DSA Phase II Example 98

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ability but because He was totally submissive and obedient to the will of God.⁹⁹

On another hand, Jesus teaches that the basis of Christianity lay in the commandment,

‘thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’. He showed the necessity of this law in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and stressed that even a member of a despised social class could embody service to humanity. Consequently, Kaunda argues that “humanism operates on the boundary between religion and politics as a channel for the best gifts of all true faith: compassion, service, and love-to be lavished on the nation’s people”.¹⁰⁰ During the independence struggle, he had constantly reminded his colleagues that Christian religion had something to teach them about political organization. This admission, also, shows how deeply perturbed he felt on the failure of the missionaries to openly back the struggle for freedom, majority rule and racial emancipation in Northern Rhodesia. As a result he notes that “Christian principles can never be split, they have either to be accepted, or sacrificed as they are. In our opinion, for Christian churches not to condemn racial discrimination, whether practiced by black or white governments, or any other groups, is to sacrifice Christian principles. What is immoral cannot safely be passed as Christianly right”.¹⁰¹ Makumba understands this to imply that

“Kaunda saw the need for religious believers to harness the power inherent in their faith for socially desirable ends”.¹⁰² The necessity of this finds explanation in Kaunda’s conviction that human life cannot be confined only to the present life because it contains a spark of immortality. This can be deduced by reason which is God’s gift to man. Man’s actions tend towards God’s will. He controls all things and to Him man must submit through love and service.

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politics and economics- back on the right track and working properly. He feels that the significance of this is funded on the fact that the contemporary era has lost its appreciation of the value of man, and have subsumed him under institutional operation and efficiency, as is common to Capitalism. Therefore, to bring man back, again, into focus, his welfare should be made to assume center stage. To realize this, he openly theorizes:

How can we humanize our politics in Zambia so that the humblest and least well-endowed of our citizens occupies a central place in Government’s concern? The point of departure must surely be to look afresh at Man-not Man for anything or Man as anything but Man in himself-and sing his praises unashamedly. For until every person learns self-valuation, it is pointless trying to humanize Government and other institutions within which Man tends to be subsumed.¹⁰⁴

Man has possibilities and limitations. Kaunda accepts that this fact places his nature on a different pedestal from that of animals. Man is an animal because he shares the same nature with other animal; yet, “is it not amazing what this frail creature has achieved by using his mind and imagination in place of lost instincts?”¹⁰⁵ Equally, Kaunda argues that although man has recorded so great inventions and achievements, his greatest shortcoming and challenge comes in the area of social relationship; “his inability to live in community and to make his highest faculty, love, the law of his being”.¹⁰⁶ And the very confrontation with this problem, places two choices before him. According to Kaunda:

The choice is between rejoining his animal ancestors and struggling against his lower Self in order to achieve spiritual freedom. There is a price to be paid either way.

To align oneself with the animal world is to sacrifice dignity for comfort. To choose human freedom is to purify one’s spirit through suffering and sacrifice. And by every decision he makes, man shows whether he belongs to the

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past or the future; whether he is a biological dead-end or a new departure in evolution, thrusting upwards into the realm of the spirit.¹⁰⁷

Whichever be the path man takes, the fact is that such choice propels him towards the goal of the Universe. Kaunda entirely agrees with Teilhard de Chardin that life evolves progressively towards a greater form of being. Though this realization is comforting, it still constitutes a challenge to man. Confronting this challenge requires him, therefore, to put up his best efforts as he thrusts through the course of life, or else relapse to the level of animals. Kaunda shows how this plays out by considering the qualities he believes are unique to man. In the first place, he considers that only man has the capacity for suffering. By this he means to differentiate suffering from mere experience of pain, which he believes is a quality of lower animals. For him “pain brings out the very highest or the very lowest in man-it will either degrade him and reduce him to the animal, or it can be used creatively to accomplish some purpose. Strike a child and he will suffer, not because he feels unpleasant sensation but because he senses a change in relationship”.¹⁰⁸ This in other words implies that “suffering is the ability to understand and use pain in a constructive way”.¹⁰⁹ This definition follows from his understanding of the idea of non-violence in Gandhi and Martin Luther King jnr as is obvious from the statement; “the key to the philosophy of non-violence is that it transforms pain into suffering. It welcomes the pain inflicted by others and uses it to alter relationships”.¹¹⁰ This alludes to the principle of civil disobedience and non-corporation, which are basic tactics employed in non-violence to effect social improvement and reconstruction. The operation of this appears thus:

Civil disobedience and non-cooperation as practiced under Satyagraha are based on the “law of suffering”, a doctrine that the endurance of suffering is a means to an end. This end usually implies a moral upliftment or progress of an individual or society. Therefore, non-cooperation in Satyagraha is in fact a means to secure the cooperation of the opponent consistently with truth and justice.¹¹¹

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In reference to the above, Kaunda, also, brings out the tendency of man, in terms of modern social organizations, to degrade the dignity of man through denial of love. That is, that the refusal to suffer for the sake of another tantamount to non-recognition of the value of man operational in modern societies. He elaborates:

The very attempts of modern societies to insulate themselves from suffering have resulted in a refusal of love, for the willingness to love and be loved makes suffering inevitable. And in the refusal of love, modern man feels pain without the possibility of transforming it into suffering. In trying to shut out suffering, man only turns into something useless and degrading. To be a man implies a willingness to accept the responsibility and dignity of suffering; where this capacity is lost, man once again takes his place in the animal world.¹¹²

He intends by this statement to show the position adopted by the apartheid regime and policy in Northern Rhodesia before the independence of Zambia. The racial programme of the apartheid regime refused to accept the reality of man in the African, hence, treated him like an instrument and a means to the sustenance of the prevailing social structure rather than use these structure for his good.

Secondly, Kaunda believes that the dignity of man rests on the fact that man has a name.

For him, name does not mean the common label, man, which refers to a whole specie, but “the means by which we are identified and distinguished from each other”.¹¹³ Based on African ontology which is essentially human centered, Africa is rich in names, since names reflect the interconnectedness of relationship which characterizes this worldview. Consequently, “to be known by name is to be dependent, linked with one the one who utters it, and to know all a man’s names is to have a special claim upon him”.¹¹⁴ Names usually depict the extended family spirit of the African. On another hand, name describes special circumstance surrounding a person, his particular achievement or a special event related to his person. In other words, though the individual is essentially part of the whole or community, he still retains his individuality

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as a mark of distinction. In his work, African Social and Political Philosophy, Okolo clearly supports this claim when he writes that, “in African philosophy, self is not completely dissolved into an object. An individual existence has a double status and import”.¹¹⁵ Kaunda furthers this by stating that, “the importance of man having a name is that it speaks both of his uniqueness and of his dependence upon others”.¹¹⁶ As such, name is very significant in the African worldview unlike in the Colonial-Christian position, where it was a matter of convenience. The Western-Christian colonial view bespeaks of racism and denigration of man in the African. Consequently, Kaunda argues that, in this tradition, “it was less trouble for the White Man to dub a servant John or David than to go to the trouble of learning his true name, which would be to demean himself and come down to the African’s level”.¹¹⁷ The significance of a name is in the fact that on it lies the individual’s humanity and dignity. This arises from, as had been shown, both his interconnectedness with others in the society and his individuality.

Kaunda believes that each man is unrepeatable, since it is impossible for any other person to share the same point with him in space and time. Each person makes a distinctive mark and contribution, which is particular to him, and non-identical. To this regard Kaunda rhetorically asks; “is it not the tension between that element in his nature in which he differs from all others and the element which he shares with them that produces most of the great things of which he is capable of?”.¹¹⁸

Lastly, Kaunda believes that man is an end in himself. He holds that this is obvious in the fact that he was made in the image of God, and was from the onset given dominion over all things. So, man is therefore, the pivot of the world. This is what Protagoras implied in the idea that man is the measure of all things. African ontology, which is mostly religious, in reflection of this, places man at the center of all the interacting vital forces. Paul Ogugua, in his Igbo Understanding of Man, succinctly posit this in stating that “at the center of the universe is man. Every being and God is at the service of man.

Man through physical activities, sacrifices, rituals, prayers, et.c. maintain the balance in

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the universe”.¹¹⁹ However, to Kaunda, the materialistic capitalism of the modern society has reduced man to a mere means to an end. He shows this distortion thus:

The industrialist uses him as a means to wealth. To the demagogue he is the means to power, to the selfish lover the means to gratification. The war-monger uses him as cannon-fodder; to the economist he is a statistic; to the mass entertainer, he is an instrument to be manipulated.

Everywhere Man is being used. And once he becomes a means to an end then all his abilities and activities can be exploited and organized to serve the interests of the nation, the state or the society. He ceases to be the absolute standard by which all systems should be measured.

Instead, he has to twist his personality and reduce his stature in order to fit into the system.¹²⁰

This is exact reflection of the racist structure of colonialism and imperialism in Africa.

Apartheid policies alienated man by using him as a means to service social and political units of the modern world. But man is not an abstraction or a mere object, but real and concrete being. For this reason, Kaunda advocates that social and political institutions of the society should be made to help man realize his possibilities, so claim and retain his place in the world. Physically, these units of the modern world dwarf man, but morally and intellectually, they are just fragments of his possibilities. Hence, man should not be used to service efficient government, national pride and international prestige. “And we can only avoid doing this by having faith in him and creating the conditions of life which will enable him to justify this faith”.¹²¹ Kaunda, by this, declares that he has faith in man, so stands in defense of man.