Moral Leadership
and Cultural Values

José Chipenda

All Africa Council of Churches, Angola

[In this brief commentary, Chipenda makes not so much an argument as a plea. The plea, meant to be programmatic, will be familiar to many Africans in its reiteration of the historical damage done to African sources of cultural renewal which might sustain adequate contemporary political and economic policies. It is a poignant reminder of the pain and the judgment which confronts us in ‘the face’ of the other (Levinas), which in turn becomes an ethical demand upon us. Chipenda provides a narrative that asks us to deconstruct our own narratives, thus moving us to assist in the reconstruction of a possible new narrative of peace and justice for our ‘neighbour’—the other who judges us. —Editor.]

We have recently been reminded that South Africa was colonised for 350 years; Angola, my country, was colonised for more than 400 years. South Africa suffered from Apartheid; in Angola the Portuguese used the policy of divide and rule in a different though not unrelated way. Whites were the rulers, and the mulatos, people of mixed blood were next to the whites with noticeable advantages in society. Blacks, by contrast, were either indigenas or assimilados. The assimilados were allowed to sell their labour; the indigenas provided cheap and forced labour.

Prior to the long history of colonisation, each ethnic group could be found occupying the land of its ancestors. By the late 1950s, a theologian from Zimbabwe writing on African Nationalism could declare that the arrival of Europeans had broken the political power of Africans like the bones of a goat, that they despised our own cultural values, ignored our moral leaders, and suppressed our political life. In Southern Africa it is only recently, with the independence of Namibia in 1990 and majority rule in South Africa in 1994, that we are beginning to speak about an ‘African Renaissance’. Nevertheless, we have to ask what chance there is for an African renaissance in a globalised world.

Given the difficulties we face at the economic and political levels it is not easy to know what will happen in the coming century. Deputy President Thabo Mbeki [now President] shared with us his thoughts on the subject. Let us make the best use of our God given gifts, he said, cultural values being one of them. We will surely succeed if ‘each one of us lights a candle, so that all together produce one light,’ he said, quoting a phrase once used by President Mandela. If it is still possible, he pleaded, let us learn to drink from our own wells.

Our starting point should be the recognition that each one of us was born in the cradle of a culture that in the past produced extraordinary moral and political leaders. Each group among us has the names of ancestors known for their deeds. In Southern Africa we are privileged because we look at South Africa with respect and pride at the leadership you have produced—perhaps because your African identity, though crushed for a time, was never completely destroyed. /end p. 67/

I have a book at home called No Life Without Roots. The title does not question our given identity but affirms it, and with you I am also reminded of my own roots. I belong to the Ovimbundu, who live in the central plateau of Angola covering the provinces of Benguela, Huambo, Bie, part of Moxico and Lubango. This group makes up 38% of the Angola population. I belong to a family that in colonial Angola was considered assimilado, by which it gained Portuguese citizenship. My brother and I therefore had the privilege of studying in Portugal early in the fifties, an opportunity which gave us the benefit of being considered children of the two countries. Throughout our lives these two cultures have been at odds with each other. Yet our collective consciousness has always been identified with Angola and the struggle for independence.

This consciousness was reinforced when one day, in a remote village, we climbed a fruit tree. Soon two old men passed by. Looking at us they said, ‘You are the ones who will liberate us from the Portuguese’. That message found a fertile place in our hearts. We never forgot it. Throughout our journey, whether in Angola, Portugal, USA, Switzerland, Kenya, Zaire, and Zambia we felt obliged to work for the liberation of Angola. My brother, Daniel Chipenda, who passed away in 1996, joined the Movement for the Liberation of Angola in Zaire and Zambia and I, for seven years, joined the Program to Combat Racism of the World Council of Churches. Culture was not a theoretical matter for us. You can not speak of culture without referring to its importance in our lives.

In his writings Amilcar Cabral, the founder and first leader of PAIGC, highlighted the role culture plays in the liberation struggle. Culture reminds us of our past and makes us proud of it, he told us. Through culture our ancestors come alive. Culture provides the lenses through which we know the world in which we live and the value system we embrace to solve our problems. Cultures may differ but none is inferior. Culture tells us that ‘people are not problems to be solved but also mysteries to be explored, not vacuums to be filled but riches to discover’ (Thierry G. Verhelst).

After realizing that we are sons and daughters of our culture we become self-conscious. We love ourselves, and thus begin to love and admire other cultures as we enter into contact with them. Jesus was right when he taught us that we must love our neighbour as we love ourselves. The projection of our love onto others promotes mutual respect. And as two or more groups live together new moral values are formed, leaders emerge and role models, in normal circumstances, are identified. So it was that in school as in society, we learned that moral values are as important for the soul as food is for the body. Moral values give a sense of direction to the community and generate norms for each individual member of the society to follow.

The problem we face today is not limited to Angola and South Africa. The world in which we live has drastically changed. The Berlin wall fell as a result of a blowing wind. Hiding places exist no more. And new contradictions emerge. While new nations celebrate their newly won independence, others celebrate the fact that we live for the first time in human history in a borderless world. Early in 1990s I got hold of a list of many organizations which call themselves ‘sans frontiers’ (of course, it all started with ‘medecins sans frontiers’). In 1994 in the middle of the Rwanda crisis I learned that there is an organization called ‘youth without frontiers.’ This is a different challenge for people who are proud of their particular culture.

The one-dimensional borderless world, if it is a promise, is also quite clearly a problem. Because of it, national sovereignty has become problematic. For a particular culture which has been damaged and hurt by the often forceful intrusion of other dominating cultures, many painful questions arise. /end p. 65/ How can we please our parents and please the foreigners at the same time? How can we protect ourselves against unwanted guests, undesirable products and dubious life styles? Angola, as the rest of Africa, is exposed to values other than those born within the nation. The mass media in general, and television in particular, has the power to neutralize local and national cultural, moral and political expressions. The interpretation of events in many of our countries is rarely objective, and in particular, in many places the voice of those who have—people who are rich—is louder than that of those who are right.

For many years the church played a major role by being the voice of the voiceless. That voice is growing stronger in its own right. The presence and the message of President Nelson Mandela at the General Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Harare may be considered the beginning of the end of an era. Let me explain why I say this.

In my country, the church for many years played an important role in providing moral leadership and participating in the creation of democratic principles. However, the chaotic way independence was granted in 1975 eroded the power base on which the church stood; today we are all groping in the dark. There was a time in our country when ideology dictated economics; today money rules supreme. In brief, for Angola, after fourteen years of war for national liberation, seventeen years of war for political control, and the ongoing war for the control of national resources, the way ahead is full of pot holes. It is with these harsh realities that we embrace the new millennium.

 It is only the experience of South Africa, where we thought majority rule would not come in our lifetime, and the quality of leadership you are providing, that gives us hope. The words of the present Secretary General Kofi Annan when he said: ‘We are in a new day, let us walk in a new way’, please us. Some of us, men of faith, are fond of quoting Eccles. 3:1-9. ‘There is a right time for everything; a time to be born, a time to die; a time to plant; a time to harvest; a time to kill; a time to heal; a time to destroy; a time to rebuild; a time for scattering stones; a time to gathering stones; a time to find; a time to lose; a time of war; a time of peace.’

Just as in South Africa you worked tirelessly to end Apartheid before speaking about reconstruction, so in the context of Angola our search for cultural values, moral leadership and political life must begin with the search for a lasting peace. Angola is like a precious golden jar, broken several times over the years, whose pieces must now be brought together. There is hope that the scattered pieces, as in a puzzle, will eventually be united. As I have said in a paper circulated among political opinion leaders in Angola, in my Umbundu language there is a pertinent proverb: ‘A river that divides two people destined to live together ends up having a bridge’. There is no reason why Angolans should not build bridges of understanding among people colonised by the same master.

How are we going to do it? It is here that cultural values, moral leadership and political life will have to help us open a new chapter in our history. To this end, Angolans must drink from their own wells, accept certain responsibilities and become protagonists of their own history in the creation of a positive, common vision of our future together. Let me end this brief exposé, then, with an experience I had in New York. I walked into an exhibition where a sign hung on the door that said, ‘Open to the Public’. I was greeted by a woman who asked me, ‘Are you a producer or a consumer?’ I want to ask you the same question: Are you a producer or a consumer? /end p. 66/