Posted on 09/01/2006 10:38:11 AM PDT by Mr. Brightside
Christians seek West's atonement for colonialism
By MacDonald Dzirutwe
1 hour, 33 minutes ago
HARARE (Reuters) - Hands aloft and tears streaming down her cheeks, Alicia Chipoyi prayed in a high-pitched voice for spiritual healing for the wounds caused by years of slavery and colonization of Africa by Europeans.
Chipoyi was one of hundreds of people attending a European-African-American church prayer meeting on atonement and reconciliation for the West's past role in the exploitation of what has become the world's poorest continent.
In prayer sessions punctuated by wailing and weeping, song and dance, delegates said the West had to repent before God as the first step to reconciliation with Africa, which blames many of its problems on the legacies of enslavement and imperialism.
"We are not looking to man for help, we are looking to God for our dignity to be restored but first of all the West must confess, repent and atone for their past," Langton Gatsi, the organizer of the meeting, told Reuters on the sidelines of the prayer session.
"Once that happens we can talk of reparations and co-operation and how we can start on an equal footing."
African leaders including Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe have in the past called for reparations from the West for its part in the slave trade.
Chris Seaton, who leads the Europe-Africa Reconciliation Process, a London-based Christian pressure group that seeks to persuade Europe to admit its past role in colonialism, said more Europeans were now aware of the "dark side of colonialism."
The West should see Africa as an equal partner in all its dealings with a continent wracked by poverty, civil wars and underdevelopment, he said.
"We are having to explain the dark side of colonialism to our people in Europe. It is a spiritual initiative which comes in a sense, as a (result) of our history," Seaton told Reuters.
"Some call it indulging on white guilt but our purpose is to acknowledge our past mistakes."
Seaton said atonement and reconciliation were the first steps toward stronger co-operation between the two continents.
"Some of the intractable problems between Africa and Europe are premised on history. We also want to listen from our counterparts in Africa and make a difference," Seaton said.
Mugabe did not attend the meeting as earlier expected, but the veteran leader has frequently blasted the West for his country's economic woes and has been hailed by some fellow Africans for standing up to powerful countries and seizing white-owned farmland.
Colonialism was good for many parts of the World that were still in the stone age.
So let's see here. The Arabs didn't enslave Christian Europeans? The Turks didn't conquer huge chunks of the Middle East? The Japanese didn't invade Korea? The Persians haven't apologized for invading Greece. And so on. Bilge wash. Hokum and balderdash.
I submit that Mugabe has already gotten his reparations when he took over Zimbabwe, which was a very agriculturally progressive and abundant country, based upon the European model.
If it works. Hallelujah. Someone really needs to bring Africans to account that they sold each other into slavery, and committed as many crimes before white people like Livingston arrived.
"...what has become the world's poorest continent"?
So it wasn't mud huts and thatched roofs before 1500 AD?
I think some parts are showing themselves nostalgic for the good old days.
This is what passes for logic in the liberal mind.
Hey, we got some folks here looking for reparations. Go ask Europe for it. I wonder if Jessee Jiveass Jackson is their consultant.
On behalf of the West, I apologize. Feel better now? I do. You're going to have to wait on reparations, though, because I'm a little short this week.
Slavery is wrong without exception and it is unfathomable to us today, but the people who did it are dead, and the victims are dead, and so this issue should be dead. I'm sure that there are things we are doing today that are quite normal to us that will be unthinkable in the future. Reparations? They should be thanking Europe.
The Irish were treated just as bad, sometimes worse than the blacks, but you don't see 6th generation Irish Americans harping about reparations. This whole issue bugs the heck out of me. /end rant
We still have Nazis who lived in Germany walking this world.
We still have Islamic supremacists who are actively mudering men women and children out of intolerance for "subhuman" kufir.
There are more worthy outrages. Don't blame the great grandchild for the sins of the elder.
"Colonialism was good for many parts of the World that were still in the stone age.
That's true.
Had it not been for colonialism the people in those colonized countries would still be living like savages and nothing good would ever have come out of those places, not that much is coming out of some of them who refused to be civilized anyway.
They ought to be grateful. But no, victimization and gratitude don't mix. Tribal life was no bed of roses: Why else would the left be working overtime to romanticize it as some golden age brought to a brutal end by colonization?
Shakedown is the correct analysis.
"Once that happens we can talk of reparations..."
Reparations to later generations?
Dummies. The colonial years are the best times Africa ever saw.
The downfall of Africa began with the demise of the colonial powers.
There is no hope for Africa......the dark continent is lost.
My gutfeeling is that as Arfica declines Indians will increase their migration and eliminate the black africans.
I was thinking the same thing. How could this reporter reference Mugabe the illegitimate murderous thug with any sense of seriousness? Why respect the wishes of one who destroyed his own country?
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