The Birth of South African Ethiopianism --- --- On this date on November 5, 1893, a revolution began in South Africa entitled Ethiopianism. Mangena Maake Mokone, a South African-native minister of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, separated from the status quo and formed his own independent Ethiopian Church in South Africa. The seeds of Ethiopianism had begun to be sown in southern Africa, Sylvia M. Jacobs wrote in her essay African Missions and the African-American Christian Churches. Up until this point Christian churches in South Africa were predominately run by European missions and its Biblical interpretations were often tainted to justify the European colonial agenda. Through the Ethiopianism movement, the Christian faith would begin to be taught by Africans for Africans in South Africa. At this time relations by native South Africans and with Highland Ethiopia (Abyssinia) were likely nonexistent. As the natives of Southern African began to advance their struggle for independence over the next two decades, Ethiopianism became the traditional term to describe this resistance movement. The social impact of Ethiopianism in South Africa is unprecedented. Nelson Mandela is quoted in a speech how the significance of Ethiopia and Ethiopianism was the inspiration for the formation for his political party the African National Congress(ANC) . Speaking on December 1992 at the Free Ethiopian Church of Southern Africa, Mandela said: Fundamental tenets of the Ethiopian Movement were self-worth, self-reliance and freedom. These tenets drew the advocates of Ethiopianism, like a magnet, to the growing political movement. That political movement was to culminate in the formation of the ANC in 1912. It is in this sense that the ANC we trace the seeds of the formation of our organization to the Ethiopian Movement of the 1890s.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 02:27:35 +0000
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