RELIGIOUS INNOVATION AND POLITICAL CONFLICT IN ZAMBIA
The Lumpa rising (Part I)
Wim van Binsbergen
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RELIGIOUS INNOVATION AND POLITICAL CONFLICT IN ZAMBIA The Lumpa rising (Part I) Wim van Binsbergen |
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When in January 1976, in response to a
complex national and international crisis, President Kaunda of
Zambia announced a state of public emergency, he in fact merely
re-activated the dormant state of emergency that had been
declared in July 1964 by the then Governor of Northern Rhodesia,
in connexion with the rising of Alice Lenshina’s separatist
church, commonly called ‘Lumpa’. in the rural areas of
north-eastern Zambia the fighting between state troops and the
church’s members had ceased in October 1964, leaving an
estimated death toll of about 1,500.[2] But the state of emergency (implying
increased powers for the government executive) was allowed to
continue. It was renewed every six months and lived through both
the attainment of territorial independence (October 1964) and the
creation (December 1972) of the Second Republic under the
exclusive leadership of Kaunda’s United National
Independence Party (UNIP). The Lumpa aftermath, including the
continued presence of thousands of Lumpa refugees in Zaire just
across the Zambian border was repeatedly cited as a reason for
this continuation.[3]
It is not only in this respect that the Lumpa rising at the verge
of independence appears as a key episode for an understanding of
post-colonial Zambia. The event lives on as an important
reference point in the idiom of the Zambian elite. Sometimes
reference is made to it to express governmental and party
assertiveness, as in Kaunda’s remark at a mass rally in
January 1965:[4]
We have no
intention whatsoever ...of legislating against the formation of
any other party, so long as their behaviour inside Parliament and
outside is responsible. If they misbehave, in accordance with the
law of the country we shall ban them. If they misbehave, l repeat
misbehave, we shall ban them as we banned the Lumpa Church.
More often, the Lumpa example is used
to point out the dangers of religious sectarianism for national
unity and stable government. This is most clear in the case of
African Watchtower, one of Zambia’s largest religious
groupings, with a long history of clashes with the colonial
government. Shortly after independence, Watchtower adherents
incurred the wrath of government and the party for their refusal
to register as voters, buy party cards or honour the Zambian flag
and national anthem. In that context, comparisons with the Lumpa
Church were frequently made, partly in justification of the tough
measures taken against Watchtower.[5] The use of Lumpa as a reference point,
and the comparison between Lumpa and Watchtower, have become so
commonplace that the Zambian historian Meebelo,[6] himself a government official,
somewhat anachronistically reaches for the Lumpa example (1963-4)
in order to stress features of early Watchtower in 1918.[7] Likewise, reference to the Lumpa
events played an important role in the discussion, within the
Zambian government, that led to the final banning of the Zambian
wing of the Zaire-founded ‘Church of Christ on Earth through
Simon Kimbangu’.
But the most typical attitude towards the Lumpa episode among the
Zambian elite has been one of embarrassment and silence. One gets
the impression of a home truth that one is not at all keen to
share with outsiders. The rising was not only a national crisis
but also a crisis in the home ties and kin relations of
UNIP’s top leadership. Chinsali district, where the conflict
concentrated, was the home both of the nationalist leaders Kaunda
and Kapwepwe, and the Lumpa foundress, Lenshina. Kaunda and
Lenshina had been at the same school. Robert Kaunda, the
President’s elder brother, was a top-ranking Lumpa leader,
whilst their mother, the late Mrs Helen Kaunda, was reported as
having been ‘close to the movement’.[8] But it was not just childhood
reminiscences and family ties that made Kaunda’s decision,
three months before independence, ‘to use force against the
Lumpas.... as he told me at the time, the hardest decision he had
ever taken in his life’.[9]
The long and hard struggle for independence had seemed over with
the January 1964 election, which gave the then Northern Rhodesia
its first African party government under UNIP.[10] The world’s eyes were on what was
soon to be Zambia. After campaigning for black government for
years, UNIP, Kaunda and his cabinet, however ‘well-balanced
and extremely capable’,[11] now had to prove themselves. The
country was ready to reap all the economic, social and moral
benefits that self-government was expected to entail.
At this extremely inconvenient moment the Lumpa rising had to
occur. It demanded a death toll far exceeding that of the general
clashes (commonly called ‘Chachacha’) between the
colonial government and the nationalists in 1961.[12] The rising manifested the existence of
massive and intransigent opposition to UNIP and to an African
government, in the part of Zambia that had been UNIP’s main
rural stronghold. For years the UNIP leadership, and foremost
Kaunda, had through tremendous efforts rather successfully
attempted to keep the rank and file of their party membership
from violent anti-white agitation; but now the Lumpa rising
forced an African government to direct a predominantly African
military force against fellow-Africans. Kaunda was compelled to
suspend his Gandhist principles of non-violence, which until then
had been such an integral aspect of his identity as a nationalist
leader, and of his splendid international image. Also, the rising
could not fail to focus attention on such acts of violence by
local UNIP members as were, from the beginning, recognised to
constitute part of its causes.[13] An extensive process of attempted
reconciliation, undertaken by Kaunda and other senior UNIP
leaders in the months preceding the final conflict, had failed.
Instead of the nationalists’ promise of a new, proud African
order there was chaos and fratricide. White racialists, and
critics of nationalism, could sit back and rejoice. The blow to
nationalist self-confidence was almost fatal.
While the insurrection was effectively quashed, angry
declarations of the obvious juridical justifications of this
state action, as issued by Kaunda and his cabinet, could barely
hide the distress and embarrassment of the nationalist leaders.
In the terrible dilemma, it was soon realised that reconciliation
not retaliation was the only way out. Whilst Lumpa’s alleged
fanaticism, criminality and heresies were vehemently condemned,
measures were taken to limit the number of casualties to an
absolute minimum. Local people who were loyal to the state and
the party were urged to refrain from all retaliation.
Rehabilitation camps were erected and resettling campaigns were
vigorously undertaken. When captured, the Lumpa Church’s
senior leadership, including Lenshina, were treated respectfully.
An amnesty for the Lumpa rank and file was declared in 1968.
However, the ban on the Lumpa Church imposed in August 1964 was
not lifted, and Lenshina remained in custody.
After the rising the Lumpa adherents found themselves dispersed
all over north-eastern Zambia. Because of difficulties in
resettling in their home areas, among people with whom they had
fought, a gradual exodus took place to Zaire. In the years 1965-8
the number of Lumpa refugees in that country increased to about
19,000, and only about 3,000 returned to Zambia after
concentrated governmental effort in 1968.[14] The Lumpas in exile have continued to
form a reminder of what by now has taken the proportion of a
major trauma of the Zambian nationalist dream. The main other
reminder consists of the occasional trials of individuals who
within Zambia were caught in the act of reviving the Lumpa
Church’s organization and ritual (revolving particularly
around Lenshina’s talented hymns). Such trials, in which
again a reconciliatory attitude prevails, occurred in small
numbers throughout the 1960s and early 1970s.[15] The final gesture of reconciliation
was Lenshina’s release in December 1975.[16]
The extent to which the Lumpa rising and its aftermath does
constitute a collective trauma for the Zambian elite can also be
gauged from the silence surrounding it. The occasional
vindications by the UNIP leadership at the time of the rising,
justifying state action, and Meebelo’s cursory reference as
cited above are virtually the only published statements on the
subject by members of the Zambian elite. The 1965 official Report
of the Commission of Enquiry into the Former Lumpa Church[17] is not easily available within Zambia.
Expatriate writers who covered the details of the creation of
independent Zambia, and who therefore for their data collection
and publication were highly dependent on official introductions
and clearances, are remarkably reticent on the subject.[18] They have certainly not attempted any
interpretation of the significance of the Lumpa rising. The final
conflict, and the preceding rise and development of the Lumpa
Church, are still considered topics too sensitive for research
within Zambia.
Thus in this time of rapidly expanding insights into African
religious innovation, our knowledge of and insight into the Lumpa
episode remains rather stagnant. At present, the literature on
the subject mainly consists of the following categories of
publications:[19]
1 Exploratory
scholarly studies of the Lumpa Church as an independent church in
colonial Northern Rhodesia, written before the final conflict
broke out.[20]
2 A host of journalistic
pieces covering the events of the 1964 rising.
3 Scholarly
articles and notes in which soon after the rising a considerable
number of specialists on African religious innovation and Central
African society interpreted the conflict, thus providing often
hurried attempts to add a scientific background to the
journalistic accounts. Publications in this category mainly refer
to the pre-conflict studies under 1.[21]
4 A few scholarly
publications in which the available material, including some
unpublished data, is synthesised, and attempts are made at more
comprehensive interpretation.[22]
The empirical basis is still rather
scanty, and so far there is no accomplished full-size study[23] interpreting the Lumpa episode within
a widely acceptable theoretical framework. Yet the literature is
sufficiently voluminous for the Lumpa Church to become a standard
reference in Africanist writing over the past two decades. Here,
to give a few instances, Lumpa is cited as an institutionalised
witchcraft-eradication movement;[24] as a case in point for the claim that
independent churches re-enact traditional opportunities for
female leadership;[25] as an example of the religious
expression of nationalism;[26] as a ‘stark corrective [of the
view that] all anti-administration movements were forerunners of
mass nationalism’;[27]and, finally, as an example of the
post-colonial rivalry between state and church.[28]
As this selection of contradictory references makes clear, the
relations between the Lumpa Church and the power structure of
Zambian society, both before and after Independence, constitute a
major interpretational difficulty. It is in this respect that
Lumpa forms a key to the under standing of contemporary Zambia.
My claim of Lumpa’s significance is somewhat at variance
with the attention given to the rising in the two main recent
studies of Zambian politics.[29] Both studies summarise the basic facts
concerning the rising and its aftermath. However, in their
interpretation they are rather reserved .
Pettman writes:[30]
Subnational
threats to Zambia’s unity and security are not only seen in
tribalism, regionalism, and other sectional interests, but also
in group loyalties like those of the Lumpas and the Watchtower
Sect. These religious groups are held to differ from others in
that their behaviour and beliefs are ‘political’, a
perceived challenge to the existing or desired authority of the
party and government.
Correct as this assessment may be, as an
analysis of a major episode in modern Zambian politics it remains
on the surface. In what respect are such primarily religious
phenomena as Lumpa and Watchtower, political? Why do they
represent a threat to the political establishment and why is the
latter’s perception of this threat sufficient reason for
suppression and violence? These are some of the questions Pettman
ignores, and to which the present chapter attempts to give an
answer.
In Tordoff’s book, Politics in Zambia, Molteno’s brief
discussion of Lumpa and Watchtower[31] revolves around the question: what
cleavages exist in modern Zambian society that could be a
mobilisation basis for political conflict within the existing,
formal party organization and the representative institutions of
the Zambian political system? For Molteno, religious affiliation
‘could form the social basis for political conflict, but
...has not done so’.[32] Within the context of his argument,
Molteno’s narrow conception of political conflict is
justified; and it conveniently excludes Lumpa and Watchtower
troubles from a discussion of political conflict. Yet conflict it
remains, and with far-reaching implications for the distribution
of power - the subject matter of politics. Therefore,
Molteno’s explanation of why the unmistakable religious
cleavage has failed to precipitate political conflict in the
narrower sense of the word. does not convince:[33]
The reasons are
that Watch Tower and Lumpa together form less than 5% of the
population, and both movements in any case reject political
participation.
Is Molteno suggesting that if there had
been more Lumpa adherents, they would have challenged UNIP in the
arena of Zambia’s formal political institutions, instead of
engaging in battle against government troops, brandishing their
battle axes and spears and firing an occasional muzzle-loader?
What makes Molteno’s approach unhelpful for an understanding
of Lumpa, is that it takes the existing, formal political system,
such as defined by the political elite themselves, as its
exclusive frame of reference. This would deny us the possibility
of exploring the limits of that system, and of identifying such
social groups and institutions as, peripheral to or outside the
formal political system, may legitimate it, challenge it, or opt
out of it. If it is true that any political system can only be
understood in its wider social context, this is particularly so
in the case of a post-colonial state that still has to
consolidate itself through processes of incorporation and
legitimation. The significance of Lumpa (and of Watchtower) is
that it demonstrates the limits of these processes. Beyond these
limits a considerable number of Zambians refuse to be drawn into
the post-colonial state, and reject its claims to legitimate
power. Studying the Zambian political system from this angle
helps to reveal its dynamic, even precarious nature - instead of
taking this system for granted as an established and
self-contained fact.
The Zambian political system is of recent date. It is not yet so
deeply rooted in every part of the Zambian soil and population
that it can afford to ignore challenges from outside this
political system, challenges that undermine its legitimation and
threaten its most fundamental assumptions. It is along such lines
that I will attempt, in this chapter, to interpret Lumpa’s
relations with nationalism and the state against the background
of the process of class formation. Such an approach is only
meaningful if the following related problems are discussed at the
same time. Because of what structural conditions should the
post-colonial state experience difficulties of incorporation and
legitimation, particularly with regard to peasants in remote
rural areas? For the rural adherents of Lumpa form only a small
part of the large class of Zambian peasants; and difficulties
similar to Lumpa exist elsewhere in rural Zambia, although
without the specific Lumpa features of a large, rural-based
independent church and armed mass resistance.[34] Moreover, we shall have to identify
Lumpa’s specific dimensions of power, particularly in terms
of class and class struggle. Thus we may begin to understand
Lumpa’s relations with nationalism and the state, including
the final conflict. Finally, as a religious movement, Lumpa is
only one in a long series of religious innovations that have
occurred in Central Africa during the last centuries. The latest
decade has seen considerable growth of our insight into these
religious innovations, their interconnectedness, and their
causes. What new light does this emerging, comprehensive analysis
of Central African religious innovation throw upon the Lumpa
movement?
As my argument develops, it will become clear that these several
problems are intimately related, mainly through the themes of
urban-rural relations, incorporation processes, and class
formation - which are in fact three different terms for the same
phenomenon Meanwhile, the relations between religion, politics
and the economic order, as exemplified by the Lumpa problem,
constitute a core problem of society and history. The present
argument, however ambitious, does not pretend to solve the
problem But perhaps it rearranges the pieces in a way that may be
helpful towards a future solution.
Reserving the order in which the specific problems raised by
Lumpa were mentioned above, I shall now first discuss the
background of religious innovation in Central Africa; then place
Lumpa in this context; finally, after a discussion of its
confrontation with nationalism, I shall deal with the problems of
incorporation and legitimation of the Zambian state from a more
general point of view.
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IV
[1]
Given the circumstances described in the opening section of this
paper, l could not carry out local field-work specifically on the
Lumpa Church. The general argument is backed up by prolonged
research in Zambia, both in the Zambian National Archives and in
various urban and rural field-work settings. Moreover, while in
Zambia I informally interviewed a limited number of people with
first-hand knowledge of the Lumpa Church, some of them personally
involved in its history. However, the specific argument on Lumpa
is primarily based on published sources (including the Zambian
press) and secondary analyses, most of which are listed in the
bibliography. My purpose is not to present new data but to
attempt a new interpretation on the basis of available data. For
the present chapter, l am indebted to R. Buijtenhuijs C.
Holzappel, A. Kuper and G. Verstraelen-Gilhuis† for comments
on an earlier draft, and to L. Lagerwerf for bibliographical
assistance. My greatest debt is to S. Simonse, who took a keen
interest in this study and generously contributed towards its
leading ideas.
[2]
Times of Zambia, 20 September 1969, as quoted in Gertzel (n .d .)
:41.
[3]
Tordoff and Molteno (1974):12; Sklar (1974):359; Pettman
(1974):95.
[4]
Legum (1966):209.
[5]
Mwanakatwe (1968):253f; Phiri (1975); Hodges (1976); Sklar
(1974):359; Pettman (1974):29, 96f;Assimeng (1970):110f.
[6]
Meebelo (1971):141.
[7]
Interestingly, the comparison was suggested to Meebelo by the
influential Nestor of Zambian Protestant ministers of religion,
the late Rev. Mushindo, whose refusal to accommodate Alice any
longer within the Lubwa Mission congregation formed the occasion
for the founding of Lumpa as an independent Church. On early
Watchtower, see note 45.
[8]
Hall (1968):229f.
[9]
Legum (1966):xii.
[10]
For detailed studies of Zambia’s attainment of independence,
see: Mulford (1967); Hall (1968); Krishnamurty (1972).
[11]
Mulford (1967):330.
[12]
Cf. Hall (1968:209) for some conservative figures on the death
toll of ‘Chachacha’. Macpherson (1974:340f) gives a
more vivid, lengthy description suggestive of a large number of
casualties, but does not actually provide an estimate On the
basis of confidential government reports to which Short, a former
district officer, had access at the time, he quotes a number of
about fifty fatal casualties (Short 1978).
[13]
Report 1965, as quoted in Gertzel (n.d.):40, and in Times of
Zambia, 22 September 1965; Kaunda in Legum (1966):108; Roberts
(1972):39f.
[14]
Zambia Mail, 4 and 21 June 1968.
[15]
E.g., Daily Mail (Zambia),2 June and 17 July 1972; Times of
Zambia, 21 March; I,5,20 and 25 April; and 14,16 and 20 May 1972.
[16]
Mirror (Zambia),45, February 1976: 3. Lenshina died on 7 December
1978 (Zambia Daily Mail, 8 December 1978).
[17]
Report (1965).
[18]
Hall (1968); Mulford (1967); Macpherson (1974); Rotberg
(1967);Krishnamurty (1972).
[19]
For fuller bibliographical references, particularly to more
obscure publications and journalistic pieces, see: Roberts
(1972); Calmettes (1970); Mitchell and Turner (1966): Ofori
(1977).
[20]
Rotberg (1961); Lehmann (1961); Macpherson (1958); Stone (1958);
Oger (1960); Chéry (1959, 1961). Oosthuizen (1968:65) refers to
an article by Audrey I. Richards on the subject, which however
does not appear in Gulliver’s (1972) bibliography of the
principal writings of Audrey Richards, and most probably does not
exist.
[21]
Anonymous (1964); Emanuel (1964); Fernandez (1964b); Martin
(1964); Douglas (1964b);Welbourn (1964); Heward (1964); B.R.
Wilson (1964); Roberts (1964).
[22]
Lanternari (1965-6); Greschat (1968); Calmettes (1970, 1972);
Roberts (1972).
[23]
While this was written, J.-L. Calmettes was working on his MSc
Econ thesis on the subject, for University College of Wales; cf.
Calmettes (1978) and below.
[24]
B.R. Wilson (1975):94f; Greschat (1965): 101 f
[25]
Shepperson (1970):48; Lehmann (1963):68.
[26]
Banton(1970):225.
[27]
Henderson (1970a) :591.
[28]
Barrett (1968):246f; Peel (1973):349.
[29]
Tordoff ( I 974); Pettman 1974.
[30]
Pettman (1974):94.
[31]
Molteno (1974):85f
[32]
Molteno (1974):85.
[33]
Molteno (1974):86.
[34]
I have myself studied a similar peasant situation in western
Zambia (Van Binsbergen, 1975a, 1975b, 1976b, 1977c, 1978, 1979c,
and forthcoming (a)).
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