VULNERABLE MISSION

VULNERABLE MISSION IN ANGOLA: AN INTRA-AFRICAN CONVERSATION WITH JIM HARRIES
communal and cyclical coherence of life together with the ancestors. 43 This story defines
each tribal social grouping in contradistinction to others.
The continuing importance of ancestors has waned significantly in peri-urban Angola, 44
and many other elements of the traditional story, including rituals, have been removed
or replaced, as noted above. Perhaps it is not too bold to say that peri-urban Angolans
explain their place in the world not primarily in terms of the traditional story, but in
terms of the story of how they have survived the war and rebuilt since the war. It is this
story that has redefined the social groupings. For some, such as the returned refugees
from Kinshasa, their new community is not their tribe but the people who accompanied
them in their journey of survival. Thus this group does not speak Kikongo (their tribal
language) but Lingala (the language of their refugee story). They feel a unique solidarity
with each other, but not with other Bakongo. 45 For other residents, their social group is
their immediate family. They are the only ones who have stuck together through thick
and thin—there is no story which binds them to their neighbor, regardless of ethnicity.
One of the most important social groupings, by the assessment of several independent
observers, is the church community. Fellow church members are the people who have
endured the struggles of the story together and hence share a solidarity that is not found
in the larger peri-urban population. 46 But for many, key identity has shifted to the national
level: an individual is, first and foremost, an Angolan, regardless of region, social class,
language, religion, or race. A national identity has been forged in the furnace of the
nation’s story of struggle, a story that binds Angolans together and distances them from
surrounding peoples, many of whom used to be family. For many Angolans, a redefined
story has redefined communal identity. 47
Perhaps the illustration of this reformation of communal identity that would most surprise
Harries is Angola’s breakdown in racial division. As he notes, where tribal identity
is key, whites must necessarily remain foreigners in black Africa. So great is the racial
divide of his Kenyan context 48 that Harries naturally adopts the racial divide into his
own terminology:
43 Adebayo O. Oyebade, Culture and Customs of Angola, Culture and Customs of Africa (Westport, CT: Greenwood,
2007), 29–30, 43–45.
44 In a recent conversation I asked several Ovimbundu friends of differing ages what impact the ancestors
continue to have on life. They generally agreed that during the first year after a family member’s death, the
spirit remains influential—for better or worse—in family affairs. But the ceremony at year’s end liberates that
spirit, and it ceases to have any impact on life. I pressed them, suggesting that surely people might still pray to
the ancestors for protection, etc. Their response was unanimous as they laughed at me: “Friend, that was a
long, long time ago. Perhaps our great-grandparents did that, but not today!”
45 Paul Robson, “Communities and Community Institutions in Luanda,” in Communities and Reconstruction,
170; Robson and Roque, 36–37, 81. It is this social segment, defined by a refugee story and not by ethnicity,
that birthed the ICA movement with which we work.
46 This is the conclusion of Robson and Roque, 130–41; Van der Winden, 113–14; Robson, 178; Andrade,
de Carvalho, and Cohen, 143. Fernando Pacheco, “Rural Communities in Huambo,” in Communities and Reconstruction,
97–98, 110, makes clear that this vital role of churches began in the rural areas, though it has gained
importance in the peri-urban context.
47 Birmingham, 99, points out that similar identity revolutions took place among the Kimbundu people
three centuries earlier.
48 Harries, Vulnerable Mission, 163.
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