The God of Colonization and Africa’s Post-Colonial Redemption

In pre-colonial African societies, religion and art were inextricably linked. The terracotta of West Africa, and the sculptures of Ancient Egypt are evidence of this. If religion provided a world of meanings, then art, in its various guises, served to reflect the state of human consciousness. If we think of art as a mediator of truth, an idealized form of true beauty and freedom, then art serves the role of exposing something true of ourselves. Art as a form of individual expression is often thought of as a mirror or reflection of human experience. Art is, of course, the most visible aspect of a culture but it can also be an expression of rebellion, a form of protest against culture. What art does, essentially, is illuminate the human condition. If culture plays a role in shaping the type of art produced, then art, which often reflects the undulations of culture, can serve to inform and to replenish culture. It stands to reason then, that one of Nigeria’s greatest artists, Fela Kuti, was an ardent anti-colonialist.

Art and religion are not so different in that they both express deeply, a way of seeing and experiencing the world. More so, religion provides a sense of identity, and is a social adhesive that holds society and peoples together. Of course, one can identify with a work of art; however, a work of art, one could argue, does not necessarily exude an ideological narrative that draws people together, providing an institutional sense of identity in the way that religion does.

If we look at the divisions in Nigeria, we find that the deepest fault line that runs through society is religious. Nigeria was, once, a colonial fiction of two halves and we are still struggling to reinvent ourselves despite the reality of intermarriage, migration and mixing of other sorts initially imposed through colonial rule. The northern half still represents the first wave of colonization (the Arab Islamic colonization), and the southern half of Nigeria still represents the European wave of colonization. This religious division is interwoven into the deep ethnic diversity of the country, and, as a result of political machinations, has long been a significant driver of conflict.

If art serves to reflect culture and the human experience, then religion is an expression of those cultural and experiential values. And we can see that in the way various religions express our relation to the world. The Abrahamic religions express a fundamental opposition between chaos and order. Nature represents chaos, and it is we the humans, directed by God, who have to impose order. This fundamental opposition between chaos and order is expressed by many other doctrines: Daoism, for example, eloquently expresses these forces as Yin and Yang. However, for the Daoists, the existence of this duality, order and chaos, simply points to the necessity of finding “The Way”, finding a balance between the two states of being. This is expressed slightly differently in Christianity. The Christian story of creation of man in a garden is symbolic of our divine orderly nature—a garden is a centre of imposed control and design within a chaotic wilderness. However, the breach of this tender balance in the garden by a snake shows the ease with which the balance can be destroyed.

In one sense, it is remarkable the extent to which Africans, have adopted both Christianity and Islam. Every religion has at its core, a set of myths that define what it is to believe in that religion. Thus, the success of colonization rests on being able to convince indigenous populations that their myths are barbaric, and that in order to rise above that barbarism, indigenous populations must not only be colonized but also have to take on the mythology of their colonizer. And it is precisely this—the spiritual facet to colonization that is often unquestioned.

Both Fela and the Martinician philosopher, Frantz Fanon, lamented the extent to which the African mind had been colonized. However, Fela, especially, believed that the African who took on board the religion of their colonizer could never hope to decolonize themselves. His cousin and Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, was not too different: Soyinka’s avowed commitment to his patron god, Ogun—the Yoruba god of iron and creativity—was his way of re-capturing an African identity, one, especially, that was not dictated by colonizers.

Nigeria remains an interesting country to investigate the process of colonization and decolonization. Nigeria is also ideal for understanding both processes through the prism of religion, precisely because the country represents the Arab Islamic and European Christian histories of religious colonization in Africa.

History is often presented as an objective account of events. However, a more nuanced description of history might be to see it as a subjective process of constant retelling. And this process is carried out by each generation according to their needs. The renowned historian, Cheikh Anta Diop, in the acclaimed work, The Cultural Unity of Black Africa, went to great lengths to reclaim the African stories that had been lost through the ruptures of colonialism. We know that relations of power within society colour that society. For instance, many societies in West Africa today are deeply patriarchal but has it always been that way or is patriarchy something that was introduced? Diop argues the latter, that the patriarchal structures seen in African societies today, have not always existed as an essential attribute; that the groups that make up what is known as Nigeria today, along with other West African groups, did not always have the exclusively patriarchal structures that currently dominate their societies.

Rather, according to Diop, women were essential parts of the social structures that organized society. From the empire of Mali to Ashanti people of Ghana, and the Bantu people of Central Africa, these societies were to great extents matrilineal—kinship and royal inheritance being passed through the female line. We also see this in the writings of the medieval scholar and historian, Ibn Battuta. During his travels, Battuta noted that while the ancient Mali Empire had men in positions of power, this power was received through matrilineal lines. Battuta’s writings also revealed the existence of liberal attitudes with regard to the sexual [1] and social lives of women in the Mali Empire. This, perhaps, is not a view that is associated with Africa today.