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Any attempt to document how Swahili served expressions of popular culture in Shaba/Katanga would be incomplete without at least some examples of religious discourse. Protestant and Catholic translations of (parts of) the Bible were available at the time when the texts that follow were recorded. The variety used in these translations (as well as in published prayers, liturgical texts, and hymns) was "Congo Swahili" (or "Kingwana"), a form close to East Coast Standard Swahili that remained a mainly literate code. In Katanga, local spoken Swahili has been employed in popular religious discourse at least since the rise of the Kitawala movement in the twenties of the last century. It is safe to assume that its uses in moral and theological teaching significantly contributed to the development of Katanga/Shaba Swahili. Jamaa speakers, though they acknowledged the authority of the Scriptures, seldom quoted the Bible, which explains why we find hardly any interference from the literate code in their teachings.
The movement1
The Jamaa appeared first in 1953 in a workers' settlement near the town of Kolwezi
in the mining region of Katanga. At the height of its growth it may have counted
as many as 200,000 followers. Its origin was an "encounter" (as they
say) between a group of Catholic African workers and their wives with a European,
the Belgian Franciscan missionary Placide Tempels. Research covering a period
between the mid-sixties and the mid-eighties (no work seems to have been conducted
more recently) has shown that Baba Placide continued to guide the Jamaa long
after he had left the Congo in 1962. His work and biography are crucial if one
wants to understand what this movement has been about (for his biography and
writings, see the Placide
Tempels website maintained by Michael Meeuwis). Conversely, in order
to appreciate some of the ideas for which Tempels became world-famous, one should
know how they were put into practice by the Jamaa.
Three traits were characteristic for the Jamaa as a movement: (a) It was conceived
as renewal and as an intensification of Christian life within the Catholic mission
church. (b) As a rule only married couples could be members (exceptions being
made for widowed Catholics, priests, and a few nuns and female social workers.
(c) Until the seventies the movement had no formal organization and it lacked
an ethnic basis. It had no explicit social or political program and actively
refrained from practices often associated with religious enthusiasm (such as
trances, faith-healing, exorcism, and speaking in tongues).
Jamaa followers, though they were exemplary Catholics who participated actively
in the ritual of the church, identified with the teachings of Baba Placide,
a Christian-humanist doctrine. Candidates and members regularly followed instructions,
(mafundisho), in the common language of Katanga, Swahili, later also
in the languages of other regions of the Congo and neighbouring countries. A
core concept of the doctrine was umuntu, best translated as " what
it means and takes to be human." Umuntu expressed itself in the
"three great thoughts," uzima, (life, conceived as wholeness),
uzazi (fecundity), and mapendo (mutual love). In a manner reminiscent
of gnostic ideas, the movement as a whole and each of the member-couples were
to realize these mawazo (thoughts), another central concept, in spirit
and body. This was to be accomplished through gradual initiation into the "three
ways," njia tatu, each grade being preceded by instruction, counselling,
mashaurio, and by more and more intensive encounters, mapatano
between initiating and initiated couples and the "first Jamaa on earth,"
Lord Jesus, Bwana Yesu, and the Virgin Mary, Bikira Maria.
Induction into the Jamaa was conceived as giving birth, kuzaa, and members
always used baba (father), and mama (mother), when addressing
each other. Local groups, nkundi, were constituted as lines of spiritual
descent, kizazi, lead, as a rule, by the most "fertile" couples,
this is, by those who had initiated the largest number of couples. They derived
their authority from their ability to articulate the doctrine, give counsel,
and often also as interpreters of dreams that had an important role in the spiritual
ascent through the grades of initiation. Groups met for regular, usually weekly,
mafundisho (instructions). Contact between local groups were maintained
by correspondence, visits, and an annual Easter meeting.
This simplified and somewhat idealized picture of the Jamaa is valid for the
period of its emergence and consolidation in the sixties. But it is also true
that, almost from the beginning, its teachings and organization contained the
seeds of tension and serious conflict. Most missionaries eventually perceived
the Jamaa as a threat to their authority. Preceded by local measures of control
and suppression, this lead, at the beginning of the seventies, to an open confrontation
between the movement and the mission church.
This could have been the end of one of the most impressive attempts to Africanize
Christianity but more recent field research (in 1985 and 1986, most of it as
yet unpublished) has shown that the movement survived through diversification.
Next to a Jamaa, recognized by the church (Jamaa Takatifu Katolika),
some of Tempels' oldest followers joined an independent church recognized by
the civil authorities (Jamaa Takatifu mu Afrika). Then there was an unknown
number of groups who, though they refused to participate in the rite of abjuration,
continued to practice Catholicism (tolerated by liberal members of the clergy).
Finally, there were many individual followers of Tempels who were not organized
in groups. Nevertheless, it appears that the Jamaa has been losing ground (and
members) to the "prayer groups" of the charismatic renewal. Its basis
among workers is being eroded by the decline of the mining industry and the
rise of a new middle class and its exclusive focus on adults and failure to
establish a youth branch may further contribute to its demise.
The texts and commentaries
The wealth of recordings and written documents representing the teachings of
the Jamaa makes it necessary to select material for inclusion in the Archives.
We begin with three texts that were recorded or collected by Johannes Fabian
the 1960s during fieldwork on the Jamaa movement (see his writings on that movement
in his bibliography on this website). They were transcribed and translated between
1967-1971. Together with introductory sketches evoking settings and occasion
and commentaries providing context as well as analysis and interpretation they
were included in Part 2 of a manuscript titled Anthropology and Interpretation:
Essays on the Thought of the Jamaa Movement (1972) which did not get published
at the time. Regarding the commentaries it is important to keep in mind that
they were written more than thirty years ago.2
With only minor corrections and changes they are now included in this Archive
as documents of a stage in the interpretive, text-centered turn in anthropology
and folklore studies that, inspired mainly by Dell Hymes's "ethnography
of speaking," emerged at the time.
The three examples of Jamaa teaching to be presented first were selected such
that they illustrate a great number of contrasts among the speech events that
produced them and the features of the text that resulted. Here is a brief summary:
Texts 1 and 2 were recorded in an appropriate setting before an audience (1
in a private home, 2 in an assembly hall), for Text 3 speaker and ethnographer
met in an office. The topic —umuntu— is approached directly
in Texts 1 and 2, indirectly in Text 3. Texts 1 and 3 were recorded by the ethnographer
(on July 6, 1966, and in June 1966 respectively). Text 2 was recorded -probably-
in 1965 by Fr. Bertien Peeraer, the parish priest who was a member of the movement
(before I started fieldwork). Text 1 was recorded in Lubumbashi, Texts 2 and
3 in Musonoi. As will be shown in the commentaries, each of the speakers structured
his teaching differently and employed a different style of argumentation/exposition.
Concerning the presentation of the texts (rules and conventions of transcription
and translation) see the remarks formulated in the Introduction
to Tshibumba's history of Zaire. It should be noted, however, that in the
Jamaa texts published here italics are used where the Tshibumba texts have bold
type face to mark lexical items in other languages, overlapping speech, and
word- or sentence completion/repetition, whereby listeners respond to a cue
from the speaker. No attempt was made to harmonize certain discrepancies with
later transcriptions; they may even be interesting in that they reflect a learning
process that is still ongoing.
1
The following section only gives the barest outline of the history and the teachings
of the Jamaa. More may be found in published sources and also in the commentaries
to each of the texts to be presented.
2 Eventually the book project was abandoned
and two of the theoretical essays of Part One, as well as one of the texts of
Part 2 with commentary, were published as articles and contributions to collections
(Fabian 1974, 1975, 1977). More material on the Jamaa, including
written documents and recordings, were gathered during stays in Katanga in 1972-1974,
1985, and 1986. Regarding developments until the mid-eighties see Fabian
1994.
Fabian,
Johannes. (1974). Genres in an emerging tradition: An approach to religious
communication. In: A.W. Eister (ed.), Changing perspectives in the
scientific study of religion. New York: Wiley Interscience. 249-272.
Fabian, Johannes. (1975). Taxonomy and ideology: On the boundaries of
concept classification. In: M. Dale Kinkade, Kenneth L. Hale and Oswald
Werner (eds.), Linguistics and anthropology: In honor of C.F. Vögelin.
Lisse: Peter de Ridder Press. 183-197.
Fabian, Johannes. (1977). Lore and doctrine: Some observations on story-telling
in the Jamaa movement. Cahiers d`études africaines 17: 307-329.
Fabian, Johannes. (1994). Jamaa:
A Charismatic Movement Revisited. In Thomas D. Blakely, Walter E. A.
van Beek and Dennis L. Thomson (eds.), Religion in Africa.
Experience and Expression. London: James Currey/ Portsmout, N.H.: Heineman.
257-74.
