Resistance and Christian Ethics in Africa

Abstract

Colonialism in Africa rewarded individuals who offered no resistance to its ideology and demonized those who did. An effect this continues to have on the African moral imagination is the tendency to idealize compliance over resistance, especially to Western hegemony. Given Africa’s sociopolitical struggles and the consequence of the continent’s ongoing entrapment in the colonial power matrix, I explore ways ethical discourses on the continent can contribute to the ongoing interdisciplinary process of decolonization. In engagement with African literature and decolonial studies on the one hand and liberation ethics on the other, this article proposes a Christian ethics for Africa, discussing resistance as both a moral imperative in postcolonial contexts and a constitutive of the Christian identity.

1. Introduction

Anglo-Nigerian writer Bernadine Evaristo describes Amma and Dominique, two black and lesbian characters in her 2019 novel Girl, Woman, Other, as believers “in protest that was public, disruptive and downright annoying to those at the other end of it” (Evaristo 2019, p. 2). She doesn’t forget to mention that because of this, they found themselves excluded by the establishment and “pretty unemployable” in the earlier years when they were just fresh out of drama school (Evaristo 2019, p. 7). It didn’t take long for them to realize that to have careers as actors, they must start their own theatre company “because neither was prepared to betray their politics to find jobs or shut their mouths to keep them” (Evaristo 2019, pp. 13–14). Their ethics can best be described as a radical refusal to depend on the dominant establishment for liberation. As to the source of their “fighting spirit”, Dominique spent years educating herself on the rich theme of resistance in African history, culture, politics, and feminism. Amma’s journalist father campaigned for independence in Ghana until he was forced to flee to avoid arrest for sedition.

Protest and resistance are prevalent themes in modern African literature because they have remained a constant feature of modern African history. “With colonialism and coloniality”, insist Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine Walsh, always “came resistance and refusal” (Mignolo and Walsh 2018, p. 17). This is true about Africa as it is about anywhere else in the world that experienced any form of colonialism, especially in the last century. Equally true, and we see this play out in Evaristo’s novel, when confronted by any form of resistance, those in power are always prepared to respond, if not with violence and other equally extreme measures, then through very subtle means, including demonizing the act of resistance, regardless of its rationale. One effective strategy during colonialism in Africa, Ngugi wa Thiong’o explains, was the colonial authorities’ distinction between “two types of Africans: the good and the bad” (Ngugi wa Thiong’o [1981] 1986, pp. 91–92). The “good African” who offered no resistance to the colonial ideology but instead “helped the European colonizer in the occupation and subjugation of his own people and country” is “portrayed as possessing qualities of strength, intelligence and beauty”. In contrast, the “bad African”, an individual “who offered resistance to the foreign conquest and occupation of his country”, was dismissed as “ugly, weak, cowardly and scheming” (Ngugi wa Thiong’o [1981] 1986, p. 92). The lingering effect this colonial strategy continues to have on the predominant moral imagination of Africans, and how it has shaped what Lee Yearly calls “ideas of ethical excellence”, needs more attention in studies of African ethics.1

This article has two progressions. To start, I engage with African fiction and the works of decolonial scholars Frantz Fanon and Paulo Freire to explore what I term the “ethics of the oppressed” as a counter to the “morality of non-resistance” embodied by the “good” African during colonialism.2 In contrast to characters like Reverend Kumalo in Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, who submits to a colonial system that undermines the freedom and dignity of blacks in apartheid South Africa, and Meka in Ferdinand Oyono’s The Old Man and the Medal, who for much of his adult life adhered to the imposed value of the colonial order, is the ethical framework personified by iconic characters like Jacinta Wariinga in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross, who display attentiveness to the concrete historical situation of their continent, rejecting not only the external hegemony of colonial and neo-colonial power structures but also the internalized moral frameworks that have historically idealized compliance over resistance. Approaching these characters through a decolonial lens, I argue that, given Africa’s sociopolitical struggles, the continent needs more Wariingas than Kumalos and Mekas. Resistance must be the starting point of all ethical discourse on the continent. The perennial questions of what it means to live the good life as well as what constitutes human excellence must take seriously the constraints within which African societies remain trapped, as well as the ongoing decolonization process, which Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga insightfully declares the “only logic that offers hope for the future” (Dangarembga 2022, p. 151).

The second progression of this article is towards an African Christian ethics of resistance, a contextual ethics attentive to Africa’s postcolonial condition, proposed as a theological and pastoral contribution to the ongoing interdisciplinary effort towards the decolonization of Africa.3 In conversation with the ethics of the oppressed and liberation theology, I highlight that resistance is at the core of Christian ethics and identity, arguing that resistance becomes not only expedient but a moral imperative and an essential marker of human excellence in contexts of oppression. An important clarification I make is that Christian ethics, unlike the ethics of the oppressed, is not a struggle “for freedom”. A core Christian belief is that all humans have been created free in the imago dei.4 In Christianity, too, is the notion that we are made free indeed in and by Christ’s redemptive death, which makes Christian life not a struggle for freedom but a pilgrimage of freedom.5 The unnamed widow in Jesus’ Parable in Luke 18: 1-8 is, as I will demonstrate towards the end of the article, a portrait of Christian resistance. She challenges Christians who, like her, live within unjust societies, to assert their freedom in Christ. She is also an example of what it means to resist oppression without demonizing the oppressor, a vital concern in every Christian ethical discourse addressing oppression.

2. The Morality of the “Good” African

Rev. Stephen Kumalo in Cry, the Beloved Country is, for Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the best example of the “good African” in “colonial” literature, the “perfect hero”, “eschewing violence, despite the racist violence around him” (Ngugi wa Thiong’o [1981] 1986, pp. 91–92). In the novel, first published in 1948, by Alan Paton, a white liberal South African, Kumalo is a humble and compassionate Anglican priest from the rural village of Ndotsheni. He embarks on a journey to Johannesburg to visit his sick sister, Gertrude, and find his son, Absalom, who has since stopped corresponding. Sadly, by the time he gets to his son, it is already too late. Influenced by bad company, not only had Absalom impregnated a girl out of wedlock, but he also “had become a thief, moving like a vagabond from place to place” while living with his girlfriend (Paton [1948] 2003, p. 119). And worse, he unintentionally murders Arthur Jarvis, a white man, with a revolver he insists he only carried for personal protection (Paton [1948] 2003, p. 130).

Because Jarvis was one of the few whites not only sympathetic to the plight of the black natives but, even more remarkably, honest about the true exploitative nature of the economic system of apartheid, his death is especially tragic. His concern about colonialism’s complicity in the breakdown of the moral system of the natives is insightful.

The old tribal system was, for all its violence and savagery, for all its superstition and witchcraft, a moral system. Our natives today produce criminals and prostitutes and drunkards, not because it is their nature to do so, but because their simple system of order and tradition and convention has been destroyed. It was destroyed by the impact of our own civilization. Our civilization has therefore an inescapable duty to set up another system of order and tradition and convention.

(Paton [1948] 2003, p. 179)

In another written speech, which Arthur’s father also finds in his son’s room after the latter’s demise, Arthur sounds even more critical of whites’ mistreatment of blacks. “The truth is that our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of high assurance and desperate anxiety, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions” (Paton [1948] 2003, p. 187). Apart from his “colonial” bias seeping through every line of these otherwise progressive speeches, which he wrote before his sudden demise, he also seems to take it for granted that Africans would always remain passive in the face of their plight. According to him, their only hope of liberation would be in white settlers finally deciding to live true to their Christianity, face their fear and stop evading the moral issues at stake.

We also cannot miss the fact that, regardless of their divergent opinions on colonialism’s role in the plight of black people, every white and black member of the community agreed that killing a white man was “the most terrible deed” a black man could commit (Paton [1948] 2003, p. 144). Absalom is thus, as expected, condemned to death by hanging, despite a lawyer’s pro bono effort to demonstrate “the disastrous effect of a great and wicked city on the character of a simple tribal boy” (Paton [1948] 2003, p. 233). In his judgment, the judge alludes to “a school of thought” that regards murder “as less serious when the victim is black”. Even though he immediately insists that “no Court of Justice could countenance such as view”, it is obvious this was a popular view, one of the “customs” of apartheid (Paton [1948] 2003, pp. 236–37).

Yet, while the execution of his son shatters Kumalo, his more profound struggle, which is that of reconciling his moral convictions with the harsh realities of apartheid South Africa, persists. Earlier in the novel, we are informed of the constant anxiety that defines his life. “Deep down the fear of a man who lives in a world not made for him, whose own world is slipping away, dying, being destroyed, beyond any recall” (Paton [1948] 2003, p. 44). He desires change but is afraid and does little to challenge the prevalent social order. Rather, he embodies patience, non-violence, and self-restraint despite personal suffering and societal injustices. In one episode where he addresses a crowd after the discovery of new gold in South Africa, many policemen are present and alert, except those who, having heard him before, “know that this Kumalo goes so far and no further” (Paton [1948] 2003, p. 218). All that the narrative voice can do is wonder what will happen if Kumalo’s voice begins to “rise and rise and rise, and the people rise with it, should madden them with thoughts of rebellion and dominion, with thoughts of power and possession? Should paint for them pictures of Africa awakening from sleep, of Africa resurgent, of Africa dark and savage?” (Paton [1948] 2003, p. 218). Though stirring such a rebellion “would not be hard to do”, Kumalo’s fear silences his voice. And with his voice subdued, the people, too, tremble and fall back into submission (Paton [1948] 2003, p. 220). In other words, it is not just Kumalo refusing to resist; it is even worse. He models non-resistance as an ethical ideal. His non-resistance discourages those who would have otherwise resisted.

In the end, Kumalo is rewarded, even if subtly, for choosing to remain within the expectations of his colonial society rather than stir rebellion. Despite the gravity of his son’s crime, the deceased’s family, particularly Arthur’s father, extends forgiveness toward Kumalo and his family, contributes handsomely to the construction of a dam in Ndotsheni, and even pays an agricultural expert to help the community navigate their struggle with land deterioration, this clemency extended to Kumalo, an example of heroic compassion, simultaneously symbolizing the colonial logic that rewarded Africans’ submission. Because he accepts his subjugation within the colonial order and, by his disposition, encourages other natives to do the same, Kumalo is considered a good African, irrespective of the abomination committed by a member of his family.

The reward theme is even more prominent in Ferdinand Oyono’s The Old Man and the Medal, first published in French in 1956. For years of unwavering loyalty to colonial administrators and missionaries, and after making great personal sacrifices “to forward the work of France”, the protagonist Meka is informed by the Commandant that he will be publicly honored with a medal by the “great Chief of all white men”. Meka recounts his meeting with the Commandant to his much-impressed wife.

‘You have done much to forward the work of France in this country. You have given your lands to the missionaries, you have given your sons in the war where they found a glorious death. (He wiped away an imaginary tear.) You are a friend.’ He shook my hand across the table. Then he finished: ‘The Medal we are going to give you means you are more than our friend.’ That is more or less what the interpreter translated to me. I told him to reply to the Commandant that for my part I was very happy to be the friend of the white man and to ask him who was going to give me the medal because he had said ‘we.’ The white man when he heard, laughed. He talked to the interpreter again and he told me it would be the Chief of the white man of Timba himself and not his assistant who would come and pin the medal on (Oyono [1956] 1967, pp. 40–41).

Although Meka’s loyalty to the colonial system, just like Kumalo’s, positions him as the “good African” in the eyes of the colonizers, his reward is not proportional to his sacrifice of lands and children. At best, it is only a strategy to ensure his continual subjugation to the colonial system. For instance, he easily notices that the medal pinned on him is inferior to the one pinned on another honoree, M. Pipiniakis, a Greek (Oyono [1956] 1967, p. 114). The turning point, however, only occurs when, looking for the medal after he loses it, he is humiliated and beaten by the colonial police, who see him wandering late at night. He stopped believing in the genuineness of the white man’s friendship, realizing, to his utter dismay, that the medal, which was supposed to represent his elevated status in the eyes of the colonizers, meant nothing when it comes to what the colonial authority perceived to be his true status in relation to them (Oyono [1956] 1967, p. 158). Sadly, for an old man who has already lost everything, it is too late.

Just as Ngugi’s distinction between the “good” and “bad” African helps us understand Meka’s sense of satisfaction before losing the medal, Paulo Freire’s distinction between “true” and “false” generosity in Pedagogy of the Oppressed is an apt framework for understanding Meka’s sudden awareness of colonialism’s true ethos, even if this was only after he had lost almost everything dear to him, including his children. “An unjust social order”, Freire explains, is the “permanent fount” of false generosity, and “That is why the dispenser of false generosity become desperate at the slightest threat to its source” (Freire 2000, p. 44). A primary feature of an unjust social order, which enables false generosity, is the dehumanization of the oppressed by the oppressors.

In the context of colonial Africa, the prelude to the false generosity the good African who is elevated above other natives enjoys is the dehumanization of all Africans. Arthur’s father’s generosity to Ndotsheni is commendable, albeit “false”. Its prelude is an unjust social order. Considering that the Native Trust and Land Act of 1936 allocated a mere 13% of the country’s land to blacks even though they constituted more than 70% of the population, we do not have to guess that whites like James Jarvis inherited expensive and productive farmlands “while the black inhabitants of the valley below struggle to subsist on their poor and limited land” (Foley 2006, p. 39). Furthermore, as we see in the inferiority of Meka’s medal to that of the Greek, the elevation of a few “good Africans” is never a restoration of full humanity, even to these so-called “privileged few”, but a colonial strategy meant to keep every native subservient. Meka, who notices this discrimination and who should have come to this realization at this point, is joyfully overwhelmed at the thought that he alone is “the one African of Donum decorated by the Chief of the white men” (Oyono [1956] 1967, p. 115). Freire highlights how false generosity, at its best, constrains the dehumanized to “extend their trembling hands”. He contrasts these trembling hand of the “subdued” first to the “human hands which work, and working, transform the world” and, next, to the hands of people who are finally able to eject the internalized image of the oppressor, who are no longer fearful of freedom, and who, realizing that “Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift”, engage in “struggle for a fuller humanity” with the constancy and responsibility needed (Freire 2000, pp. 45–47).

Freire adds that liberation—the process of the oppressed regaining their full humanity—is always a painful childbirth. This is because “The oppressed suffer from the duality which has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom, they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic existence, they fear it. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor they have internalized”. And “As long as they live in the duality in which to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor”, their liberation will remain elusive (Freire 2000, p. 48). Thus, while the pedagogy of the oppressed forged in their ongoing struggle to assert their humanity is Freire’s proposed panacea, the preferred weapon of the oppressor consists ultimately in manipulating the consciousness of the oppressed to keep them from an awareness of their state of being oppressed and content in that state. This is sometimes carried out by violence. “In colonial regions”, Frantz Fanon writes, “the proximity and frequent, direct intervention by the police and military ensure the colonized are kept under close scrutiny, and contained by rifle butts and napalm” (Fanon [1961] 2004, p. 4). At other times, as Freire emphasizes, they are contained not by direct violence but by a false generosity nourished by an unjust order, which is enforced and perpetuated by ready recourse to manipulation and repression (Freire 2000, p. 60).

Decolonial studies, which both Freire and Fanon eminently represent and continue to inspire, emphasize the effect of colonial strategy on individuals and communities over time. When the strategy of manipulation and repression succeeds, the oppressor might devolve into “fatalism”, which, as Fanon bemoans, “relieves the oppressor of all responsibility since the cause of wrong-doing, poverty, and the inevitable can be attributed to God. The individual thus accepts the devastation decreed by God, grovels in front of the colonist, bows to the hand of fate, and mentally readjusts to acquire the serenity of stone” (Fanon [1961] 2004, p. 18). Fanon and Freire note that, at this point, the oppressed would be more likely to strike out at their comrades than challenge the oppressor, towards whom, and to their way of life, they feel an irresistible attraction (Freire 2000, p. 62). At the receiving end of this “horizontal violence”, as Freire calls it, are often other oppressed people who dare challenge the idealized humanity and authority of the oppressor. They also add that manipulation and violence also result in self-depreciation among the oppressed and, by extension, an emotional dependence on the oppressors.

In most African societies, these colonial methods were highly effective, if not in silencing resistance outright, then in reducing it to the barest minimum. In societies, therefore, protests, “public, disruptive and downright annoying”, which we encounter in Girl, Woman, Other, were rare. Far more common was what James Scott has named “everyday resistance” (see Scott 1985). Fifty years after the public hanging of the seventeen men who fought in the war of resistance against colonialism in Yvonne Vera’s Butterfly Burning—a novel based on the aftermath of the First War of Liberation or the Ndebele–Shona Uprising, which took place between 1896 and 1897 in what was then called Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe)—the inhabitants of Makokoba township are still yet to recover the courage to protest openly and publicly (see Vera 1998).

It is also true, however, that the colonial machine could not subdue every native, and African literature has many accounts of public and oppositional resistance.6 For every Reverend Kumalo in African literature, there is an Ezeulu, the Chief Priest in Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God, who was committed to preserving the customs and dignity of his people over approval or favors from the colonizers. For every Meka, there is a Kimathi in Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Githae Mugo’s The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, who was willing to die rather than submit or even compromise with the oppressor. There is also Jacinta Wariinga in Devil on the Cross, another work by Ngugi wa Thiong’o. While the list of characters in African literature who embody resistance to the colonial ideology is long, I will focus on Wariinga in the next section. As a character created by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, not too long after its publication, where he makes the distinction between good and bad African, in her story set in postcolonial Africa we encounter both determination in the struggle for freedom for herself and her society and the conscious and vehement rejection of the manifestation of the morality of the good African entrenched in the African psyche during colonialism.

3. The Ethics of the Oppressed

In his brief chapter in an edited volume on religious ethics, Lee Yearly argues that “People choose a virtuous action not only because it contributes to goods they want to acquire, but also because it expresses their conception of human excellence” (Yearly 2005, p. 47). Following this remark, he identifies developmental and discovery models as two prominent theories about human excellence. In the first, “human nature has an innate constitution that manifests itself in the process of growth and culminates in specifiable forms”, which only occurs “if the organism is both uninjured and properly nurtured” (Yearly 2005, p. 48). In the discovery model, by contrast, people do not cultivate inchoate capacities but “discover a hidden ontological reality with sacred characteristics that truly defines them, whatever may be the apparently defining, regnant social ideas about human excellence” (Yearly 2005, p. 48). In either model, however, there is always a noticeable social dimension and the place of societal constructions and cultural guidelines about what human excellence is cannot be ignored. Yearly insists that distinctions between virtues associated with human excellence as well as their hierarchical arrangement “usually match the prevailing social structure and its justifying ideology” (Yearly 2005, p. 51).

At the very least, this assertion affirms a possible connection between a colonial system that rewarded “good” Africans, like Reverend Kumalo and Meka, because they offered no resistance to colonialism and its power arrangement, and the fate of resistance in the dominant moral framework of postcolonial Africa. In other words, the colonial ideology that rewarded Kumalo and Meka as “good” Africans for their non-resistance has, over time, transformed non-resistance into a perceived virtue tied to human excellence. While it may be challenging and unnecessary to ascertain the precise extent to which this is true, colonialism’s influence on African ethics, specifically the suppression of resistance as a moral ideal, is a theme often explored in African literature. Devil on the Cross, one of the best stories of resistance in the canon of modern African literature, is a good example.

On her way from Nairobi to Ilmorog to attend the metaphoric Competition to Choose the Seven Cleverest Modern Thieves and Robbers at the Devil’s Feast to which a stranger who had saved her from suicide invited her, Wariinga, the protagonist, travels on Robin Mwaura’s mutatu with four others, including Muturi, the revolutionary. Apart from gifting Wariinga the gun with which she would, towards the end of the novel, shoot and kill the Rich Old Man from Ngorika, who befriended her when she was still a teenager and quickly abandoned her as soon as she got pregnant by him, Muturi also serves the narration in another even more crucial way. Ngugi attributes to him the moral framework upon which the entire novel rests. “There are two kinds of man: he who lives by his own sweat and he who lives by the sweat of others” (Ngugi wa Thiong’o [1982] 1987, p. 57). Wariinga would experience these words dramatized during the feast, as African leaders and elites took turns narrating how they had perfected the act of living off the sweat of their fellow citizens. What hits us hardest is not the shameless glorification of “cunning and skills in theft and robbery” by the competitors at the feast (Ngugi wa Thiong’o [1982] 1987, p. 97). Instead, it is the special recognition accorded to the foreign delegation at the feast and the treatment of an African who dared an open resistance to the legacy of the foreign delegation.

At no place in the intense competition does anyone moralize about modern theft and robbery. Beginning with the leader of the foreign delegation, none of the speakers imply that stealing is morally acceptable. Instead, they argue that exploitation is the only path to progress for humans, nations, and civilizations, as the great fortune of the foreign powers proves. “If you want to be like us, then hang your compassion from trees, and you will never be scared of your workers”, said the leader of the foreign delegation (Ngugi wa Thiong’o [1982] 1987, p. 89). For the African participants, what mattered was winning the approval of the foreign delegation, who promised to select seven disciples at the end of the competition. So fierce was this lust for validation that Mwireri wa Mukiraai, who challenged the presence of the foreign delegation, distinguished between domestic robbers and foreign thieves, insisted that “every robber should go home and rob his mother”, and worst, expressed his determination to drive out all foreign thieves, incurred the wrath not only of the foreigners but of his fellow Africans. He was assassinated not too long after the feast (Ngugi wa Thiong’o [1982] 1987, pp. 165, 175).

In a heartfelt apology after Mwireri wa Mukiraai’s remarks, the master of ceremonies said to the agitated foreign delegation,

Distinguished guests, we are slaves, you have come back to see what we have done with the talents you bequeathed to us in grateful recognition of the services we rendered you in suppressing those of our people who used to call themselves freedom fighters. That is good. I would like to remind you that even today we have continued to hoodwink our people into believing that you did actually leave the country. That’s why we don’t call you foreigners, or imperialists, or white robbers. We call you our friends. Therefore, I beseech you, please resume your seats and be patient, so that you can hear the stories of all the other man-eaters. Don’t worry about Mwireri wa Mukiraai. We shall take care of him. His fate will be decided here today. I hope that this apology is adequate. What remains is the apology of actions.

(Ngugi wa Thiong’o [1982] 1987, p. 174)

The truth and weight of these words cannot be overemphasized. Like Mwireri wa Mukiraai, freedom fighters throughout the history of modern Africa, defined as Africans who dare resist foreign dominance, have consistently suffered dire consequences, including death. Especially when their resistance is “public, disruptive, and annoying”, colonial authority and their successors, present-day African leaders, are often very quick to suppress it, as Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novel illustrates.7

Interestingly, Mwireri’s fate is not decided only by the leaders and elite desperate to maintain friendship with the foreign delegates but by the majority of the ordinary people present at the feast. “A small group ululated for him, but the vast majority cried out in protest” (Ngugi wa Thiong’o [1982] 1987, p. 172). Apart from the fact that his untimely death provoked no outrage, this spontaneous reaction by the guests, which occurred even before the leader of the foreign delegation expressed his party’s dissatisfaction, reveals the pervasiveness of the desire for foreign approval at all levels of African society and why, despite decades of independence, decolonial scholars like Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, insist that a “postcolonial world exists only as that which is absent” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013, p. 12). According to him, “postcolonial Africa is still far from being truly free; if anything, it has merely entered into another phase in the colonial continuum” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013, p. 12). While Africa remains “entangled and trapped within the snares of the colonial matrix of power”, manifested in four domains, i.e., economy, authority, gender and sexuality, subjectivity, and knowledge, this is not the only issue (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013, pp. 37, 54). Even more worrisome is what Ndlovu-Gatsheni calls the pervasiveness of “the myths of decolonization and the illusions of freedom that compelled and induced Africans to relax and postpone the liberation struggles”, while sadly they “continue to live in a neo-colony dominated by the ‘coloniality of power”, only allowed to live lives that the West has conditioned (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013, pp. 13–14).

From an African perspective, Yearly’s point about the prevailing social structure’s decisive role in conditioning the dominant imagination with regard to virtues and ideals of human excellence can be seen as an ethical dimension of colonialism’s enduring influence on the imagination and socio-politics of Africans, which Ndlovu-Gatsheni highlights. Most African ethicists and theologians in general do not deny that colonialism has influenced the African imagination. My concern here, however, is whether discourses on African ethics are raising the crucial issues confronting coloniality and, most importantly, what these discourses contribute to the interdisciplinary effort towards the liberation of the continent and its diverse peoples. Are contemporary discourses on ethics attentive to the precise manifestation of the colonial effect on the moral imagination and how this plays out in the general tendency of many Africans to prostrate themselves before the West, as symbolized in the immediate condemnation that followed Mwireri’s pragmatic proposal at the feast?

I am not suggesting that the questions pertaining to the nature, foundation, and origins of African ethics, including to what extent it differs from Western ethics and what African ethics can contribute to the “so-called mainstream methods of ethics”, are no longer relevant. Instead, I worry that Benezet Bujo’s influential quest for an African ethic beyond the universal claims of Western morality, Thaddeus Metz’s commendable attempt at what he calls a normative theorization of African ethics, and several other similar quests, which are indeed very laudable quests for authentic African morality, often fail to explore the kind of ethics postcolonial Africa urgently needs for liberation from the prison wall of colonialism (See Metz 2017; Bujo [2000] 2001). Even when they reference Africa’s colonial history, these discourses do not seem attentive enough to the continent’s ongoing entanglement in the colonial power matrix and thus do not explore what ethics might contribute to the ongoing effort towards decolonization in the continent.

What African ethical discourses often ignore is what Ngugi wa Thiong’o tackles with his portrait of Wariinga’s life after her experience at the Devil’s feast, a new life characterized by an active resistance to exploitation and a pursuit of liberation from both external forces and an internalized colonial mindset that had long subdued her and, as she discovered at the feast, continues to hamper socioeconomic progress in her society. Wariinga, after her experience at the feast, rises first to the reality of her beautiful black skin and heritage. She discovers self-esteem and stops burning “her body with Ambi and Snowfire to change the color of her skin to please the eyes of others, to satisfy their lust for white skins”. She learns karate and judo, the act of self-defense against the philandering hands of men. She returns to school while also apprenticing as a mechanic, recovering her dream of becoming an engineer and the possibility of making her mark in a male-dominated field. What is most striking about the “new” Wariinga is her decision

that she’ll never again allow herself to be a mere flower, whose purpose is to decorate the doors and windows and tables of other people’s lives, waiting to be thrown on to a rubbish heap the moment the splendor of her body withers. The Wariinga of today has decided to be self-reliant all the time, to plunge into the middle of the arena of life’s struggles in order to discover her real strength and realize her true humanity.

(Ngugi wa Thiong’o [1982] 1987, p. 216)

At the end of the novel, she confronts and kills the Rich Old Man from Ngorika who, thanks to her awakening at the feast, has become not just the man who almost ruined her life but a symbol of imperialism, ruining innumerable African lives, murdering in cold blood, people like Mwireri, who refuse to be deceived by its “words of honey and perfume” (Ngugi wa Thiong’o [1982] 1987, p. 253).

Wariinga’s transformation helps to illustrate some of the crucial elements of the African ethics of the oppressed. Firstly, it is founded on the authenticity of the African identity and a radical rejection of every residue of colonial distortion of this identity, whether from the perspective of ethics or even of aesthetics. One goal of an African ethics of the oppressed is a thorough reversal of the dehumanization which colonialism and ongoing coloniality represent, or to use Freire’s words, a “struggle for humanization” (Freire 2000, p. 44). A society transformed by the ethics of the oppressed realizes the equal dignity of all members irrespective of the accidents of race, color, gender, or socioeconomic status. It rejects stratification of any kind, the elevation of any individual above the other members of society, as symbolized, for example, by the temporary sense of superiority above other Africans Meka felt upon receiving the medal.

Secondly, the ethics of the oppressed emphasizes the agency and responsibility of Africans for their liberation, underscoring the dynamics between individual action and collective responsibility. As Freire argues, “The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both” (Freire 2000, p. 44). Wariinga’s attendance at the feast and other events soon afterward helped her understand that the political and economic structures of her neo-colonial society neither want her to be free nor economically independent. From being a young woman who, not too long ago, was about to jump to her death, she became an individual who took hard and decisive actions that improved the quality and trajectory of her life.

Thirdly, an African ethics of the oppressed insists that it is not enough to highlight the communitarian dimension of African ethics without highlighting even more the responsibility of the community to ensure the wellbeing of every member, especially when, as Mwireri did at the feast, they assert their right to protest or dissent against the dominant sociopolitical order. Bujo argues that while Africans never understand individual autonomy independently of the community, “Africans hold that the community is not allowed to crush the individual members. On the contrary, the community is obliged to grant them the space necessary for the unfolding of their personal existence” (Bujo [2000] 2001, p. 161). African ethics of the oppressed ensures “the flourishing of all life in the community” by protecting the right to self-actualization of every individual, irrespective of their sex, gender, religion, or political ideology (Aihiokhai 2022, p. 92).

Above all, an African ethics of the oppressed affirms resistance as an appropriate and even necessary response to any form or manifestation of oppression. As Freire asserts, this is the only possible path to freedom for the oppressed and the oppressor. It affirms the right oppressed people have to protest, however public, disruptive, or even annoying their acts of protest might be, emphasizing that they have the best chance of reclaiming their full humanity through these acts of protest. It equally affirms the right of every individual and community to reject external domination and pursue freedom despite external constraints. Arguing that freedom is a fundamental human value that must be pursued, Sartre insists that no human being pursues personal freedom without at the same time, choosing freedom for all (Sartre 2013, p. 85).

4. Christian Ethics as Resistance

Freedom is also an important concept in Christian theology and ethics and, as Nico Vorster puts it, it “forms part of the structural essence of the human being, who was created by God as a free agent with a free will” who is not just able but expected to act in accordance with God’s ordinance (Vorster 2011, p. 110). Not only is genuine human existence never possible when freedom is inhibited, “The ultimate goal of salvation, mankind’s ultimate hope, is conceived as total freedom” (Brague 2016, p. 400). Robin W. Lovin’s An Introduction to Christian Ethics: Goals, Duties, and Virtues includes a framework not only for discussing the centrality of freedom in Christian ethics but, of primary interest to this project, a comparative study of the place of resistance in the different moral systems discussed in this article. “Although people face many different moral problems”, Lovin explains, “they typically use three methods of moral reasoning to make their moral choice. They set goals, they identify their duties, and they ask what virtue they ought to have” (Lovin 2011, p. 69). This is true about Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as it is about Christian ethics and, according to him, even when ethical choices do not always begin teleologically, goals, duties, and virtues are three elements that are always consistent and visibly present in all ethical frameworks.

As I have demonstrated, these elements are undeniably present in the morality of the good African. Motivated by a desire for colonial reward (goal)—a medal in the case of Meka, forgiveness for Kumalo despite his son’s crime, and immense material benefit for the African leaders in Devil on the Cross—the “good” African embodies two key traits: first, the virtue of non-resistance to the colonial agenda, and second, a thorough dedication to support and promote (duty) the colonial agenda no matter the personal cost—including lands and sons, liberty and the economic welfare of one’s nation.

The ethics of the oppressed, as a counter to the morality of the good African, can equally be articulated from a goal–duty–virtue framework. The desire for freedom for everyone in society is the goal that not only motivates acts of resistance (duty) but the aptness of resistance (virtue). However, it is essential to quickly emphasize that the response that the ethics of the oppressed represents does not just consist of goals, duties, and virtues that contrast with those of the morality of the good African, but a lens that is attentive to Africa’s postcolonial context and the ongoing entanglement of the continent within the colonial matrix of power.

This same lens shapes Christian ethics that emerge within contexts of oppression, exemplified most famously by black and Latin American liberation theology. First published in 1970, the penultimate chapter in James H. Cone’s God of the Oppressed, titled “Liberation and the Christian Ethics”, explored what it means to live as a black person in a world of white supremacist violence, highlighting the interdependence of theology and ethics and social and political setting, while insisting that Christian ethics “can never be identified with the actions of people who conserve the status quo” (Cone [1975] 1997, pp. 180–83). His black ethic of liberation is a resistance to the status quo and a response to Christian ethics dependent on a theology that does not know the God of the oppressed and theologians who do not identify with the oppressed. According to Cone, “the oppressor cannot decide what is Christian behavior” (Cone [1975] 1997, p. 191). This does not make the oppressed the source of ethics. Rather, the divine act of liberation in Jesus

is the ground and possibility and the actuality of human freedom. Because of Jesus Christ, our behavior can now be defined as divine behavior. Since God’s revelation is an act of liberation for the weak and the helpless, the constituents of the koinonia inaugurated by that event are oppressed people who now know that what the world says about their personhood is not true. The encounter of God’s liberating presence includes hearing the call to be obedient to the claim of divine freedom. Christian behavior is basically the behavior that arises out of the oppressed community in response to God’s call to be obedient to God’s will.

(Cone [1975] 1997, p. 190)

In addition to the identity and agency of black people, Cone also emphasizes the openness of Christian ethics to all people struggling for black freedom, irrespective of whether their perspective is non-Christian or even anti-Christian, with the common denominator being a “shared participation in finding out the best means of struggle” (Cone [1975] 1997, pp. 197–98).

Latin American liberation theology, which developed concurrently with Cone’s Black liberation theology, also takes seriously the identity and agency of the poor and oppressed, specifically the morality of their right to resist oppression, as well as “God’s preferential option for the poor and oppressed”, which has become, to use Thomas L. Schubeck’s expression, the linchpin and ethics of liberation theology (Schubeck 1995, p. 109). Schubeck’s 1995 article “Ethics and Liberation Theology” remains a relevant summary of how liberation theologians up until the 1990s and beyond have engaged with the question of ethics in their works. It also highlights how these works have, in turn, revolutionized moral theology by bringing the deplorable condition of the poor and oppressed and their struggle for freedom to the forefront of Christian theology.

Just as in the Black Christian ethics of Cone, resistance is equally at the heart of the ethics of Latin American liberation theologians. Following social and moral analysis of the condition of the oppressed is a call to resistance that is at once an intuitive response to injustice and different forms of oppression and, at the same time, an expression of discipleship, which might be defined as “acting faithfully, justly, and freely, reproducing the Spirit of Jesus in proclaiming the reign of God” (Schubeck 1995, p. 120). The perennial issue among liberation theologians, whether black or Latin American, which Schubeck’s appraisal helps summarize, is whether the priority is to be placed on resistance, necessitated by the reality of injustice and oppression, or on discipleship as the primary expression of the Christian identity, as well as a response to God’s gratuitousness (Schubeck 1995, p. 112).

We resolve the tension above only when we understand that resistance is not merely compatible with Christian ethics, as the different strands of liberation theology highlight, but is the very essence of Christian ethics, whether in a context of oppression and injustice, and even when the status quo is more favorably different. The implication of this is at least twofold. Firstly, resistance is a moral imperative, especially in social contexts such as postcolonial Africa. Christians in Africa must recover “the virtue of revolt and indignation” which, according to Camus, belongs to the very essence of Christianity (Camus [1960] 1995, p. 74). In contrast to the colonial morality of the good African who is rewarded for not resisting colonial ideology, from the perspective of Christian ethics, not to resist oppression and injustice is to be a “bad” African. To submit to the “unfreedom” imposed by colonial morality without resisting is to be a “bad” African Christian.

We must resist the temptation to reduce resistance to something that Christians do only in response to oppression and injustice in their social contexts. On the contrary, resistance is an integral element of the Christian identity and ethics, even in favorable social contexts. Jurgen Moltmann insists that there is never pleasant harmony between Christians and reality “due to our unquenchable hope”, which keeps us “unreconciled, until the great day of fulfillment of all the promises of God” (Moltmann 1967, p. 22). According to Moltmann, because of hope, resisting and contradicting reality, no matter how ideal, is a primary characteristic of Christian identity and life. His point is not that Christians need to resist to prove that they are Christians. Rather, being Christian is an unrelenting resistance.

While we can argue that what can be called a favorable context, a social context utterly free from injustice and oppression, cannot exist on this side of eternity, this is not Moltmann’s point. Neither is it my point, and this becomes clear as I now elaborate on the place of freedom in the Christian ethics of resistance using Lovin’s framework. Becoming free or making the world truly free and just is not the goal of this Christian ethics of resistance I am proposing. It is not a struggle for freedom. Instead, it is living and acting in freedom. Christian ethics is not a means to freedom for, if it were, it would mean that the death of Christ achieved nothing definite or substantial. Christian ethics is for those who know that they are free, that they have been made free by Christ, and Christian resistance is not just, as Moltmann highlights, a sign of the presence of hope. It is equally the proof of freedom.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free”, Paul writes to the Galatians. “Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery” (5.1). As Mark Labberton explains, “The ministry of Jesus is a ministry of recasting how we see ourselves in the world” (Labberton 2010, p. 86). This makes the Christian ethics of resistance an ethic for those who, while living under oppression and constraints, know that they are free indeed. This realization makes all the difference in how they act and to their conception of human excellence. In Enfleshing Freedom: Body Race and Being, M. Shawn Copeland describes how enslaved black women nurturing “a sense of themselves as subjects of freedom”, “defied the degradation of chattel slavery and refused to internalize a devaluation of self”, choosing instead to struggle and die if need be “for the cause of freedom in this life and the next” (Copeland 2010, pp. 38–39). This is similarly what Martin Luther King Jr. articulates in his memorable “I Have Been to the Mountain Top” speech delivered in Memphis on 3 April 1968, a few days before his assassination.

We aren’t engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying—We are saying that we are God’s children. And that we are God’s children, we don’t have to live like we are forced to live. Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh’s court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.

(King 1968)

With these words, King acknowledges the reality of oppression, asserts the God-given freedom of the oppressed, and insists that this makes the Civil Rights Movement more of a freedom movement than a struggle to end oppression.

Applying Apostle James’ teaching on faith—that faith is only proven by good work—if we realize our freedom, we will produce “good works”, that is demonstrate our faith though lives courageously lived in freedom. King and the people who marched with him knew that freedom, as Albert Camus insists, “is not made up principally of privileges; it is made up especially of duties” (Camus [1960] 1995, p. 96). This is where the Christian ethics of resistance intersects with the ethics of the oppressed and departs from it. Camus’ point is that all those who recognize the precedence of freedom’s duties over its privileges unite in a collective action at the service of justice and a blatant and constant rejection of humiliation. We see this in Amma and her friend Dominique, who, refusing to “betray their politics to find jobs or shut their mouths to keep them”, soon realize they need to set up their own theatre and unapologetically express their creativity. We see it not just in the radical choices the new Wariinga makes after her experience of the events at the Devil’s Feast, not just in the decision to take charge of her life, but in her solidarity with other “oppressed”, as they established cooperatives and determinedly took control over the means of production.

However, it is important to reiterate the essential difference between resistance inspired by the Christian faith and one that is not. Because the Christian is already truly free, violence, as a “means of struggle”, the kind we encounter in Wariinga’s murder of the Rich Old Man, is not only inexcusable but also unnecessary. While Christian ethics is, in essence, an ongoing resistance, “Christian” resistance eschews the deliberate intention to cause offense or to annoy. Be gentle as a dove, Jesus instructed his disciples in Matthew 10:16. This does not mean that the resistance of Christians does not often offend, but that Christians never intentionally offend. Just as Jesus did not forget to inform his disciples that they would incessantly face persecution on account of their identity and actions (John 15: 20), he did not also fail to insist that we must show love to all, including those who hate and persecute us (Matthew 5: 44).

The Gospel’s imperative to love our neighbor no matter what they do to us presents African Christian ethics as resistance with a challenge that cannot be ignored, as captured in the following questions. How do we hate the sin of oppression while not failing to love even the oppressor? How do we love our neighbor even if the neighbor is also an oppressor? How do we transform the world into a society without oppressors? While resistance is a moral imperative in every context where oppression exists, how do we forestall, as Patrick Giddy warns, the danger that ethics as resistance always carries, which is “that the ’other’ is demonized”? (Giddy 2022, p. 77). Cone does not ignore this difficulty; neither do the Latin American liberation theologians.

Cone, for example, “justifies” violence towards the oppressor and oppressive system as a “means of struggle” only on the basis that, since “no one can be nonviolent in an unjust society”, Christians must make the difficult choice between supporting the intentional violence of the oppressor or the “necessary” violence of the oppressed as they resist (Cone [1975] 1997, p. 201). Latin American liberation theologians have often been similarly concerned that resistance can easily “turn into equally cruel vengeance” (Schubeck 1995, p. 121). As Schubeck points out, liberation theologians have consistently tried to explain how God’s preferential option for the poor and their challenging structures of oppression never implies disdain, even for the oppressor. “By uprooting the structural causes of poverty, preferential action ultimately benefits the universal good” (Schubeck 1995, pp. 114–15).

The Christian ideal of resistance that refrains from demonizing even the oppressor is what the unnamed “persistent” woman in Jesus’ parable from Luke 18:1-8 personifies. She shows us what it means to resist injustice and to do so without contempt, even for the oppressor. And more importantly, in her story, we witness the potential transforming power of Christian ethics of resistance.

5. A Portrait of Christian Resistance

The parable of the widow and the unjust judge, one of the twenty-four parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, begins with Luke’s commentary on the aim of the parable. “And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). In the description of the characters that follows, Luke captures, in the words of Dorothy Jean Weaver, “a socioeconomic pyramid marked by power and oppression at the top and by powerlessness and extreme vulnerability at the bottom” (Weaver 2002, p. 318). The contrast could not have been starker. A judge who is powerful enough to neither fear God nor respect anybody, and a widow whose vulnerability has been so exploited that she is now desperately searching for justice. Although her “urgent and continuous appeals are only met by endless delay (v.4) and ongoing injustice (v.6)”, the story ends with the powerful judge yielding because of the woman’s persistence, despite his arrogant and irreverent self, which makes it, for most people, a parable about “justice requested and justice received”, power of persistence in prayer, and “the audacity of faith” (Weaver 2002, pp. 318–19). Emphasizing these three elements is particularly important to commentaries that are intent on focusing on the woman as the central character of the parable. She is an “audacious widow” who dares to ask for justice and is persistent in her quest. This persistence does not seem like that of one who has accepted her oppressed state. It is the persistence of one who knows she is free despite living in an unjust and patriarchal society. In other words, it is a way of living, an ethical disposition.

Wendy Cotter outlines some crucial elements in the widow’s ethical disposition vis-à-vis the social constraints of her world. She was constantly going to the judge, which is another way of saying that she refused to be confined to the expectation that limited women in her sociocultural context to “the domestic, private sphere of the house, not in the public male domain of the court” (Cotter 2005, p. 333). Her words to the judge, “Grant me justice against my opponent”, according to Cotter, reinforce “the image of her as tough and unwilling to accept the judge’s refusal” (Cotter 2005, p. 336). In her constant visits to the judge, “She shows that she has no regard at all for the social rules that would keep her invisible and silent” (Cotter 2005, p. 338). In conclusion, Cotter makes two points. Although a widow, Cotter insists she is anything but meek and subservient. She is “feisty and frustrated and unwilling to abide by the social rules that would keep her invisible and silent while this judge refuses her”, and this makes the parable “not at all about a conventional woman, but about one who is contrary to convention” (Cotter 2005, p. 341). Cotter’s second conclusion is the implication of this parable for the justice system of the widow’s society. “The outrageous refusal to conform to the social scripts defined by the elites carries a possible threat to personal public face and can shake the system mightily. But only those really ready to stand outside the systems of reward and advancement can experience that kind of freedom and win justice based on its power” (Cotter 2005, p. 342).

What the widow had to do to get justice is not as important as who she was and her self-perception of this identity, even in the face of the pervasive injustice of her society. She fits and, at the same time, refuses to fit into what Joseph Fitzmyer describes as “the Old Testament picture of the widow to whom justice is often denied” (See Fitzmyer 1985, p. 1178 n. 3, cited in Cotter 2005, p. 332). But that is not her primary trait. It is interesting to note how the numerous portraits of the widow in New Testament scholarship oscillate between her plight and her feistiness while ignoring the fundamental fact that she is “just”, which is perhaps the foundation of her relentless pursuit of justice in an unjust society and vindication, even from an unjust judge. In a recent article, Marcus Bockmuehl explores “the just” as “a typically retrospective honorific designating a rare observant and pious person, possibly suffering and persecuted but divinely vindicated and endowed with charismatic qualities, who facilitates mediation between God and human beings and helps sustain the world” (Bockmuehl 2023, p. 19). On the one hand, the unnamed widow fits Bockmuehl’s description of the just, someone who stands the test of time in contrast to the wicked (for example the unjust judge) who are quickly swept by the storms of the day (Bockmuehl 2023, p. 29). On the other hand, Jesus proposes her to his disciples for emulation as someone persistent in her pursuit of justice.

She is just and unrelenting in her quest for justice; therefore, she embodies the Christian ethics of resistance and highlights that it is not only necessary that Christians relentlessly resist injustice but equally crucial that they live lives that are just. As I have noted, living an authentic Christian life is an ongoing resistance. However, while resisting dehumanization, Christians are always careful never to dehumanize even the unjust. As Cotter observes, the widow’s brief command noticeably lacks a deferential address to the judge, which would have implied her acceptance of a subservient status in relation to the judge. We can equally highlight that she also refused to accept the judge’s arrogant opinion of himself. In the end, she not only receives justice because she is just and unrelenting, but she transforms the unjust judge, in this instance at the very least, into someone true to the demands of his office. In summary, the life and actions of the widow are a response to two practical concerns of Christian ethics: living according to the ideals of the Christian message and transforming society according to this ideal. She remains righteous and free in a society that denies her basic dignity. Even though her society renders her inconsequential and invisible, her demand for justice helps make her society become more just.

What distinguishes the Christian ethics of resistance exemplified in this unnamed widow and the ethics of the oppressed embodied Wariinga is not the ability to maintain an accurate self-perception in the face of oppression while living in an unequal society. It is the essential difference in their perception of the oppressor. Wariinga is justified to hate the one she rightly recognizes as an oppressor—the one who ruined her life as a teenager and continues to ruin countless lives. As Christians, we are obliged to love every human being Christ has taught us to recognize as our neighbors, including even our oppressors. The widow’s “love” for the unjust judge is reflected in her ability to recognize his “humanity”, despite his terrible reputation. Her persistence, rather than exhausting him, offers him the opportunity to fulfil the dignified responsibility of his office. We can contrast the fate of the unjust judge with that of the Rich Old Man who suffers at the hands of Wariinga.

As Camus said in a letter to his German friend during the Nazi occupation of France, “There are means that cannot be excused” (Camus [1960] 1995, p. 5). From a Christian perspective, the premeditated murder of the Rich Old Man by Wariinga, regardless of his crime against her, is inexcusable. My goal, however, in comparing the widow to Wariinga is not to judge the morality of Wariinga’s final act of killing the Rich Old Man but to engage it through a lens that is shaped by the Christian Gospel and, as such, make the parable relevant to the African context. It is difficult to fault Wariinga’s decision to kill the Rich Old Man, not only because he almost irreparably ruined her life in her teenage years but also because of what, as she points out, he continued to represent, a political and economic system that is ruining countless African lives.

Yet, despite the constant human temptation to repay evil for evil, violence for violence, the imperative to love one another demands that Christians in Africa resist the temptation to succumb to any form of violent resistance, or as Paul puts it, the temptation to overcome evil with good (Romans 12: 21). Not only is premeditated violence always inexcusable from a Christian perspective, but it has always proven to be counterproductive in the long run. The logic that violence can be resisted with violence, which, in the sermon on the mount in the Gospel, Jesus urges us to reject (Matthew 5: 39), is chiefly responsible for the vicious cycle of violence that has characterized the history of modern Africa. Christians in Africa have a twofold duty: to resist oppression, as well as the temptation to solve the problem of violence with more violence.