Jehovah's Witnesses and Religious Tourism in Africa

by OrphanCrow 16 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  OrphanCrow

  About a month ago, I had started a thread about a video the WTS had released of an interview with the minister of tourism for Zimbabwe.

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/430330002/interview-zimbabwes-minister-tourism-jw-hq
  

  The video in that thread is no longer online.

  The following article highlights the relgious tourism that the Jehovah's Witnesses have brought to Africa.

  African govts must prioritise tourism for economic growth: Mzembi

  African governments must prioritise tourism development to stimulate economic growth and development on the continent, Tourism minister Walter Mzembi has said.
  
  Mzembi, who is also United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) chairman of the Commission for Africa, said tourism had long-term intangible benefits that came with enhancing destinations amid reports that Zimbabwe’s projected 5,1% tourism growth for 2015/16 was ahead of all other economic sectors.

  
  He advocated for the scaling up of religious tourism, telling the audience that Jehovah’s Witnesses who thronged Zimbabwe for their first international convention in the country had set a fine example which should be followed by all church organisations.

  
  “Jehovah’s Witnesses held their international convention in Harare. In fact, this organisation set a fine example of how church organisations should behave, peaceable, orderly, in such a manner that gave a fine ministry of their God, while boosting the country’s tourism receipts,” he said.
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  SecretSlaveClass

  Interesting article and post OC, thank you. Zimbabwe is in such serious financial ruin thanks to Robert Mugabe's dictatorship I'm not surprised they're grasping at every opportunity to bring in foreign money - particularly Euros and US dollars.

  Zim is a spectacularly beautiful country in dire need of foreign investment but thanks to Madman Mugabe, that likely won't happen for some time.
• 

  millie210

  I have a friend that just returned from that assembly.

  Nice packaged tours, the country makes money and the Org gets the credit without spending a penny.

  OC: Did you happen to see the letter from a government authority to the UN concerning the persecution in Malawi already being over by the time JWs were writing letters about it back in 75?

  I just looked and couldnt find it but it was what I thought of when I read your post above.

  I guess now we are looking at the mining of the wealth (in souls, religiously speaking) by the Org of Africa.
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  SecretSlaveClass

  What I do find hilarious about this is Mugabe's old ZIPRA party used to persecute Christians, particularly JW's. Africa is not without a sense of irony.
• 

  OrphanCrow

  SSS: Zim is a spectacularly beautiful country in dire need of foreign investment but thanks to Madman Mugabe, that likely won't happen for some time.

  Yes, it is a beautiful country. About 15 years ago, I had a family member who owned land just outside Harare and she was always trying to get me to visit. She sent me photos of her home and the beauty of her farm was incredible. Except for the six foot black mamba they found in their house one day!

  I never wanted to visit - at the time, and since, the political upheaval and human atrocities being committed in that country were so disturbing. However, my step mother-in-law would visit there. She returned once from a visit and told us how she had met Mugabe and shook his hand. She said, "He was such a nice man."

  Wow. My mouth hit the floor when she dropped that bomb. How could she even not know what was happening in that country?? Mind you, it might have had something to do with what her daughter was doing for the government as a commodity trader in maize at the time.

  I find the WTS involvement in Zimbawe to be very interesting. Their handshaking with Mugabe would result in the very same reaction - "Oh, he is such a very nice man!".

  Yeah...well...as the crows would say - birds of a feather...
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  SecretSlaveClass

  Touche OC. Even Neville Chamberlain thought Hitler was a "Decent and reasonable" man. That old adage "the devil looks after his own" could certainly prove a point for Mugabe and his seemingly endless rule.
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  OrphanCrow

  millie: OC: Did you happen to see the letter from a government authority to the UN concerning the persecution in Malawi already being over by the time JWs were writing letters about it back in 75?

  Yes, I have seen that letter. I have it someplace in my archives.

  The history of the WT movement in Africa is very interesting and it is rooted in African politics far more than most people realize.

  I have run across several scholarly research papers about issues pertaining to the WT movement in Africa, especially concerning literacy and politics.

  Because entire villages in certain areas of Africa are almost totally made up of Jehovah's Witnesses, they make for an interesting study of social and political behavior.

  Here is a paper that I particulary enjoyed (thank you to Oubilette for sending me the pdf!):

  Ways of reading as religious power in print globalization
  Authors
  THOMAS G. KIRSCH
  First published: August 2007
  Abstract
  In this article, I address issues of power with regard to religious print media distributed worldwide. I show that mission societies seek to ensure a homogenous interpretation of their publications by making them “obligatory passage points” for socioreligious advancement and standardizing literacy practices. Once successfully established, networks created through religious print media evolve as a twofold process in which the construction of power by media distributors and their audiences' seeking of empowerment form an integrated whole. In this trajectory, literacy practices bridge local and global realms by enabling extensive religious networking based on the shared use of print media.

  Kirsch's research focuses on the local population in the Gwembe Valley in Zambia. He compares and contrasts the JW community with the Apostolic community practice.

  Oops...I got a little off topic there. It is difficult to speak about the WTS in Africa without getting sidetracked - there is so much WTS history and political influence there. The "mining of the wealth (in souls, religiously speaking) by the Org of Africa" has been going on for a long, long time.
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  SecretSlaveClass

  OC:

  Christianity and Islam have played a huge role in the shaping and destruction of African cultures. The fact that missionaries were a necessary part of successful colonization was not lost on those rebelling against colonialism and imperialism. From the very early uprisings in Africa (particularly the Mau Mau uprising) missionaries were particularly targeted for being associated with colonialism and I can't say I blame them.
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  OrphanCrow

  This book looks like it could be an interesting read:

  A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique (Perspectives on Southern Africa)

  A Complicated War combines frontline reporting, personal narrative, political analysis, and comparative scholarship to present a picture of a Mozambique harrowed by profound local conflicts—ethnic, religious, political and personal. Finnegan writes that South Africa's domination and destabilization are basic elements of Mozambique's plight, but he offers a subtle description and analysis that will allow us to see the post-apartheid region from a new, more realistic, if less comfortable, point of view.

  The book was published in 1992 and the author, William Finnegan, mentions an encounter with the Jehovah's Witnesses in Malawi during his visit to Africa. I have not read the book yet, but this is the quote from Google books:

  ...As we neared Phalombe, we passed a big, extremely neat, canico village. "Jehovah's Witnesses," Tauzene said. The village was obviously new and looked unusually well built. The huts were large with separate cookiing huts, separate shower huts with L-shaped entrances, graneries, gardens full of greens, wells with fences around them and stairways down into them, latrines that were clearly well reinforced. "they are very industrious," Tauzene said.
  They are more than that. A veteran correspondent living in Zimbabwe once told me that the only thing that united nearly all African governments was their hatred and persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses. Frelimo had expelled thousands from the cities. Many of those Mozambican Witnesses had ended up fleeing from Remino into Malawi, where the persecution was actually worse. A large number of Malawian Witnesses had been reportedly killed in 1967 for refusing to pledge allegiance to the Banda governement and more than one thousand fled into Mozambique. The Witnesses living near Phalombe, I had heard, were Malawians who had fled to Mozambique and had recently come back - on the assumption that they would be safe from persecution if they lived near the big refugee camps that were getting all the international attention. If they actually had only recently returned to Malawi, they would have had to cross.....

  ...and that is where the next page is missing. I guess I will have to try to get the book.
• 

  OrphanCrow

  SSS: Christianity and Islam have played a huge role in the shaping and destruction of African cultures. The fact that missionaries were a necessary part of successful colonization was not lost on those rebelling against colonialism and imperialism.

  Religious missionaries have always been used as a front line colonial assimilation tool. And especially since the advent of the printed word which makes the spread of political ideoology under the guise of "religious insruction" particulary powerful.

  And let's not forget Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the Nazi SS, whose post-war plans included using the Jehovah's Witnesses as a way to keep Germany's conquered lands under control. He was especially impressed with their ideology of loyalty and non-poltical stance.

  SSS: From the very early uprisings in Africa (particularly the Mau Mau uprising) missionaries were particularly targeted for being associated with colonialism and I can't say I blame them.

  The WTS has had a presence in Africa almost since the very beginning of the Bible Student movement. I don't have all the dates and such...this is from my "cole's notes/memory"...but from what I can recollect, the WTS lost control of the Bible Students in Africa quite early in the 20th C. It was only later...not sure the year, after much political turmoil involving the political influence that the JWs/WT movement had in African politics, that the New York WT Society got control of the JWs in Africa again after making deals with African governments.

  ...or something like that.

  The Jehovah's Witnesses/WT movement in Africa is still fairly fractured, with offshoots emerging and/or still hanging on to the WTS control.