Zimbabwe Begins New Year with a New Government's Opportunities

In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe provides some subtle advice for Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe's new president. He comes to office replacing Robert Gabriel Mugabe, who was elected President but ruled as a dictator for 37 years. In fact, his widow, Grace, thought she could continue her husband's rule after his death, even though unbearable conditions led to a massive march and military coup on November 18, 2017. Every family in the country considers current conditions the reason why two or three children left to find work in South Africa, Australia, or Great Britain. A new national election is scheduled for July 30, 2018.

What Achebe's book does, unlike the stories of Damien's leper colony in Hawaii or that told by colonizers in King Leopold's Ghost, is provide the point-of-view of those who formed an independent country after being converted by missionaries and ruled as a colony. Not until the last line of Things Fall Apart do we hear that an administrator from England plans to write his view of Africa in The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.

Achebe uses a three part approach to describe Ibo life in Nigeria before conversion and colonization in Part One and after conversion and colonial administration in Parts Two and Three. Life before and after missionaries arrived both had mysteries. Why do some pregnancies result in twins and how can God be a Trinity of Three Persons? But the missionaries' God didn't inspire the fear and darkness of traditional village gods. He loved them, including outcasts, and, like a shepherd, went out into the fields to find one lost sheep.

Mugabe, for all his failings, never discriminated against Christian churches. He subsidized church clinics and hospitals and permitted the national curriculum to include a syllabus for religious education. Nonetheless, Mugabe's government caused starvation in his country by seizing the white population's farms. During the transition between Mugabe and Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe's Catholic Bishops Conference called for a return to Constitutional order, oneness, and inclusion of all Zimbabweans in their diversity.

In Part Three of Achebe's book, Nigerians experienced the good and bad that Zimbabwe might expect, if no compromises are made. Many in Nigeria were converted to Christianity; white colonial administrators established a government and courts, took bribes, declared all native customs bad, and undermined the clans. Some villagers recognized the good the white men did in terms of establishing schools, hospitals, and trade that enabled villagers to earn an income from selling palm oil and kernels. Some missionaries engaged in discussions about God without imposing their beliefs on non-believers; other missionaries, converts, and administrators accepted no compromises and died.