumpa villages, which were again
unauthorised from the point of view of the chiefs and
the state. In July 1964 Kaundas ultimatum to abandon these
villages expired. Police officers on patrol visited one such
village; the inhabitants allegedly understood that they came to
demolish the village, and killed them. This started the final
conflict, whose outcome was, inter aria, the demolition of all
Lumpa villages and of the Lumpa cathedral.
The conflict with the chiefs over land shows how Lumpa, in its
creation of a new rural society, clashed with individuals and
groups who opted out of the Lumpa order and who, at the same
time, were in a position to mobilise the forces of the colonial
state against Lumpa. Mere ordinary villagers who were opposed to
Lumpa were not in such a position. If they did not want to join
Lumpa, strong social pressure was brought to bear on them:
foremost the allegation that they were sorcerers and for that
reason shunned a church concentrating on sorcery eradication;
also, occasionally, they were exposed to downright violence from
the Lumpa side.[13] Among many joiners, the obligations
(in terms of time, money and commitment) imposed by the Church
were increasingly felt as a burden; but while Lumpa was still
strong these dissenters risked serious conflicts and ostracism if
they defected to the mission churches or the nationalist party.
A group which, besides the chiefs, successfully mobilised the
colonial state against Lumpa was the Roman Catholic Church. This
Church had been the first to establish missions in the area, and
was by far the greatest Christian denomination in north-eastern
Zambia on the eve of Lenshinas appearance as a prophet.
Lenshina initially operated in a Protestant environment, whose
strong anti-Catholic feelings had not yet given way to the
ecumenism of later decades. Moreover, Lumpa was opposed to
sorcery and to all ritual objects that could be considered
sorcery apparatus; therefore it found much more fault with the
very elaborate Roman Catholic devotional paraphernalia than with
the austere, mainly verbal Protestant worship.[14] These two factors made Lumpa
particularly inimical to local Catholic missions and their senior
personnel. The rapid spread of Lumpa virtually exterminated a
major Catholic stronghold in Central Africa, and so caused bitter
animosity among the Catholic leaders. Catholic mission-workers on
tour were increasingly harassed. In 1956 an African Catholic
priest, when visiting a village, was called a sorcerer. He set in
motion the judicial machinery (accusation of sorcery is a
criminal offence under the Witchcraft Ordinance). The offending
party was detained at the district headquarters. A crowd of Lumpa
adherents headed by Lenshinas husband protested against
this, and a confrontation with the administration ensued which
eventually led to Petros Chitankwa, Lenshinas husband.
being sentenced to two years with hard labour.[15]
The last and most important conflict between Lumpa and a local
group was with UNIP. After Lenshina had been away for over a
year, visiting the urban Lumpa Churches, she returned to find her
Church declining and UNIP increasingly controlling the
countryside. She reacted very strongly to this state of affairs.
In 1962 she forbade Lumpa adherents to join UNIP, publicly burned
party cards, and instead issued Lumpa membership tickets which
may well have been regarded as the counterpart of party cards.
She was even reported to say that the nationalist activists
killed during Chachacha would not go to heaven. From
the time of preparation for the 1962 general election, bitter
feuding between UNIP and Lumpa took place, resulting in the sad
official statistics contained in Table 8.1.[16]
The resettling in exclusively Lumpa villages was no longer,
positively, the creation of a viable territorial basis for the
new society. Instead, it had become a retreat from an
increasingly hostile environment. There are indications that in
the year preceding the final conflict eschatological expectations
gained momentum among the Lumpa adherents. They prepared to
defend whatever was left to their short-lived new world. They
surrounded their villages by stockades, manufactured simple
weapons, and prepared magical substances intended to make
themselves invulnerable. There were repeated attempts by the UNIP
top leadership to bring about a reconciliation between their
local rank and file, and Lumpa. These attempts proved
unsuccessful. When fighting between UNIP and a Lumpa village
broke out, as a result of a quarrel over school attendance (in
1964 Lenshina had forbidden her followers to send their children
to school), government decided that Lumpa villages could no
longer be tolerated, and issued the ultimatum leading to the
final conflict.
Table 8.1 Official figures concerning
UNIP/Lumpa feuding in north-eastern Zambia prior to the final
conflict
|
UNIP attacks on Lumpa
adherents |
Lumpa attacks on UNIP
members |
Murders |
14 |
7 |
Houses destroyed by arson |
121 |
2 |
Churches destroyed by arson |
28 |
no information |
Grain bins destroyed by arson |
28 |
2 |
Assaults |
66 |
10 |
of which
serious |
22 |
no information |
Intimidation cases |
22 |
no information |
Cattle kraals destroyed by
arson |
1 |
no information |
Goats burned |
18 |
no information |
Why did Lumpa at first accommodate
nationalism, to reject it later on, engaging in bitter feuding
with local nationalists, which eventually lead to Lumpas
virtual extermination? The answer Roberts gives,[17] and which Ranger cites approvingly,[18] is that
Both Church and Party were competing for total allegiance. As I have argued, it was their similarities as much as their differences which brought them into conflict.
In the light of the tentative
theoretical position I have developed here, a detailed assessment
of the validity of this answer has become possible.
In defining itself more and more as an exclusive peasant
movement, Lumpa had gradually to shed such traits as it had
initially shared with the nationalist movement and with the
proletarian response in general. These traits were without solid
roots in the peasant experience. Lumpa had subsequently struggled
to regain local, rural control and to create new relations of
production not dominated by the rural communitys wider
incorporation in capitalism and the state. Once Lumpa had taken
this road, the (secular) state, and nationalism (as a set of
political ideas on the nature and the personnel of the state),
could no longer find a place in the Lumpa world view.
Alternatively, nationalism, as a response to the proletarian
situation, had found a final outcome in UNIP in 1959 UNIP
accepted the basic infrastructural conditions of modern Central
African society, including the incorporation of rural areas by
the state and by capitalism. Less radical than Lumpa, therefore,
UNIPs blueprint of the future society was almost
diametrically opposed to Lumpas. But if the incompatibility
between UNIP and Lumpa derived from a difference in class
situation and from a difference in degree of radicalism in the
context of class struggle, we still have to explain why these two
different movements confronted each other with deadly hostility
among the same rural population of north-eastern Zambia.
I have argued that the proletarian response is not confined to
places of migrant work, but may also be found in specific rural
settings: missions, betas or military campaigns. Could the
UNIP/Lumpa opposition reflect a class difference within the rural
population of Chinsali district, in such a way that the
persistent Lumpa adherents were more truly peasants, whereas
those who tilled the ranks of the rural UNIP branches were more
involved in the process of proletarisation? Again the evidence is
scanty, but this time it seems not to support the hypothesis.
Lumpa and UNIP villages were often adjacent. The UNIP/ Lumpa
division often ran across close kinship ties, as in the school
conflict referred to above.[19] We must conclude that in the early
1960s Lumpa and UNIP represented rival options for social
reconstruction amongst members of the same peasant class in
Chinsali district.
Perhaps we come closer to an answer when we try to understand the
position of UNIP as a proletarian response among a peasant
population. Let us recall the process of accommodation to the
peasant class situation, such as happened with Watchtower and, to
a lesser extent, with Lumpa itself. Did not UNIP, too, undergo a
transformation before it could make an impact among the peasants?
Superficially, there are indications in that direction. At the
village level UNIP was much more than a strictly political
movement aiming at territorial independence. It became a way of
life. It created, apparently, a state of millennarian
effervescence similar to that of more specifically peasant
responses such as sorcery-eradication and Lumpa. Already years
before the new nationalist order was realised at a national scale
(with the attainment of territorial independence), UNIP produced
what Roberts called a cultural revival in the
villages.[20] Thus, like Watchtower and Lumpa, UNIP
seems to have yielded to the model, so persistent among Central
African peasants, of superstructural reconstruction at the local
scale of the rural community. If this were a correct assessment,
the peasants siding with Lumpa would have had very much in common
with those siding with UNIP; they would have have [ check ]
acted on the basis of the same inspiration of rural
reconstruction, and [ check: then? ] Robertss
explanation would be basically correct. In this line of argument,
the explanation of UNIP/Lumpa feuding would lie in the alleged
fact that both were rival attempts at rural superstructural
reconstruction. The ultimate drive behind both movements, at the
village level, would then have been against peasant alienation
and towards the primarily local restoration of meaning and
competence. The solution that each of the feuding groups was
propounding would only have the power to convince its adherents
as long as it remained, in the tatters eyes, absolute and
without alternatives. People on neither side could afford to
yield - as they would be asserting, and defending, the very
meaning they were giving to their lives.[21]
This approach to UNIP-Lumpa feuding has three implications which
make us seriously doubt its validity. First, the different class
references of Lumpa and of UNIP, as peasant or proletarian
responses, would have to be immaterial: both would have to be
transformed to serve a strictly local peasant response. Second,
UNIP in Chinsali district in the early 1960s would not have
functioned primarily as a nationalist movement aiming at
territorial independence; rather, it would have adopted the
nationalist symbolism and idiom merely to serve some peasant
movement of local scope. Third, equally immaterial would have to
be the fact that UNIPs solution to the peasants
predicament was no solution at all, as its insistence on the
state and its acceptance of capitalism could only lead to a
further incorporation and dependence of the rural community.
Although class formation in modern Africa follows notoriously
devious dialectics, these implications do appear too preposterous
for us to maintain Robertss explanation wholesale. The
crucial issue is the mobilisation process by which UNIP
established itself among the peasant of Chinsali district. But as
long as no new, detailed material is available on this point, let
us try to modify Robertss analysis in a way that takes the
above implications into account.
Let us grant that UNIP in Chinsali district initially contained
an element of superstructural reconstruction at the purely local
level thus somewhat accommodating to the typical peasant
response. However, this element may soon have worn out, as it
became clear that UNIP aimed at intensifying, rather than
counteracting, wider incorporation, and that therefore UNIP was a
powerful mechanism in the very process of peasantisation which
the peasants were anxious to reverse Is it then not more
realistic to explain UNIP/Lumpa feuding from the fact that Lumpa,
as rather successfully realising a local, rural reconstruction of
both superstructure and infrastructure, represented in
north-eastern Zambia the main obstacle to UNIPs striving
towards wider incorporation? Those peasants siding with UNIP
would then be the instruments to curb the class struggle of the
Lumpa peasants. In that case not only the final Lumpa/state
conflict, but also the preceding Lumpa/UNIP feuding at the local
level, would revolve around wider incorporation, much more than
around total commitment (Roberts) at the village
level.
There are indications that the local feuding, and the final clash
between Lumpa and the state, were two stages of the same overall
conflict. Not only was Lumpa in both cases confronted with UNIP,
first in the form of rural branches, finally in the form of a
UNIP-dominated transition government. There is also the
suggestion that the rural feuding was accepted by the UNIP top
leadership as rather compatible with UNIPs basic
orientation. With UNIP rural aggression heavily outweighing
Lumpas (Table 8.1, based on a state-commissioned enquiry),
is it not significant that no extensive records seem to exist of
UNIP members in Chinsali district having been tried, after
independence, for offences just as criminal as those so loudly
decried when committed by Lumpa? Let me emphasise that there is
not the slightest indication whatsoever that rural UNIP
aggression was instigated by the national UNIP leaders; in fact,
the latter tried repeatedly to stop the feuding - if only Lumpa
were prepared to accept UNIP control. However, the necessity to
exterminate Lumpa, and movements like it, is at the root of UNIP
and similar reformist nationalist movements, irrespective of
personal standards of integrity and non-violence of the leaders
involved. Far from transforming UNIP into a peasant movement of
purely local scope, UNIP adherents in Chinsali district attacked
Lumpa on the basis of a consistent application of the logic of
UNIP nationalism. However regrettable, and however deeply
regretted by Kaunda and his colleagues, the feuding as well as
the final conflict were fairly inevitable.
Having attempted to explain the reasons
of the conflict between Lumpa and various other groups in rural
north-eastern Zambia, my argument already contains the elements
on the basis of which the final conflict between Lumpa and the
state can be understood. It is useful to discuss this issue in
extenso, as such a discussion may also throw light upon the
relations between the Zambian state and contemporary churches in
general.
In my introduction to this chapter I pointed out that the Lumpa
rising was a bitter disappointment for the Zambian nationalists,
and a threat to their international public image. Meanwhile we
have identified more profound reasons for the states stern
reaction to Lumpa.
The primary reason was, of course, that Lumpa did represent a
very real threat to the state itself. Although declining and
greatly harassed by conflicts with other groups in north-eastern
Zambia, Lumpa represented to the end a successful peasant
movement, comprising many thousands of people and binding these
people in an effective organization that radically rejected state
control and that was beginning to define its own infrastructure.
With the years rural Lumpa did not settle down as a tolerant
denomination attuned to the institutions of the wider society.
Here Lumpa differs from most rural Watchtower communities founded
before the Second World War. Under the mounting [ check ]
attacks by rural UNIP, Lumpa became increasingly intransigent
vis-_-vis the outside world. Short of giving up the modern
conception of the national state, or at least embarking upon a
fundamental discussion of this [ check ] conception, the
logic of the state left no option but breaking the power of Lumpa
once for all. And this is what happened.
Additional reasons helped to shape the course of events. Taking
the fundamental assumptions of the modern state for granted, the
nationalists, once in power, proved as staunch supporters of
state-enforced law and order as their colonial predecessors had
ever been. A major justification for the sending of government
troops was that the Lumpa adherents, in trying to create a
state within the state, had become criminals.[22] Moreover, there were tenacious rumours
as to Lumpas links with Welenskys United Federal
Party (the nationalists main opponent), and with
Tshombes secessionist movement in Zaire. So far the
evidence for this allegation has been slight.[23] It seems difficult to bring in line
such political manoeuvring with the situation of the Lumpa
church, which in 1963-4 increasingly entrenched itself in a
retreatist and eschatological attitude. But whatever the facts,
belief in these links with UNIPs enemies appears to have
influenced the UNIP-dominated government on the eve of
independence.
A third complex of reasons revolves around the problem of
legitimation of the modern state. The following extracts from a
speech of Kaunda show that the UNIP government was not merely
trying to enforce its monopoly of power, but also tried to
underpin its own legitimacy in the eyes of the Zambian population
by presenting itself as the supreme guardian of religion and
morality. Speaking about Lumpa, Kaunda says:[24]
They have become
anti-society. They have been known, husband and wife, to plan to
kill their own parents because they were non-Lumpa Church members
and this they have done.... Innocent villagers and children
trying to escape from their burning homes have been captured by
the followers of Lenshina and thrown back alive into the flames.
Senior men in the countrys security services have reported
that the Lumpa followers have no human feelings and their
ferocious attacks on security forces bear out the fanatical
nature of what I can only describe again as lunatics....
I have no
intention whatsoever of again unleashing such evil forces. Let me
end by reiterating that my Government has no desire whatsoever to
interfere with any individuals religious beliefs but
...such a noble principle can only be respected where those
charged with the spiritual, and I believe moral side of life, are
sufficiently responsible to realise that freedom of worship
becomes a menace and not a value when their sect commits murder
and arson in the name of religion.
No clean-living
and thinking man can accept the Lenshina Passports to
Heaven as anything more than worthless pieces of paper a
usurping by an imposter of the majesty of God Almighty. Such
teaching cannot be allowed to continue to corrupt our people and
cannot and would not be tolerated by any responsible government.
In the context of modern Zambian
society there can be little misunderstanding that here Kaunda is
describing the Lumpa adherents as sorcerers, and tries to
mobilise all the abhorrence that the general population feels
with regard to sorcerers. Kaunda even points out, in the same
passage, the need for the Lumpa members to be cleansed (as in
witch-cleansing movements so popular in twentieth century Central
Africa) before they can return to human society:[25]
When they have
surrendered and look back at their actions, some of these people
realise the horror, damage and sadness they have brought to this
young nation and say plainly that they require some treatment to
bring them back to sanity. They just cannot understand why they
acted as they did.
Kaunda presents and justifies state
action in terms of religious and moral beliefs: the anti-social
nature of sorcerers, and the majesty of God Almighty.
These beliefs have a very strong appeal among the great majority
of the modern Zambian population. By invoking them, Kaunda is in
fact claiming implicitly a supreme moral and religious
legitimation for his government. Yet his government has already,
secularly, the fullest possible legitimacy in terms of the
constitutional and democratic procedures from which its mandate
derived. Why, then, this need to appeal to a religious basis for
the legitimation of the Zambian state?
Here we have reached the point where Lumpa illustrates the
precarious situation of the modern, post-colonial state in
Zambia, due to the latters incomplete legitimation in the
eyes of a significant portion of the Zambian population.
Whatever its access to means of physical coercion, the ultimate
legitimation of a bureaucratic system like the state lies, in
Webers terms, in[26]
a belief in the
legality of patterns of normative rules and the right of those
elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands (legal
authority).
Now how does one establish and maintain
such a legitimation if part of the states subjects are
peasants for whom such an abstract, universalist legal
authority, and the formal bureaucratic organizations based
upon it, virtually have no meaning, in whose social experience at
any rate they play no dominant part?
In Zambia this problem has been duly acknowledged, if in
different terms. Under the heading of
nation-building, a tremendous effort has been
launched along such lines as political mobilisation; youth
movement; womens movement; specific school curricula
incorporating training for citizenship; rural development, etc.
Populism, here in the form of the ideology of Zambian humanism,
emerged as an attempt to overcome, if not to ignore, the
fundamental contradictions inherent in the situation. The careful
management of relations with the chiefs is part of the same
effort. At the district level chiefs have retained considerable
authority and state stipends, and nationally they are represented
in the House of Chiefs. These arrangements (which, incidentally,
strikingly contrast with the position assigned to chiefs in the
[ check ] Lumpa blueprint of society) constitute an attempt
to incorporate rural, local foci of authority into the central
government structure, so as to let the government benefit from
the additional legitimation which this link with traditional
authority may offer. Where this attempt fails, the state curtails
the chiefs privileges,[27] but such moves do not necessarily
reduce the chiefs actual authority among the rural
population. Ethnic and regional allegiances, as threats to
nation-building and as challenges, either implicit or
explicit, to the supremacy of the state, are likewise denounced
by the ruling elite.
Lumpa, as the largest and most powerful peasant movement Zambia
has yet seen, drove home the fact that large sections of the
Zambian peasantry still opt out of the post-colonial national
state. Lumpa antagonised precisely the grass-roots processes by
which the post-colonial state expects to solve its problem of
incomplete legitimation. For a national elite who find, to a
great extent, in the state not only their livelihood but also the
anchorage of their identity, this is a disconcerting fact, which
hushing-up and ostentatious reconciliation may help to repress
from consciousness. For the elite the situation is uncomfortable
indeed, for the extermination of Lumpa has by no means solved the
much wider problem of the incorporation of peasants into the
Zambian state. New peasant movements are likely to emerge which,
like Lumpa, may employ a religious idiom in an attempt to regain
local control and to challenge wider incorporation.[28]
Meanwhile, given the general problem of legitimation, it is
obvious that religion has a very significant role to play in
Zambia and other Central African states. On the basis of a rather
widespread and homogeneous cultural substratum, similar religious
innovations (of the kinds I have discussed above) occurred
throughout Central Africa. Sorcery beliefs and the prominence of
the High God form the two main constants in the emerging
supra-ethnic religious systems of modern Zambia. These two
religious elements are subscribed to by virtually the entire
African population of the country, no matter what various
specific ritual forms and organizations the people adhere to. The
process of secularisation, so marked in North Atlantic society,
has not replicated itself in Central Africa - yet. Therefore,
some form of appeal to this shared religious framework could
provide extensive legitimation for contemporary authority
structures,[29] albeit along lines rather different
from those stipulated by Weber under the heading of legal
authority. For the result would be neither legal nor traditional
authority, but charismatic authority.
In the speech cited above, and in numerous other instances.
Kaunda and other Zambian political leaders have employed a
religious idiom to underpin the authority of themselves and of
the state bureaucracy they represent. The situation is
complicated by the existence, besides the party and the state, of
specifically religious organizations, mainly in the form of
Christian churches. These churches, having reached various stages
in the process of the routinisation of charisma,[30] have a rather direct access to
religious legitimation. They generate a considerable social
power, through their large number of adherents, the tatters
effective organisation, loyalty, and above-average standards of
education and income. Of course, the churches use their
legitimating potential in the first instance for their own
benefit. Therefore their social power is, at least latently,
rival to that of the state and the party.
Between the established Christian churches (Roman Catholic
Church, United Church of Zambia, Reformed Church in Zambia,
Anglican Church, etc.) and the Zambian state a not always easy,
but on the whole productive, symbiosis has developed.[31] The churches lend both their expertise
and their legitimating potential to the government, in exchange
for very considerable autonomy in the religious field. The
settings in which this interaction takes shape include: public
ceremonies in which political and religious leaders partake side
by side; the implementation of development; the
participation of religious leaders in governmental and party
committees; and informal consultations between top-ranking
political and religious leaders. An important factor in this
pattern seems to be the fact that the established Zambian
churches derive from North Atlantic ones which, in their
countries of origin, had already solved the problem of the
relation between church and state prior to missionary expansion
in Africa. Even so, there have been minor clashes, and more
serious ones may follow in the future. For state-church symbiosis
cannot really solve the problem of the states incomplete
legitimation in terms of legal authority. A religious
underpinning of the states authority automatically implies
enhancing the authority of the religious Organisations, which may
thus come to represent, through a feed-back, an even greater
challenge to the states authority. Ultimately, a shift
towards purely legal authority for the state may require a
process of disenchantment (already noticeable among
the Zambian intellectuals). Such a process would undermine the
churches authority and would be likely to bring the latter
to concerted remonstrance in one form or another.
For the independent churches the situation tends to be more
acutely difficult. Although it is still far too early to
generalise, these independent churches seem to cater typically
for Zambians in the early stages of proletarisation. The
independent churches are most in evidence at the local level: the
bomas and the urban compounds. The superstructural reconstruction
they offer their adherents, and the extensive extra-religious
impact they make on the latters lives (e.g., in the spheres
of recreation, marriage, domestic conflict, illness, death and
burial) not infrequently clash with the local party organization
which often works along similar lines. Despite instances of
felicitous co-operation between independent church and party at
the local level,[32] conflict remotely reminiscent of the
UNIP/Lumpa feuding seems more frequent.
Among the Zambian elite there is little knowledge of and less
sympathy for the independent churches. Not only the party, but
also the established churches tend to see them as a threat. It is
therefore unlikely that the independent churches will ever be
called upon, to any significant extent, to play the
religiously-legitimating role which the established churches now
regularly perform for the state. The Lumpa rising provides an
extreme example of what form church/ state interaction can take
in the context of independent churches. On the other hand, the
organisational and interpretative experiments still going on in
the Zambian independent churches may represent a major form of
superstructural reconstruction in the decades to come with
presumably profound repercussions for the state and the
nationalist movement.
This chapter represents an attempt to
explore the deeper structural implications of the Lumpa rising in
the context of religious innovation, class formation and the
state in Zambia. In presenting a tentative interpretation, my
main ambition has been to highlight a number of problems, and to
indicate a direction in which some answers may be found in the
future.
Meanwhile, many important problems have not even been mentioned
in the present argument. If Lumpa was essentially a peasant
movement, pursuing an idiom of religious innovation that was far
from unique in the Central African context, why was it unique in
its scope and historical development, and why did it occur
precisely among the Bemba of north-eastern Zambia? Another
important problem, that can throw light both on Lumpa and on the
relations between the state and the established churches, is the
development of relations between the established churches and
Lumpa during and after the rising. The churches organised a
rehabilitation mission right into the areas of combat, and
afterwards the United Church of Zambia (into which Lubwas
Church of Scotland had merged) even tried to win Lenshina back
into its fold. As more data become available, these issues may be
tackled successfully.
At the moment, many essential data on the Lumpa episode are still
lacking. The sociology of contemporary Zambian religion still
largely remains to be written. And the whole Lumpa tragedy and
its aftermath is still a cause of grief for thousands of Zambians
from all walks of life. Under these circumstances, nothing but
the most preliminary analysis is possible; but even such an
analysis may be helpful in defining tasks, and not just academic
ones, for the future.
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[1]
See the literature cited in notes to previous parts of this
paper.
[2]
Rotberg(1961):63.
[3]
Information Department (1964):941 ;however, as, e.g., the number
of emigrant Lumpa-adherents in Zaire demonstrates, these are very
conservative estimates.
[4]
Rotberg (1961):75f; Macpherson (1974):238, cf. 180; Mulford
(1967):40; Kaunda as quoted in Emanuel (I 964): 198; Northern
News (Zambia), 19 June 1965, which contains Nkumbulas
statement.
[5]
Balandier (1965):443.
[6]
Rotberg ( I 961); Lehmann ( I 961).
[7]
Rotberg(1961):71 ;Lehmann (1961):253;Gertzel (n.d.) 36; Warren,
as quoted in Information Department ( I 964) :940; cf. below,
note 99.
[8]
Roberts (1972):43,47.
[9]
Lehmann (1961) :266.
[10]
Calmettes (1970); Roberts (1972).
[11]
Roberts (1973).
[12]
Rotberg (1961):76f; Roberts (1972):32.
[13]
Clairmonte (1964).
[14]
Chéry (1959);Calmettes (1970,1972).
[15]
Rotberg (1961):76; Roberts (1972):22.
[16]
Source: Report (1965) as quoted in Times of Zambia, 22 September
1965.
[17]
Roberts (1972):55.
[18]
Ranger (1968a):639; Ranger quoted from an earlier version of
Robertss analysis than the 1972 one used for the present
study.
[19]
Roberts (1972):45.
[20]
Roberts (1972):35.
[21]
Such an explanation would come close to the views of those
writers who have interpreted UNIP/Lumpa feuding as a clash
between rival religions: Anonymous (1964); Franklin (1964). A
similar suggestion in relation to the clashes between Zambian
Watchtower and UNIP in Assimeng (1970): 112.
[22]
E.g., M. Chona, the later Vice-President, as quoted in
Information Department (1964): 940f. Charlton ( I 969: 140)
quotes almost identical statements by Rev. Colin Morris. Morris
has been one of Kaundas main advisers. In 1964, as
president of the United Church of Zambia (UCZ), he organised the
churches rehabilitation mission to the area where the final
conflict was fought. In 1965 he campaigned to draw Lenshina into
the UCZ fold - which failed.
[23]
Roberts (1972):35f; Macpherson (1974):410.
[24]
Legum (1966):109.
[25]
Legum (1966):109.
[26]
Weber (1969):328.
[27]
E.g., Caplan (1970):191 f.
[28]
Lanternari (1965-6) made an interesting attempt to interpret
Lumpa, along with similar movements, in terms of urban-rural
relations. In his view,
les villages ...représentent des
"groupes de pression" contre la politique de
déculturation et de dépersonalisation de certaines élites
dirigeantes... Les mouvements religieux à tendance
néo-traditionaliste de la période post coloniale renferment un
avertissement à ladresse des élites insuffisamment
décolonisées. Ils sont la manifestation dun besoin
pressant dintégration des valeurs que la civilisation
occidentale a exportées en Afrique Noire, sans réussir à les
intégrer dans larrière-plan culturel des sociétés
indigenes (1966: 110).
While thus recognising that
incorporation processes lie at the root of such conflicts as
between Lumpa and the state, Lanternari only stresses
superstructural elements and ignores the fundamental issues of
class and the distribution of power.
[29]
Cf. Kuper (1979).
[30]
Weber (1969):363f.
[31]
A recent example that shows that the established churches do
occasionally antagonise, rather than legitimise, the Zambian
state, is the protest by the Zambia Council of Churches against
the banning of the Kimbanguist Church (Mirror (Zambia), 50, July
1976: 1).
[32]
E.g., in the Gondwe Watchtower community (Cross, 1970), or in
some Lusaka unauthorised settlements (Jules-Rosette, 1977).
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