News Dispatch

WHO ARE MY PEOPLE?

FATHER EMMANUEL KATONGOLE

PAGE 244 PAGES

PUBLISHER UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS 2022

REVIEWED BY JOSEPH ADERO NGALA

Who are my people explores the complex relationship between identity, violence and Christianity in Africa. Fathers Emmanuel Katongole is associate professor of theology and peace at Krock Institute at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.

He is a Catholic priest of the Kampala Archdiocese, Uganda. He examines what it means to be both an Africa and a Christian in a content that is often riddled with violence.  In 2020, Africa was the sole continent where political violence rose relative to 2019.

More than 17,200 distinct events of political violence were recorded in 2020 resulting in over 37,000 reported fatalities, this represents an increase of more than 4000 events from 2019 and nearby 9000 more reported fatalities. Death increases all categories of political violence, including battles explosion and remote violence, violence against civilian and Mob violence.

The geography of violence is not starkly different than previous years. These growth patterns of political violence in and across states underscore that current African conflict patterns and frequency are not due to poverty, environmental and climate factors, exclusion, ethnicity demographic growth.

The conflict takes place in areas of various levels of development, resources wealth, identities demographics and across seasons. They also occur in parts of states where his government is well represented.

The map depicts the dominants agents engaging in political violence across the African continent in 2020.The centralised dominance of rebel groups in the Sahel and Somali is evident in orange in contrast to the more dispersed dominance of political and identity militias in blue especially across Africa, state forces in navy meanwhile dominate north Africa as well as Ethiopia and Uganda, where they have prioritised securing their regimes.

Mob violence, meanwhile dominates Southern and Western Africa, but this has long been the trend.

The countries with the most conflicts in 2019nare the same in 2020′ Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DCR) in Nigeria and Cameroon, Libya is the sole exception.

The most significant increases in the DRC and Nigeria represent two distinct trends in violence across Africa, old conflicts are not resolving, they are getting worse, and newer conflicts are on a growth cycle of diffusing and escalating. Violence also got worse in Mali, Cameroon, South Sudan, Mozambique, Uganda and Ethiopia.

This investigation shows that Christianity can generate and nurture alternative forms of community, nonviolent agency, and ecological possibilities. The book is divided into parts. Part one deals with the philosophical and theological issues related to the questions of Africa identity.

Part two includes three chapters, each of African identity; Part two includes three chapters, each of which engages a form of violence, locating it within the broader story of modern Sub Saharan Africa.

Each Chapter includes stories of Christian individuals and communities who not only resist violence but are determined to heal its wounds and the burden of history shaped by Africans unique modernity in doing so, they invent new firms of identity, new communities, and new relationship with the land.

This engaging, interdisciplinary study, combining philosophical analysis and theological exploration, along with theoretical argument and practical resources will interest scholars and students of theology peace studies and Africa studies

After teaching for a number of years in Uganda and South Africa Katongole joined the faculty of Duke University School where he taught theology and world Christianity and Co-founded Centre for Reconciliation.

Katongole has been at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies since January 2013 and is now a full professor and peace studies.

In 2017 Katongole delivered the Heny Martyn Lectures at Cambridge University entitle Who Are My People Christianity, Violence and Belonging in Post-Colonial Africa the same year Katongole was named by Henry Luce Foundation as a HenryIII fellow in Theology for 2017 to 2018.

What drives Katongole is the quest to know what difference Christianity makes or can make in Africa. He argues that conversation on Christian social ethics in Africa is long overdue and must shift exclusive focus on strategies for fixing the structures of democracy and development and get into the business of stories.

NOTE TO THE EDITOR PROFESSOR JOSEPH ADERO NGALA LECTURES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND DIPLOMACY AND IS A JOURNALIST FOR MANY YEARS HAS PUBLISHED SEVERAL BOOKS AND SEVERAL ARTICLES CAN BE REACHED ppaafrica@gmail.com