Festo Mkenda - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Festo Mkenda
Jesuit Survival and Restoration
Jesuit Survival and Restoration, 2015
The Emergence of Chagga Nationalism in Colonial Tanganyika and its Post-independence Withering
The Chagga people of northern Tanzania constitute an ethnic community with notable elements of sh... more The Chagga people of northern Tanzania constitute an ethnic community with notable elements of shared identity and significant elements of diversity. During the colonial period, their shared ethnic identity was invoked to create a political unity which was expressed in a form of ethnic-bound nationalism that stood as a possible threat to post-colonial attempts to build a unified multi-ethnic nation. However, this Chagga nationalism began to wither as Tanzania approached its independence and ultimately disappeared from the post-colonial political scene. Both the rise of Chagga nationalism and its withering are local responses to administrative policies of the colonial and the post-colonial governments which were superimposed on the Chagga cultural substructure as a way of gaining control over the people. Neither of the governments gained full control over the Chagga people, and the final result of their policies was always a negotiated end-product, not entirely as envisaged by the po...
This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
Africa's limping democracies: lessons from Kenya
The democratic experiment that was Kenya's 2007 elections ushered in disaster. Yet, Kenya... more The democratic experiment that was Kenya's 2007 elections ushered in disaster. Yet, Kenya provided salient lessons on democracy that other African countries must take seriously. In this article, originally published shortly after the events, the author argues that the 2007/8 post election violence in Kenya manifested a failure of institutions, not necessarily 'tribalism' as many rushed to conclude. A strong democracy, anchored on radical belief in human equality and protected by strong institutions that are enshrined in good constitutions, could have prevented the Kenyan disaster. Since these were lacking at the time, people were left with no recourse to a regulated process for resolution when they judged the electoral process unfair. After the Kenyan experience, there is hardly any reason why another country in Africa should find itself in similar circumstances.
Muslim-Christian relations in Africa
Journal of Jesuit Studies
Christian Pedagogy of Evangelization and African Ethos: A Critical Appraisal
Hekima Review, 2015
In an article sub-titled “Christian Pedagogy of Evangelization and African Ethos” published in is... more In an article sub-titled “Christian Pedagogy of Evangelization and African Ethos” published in issue 2014/1 of the Tangaza Journal of Theology and Mission, Father Gorge Kocholickal, sdb, offered what he intended to be an extensive critique of Professor Laurenti Magesa’s theology. The initiative to undertake such a review is praiseworthy, since such is rarely seen among Africanists. In the same spirit, this article is presented as a critique of Kocholickal’s review. It shows that Kocholickal’s conclusions, which are mostly negative, are based on a misreading of Magesa’s theology and, more generally, on a facile analysis of missionary realities in Africa. A focus on mission misses Magesa’s point on dialogue, a paradigmatic view of Christian spirituality impairs the ability to appreciate the specificity of its African counterpart, and a determination to clear missionaries of wrong doing sticks up nakedly at odds with documented history. For the author of this article, the praiseworthy ...
Mission Context and the Jesuit Visitor: Charles Bert and the Visitation of Polish Jesuits in the Zambesi Mission, 1924
With Eyes and Ears Open: The Role of Visitors in the Society of Jesus, 2019
Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in Africa, 2017
© robert aleksander maryks, ���8 | doi �0.��63/9789004347�5�_00� This is an open access chapter d... more © robert aleksander maryks, ���8 | doi �0.��63/9789004347�5�_00� This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the prevailing cc-by-nc-nd License.
Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in Africa
© festo mkenda, s.j., ���8 | doi �0.��63/9789004347�5�_003 This is an open access chapter distrib... more © festo mkenda, s.j., ���8 | doi �0.��63/9789004347�5�_003 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the prevailing cc-by-nc-nd License.
Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in Africa
© robert aleksander maryks, ���8 | doi �0.��63/9789004347�5�_00� This is an open access chapter d... more © robert aleksander maryks, ���8 | doi �0.��63/9789004347�5�_00� This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the prevailing cc-by-nc-nd License.
Jesuit Historiography in Africa
Jesuit Historiography Online
David Tonghou Ngong (ed.), A New History of African Christian Thought: From Cape to Cairo
Theology
Jesuit Involvement in Africa, 1548–2017
Oxford Handbooks Online
Divided into nine administrative regions, Jesuits in Africa are involved in a number of education... more Divided into nine administrative regions, Jesuits in Africa are involved in a number of educational and pastoral ministries in thirty-six countries. This geographical spread occurred as a response to greater openness to missions after World War II and growing appreciation of African cultures after Vatican II. Between 1861 and 1945, Jesuits had concentrated on Madagascar, southern Africa, and Congo. In these regions they acted as evangelizers within the context of the nineteenth-century influx of Christian missions into Africa and organized themselves along the lines of colonial spheres of influence. Jesuit missions in these three regions were new, not resuscitations of previous Jesuit existence in Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia before the Society’s suppression in 1773. The presuppression missions had lasted for almost two centuries, thus linking the Jesuits to the poorly researched second wave of evangelization in Africa and connecting the continent to the very beginnings of the S...
Jesuits and Africa
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016
David Tonghou Ngong (ed.), A New History of African Christian Thought: From Cape to Cairo
Theology
Jesuit Involvement in Africa, 1548–2017
Oxford Handbooks Online
Divided into nine administrative regions, Jesuits in Africa are involved in a number of education... more Divided into nine administrative regions, Jesuits in Africa are involved in a number of educational and pastoral ministries in thirty-six countries. This geographical spread occurred as a response to greater openness to missions after World War II and growing appreciation of African cultures after Vatican II. Between 1861 and 1945, Jesuits had concentrated on Madagascar, southern Africa, and Congo. In these regions they acted as evangelizers within the context of the nineteenth-century influx of Christian missions into Africa and organized themselves along the lines of colonial spheres of influence. Jesuit missions in these three regions were new, not resuscitations of previous Jesuit existence in Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia before the Society’s suppression in 1773. The presuppression missions had lasted for almost two centuries, thus linking the Jesuits to the poorly researched second wave of evangelization in Africa and connecting the continent to the very beginnings of the S...
Jesuits and Africa
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016
Jesuits and Africa
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016
Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu (AHSI), 2019
The election of Pedro Arrupe as Superior General of the Society of Jesus in 1965 coincided with t... more The election of Pedro Arrupe as Superior General of the Society of Jesus in 1965 coincided with transitions of monumental proportions in Africa. Most African countries basked in the early sun of political independence, and Vatican II had just allowed greater inculturation in the practice of the faith. Now, with audacious calls for “Africanization”, Africans sought to expand their space in political and ecclesiastical institutions. These changing realities had a considerable impact on the missions of the Society in Africa. Hitherto the missions were scattered and directed by various provinces in Europe and America. As the Church was becoming more African, there was obvious need to make the Society more African too. To this need Arrupe responded decisively. Engaging directly with Africa, he practised a three-pronged policy of empowering, supporting and inspiring Jesuits on the continent so that they could live up to the challenge of their vocation in Africa. To this end he established administrative structures designed to allow grassroots experience to inform key decisions, which now could be made on the ground. He was particularly supportive of the new superiors he appointed. Arrupe also used the African experience to enrich his own theological reflection, which eventually contributed to shaping his ideas on inculturation and on mission.
Jesuit Survival and Restoration
Jesuit Survival and Restoration, 2015
The Emergence of Chagga Nationalism in Colonial Tanganyika and its Post-independence Withering
The Chagga people of northern Tanzania constitute an ethnic community with notable elements of sh... more The Chagga people of northern Tanzania constitute an ethnic community with notable elements of shared identity and significant elements of diversity. During the colonial period, their shared ethnic identity was invoked to create a political unity which was expressed in a form of ethnic-bound nationalism that stood as a possible threat to post-colonial attempts to build a unified multi-ethnic nation. However, this Chagga nationalism began to wither as Tanzania approached its independence and ultimately disappeared from the post-colonial political scene. Both the rise of Chagga nationalism and its withering are local responses to administrative policies of the colonial and the post-colonial governments which were superimposed on the Chagga cultural substructure as a way of gaining control over the people. Neither of the governments gained full control over the Chagga people, and the final result of their policies was always a negotiated end-product, not entirely as envisaged by the po...
This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
Africa's limping democracies: lessons from Kenya
The democratic experiment that was Kenya's 2007 elections ushered in disaster. Yet, Kenya... more The democratic experiment that was Kenya's 2007 elections ushered in disaster. Yet, Kenya provided salient lessons on democracy that other African countries must take seriously. In this article, originally published shortly after the events, the author argues that the 2007/8 post election violence in Kenya manifested a failure of institutions, not necessarily 'tribalism' as many rushed to conclude. A strong democracy, anchored on radical belief in human equality and protected by strong institutions that are enshrined in good constitutions, could have prevented the Kenyan disaster. Since these were lacking at the time, people were left with no recourse to a regulated process for resolution when they judged the electoral process unfair. After the Kenyan experience, there is hardly any reason why another country in Africa should find itself in similar circumstances.
Muslim-Christian relations in Africa
Journal of Jesuit Studies
Christian Pedagogy of Evangelization and African Ethos: A Critical Appraisal
Hekima Review, 2015
In an article sub-titled “Christian Pedagogy of Evangelization and African Ethos” published in is... more In an article sub-titled “Christian Pedagogy of Evangelization and African Ethos” published in issue 2014/1 of the Tangaza Journal of Theology and Mission, Father Gorge Kocholickal, sdb, offered what he intended to be an extensive critique of Professor Laurenti Magesa’s theology. The initiative to undertake such a review is praiseworthy, since such is rarely seen among Africanists. In the same spirit, this article is presented as a critique of Kocholickal’s review. It shows that Kocholickal’s conclusions, which are mostly negative, are based on a misreading of Magesa’s theology and, more generally, on a facile analysis of missionary realities in Africa. A focus on mission misses Magesa’s point on dialogue, a paradigmatic view of Christian spirituality impairs the ability to appreciate the specificity of its African counterpart, and a determination to clear missionaries of wrong doing sticks up nakedly at odds with documented history. For the author of this article, the praiseworthy ...
Mission Context and the Jesuit Visitor: Charles Bert and the Visitation of Polish Jesuits in the Zambesi Mission, 1924
With Eyes and Ears Open: The Role of Visitors in the Society of Jesus, 2019
Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in Africa, 2017
© robert aleksander maryks, ���8 | doi �0.��63/9789004347�5�_00� This is an open access chapter d... more © robert aleksander maryks, ���8 | doi �0.��63/9789004347�5�_00� This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the prevailing cc-by-nc-nd License.
Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in Africa
© festo mkenda, s.j., ���8 | doi �0.��63/9789004347�5�_003 This is an open access chapter distrib... more © festo mkenda, s.j., ���8 | doi �0.��63/9789004347�5�_003 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the prevailing cc-by-nc-nd License.
Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in Africa
© robert aleksander maryks, ���8 | doi �0.��63/9789004347�5�_00� This is an open access chapter d... more © robert aleksander maryks, ���8 | doi �0.��63/9789004347�5�_00� This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the prevailing cc-by-nc-nd License.
Jesuit Historiography in Africa
Jesuit Historiography Online
David Tonghou Ngong (ed.), A New History of African Christian Thought: From Cape to Cairo
Theology
Jesuit Involvement in Africa, 1548–2017
Oxford Handbooks Online
Divided into nine administrative regions, Jesuits in Africa are involved in a number of education... more Divided into nine administrative regions, Jesuits in Africa are involved in a number of educational and pastoral ministries in thirty-six countries. This geographical spread occurred as a response to greater openness to missions after World War II and growing appreciation of African cultures after Vatican II. Between 1861 and 1945, Jesuits had concentrated on Madagascar, southern Africa, and Congo. In these regions they acted as evangelizers within the context of the nineteenth-century influx of Christian missions into Africa and organized themselves along the lines of colonial spheres of influence. Jesuit missions in these three regions were new, not resuscitations of previous Jesuit existence in Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia before the Society’s suppression in 1773. The presuppression missions had lasted for almost two centuries, thus linking the Jesuits to the poorly researched second wave of evangelization in Africa and connecting the continent to the very beginnings of the S...
Jesuits and Africa
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016
David Tonghou Ngong (ed.), A New History of African Christian Thought: From Cape to Cairo
Theology
Jesuit Involvement in Africa, 1548–2017
Oxford Handbooks Online
Divided into nine administrative regions, Jesuits in Africa are involved in a number of education... more Divided into nine administrative regions, Jesuits in Africa are involved in a number of educational and pastoral ministries in thirty-six countries. This geographical spread occurred as a response to greater openness to missions after World War II and growing appreciation of African cultures after Vatican II. Between 1861 and 1945, Jesuits had concentrated on Madagascar, southern Africa, and Congo. In these regions they acted as evangelizers within the context of the nineteenth-century influx of Christian missions into Africa and organized themselves along the lines of colonial spheres of influence. Jesuit missions in these three regions were new, not resuscitations of previous Jesuit existence in Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia before the Society’s suppression in 1773. The presuppression missions had lasted for almost two centuries, thus linking the Jesuits to the poorly researched second wave of evangelization in Africa and connecting the continent to the very beginnings of the S...
Jesuits and Africa
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016
Jesuits and Africa
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016
Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu (AHSI), 2019
The election of Pedro Arrupe as Superior General of the Society of Jesus in 1965 coincided with t... more The election of Pedro Arrupe as Superior General of the Society of Jesus in 1965 coincided with transitions of monumental proportions in Africa. Most African countries basked in the early sun of political independence, and Vatican II had just allowed greater inculturation in the practice of the faith. Now, with audacious calls for “Africanization”, Africans sought to expand their space in political and ecclesiastical institutions. These changing realities had a considerable impact on the missions of the Society in Africa. Hitherto the missions were scattered and directed by various provinces in Europe and America. As the Church was becoming more African, there was obvious need to make the Society more African too. To this need Arrupe responded decisively. Engaging directly with Africa, he practised a three-pronged policy of empowering, supporting and inspiring Jesuits on the continent so that they could live up to the challenge of their vocation in Africa. To this end he established administrative structures designed to allow grassroots experience to inform key decisions, which now could be made on the ground. He was particularly supportive of the new superiors he appointed. Arrupe also used the African experience to enrich his own theological reflection, which eventually contributed to shaping his ideas on inculturation and on mission.
DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 2009
This paper is a chapter in a much larger thesis bearing the title "Building National Unity in sub... more This paper is a chapter in a much larger thesis bearing the title "Building National Unity in sub-Saharan Africa: The Impact of State Policies on the Chagga Community in Northern Tanzania." Unlike the local political authority which lost popular support, the Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union (KNCU) grew even stronger after World War II. Government interference was at the minimum, the Union’s administration was in Chagga hands, its affiliate societies were fully democratised and
world coffee prices at their best. With this prosperous cooperative under their control, the Chagga crossed confidently into independence. However, political interference was soon resumed at the same time as coffee prices plummeted. The KNCU limped through the 1960s towards its abolition in 1976. Though much regretted, the political interferences did not elicit stone-throwing as previous ones did. Instead, those who
could simply abandoned the KNCU and exploited other social and economic avenues opened up by independence. Often they did so legally, but sometimes they quietly subverted unfriendly policies of a state to which they now owed some loyalty.