Ethiopianism and African Nationalism

Abstract

NTERNATIONAL press reports on movements of Negro revolt and nationalism all over Africa today prompt reflection on one of their earlier phases, often called Ethiopianism, in which Americans, particularly Negroes, played important parts. The topic might well be introduced with a quotation from one who has figured much in the recent world press in connection with the Mau disturbances in Kenya: Jomo Kenyatta. He writes: During the last fifty years various religious sects have appeared in Africa. The most popular and one which conforms with the African secret societies is Ethiopianism. But Kenyatta uses Ethiopianism here almost as vaguely as do many Europeans, whom he has so often condemned for their ignorance of African culture. Strictly speaking, the term ought to be applied only to some aspects of the independent African church movement in South Africa, whose origins may be traced back to the 70's of the nineteenth century and earlier. Colour bar inside white churches, the search for avenues of personal advancement amongst a growing group of educated Africans, vague feelings of nationalism amongst peoples whose traditional institutions are being undermined all combined to spur groups of Africans to seek at least a partial independence in their own churches. The movement came to a head first among the Wesleyans with the establishment of a tribal church in 1884 by a Tembu Wesleyan minister, Nehemiah Tile, and reached its first peak in 1892 with the founding of the Ethiopian Church (Psalm 68:31, Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands to God) by another Wesleyan minister, Mangena M. Mokone. It was almost inevitable that the South African Ethiopian Church should seek affiliation with the American Negro body with which it had so much in common: the African Methodist Episcopal Church. This was achieved in 1896 when James M. Dwane, another ex-Wesleyan, visited the United States; and was consummated in 1898 when the A.M.E. bishop, H. M. Turner, made a five weeks' triumphal tour through South Africa. The independent Bantu church movement in South Africa by 1912 had created at least seventy-six separatist churches, which in the next thirty years were to swell to over eight hundred. It would be false, however, to give the impression that this movement was dominated by quasi-respectable secessions from European Wes-