Archives - Page 5
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Hekima Review No. 28 (Dec 2002)
The last eleven months of this year have given us a mixed bag of hope and despair in Africa. One conference followed the other, in or about Africa and its plight in the fast-changing world. Whatever causes are put forward for the ragbag of Africa’s hope as well as despair, one conclusion is that the reason we hold so tightly to hope is that we face so many challenges in our continent. Civil conflicts are still razing down thousands of lives daily. HIV/AIDS is ravaging the most productive segment of our population. The effects of the coup d’état in La Côte d’Ivoire are unresolved as we go to press. One could go on and on with the problems, but there are also many encouraging signs emerging. For instance, in July this year, the fifty-four heads of African countries cloned an African Union (AU) out of the beleaguered Organisation of Africa Unity (OAU).
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Hekima Review No. 27 (May 2002)
The biggest riddle of Africa is its political situation. Over the last three decades, our continent’s preoccupation with the process of democratization has only had marginal success. At the onset of this third millennium, the call urging African countries to democratize is coming both from within and from without. In our time, to subscribe to democracy as a form of government is to appeal for national renewal and global deference. However, a cursory glance at the continent’s political history shows that two opposing forces are at work: on the part of the majority, goodwill to change the situation, and on the part of others, unwillingness to tamper with the status quo. The weight of the inertia has, of course, been exacerbated by the absence of regard for the promotion of justice and by fanatical intolerance towards dissenting voices. The assumption is easily made that the democratization process is itself a response to the political riddle, which taunts Africa and its people.
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Hekima Review No. 26 (Dec 2001)
From the fertile soil of Africa, the Hekima tree of theology continues to absorb its nutrients. Now matured and ripe from that tree are the fruits offered to you in this issue of Hekima Review. It is a basket of ten articles, six book reviews, and a poem on the HIV/AIDS situation in Africa. This assortment of articles has as its essential focus ‘The Relevance of Theology in Africa Today’. Like the trained scribe of Matthew (13:52), we draw from the old harvest of the last Hekima Theological Week of January this year. From that treasure, we present in our SYMPOSIUM COLUMN the reflections of two renowned theologians. Aylward Shorter, a prolific writer on African theology, reveals the challenges of “Theology and the New Religious Movements”. Aware of the social intricacies of those movements in Africa, Professor Mugambi maps out a game plan for “African Christian Theologians and the Reconstruction of Africa”.
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Hekima Review No. 25 (May 2001)
Hekima Review therefore continues to reflect our wholehearted engagement in critical theological reflections on the problems that plague our continent from within and without. Through this apostolic labour, fresh waters have recently passed under the bridge of theology here. The articles in this issue of Hekima Review are freshening waters from beneath this bridge of theology
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Hekima Review No. 24 (Dec 2000)
January 1999, James D. Wolfenson, head of the World Bank, proposed to the Board, Management, and Staff of the W.B., for a comprehensive development framework. In September 2000, the proposal was carried on in the W.B.’s World Development Report. The move obviously stems from the recognition of the failure of the Structural Adjustment Program. For more than two decades indeed, the Bank had claimed that there was a necessary link between the implementation of the SAP and the reduction of poverty. But, as Wolfenson’s proposal pointed out, despite the commitment of the institution to the ‘betterment of mankind and (the) improvement in the life of many in poverty… progress is slow’- if at all there is any 2.8 billion people, almost half of the population of the World, live on less than $ 2 a day. Of these 2.8 billion, 1.2 billion live on less than $1 a day. The figure has increased compared to the 1,183 million of 1987. In poorer countries (most of them in Africa), as many as 50 percent of the children suffer from malnutrition.
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Hekima Review No. 23 (May 2000)
The last ten years have seen a new paradigm emerge from theological discourses in Africa: the paradigm of reconstruction. A theology of the reconstruction of Africa, essentially carried out by Protestant theologians, is trying to take shape. Ka Mana, Mugambi, Karamaga, and Mulunda-Nyanga, to name but few, have each dedicated scholarly works to what they consider to be the primordial challenge of the continent. Ka Mana, for instance, argues that the religious and socio-political environment of the
continent has significantly changed. Christian theologies no longer have the monopoly of theological discourse. The political ideologies, which sustained the freedom fighters and brought about independence are slowly dying, thus leaving a more serene landscape. Africans are nowadays concerned with democracy, freedom, human rights, and wars…They dream of a new Africa. All these, Ka Mana claims, summon us to renew our way of doing theology in Africa. -
Hekima Review No. 22 (Dec 1999)
Suffer me yet just one more liberty at the close of this millennium, for moments of pain are packed with poetry. While mourning the death of Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, is not the parallel of Moses both spontaneous and poignant? Like Moses, Mwalimu had a vision arising from, yet more durable than, the suffering around him. Like Moses, he dared to begin to effect it. Indeed many countries in the sub-region of East, Central, and Southern Africa owe their liberation from the yoke of colonialism, racism, and dictatorship to the vision of Mwalimu Nyerere. Where his material resources could not be reached, Mwalimu Nyerere lent a voice: he articulated the concerns of voiceless peoples and nations against domineering powers of subjugation and marginalization. And that little voice from that discreet figure was hard to ignore
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Hekima Review No. 21 (May 1999)
In these last days of the second millennium, perhaps one message the whole of humanity is dying to hear and digest is that we are One World. To this Bob Marley would add the natural consequence: “…let’s get together and feel all right!” We have harped for so long at our superficial differences. We have enslaved, we have colonized and would re-colonize, and we do exploit, deplete, pollute, embezzle, bribe, rape, and massacre to hold on to one passing difference or another.
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Hekima Review No. 20 (Dec 1998)
It may be paradoxical, but the stark reality shows us that the poor increase the wealth of the rich! Like other continents, Africa has her share of headaches. As the darkness of the 20th-century steps aside for the dawn of the third millennium, two of the most cancerous cogs in the wheel of progress for our continent, are the twin developmentally retarding and dangerously crippling issues: brain drain and capital flight. For a continent still struggling to stand on her badly battered feet, in order to lessen the enormous burdens placed on the bent backs of her four hundred million plus citizens, Africa can ill afford to loose her highly trained labour force, as well as her own considerable capital resources.
