Voici le proglogue du livre "Christianity in Africa and the African Diaspora"
Welcome speech: President of the Council for Christian Communities of an African Approach in Europe. Hirschluch(09 November 2003)
Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear brothers and sisters who love peace and want to create it in a world in process of reaching a decisive turning point.
Honorable personalities and high Church authorities of Christian communities and of the Council of Christian Communities of an African Approach in Europe.
Dear hosts from the Univesities, from culture, religion and politics.
Dear friends of peace who have come from afar to build bridges within our humanity when history left us with an ocean of blood, tears, misery and hatred.
I am honoured to welcome you to the Third International Interdisciplinary conference of the African Christian Diaspora in Europe (CCCAAE) taking place here in the Hirschluch conference centre, not far from Berlin, Germany, on the theme:"The 1884 Berlin-Congo Conference: the partition of Africa and its implications for Christian mission today."
This thrid conference is organized under the auspices of the CCCAAE, Humboldt University(Berlin), Rostock University, and the Hamburg Mission Academy. As president of the CCCAAE, I thank these four institutions that worked in collaboration towards the realization of this conference under the best of conditions. In your name, I thank them all. Allow me to thank also those institutes that made possible in one capacity or anotherm the coming-into-existence of this gathering. Asking forgiveness in advance for anyone I might have forgotten, I wish to thank those present:the search Institute of Missiology; the Catholic Africa Centre in Berlin; the International Conventof Christian Congregations in Berlin.
This conference would not have been possible, were it not for the long persistent work of the organizational conference team composed of: Dr Roswith Gerloff, Dr Afe Adogame, the General Secretary Alimany Sesay, Professor Andreas Feldtkeller, Pastor Peter Mansaray, Dr Andreas Heuser, Dieudonné Tobbit and the African Council of Berlin and its president Dr Arthur Kingsley. I am filled with infinite gratitude for the work they have accomplished.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear brothers and sisters let me tell you we are gathered to enliven a momentum, an event of peace on which we shall build a new Africa and a bridge between Europe and Africa. In 2002, we asked our God for the deliverance of Africa in front of the Reichstag and the location were once the partition of Africa was decided upon;this is not to be separated from the conference we are holding today! It is indeed during the meeting of the Council executive in Berlin in 2002 that both decisions, to pray for the deliverance of Africa and the theme of this conference were taken. By this resolutionm we want to undo the destiny of Africa that humans deverted- a destiny turned into the 'black man's burden' according to Davidson Basil.
Healing memory
We also want to heal the memory of the generations which have given birth to a world maked by hatred. The roots of this lie in the history that divided us Africans so that we now may be united and re-build our continent together. The same historyseparates us into colonists and colonized, whereas as Africans and Europeans we should be able in spite of our differences to act and co-operate towards an equitable commerce and a more blalanced and lasting development.
When Portugal, the oldest occupant on Africa's Atlantic coast, suggested an international conference in 1884, it aimed at a solution to more efficiently control Africa and bury the tensions between the European conquistadores on the black continent. Fourteen countries responded to the invitation then put forward by Germany. It is important to put this into the context of the ensuing geostrategic evolutions of these countries. Among the big powersm we find Belgium, France, Portugal, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Denmark and Holland. Does not this group still form the spine of the European Community? Russia also was to show up at the conference and became one of the world powers during the cold war. So did the USA, the Super power today. Finally, Turkey was to be presentm yet another country which applied for ;e;bership in the EU. Ladies and gentlemenm the political geostrategy of the dominant powers that is, historically speaking, the cause of this convocation, remains the same until today.
Historicallym the Berlin-Congo conference lasted a yearm from 15 November 1884 to 26 February 1885. It ended with the geometrical partition of Africa. In the following centurym the European powers experienced the fever of the industrial revolution hence the request for raw materials from Africa and the need to create new outlets. Politicqlly, this position still makes sense. On one handm the desire to do;inate the world crystallizes in the tendency of these political powers gathered at the Berlin-Congo conference to affirm to the world the image of a dominated: Africa. Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany as the inviting power, pronounced such in his introductory speech, the effects of which live on and assert Africa as eternally dominated. The speech, however, did not lack humanitarian aspects.
Since then, indeed, it has been argued that there were hopeful intentions towards Africa, yet the occidental political actors continued with their control and hence deceived the Africans. In 1885, the argument consisted in putting an end to slavery and to propose humanitarian actions towards Africa. Then it was not yet started explicitly that Europe needs raw materials from a continent now brought into globalization and turned into a simple outpost.
Churches, too, saw in these actions God's plan to develop a mission, even an "internation right for mission" (Boegner). Thus they abused opinion. The church, in a state of euphoria, did not pay attention to the dangerous balakanisation of Africa, and to the fact that this discredited the Christian faith among balck people, bringing to despise the church, the Godspel and any white man. At the same time, an indestructible superiority complex was planted in the minds of white people up to the point that it turned into hatred for blacks. One could brush it aside and turn a nez leaf, if it were not for the 1884/85 event, its aberrations and unfolding mechanisms that still impact on our world and international relations. Political logic of the past still shapes the present and the future.
I come from Brazzaville, Congo, the region in the south called Pool that is going through a genocide stifled by international opinion. The international community exploits petro from the Congo. It chooses to support a tyrant who wants to do away with the Pool population. Neither the international community nor the tyrant himself will publicly declare their true intentions. When invited to a joint action to save the Congo, they all excuse themselves by refusing to meddle in internal affairs, and argument backed up by international opinion, zhich justifies the lack of intervention to stop a dictatorship they put in place. The case of the Congo is not exceptional in Africa and, like in 1885, the church, too, continues to fall into a trap.
Let us communicate!
Dear friends, when we re-open the file on the Berlin-Congo Conference after a century, this is not meant to perpetuate the order of political violence and the infernal cycle of political revenge. We aim at a goal : to establish the truth on the trap into which the church as well as the whole of humanity have fallen. This truth can rehabilitate the dignity of political actions in international relations. This very truth will set us free from the semi-truths which mutilate the image of God and hurt the deepest roots of human beings.
Hence we are asking our experts, through their papers and statements, to explain plainly what really happened at that time in all domains, religious, political, social and cultural. We are also asking for their help in evaluating the consequences, in particular those which keep on disturbing African populations and the relationship between whites and blacks. We wish that, at the end of this conference, the mutual trust between the children of God, whatever their colour, be reborn! In the heart of this planet and the globalization process, we ask God for His gift of forgiveness, peace and reconciliation - a peace the world alone is not able to provide.
We shall look from the past into the future. We will heed the expectations of peace and justice in Africa. We will examine our responsibilities in the face of ignored and forgotten wars, the origins of which are to be found in the decisions of the Berlin-Congo Conference. We will attempt to explore the right way to become actors of peace and progess facing a mutual future. At the end, we have leave this place each with a dream, transformes into a collective act, aiming at building a new humanity, prosperous and reconciled.
For us, the Holy Spirit enacts Isaiah's vision in which the wolf and the lamb, the descendant of the colonizer and the colonized, live, dwell and work in faith together. For Africa, we call upon the reconstruction of spaces of prosperity where humans become true citizens endowed with the power for decision-making and empowered to determine their lives. Hence we will contribute to better our children's live. May the Holy Spirit enlighten our work and lead us towards new divine paths yet untouched by human intelligence. Dear friends, instead of fighting and getting into wars, may we enter the life-giving dialogue! I thank you and wish you God's speed.