VULNERABLE MISSION

VULNERABLE MISSION IN ANGOLA: AN INTRA-AFRICAN CONVERSATION WITH JIM HARRIES
tional armament embargoes. 54 With its pockets lined, Angola wasted no time becoming
bedfellows with the superpower that is China. 55 But perhaps the most poetic twist in the
international plot was when Portugal, the former colonial power, came on its knees begging
for a financial bailout from Angola, its former colony. 56 Of course Angola condescended
to open its purse! Who could pass up the chance to reverse history, to rise from
slave to master with all the world watching?
What does this look like at street level in Angola? There is lots of money floating around
in this country. As “wealthy Westerners” in Angola, we find ourselves consistently unable
to afford the exorbitant prices that wealthy Angolans throw money at. We stay as guests
in homes in Luanda that would rent for $20,000 a month. There are also many poor
Angolans who live on just a few dollars a day; the lifestyle gap between rich and poor is
astounding!
So what does this mean for dependency issues in Angola? Angolans, like other Africans,
will take a handout no matter who it comes from, but most of the time in Angola it
comes from wealthier Angolans. International aid dependency, whether from the IMF,
NGOs, or churches, is still a problem in Angola. But it is dwarfed by the issues of internal
dependency. A church here might ask us missionaries for funds to build a new
building, but when we don’t prove golden, they waste no time in turning to their list of
Angolan donors, who consistently prove much more generous than the stingy foreigners
who keep mumbling on about missiological ideals. In this context, the all-important
purse strings are held not by Westerners, but by wealthy Angolans who walk in the ageold
African paths of patronage. 57 This pattern holds true at levels from the individual to
the national. The result is that in Angola, Westerners are seen as potential donors, but
their influence is not dominant because they do not carry the biggest wallets. 58
54 Regarding the US, I refer to the abrupt switch in allegiances in the early 1990s from overt and covert
UNITA support to solid MPLA relations. Regarding France I refer to the infamous Angola-Gate scandal; see
“Angola-Gate: Relations between Angola and France Remain Troubled,” The Economist (19 November 2008),
http://www.economist.com/node/12630028. Regarding armaments, I refer to the steady flow of Eastern
European arms into Angola during the latter stages of the civil war, despite the limitations set by the Lusaka
Protocol; see Alex Vines, Angola Unravels: The Rise and Fall of the Lusaka Peace Process (New York: Human Rights
Watch, 1999), 103–6.
55 China’s multi-billion-dollar oil-backed loans are the bread and butter of Angola’s infrastructure program.
See e.g. Scott Johnson, “China’s African Misadventures,” Newsweek (3 December 2007), 46–47.
56 “Angola’s Eduardo Dos Santos Offers Help to Portugal,” BBC News (11 November 2011), http://bbc.
co.uk/news/world-africa-15790127.
57 Perhaps the best accessible explanation of African patronage is found in David E. Maranz, African Friends
and Money Matters: Observations from Africa, Publications in Ethnography 37 (Dallas, TX: SIL International, 2001),
125–42. Harries, Vulnerable Mission, 152 agrees with Maranz that all friendship relationships in Africa have an
element of financial dependency. In this context, therefore, our attempt to uphold VM principles has resulted
in our friendships being somewhat stultified, incomplete. Angolans do not have a reference point from which
to understand our stinginess. Surely, they think, if anyone of means can help the church financially, the missionaries
would be the first to jump at that chance! They are not looking to us as sources of Western wealth,
but as sources of patron-friend wealth.
58 These dynamics opened the door for us to make one exception to our no-foreign-resources strategy: the
Bibles for Angolans program. Donating Bibles has provided us a small-scale method to exhibit generosity
without creating dependency. Bibles are readily available in Angola for those who wish to purchase them, and
the cost is not out of the range of most Angolans. We place Bibles in the hands of believers, or almost believers,
who would not choose to purchase one, and the act of generosity has in many cases already spurred people on
to a greater personal appreciate for the Word of God. In a few cases the recipients have, after months of Bible
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