Zimbabwe going back in time

[Uiler]

Actually Christianity does sound really stupid if you just describe it superficially. I've tried doing it to my 90 year old Grandmother who grew up in rural China, didn't leave the area of her birth until she was in her late 60s, didn't see running water before then and only knows that Jesus has a beard, is Western and has good schools. Is it just me or does the Chinese name for Jesus sound a bit like the Chinese word for beard?

"Well you see people were really evil. So God sent down his son to this virgin girl and she had a baby. Who was God's son. And he had a big following. And to stop people going to hell for being evil and showing his love for the world, he followed his father's request and died horribly and so lots of people didn't go to hell. And his followers were called Christians."

"Well that's a strange story. Do you want some lollies."

"Sure thanks."

Of course if you go into the spiritual depth and the real nitty-gritty it all makes so much more sense, or at least you think it makes more sense. You could be deluding yourself. And if you know the symbolism actually means, the history of why the sacrifical lamb is so important etc. etc. it all doesn't sound so stupid. But a superficial description of any religion sounds stupid - Christianity, voodoo etc. A lot of what makes a religion is the history, the symbolism, the people, the atmosphere, the religions it is based on, the cultures that added extra stuff to it, the tortuous spiritual descriptions and arguments over what this line here actually means, and this sort of stuff is not something that comes out in brief paragraph-long description or even in a page-long description really. It's like a work of art really. "This is a picture of someone who is really quite crazy." to describe the "Scream" is not the same as going to see it and knowing the history of the artist and what the picture represents.

And personally I think a large part of is really what you are used to. Something you grew up with or something that sounds like something you grew up with makes a lot more sense to your brain than something that is completely different. It's simple logic. This is one of the reasons why when the major world-wide religions like Christianity, Islam and Buddhism spread to a new area the initial followers tend to blend the old ways with the new religion and tend to take facets of the new religion most compatible with their preexisting beliefs. Given enough generations and enough oppression of the old religion, the elements of the old religion will largely fade away but parts still remain.

Grandma may think the stories about Jesus are stupid, but she sure takes stories of the Goddess of Mercy and Compassion coming down and saving people very seriously. In fact she swears she saw the Goddess a few times.

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

The point is that the white farmers were farming land that had been simply expropriated from the native tribes after the country was colonised.
So, now it has been re-expropriated.

I know, two wrongs, yada-yada.

Well perhaps those Bantu farmers can now give the land back to the bushmen they "expropriated" it from previously. Perhaps the English should leave Britain to the Celts while the Japanese leave Japan to the Ainu.

 

[HannibalBarka]

Actually Christianity does sound really stupid if you just describe it superficially. I've tried doing it to my 90 year old Grandmother who grew up in rural China, didn't leave the area of her birth until she was in her late 60s, didn't see running water before then and only knows that Jesus has a beard, is Western and has good schools. Is it just me or does the Chinese name for Jesus sound a bit like the Chinese word for beard?

"Well you see people were really evil. So God sent down his son to this virgin girl and she had a baby. Who was God's son. And he had a big following. And to stop people going to hell for being evil and showing his love for the world, he followed his father's request and died horribly and so lots of people didn't go to hell. And his followers were called Christians."

"Well that's a strange story. Do you want some lollies."

"Sure thanks."

Of course if you go into the spiritual depth and the real nitty-gritty it all makes so much more sense, or at least you think it makes more sense. You could be deluding yourself. And if you know the symbolism actually means, the history of why the sacrifical lamb is so important etc. etc. it all doesn't sound so stupid. But a superficial description of any religion sounds stupid - Christianity, voodoo etc. A lot of what makes a religion is the history, the symbolism, the people, the atmosphere, the religions it is based on, the cultures that added extra stuff to it, the tortuous spiritual descriptions and arguments over what this line here actually means, and this sort of stuff is not something that comes out in brief paragraph-long description or even in a page-long description really. It's like a work of art really. "This is a picture of someone who is really quite crazy." to describe the "Scream" is not the same as going to see it and knowing the history of the artist and what the picture represents.

And personally I think a large part of is really what you are used to. Something you grew up with or something that sounds like something you grew up with makes a lot more sense to your brain than something that is completely different. It's simple logic. This is one of the reasons why when the major world-wide religions like Christianity, Islam and Buddhism spread to a new area the initial followers tend to blend the old ways with the new religion and tend to take facets of the new religion most compatible with their preexisting beliefs. Given enough generations and enough oppression of the old religion, the elements of the old religion will largely fade away but parts still remain.

Grandma may think the stories about Jesus are stupid, but she sure takes stories of the Goddess of Mercy and Compassion coming down and saving people very seriously. In fact she swears she saw the Goddess a few times.

Great post Uiler. Couldn't have formulated better.

 

[Princeps]

Well perhaps those Bantu farmers can now give the land back to the bushmen they "expropriated" it from previously. Perhaps the English should leave Britain to the Celts while the Japanese leave Japan to the Ainu.

Don't be silly. These scenarios are completely incomparable.

Europeans built very little to Africa, they simply held it under their rule and exploited its natural wealth, enslaved its population etc. (Quite) few Europeans actually moved to live there for the rest of their lives. Native africans were an opressed majority and they always out numbered the Europeans and those who followed European culture.

Roman culture has replaced them long time ago. Same goes for Japan, Ainu
Celts lived over the england thousands of years ago, Anglo-saxon culture and (to my severly limited knowladge) are gone.

 

[Uiler]

Anyway, there seem to be a lot of misconceptions and I blame it on the sensationalistic drivel that is the original BBC article and the prejudices of some of the posters here on this thread. Though mostly the BBC article.

1. No-one in the Zimbabwe government claims that witchcraft works. In fact the police spokesperson is quoted as saying the new law is a relief because how on earth are you supposed to prove that an evil spell works (I'm guessing this means that under the old colonial law there was an exception along the lines of "unless you can prove they really a witch")?
2. The old law, crafted by the British, banned accusing anyone of witchcraft.
3. Most people in Zimbabwe believe in witchcraft and take a major threat of witchcraft with the same attitude as people normally take the real threat of violence.

2. & 3. meant that people who went around extorting money or taking revenge on people by exploiting their very real fear of witchcraft could not be persecuted no matter how much psychological suffering they deliberately caused. Basically they are taking advantage of a loophole in the law crafted to match ideological reasons and British prejudices rather than reality.

4. The new law keeps the ban on accusing people of witchcraft *with* the exception of the situation where people deliberately use witchcraft to hurt people.
5. The reason why this is punished, and this is explicitly stated in the law, is not because the witchcraft works but because of the very real psychological fear and suffering it causes amongst the victims. Note there is no need to prove that the witchcraft actually did something. Only (a) the real very serious suffering it caused in the victims and (b) the deliberate intention of the attacker to cause this suffering by the use of actions which are normally considered to be part of witchcraft. Let me stress again - there is nothing about whether the witchcraft actually worked.
6. This is only for serious incidents, not say going bald.
7. Otherwise it is still illegal to accuse people of being witches.
8. You are not allowed to use fear of witchcraft as an excuse for things like murder and violence though it can be taken into account as a mitigating factor in sentencing.

Personally I find it hilarious that different news agencies reporting on the same piece of legislation have such different headlines on it. According to Zimbabwe news sources, witchcraft is "outlawed" and according to the BBC "Witchcraft ban ends". I guess it has to do with the different slants that the news sources want to put on it. The African source want to stress the aspect of witchcraft no longer being allowed to be used to psychologically torture people (good news for Africans! Law and order! Respecting African culture!) and the BBC wants to write something so we can all laugh at the Zimbabwe government. Personally I thought this sort of thing was beneath the BBC. I guess I was wrong. If you look at the actual legislation nothing supports what the BBC article claims? And I haven't heard anything about the old laws banning witchcraft itself, just accusing people of witchcraft (EDIT: I just saw something which does suggest that the old laws did ban witchcraft as well, so I take that back. Another interesting little tibit is the high court judge that supports the act in the African news article is a supporter of Mugabwe. Hmm....This is looking more and more tricky.). The people the BBC article quote as if they are silly fools actually sound intelligent and reasonable in the African news article. It's like the BBC deliberately chose the stupidest quotes from the people and ignored anything intelligent they had to say. The BBC article claims that people have to prove that witchcraft worked but that's nowhere in the legislation and according to the police spokesperson in the African news article it was under the *old* British-drafted law that you had to prove that someone was really a witch but it was impossible because you can't prove that an evil spell worked. Looking at the African article and the BBC article you'd almost think they were talking about two completely different pieces of legislation that just happened to have people and places with the same names. However, the African article actually quotes the legislation and the African POV sounds a lot closer to the legislation than the BBC one. I am utterly disappointed in the BBC.

Of course then if we look at what other articles Steve Vickers has written for the BBC we have:

Zimbabwe furore over loincloths
Zimbabwe female athlete 'was man'

Hey, looking at the Google results, I think he mostly writes as the BBC Zimbabwe sports journalist. Basically this guy doesn't cover serious deep matters like the evictions and Mugabwe ruining the country and starvation and evicting the slums but sports in Zimbabwe and "little interesting tibits about how weird the country is" (two examples of which can be seen above) on the side. No wonder the article is such rubbish. Finally the BBC article is in July while this news dates back to...April. I sense a slow news day, space filler article here.

Anyway, personally, I'm going to be a lot more suspicious of the BBC from now on. I thought the BBC was supposed to be about quality journalism, leaving the sensationalised stuff to the tabloids. I guess I was wrong.

EDIT: Hmm. The more information I read about the history of the witchcraft suppression legislation (I was trying to find the original 1894 law), the more trickier and trickier it looks. I still think the BBC article was a sensationalised bit of tabloid rubbish but the Zimbabwe legislation is not as innocent as the African article makes it out to be but it's not as silly as the BBC article tries to make it. There's a lot of politics going on. For example the judge being cited being a Mugabwe supporter. The role of various religious groups. And the various motivations of each of the pressure groups for and against the Witchcraft Suppression Act. It's a tricky bit of power play. None of this is of course mentioned in the BBC article whose aim is to make us all laugh at how silly the Zimbabwe government is. In fact none of it is mentioned at all in direct connection to this new legislation. But reading between the lines of the politics of Zimbabwe you can get a hint of what is going on.