Mbiti defended African religion, but was not feted

John Samuel Mbiti (pictured), born in Mulango, Eastern Kenya on November 30, 1931, died on October 6. He was cremated in Burgdorf, Switzerland, 128 years after the death of Samuel Ajay Crowther in Nigeria in December 1891.

Both were pioneer African clergymen of the Church of England who went beyond preaching and became linguists. They translated parts of the Bible, mainly the New Testament, into African languages. Crowther operated in pre-colonial West Africa and translated the Bible into Yoruba. Mbiti grew up in colonial Kenya and operated in post-colonial times. Mbiti is of great interest to Kenyans who know him for his notoriety of asserting that Africans are "notoriously" religious.

Mbiti and his intellectual age mates were hardworking warriors of the intellect. Mbiti was a good clergyman, Canon of the Anglican Church, and proud of his Kikamba prowess. He became a linguist, besides preaching the Gospel, and noticed the insertion of West European cultural imperialism in the translation of the Bible into African languages.

He, therefore, translated the New Testament from its original Greek version into Kikamba in response to distortions that arise from translations of other translations, rather than from the original language. Mbiti, speaking both Greek and Hebrew, went to the original Greek text in order to weed out the "additions", and add the "omissions" that occurred through translations by foreign speakers.

In doing that, Mbiti was prodded by one of his famous admirers, Jesse Mugabi, who ensured that Mbiti’s New Testament translation was first published in Kenya as Utianiyo wa Mwiyai Yeso Kristo in 2014. Mbiti went on to accuse Euro-influenced translators of "impregnating’" the Bible with cultural claims that are not part of the original Greek version. Mbiti’s fame, however, preceded his translation of the New Testament or arguments about Bible "impregnation".

Mbiti was among the "natives" in colonial Kenya who found their way to the prestigious Makerere University, competing for the prestige of moulding prospective African elite alongside Fort Hare in South Africa, Ibadan in Nigeria, and Abeokuta in Ghana. After study stints in the United States and the United Kingdom, he returned to Makerere with a Cambridge doctorate as a lecturer at about the same time that political scientist Ali Mazrui entered Makerere from Oxford. This was independence time in East Africa.

Independence challenged Mbiti’s intellectual agemates to fit into and help to shape new learning environments. As intellectual warriors, they were to address African interests rather than continue drilling European distortions into African young minds in schools and colleges. As warriors, however, they were not operating in an intellectual terra nullius, for they had good examples to emulate in countering European distortions.

Kenyan political adventurer Jomo Kenyatta, who in the 1930s faced Mount Kenya to attack pretensions of colonial benevolence, had hit out at Africa’s permanent friends whose only interest was to protect their jobs of permanently speaking for Africans. There was also Senegalese Cheikh Anta Diop exposing European attempt to relocate ancient Egypt from Africa into a mental Western Europe.

Developing Africa

There was George James, the Guyanese, accusing Plato and Aristotle from ancient Greece of intellectual thievery. And there was WEB Du Bois noting European tendency to use history as a tool of self-entertainment. The new post-colonial African elite at the universities, therefore, had good foundation on which to build the intellectual dwelling to house and protect African interests.

Mbiti was one of the intellectual warriors; the "enemy" was European distortions about everything. Their mission was to correct anomalies. Literature, as presented by Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o or Wole Soyinka became entertaining because post-colonial citizens identified with what they wrote more than with Thomas Hardy, Ernest Hemingway, or William Shakespeare. History had Jacob Ajayi, Bethwell Ogot, Godfrey Muriuki and Walter Rodney. At Dar es Salaam, Willy Mutunga remembers, Rodney taught outside official classrooms on Europe developing Africa.

Religion and philosophy were Mbiti’s intellectual war fronts. He distinguished himself by asserting that Africans knew God, and were Christian before the Europeans. Being notoriously religious, Mbiti declared that Africans did everything religiously, whether in the past, present or and future. In many ways, Mbiti became a missionary in the West, which had lost its Christian soul. Although post-colonial Kenya forgot to recognise Mbiti in its many annual awards, he and his intellectual agemates were unique, beyond Kenya, beyond Africa.

Prof Munene teaches History and International Relations at USIU