“Mungu atatenda muujiza Eric”
“Erick nakuweka kwenye maombi”
“Erick Mungu akutie nguvu kwenye kipindi hiki kigumu”
“Kwa neema ya mungu kila kitu kitapita Eric”
“Eric anahitaji maombi yenu”
“Today I keep praying for you Eric”
“Eric, the Lord your God is with you wherever you go”
These and many more messages like these are all over social media since the beginning of the week following the passing of Erick Kabendera’s mother, the late Verdiana Mujwahuzi. The pouring of thoughtful spiritual messages either intends to comfort Erick (who unfortunately can’t read them) and/or makes us feel better about ourselves, that we have done all we could to support him by putting him on able and safer hands of God! #PrayForErick
As far as I can recall, this is not new, we prayed for him when he was kidnapped/caught, we prayed even harder when we knew the charges he had to face, but he is still in custody, still his mother died, and still he was denied his right to bury his mother. I know this will sound like I have lost faith in GOD! Please hear me out, I am not questioning the paower of your and my God, but am questioning how we are misusing the power granted to us by “GOD” as we chose to stay passive and lazy and, worse, to have the audacity of asking him to fix things which she/he has already given us capabilities and abilities to fix them ourselves, Isn’t she/he (GOD) who made us superior compared to other creatures? I am telling you, lions, snakes and even bees would not tolerate this shit!
If I would be GOD I would be mad, frankly I assume she/he is! That’s why we are still here, our pain getting worse and our oppressor getting stronger… Imagine, you have nurtured this son of yours and train him to do everything, just to find him screaming and begging you to feed and bath him at the age of 30 just because you are his parents? Are you not gonna be mad? I would. Isn’t the same GOD who told us, ‘jisaidie nami nitakusaidia’? Or ‘munkari uondoe kwa mkono wako, ulimi wako au uchikie kwa moyo wako’?
As I sit here, hopelessly, miles away, unable to even attend the funeral service of Erick’s mother, these social media messages reminded me why religion was the necessary tool to facilitate colonialism and centuries of oppression and exploitation. If anything, religion and belief in GOD takes agency, power and control from us, especially when we are oppressed. What a clever and effective ways to make all of us dormant, passive and inactive social actors?
What is striking similar during the colonial era and now is how the oppressors are praying the loudest, and how they create and use the entire governing system to be machinery of oppression, I mean, they don’t just sit and pray, they have the judiciary, legislative organs, police, bureaucrats and even religion itself to facilitate inhumane acts of injustice and oppression. And here we are; the oppressed praying for God’s grace in the comfort of our keyboards, hoping for miracles!
NO, we are praying for tolerance of injustice.
We know nothing will change if we won’t act.
We know we are too cowardly lazy to act.
We know the only option we have in our cowardly laziness is to pray for ‘comfort’ in our pain and ‘acceptance’ our oppression, after all, ‘kila jema na baya la toka kwa Mungu’, right?
To be fair, there is a difference between then (colonial era) and now. Then, prayers were left for the “converted”, our freedom fighters did what needed to be done to unchain us from the oppressors who brought us their GOD. Today, thanks to the hegemony of religion, our politicians, activists, and everyone else have turned to prayer warriors, they are no longer stopping injustice the way they should, instead they lead us to prayers…. “Erick needs your prayers, pray for him” really? What would Bishop Bagonza do then?
Given I too belong to the group of ‘converted’, I guess I should as well offer my prayer… Erick, brother, I wish you Subra, It’s a long shot but we have no choice than waiting for the God of the oppressor to save you and us all… Ameeen.
