Ephraim Radner and the Frailty of Contemporary Ecclesiology

 As always, this should be read in its entirety.

I was by then disillusioned by the promise of jumping ship, as I am still: was there really a better one, the “true ark,” plying the currents in the night, unmarked by what seemed more and more a drifting fleet of imposters? Burundi, then Rwanda, the urban centers of America, then simply reading and looking about the world and its past and present, made it quite clear to me that Catholics, Anglicans, and all the welter of Protestants busying about had come to the same horrendous moral shipwreck that my own little window onto the Great Lakes Region of Africa had looked upon. It struck me as more likely that all of them were but remnants, the battered timbers and rafts that had been set loose from one once grand vessel, eight souls now holding on to this or that within the tides, often too far from one another even to be apprehended.

“Bring them together again!” I began to yearn, tying myself not so much to a pristine boat, as to the task of repair, calling to this or that passing group — and they to me — so that somehow, before the currents swept us too far away from one another, we should lash our boards together, bit by bit. Ecumenism became the new road for my search. Though it couldn’t quite see the ark itself, the ecumenical venture to which I now gave myself seemed to guess at the blueprint, its earlier towering form; to recognize this or that piece of what was once a lofty ship; to intuit the nails and fittings, like some great marine jigsaw that skill, acuity, and patience might resolve.

That was some years ago. I now think the ecumenical road is a journey of “defaults” — it is whatever it is we simply end up being, as churches come and go, pressed up together, pulled apart, refashioned by the waves. Our skills at putting things back together seem to have withered, if ever we had them, and acuity and patience both are out of fashion in church and civil society. We have been drifting farther from each other, not closer, as the days pass on. Eight souls were saved within the ark, and truly so, I believe. But many souls have been lost within the ark as well. Who is who, and where they are, and how far the distances, no one knows. We are left to trust the tides, the long swirl of the currents, the default of the globe’s encircling streams.

This long circling, I now believe, will wash up the (Roman) Catholic Church that, by default, will gather up, in some fashion, the pieces of everything else, including its own broken witness. Not as a “takeover.” More like someone coming back to their home after a fire has burned it down, and kicking through the embers and piles, the scattered bits of uncharred belongings, and then taking them up and caring for them together in some new setting where new homes are built.

Inevitable Defeat?

I posted this at my LinkedIn account earlier today.

Even as I write the Taliban are entering the outskirts of Kabul, almost twenty years since Ahmad Shah Massoud's assassination in Takhar Province and the assault on the World Trade Center two days later. In the immediate aftermath, certainly in 2001 and even in 2003, I would have counted myself a fellow traveller with those Neoconservatives who pressed for intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, not least because those who talked most loftily of respecting international law were also those who fell strangely silent when the talk of human rights abuses switched to Cuba or Venezuela and who seemed unfazed by the willingness of the United Nations to include representatives of notoriously brutal regimes on the Human Rights Council. In the case of Afghanistan, the hosting of Al Qaeda and the Taliban's refusal to expel it after 9/11 certainly seemed reasonable grounds for intervention. In the case of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I could never understand why this was not couched in terms of the simple fact that for over a decade the Iraqi regime remained in breach of many aspects of the UN resolutions to which it had committed itself in the ceasefire agreement in 1990 (the enduring complaints about the cost of maintaining the no-fly zone were a staple of the 1990s). Recalling further the betrayal of the Shia community, who were encouraged to rise against Saddam Hussein only to be then left unprotected by the Coalition (in contrast with the Kurds), there seemed ample justification both for the removal of the regime and the promotion of a multi-ethnic state in the Fertile Crescent.

The devil, of course, is in the detail. The vignette of the forty-third president's victory address on board the USS Abraham Lincoln beneath the banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" in retrospect proved symbolic of the shambles that characterised so much of the peacekeeping and 'nation-building' of the next twenty years. Ironically, for a nation that has long recognized the importance of subsidiarity and federalism, all too many of the 'experts' failed to recognise the enduring importance of the local community (which, after all, helped sustain Kurdish resistance to the Baa'thist regime, Mujahidin opposition to Russian occupation and, indeed, the Taliban themselves). A sustained commitment to a federal model from the outset might have kept in check the Sunni resentment that ultimately gave rise to ISIS and empowered local ethnic communities in Afghanistan to resist the Taliban (of course, it might also have given rise to a resurgence of warlordism, but the evident bankruptcy of the Kabul regime and the Afghan National Army today suggests that this would hardly have been worse than the present situation).

I was only five years old when South Vietnam fell, so for me it has always been a historical debate, rather than a process through which I Iived. There are many issues on which I disagree with the current president, but it seems incredibly hypocritical of some of his political opponents to condemn him for following through on a process that his predecessor set in motion. Bob Dole's acid comment in the 1976 vice-presidential debate about the deaths in "Democrat wars" in the twentieth century hardly holds true for the twenty-first (though the death toll - of Americans at least - is far less). Even if the Republican Party has now repudiated nation-building, it was a Republican president who brought us to this pass. I must confess that I better understand the old midwestern isolationists (many of whose views on economic - though not cultural - issues would suggest them to be men of the Left). They viewed the priorities of the Old World - including colonialism - as incompatible with those of the New World, but they did not offer up the United States as the embodiment of the perfect society but rather as the nation most predisposed to strive for that goal. For them it was a model that could only be adopted, never imposed.

The hubris with which the wars of the early 2000s were launched has brought us to where we are today. The sacrifices of military personnel - American and otherwise - and of those Afghan and Iraqi citizens who struggled to build a civil society would appear to have been thrown away on a cause which few politicians - on the Left or the Right - have shown much interest in promoting. What more can one say?

If this is hate speech then what future for pluralism?

In June 2019 the Reverend Dr. Bernard Randall delivered a sermon at Trent College, the private boarding school of which he was then chaplain, in which he sought to voice his concerns regarding the college's plans to develop an "LGBT+ inclusive curriculum". Full details of these events can be found here (and elsewhere), but since the sermon appears to have been the catalyst for, amongst other things, the reporting of Dr. Randall by the school to the anti-terrorism unit of Derbyshire Police it seems as worthy a document as any for judging the state of free speech in general and freedom of religion in particular in British education.

For more than thirty years, Section 28 of the Local Government Act (1988) has been excoriated for its prohibition of  "promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship." Regardless of one's views as to what constitutes an authentic marriage (and many opposite sex and ostensibly Christian partnerships would fall short of the desired standard), I doubt that Section 28 did little actively to promote family life and I fear it may well have further contributed to the diminution of the human dignity of those whose manner of living it condemned. Sadly, the same mindset that inspired the authors of Section 28 now appears to inform the views of the present generation of LGBT activists who are disinclined to entertain the possibility of constructive dissent

At a time when the language of activists (liberal and conservative alike) is characterised by a 'take no prisoners' mentality, it is telling that the words of Dr. Randall (is it not interesting, in a world that tends to dismiss traditional religious teaching as the preserve of the uneducated, that the individual at the centre of the controversy is the holder of a PhD and the headmaster of Trent College is not) can be deemed "inflammatory, divisive and harmful".   

"We should not descend into abuse," declares Dr. Randall, "we should respect the beliefs of others, even where we disagree. Above all, we need to treat each other with respect, not personal attacks – that’s what loving your neighbour as yourself means." And further, "Whichever side of this conflict of ideas you come down on, or even if you are unsure of some of it, the most important thing is to remember that loving your neighbour as yourself does not mean agreeing with everything he or she says; it means that when we have these discussions there is no excuse for personal attacks or abusive language."

It can be enlightening to reflect, as I sometimes remark to my students, on the evolution of the understanding of the term "toleration," particularly as it applies to religious communities. In the late 17th Century it was acknowledged that the transformation of the religious landscape effected by the Reformation could not be reversed and those states with religious minorities would have to find some means of accommodating them (there were, of course, exceptions to this principle, notably the French Huguenots either expelled or forcibly converted by the terms of the Edict of Fontainebleau of 1685). However, such religious toleration was far removed from the freedoms accorded Christians in North America after the Revolution. Membership of the state church was usually a requirement for active involvement in the life of the community and for holding civic office, with "Dissenters" excluded from the public square. The story of toleration in Europe in the 18th and 19th Centuries is one of the devlopment of a much more inclusive approach to religious minorities in which political constraints were lifted and their communities encouraged actively to contribute to the life of the wider society. Such a welcome carried with it a readiness to recognise that those who dissented from the prevailing orthodoxy had a right to do so without fear or favour.

I reproduce the text of Dr. Randall's sermon below. It seems to me to be as reasoned (and reasonable) expression of the 'minority' position as one could hope to find in this polarized age. "It is perfectly legitimate to think that marriage should only properly be understood as being a lifelong exclusive union of a man and a woman;" writes Dr. Randall, "indeed, that definition is written into English law. You may perfectly properly believe that, as an ideal, sexual activity belongs only within such marriage, and that therefore any other kind is morally problematic. That is the position of all the major faith groups – though note that it doesn’t apply only to same-sex couples. And it is a belief based not only on scripture but on a highly positive view of marriage as the building block of a society where people of all kinds flourish, and on recognising that there are many positive things in life more important than sex, if only we’d let them be. This viewpoint is recognised by many people as extremely liberating. And it’s an ethical position which could also be arrived at independently of any religious text, I think". 

Many may disagree with his views, but pupils at Trent College are entitled not only to hold them but to express them without fear of sanction. "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four," insists Winston Smith in George Orwell's 1984. "If that is granted, all else follows." I can't help but wonder if that premise is ever more under threat in the increasingly intolerant West.   

Text of Dr. Randall's sermon, June 21, 2019

 I have a theory about Brexit. It seems to me that people who voted to leave the European Union voted for largely political reasons – to do with democratic self-determination; and people who voted to remain did so for largely economic reasons – to do with prosperity and jobs.

Of course I’m simplifying here, and both sides claim to consider both, but it seems to me that which set of ideas, which ideology, takes priority determines which way many people voted.

And while we can easily discuss facts, and try to find the truth behind factual claims, ideals aren’t true or false in the same way.

And so the problem with the often very heated and unpleasant debate ever since the referendum is that people haven’t managed to cope with there being two competing sets of ideals – two ideologies.

Now when ideologies compete, we should not descend into abuse, we should respect the beliefs of others, even where we disagree. Above all, we need to treat each other with respect, not personal attacks – that’s what loving your neighbour as yourself means.

By all means discuss, have a reasoned debate about beliefs, but while it’s OK to try and persuade each other, no one should be told they must accept an ideology. Love the person, even where you profoundly dislike the ideas. Don’t denigrate a person simply for having opinions and beliefs which you don’t share.

There has been another set of competing ideals in the news recently. You may have heard of the protests outside a Birmingham primary school over the teachings of an LGBT-friendly ‘No Outsiders’ programme.

In a mostly Muslim community, this has been sensitive, because many parents feel that their children are being pushed to accept ideas which run counter to Islamic moral values.

And in our own school community, I have been asked about a similar thing – and the question was put to me in a very particular way – ‘How come we are told we have to accept all this LGBT stuff in a Christian school?’ I thought that was a very intelligent and thoughtful way of asking about the conflict of values, rather than asking which is right, and which is wrong.

So my answer is this: There are some aspects of the Educate and Celebrate programme which are simply factual – there are same-sex attracted people in our society, there are people who experience gender dysphoria, and so on.

There are some areas where the two sets of values overlap – no one should be discriminated against simply for who he or she is: That’s a Christian value, based in loving our neighbours as ourselves.

All these things should be accepted straightforwardly by all of us, and it’s right that equalities law reflects that.

But there are areas where the two sets of ideas are in conflict, and in these areas you do not have to accept the ideas and ideologies of LGBT activists. Indeed, since Trent exists ‘to educate boys and girls according to the Protestant and Evangelical principles of the Church of England’, anyone who tells you that you must accept contrary principles is jeopardizing the school’s charitable status, and therefore it’s very existence.

You should no more be told you have to accept LGBT ideology than you should be told you must be in favour of Brexit, or must be Muslim – to both of which I’m sure most of you would quite rightly object.

I am aware that there will be a good few in our community who will have been struggling, if they feel they are being told that they must accept ideas which run counter to their faith – or indeed non-faith – based reasoning about the world.

So I want to say to everyone, but especially to those who have been troubled, that you are not obliged to accept someone else’s ideology. You are perfectly at liberty to hear ideas out, and then think, ‘No, not for me’.

There are several areas where many or most Christians (and, for that matter, people of other faiths, too), will be in disagreement with LGBT activists, and where you must make up your own mind. So it is perfectly legitimate to think that marriage should only properly be understood as being a lifelong exclusive union of a man and a woman; indeed, that definition is written into English law.

You may perfectly properly believe that, as an ideal, sexual activity belongs only within such marriage, and that therefore any other kind is morally problematic. That is the position of all the major faith groups – though note that it doesn’t apply only to same-sex couples.

And it is a belief based not only on scripture but on a highly positive view of marriage as the building block of a society where people of all kinds flourish, and on recognising that there are many positive things in life more important than sex, if only we’d let them be.

This viewpoint is recognised by many people as extremely liberating. And it’s an ethical position which could also be arrived at independently of any religious text, I think.

In other areas you are entitled to think, if it makes more sense to you, that human beings are indeed male and female, that your sex can’t be changed, that although the two sexes have most things in common, there are some real, biologically based differences between them overall. And if you think that, you would be in accord not only with the tradition of most Christians, and other faiths, but much of the biological and psychological sciences too.

You are entitled, if you wish, to look at some of the claims made about gender identity and think that it is incoherent to say that, for example, gender is quite independent of any biological factor, but that a person’s physiology should be changed to match his or her claimed gender; or incoherent to say that gender identity is both a matter of individual determination and social conditioning at the same time, or incoherent to make claims about being non-binary or gender-fluid by both affirming and denying the gender stereotypes which exist in wider society.

And if these claims, which do seem to be made, are incoherent, then they cannot be more than partially true. Yet truth is important as we try to make decisions about the consequences of these ideas.

And you might reasonably notice that some LGBT activists will happily lie about gender identity being a legally protected characteristic (which it isn’t), and from that observation wonder whether there are other areas where their relationship to truth is looser than might be ideal.

But, by way of contrast, no one has the right to tell you that you must lie about these matters, to say things you sincerely believe to be false – that is the tactic of totalitarianism and dictatorship.

On a more positive note, Christians will want to have a discussion about human identity which focuses on the things we all have in common, rather than increasingly long lists of things which might divide.

You might be concerned that if you take the religious view on these matters you will be attacked and accused of homophobia and the like. But remember that religious belief is just as protected in law as sexual orientation, and no one has the right to discriminate against you or be abusive towards you.

Remember too that ‘phobia’ words have a strict sense of extreme or irrational fear or dislike, like arachnophobia, fear of spiders, or triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number thirteen – well, there’s nothing extreme about sharing your view with the Church of England, established by law, and of the majority of the world’s population who belong to these faiths.

Nor is it irrational to hold these views, since they can be based both on secular reasoning and on scriptures – and if, on other grounds, you are sure that the scriptures reflect the mind of God, then they provide the very best reasons possible for anything.

But ‘homophobia’ and ‘transphobia’ have come to be used in a looser sense to mean often simply, ‘You disagree with me and I’m going to refuse to listen to you, and shame you to shut you down’. In other words, they have sometimes come to be terms of abuse, used in a dictionary-definition, bigoted and bullying way. You can safely ignore these uses, although that takes real moral courage, I know.

And you may think that LGBT rights are different somehow, because no one chooses to belong to the varied groups represented by these ideas. To which I would remind you that equalities law does not recognise that distinction – all equalities are in fact equal.

So, all in all, if you are at ease with ‘all this LGBT stuff’, you’re entitled to keep to those ideas; if you are not comfortable with it, for the various especially religious reasons, you should not feel required to change.

Whichever side of this conflict of ideas you come down on, or even if you are unsure of some of it, the most important thing is to remember that loving your neighbour as yourself does not mean agreeing with everything he or she says; it means that when we have these discussions there is no excuse for personal attacks or abusive language.

We should all respect that people on each side of the debate have deep and strongly held convictions. And because, unlike Brexit, this is not a debate which is subject to a vote, it is an ongoing process, so there should be a shared effort to find out what real truth looks like, and to respect that that effort is made honestly and sincerely by all people, even if not everybody comes up with the same answers for now.

The Red Wall Continues to Crumble?

In 1919 the British Labour Party won control of Durham County Council in the heart of the coal-producing Northeast, the first such victory at that level of local government (directly elected county councils have existed since 1888). Following three years of minority control from 1922 to 1925, Labour recovered full control of the county council, a state of affairs that prevailed until May 6, 2021 when the party lost twenty seats and slumped to 37.7 percent of the popular vote. American readers will doubtless be put in mind of the same West Virginia that backed Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Michael Dukakis in 1988 but gave two-thirds of its votes to Donald Trump in 2020. The fortunes of the white working class and the political parties that once championed their interests seem increasingly to have diverged, economically as well as culturally, even if the political beneficiaries of that shift sometimes seem unlikely inheritors of the populist mantle.

 

	Votes in 2021	Wards contested in 2021	Seats won in 2021	Change in seats 2017-2021
Labour	48,146 (37.7%)	63	53	-20
Conservative	34,621 (27.1%)	62	24	+14
Liberal Democrat	15,442 (12.1%)	39	17	+3
Green	3,418 (2.7%)	17	1	+1
Derwent Independent	4,176 (3.3%)	10	5	-2
Northeast Party	2,198 (1.7%)	6	4	+1
Independent	19,692 (15.4%)	41	22	+3

 

As a local resident (born within sound of cathedral bells half a century ago) it has been fascinating to witness the culmination of a process that began with the region’s sweeping endorsement of Brexit in 2016, continued with the loss of three long-time Labour seats in County Durham, including the Sedgefield constituency of former Prime Minister Tony Blair (like me an alumnus of Durham Cathedral’s Chorister School) in 2019, and now has even deprived Labour of power in its ancestral heartland.   

Members of the county council are elected from sixty-three wards, each of which return between one and three councillors. Electors in two-seat and three-seat wards cast as many votes as there are seats allocated, meaning that the party that secures the most votes may not win all the seats. I have attempted to calculate levels of popular support by combining the vote for all candidates from a particular party and dividing this by the number of seats allocated to that ward. Only the Labour Party ran enough candidates to fill every seat on the council, however, and I was obliged to treat “independent” as a generic term, even though the majority of such candidates ran on their individual merits. The vote totals are at best an approximation.

Arguably the most remarkable feature of the local election was the success of the Conservative Party, who secured almost a fifth of the seats and more than a quarter of the popular vote. This is a region in which the decimation of the mining industry in the Thatcherite Eighties has cast a long shadow and Conservatism has struggled to articulate a vision that can appeal to the Geordie heartlands. “Brexit and Boris” seems – thus far – to have altered the rules of the game, though whether the latter will succeed in creating a “Joseph Chamberlain moment” remains to be seen. The local party ran candidates in every ward except Tow Law (where none of the national parties stood) and won pluralities in thirteen wards. Apart from a solitary win in Chester-le-Street, however, all the Conservative councillors were returned for wards in the three parliamentary constituencies in the south and west (Bishop Auckland, Northwest Durham and Sedgefield) that fell to them in 2019. That they took eleven seats directly from Labour is no small achievement, but also reflects the distinctive character of western Weardale, as compared with the eastern ex-colliery communities of Easington and North Durham. Had the party’s share of seats reflected their share of the vote, there would now be thirty-four Conservatives on the county council rather than twenty-four.   

By contrast, the Liberal Democrats adopted a more targeted strategy, contesting only thirty-nine wards. An absence of candidates was particularly noticeable in Easington, where they left nine of the eleven wards uncontested. Their base remains in the City of Durham (home to the university) and the communities around it, where they hold ten seats (over half their caucus). The two seats lost by Labour in the City of Durham constituency in 2021 actually went to an independent candidate and to a Green, who won the most votes in the town of Brandon and is that party’s only representative on the county council. The Liberal Democrats also took two seats from Labour in the town of Aycliffe and one seat in the old steel town of Consett, where they now hold two of Consett’s three seats.

The third component of the anti-Labour bloc is comprised of independents, either affiliated with minor parties or running on their own merits. There were twenty-nine such councillors elected in 2017 and thirty-one in 2021. Independent candidates topped the poll in ten wards in 2021 and won almost a quarter of the seats on the county council, despite winning only a fifth of the popular vote. Nevertheless, the Independents can plausibly argue that they have shown strength across the county, particularly in Easington and North Durham, where neither Conservatives nor Liberal Democrats have much of a foothold.

Finally, of course, there is the Labour Party itself. By no means a spent force, the party continues to dominate in Easington (fifteen of twenty-one seats) and has a narrow majority in North Durham (twelve out of twenty-two seats). The real damage was inflicted in the west of the county where the Conservatives gained ten seats from Labour. That alone would have left Labour with exactly half the seats on the county council, but further losses to the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Independents drove it to its historic defeat. Of course, this is no guarantee that the former opposition can unite behind a common agenda. It will be much easier for Labour to persuade eleven independents to commit to confidence-and-supply than for Conservatives and Liberal Democrats not only to agree upon a common programme, but to persuade three-quarters of the independent councillors to go along with it. It should still make for some interesting council debates.

 

"As long as we are not blinded by unjust temptations, as long as we do not let evil get its way through us, we are fulfilling our responsibility."

 

 (Image from the Catholic New Agency, August 18, 2020)

When it comes to successful businessmen, all too often I fear we are tempted to assume that they are pragmatists when it comes to matters of conscience. Today's conviction of Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong attests to the fact that there will always be those willing to stand for a principle, even when self-interest might dictate otherwise. From Xinjiang to Hong Kong and even Taiwan, we are witnesses to the rise of an imperialistic China that is as intolerant of dissent as were the architects of the Cultural Revolution. China may not yet present a  military threat comparable to that posed by the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, but when it is host to almost one-fifth of the world's population what its government permits (and proscribes) matters to us all. Would that there were a greater willingness on the part of western governments to recognise the existential threat that the present regime poses (not least through the Belt and Road initiative) and to commit to supporting those within China who, like Jimmy Lai, are willing to sacrifice even their freedom in defense of those liberties that we in the West take for granted.  

       

New Article on the Anglican Church in North America

I have been indulging in some number crunching on the current state of the Anglican Church in North America, which the Living Church has been kind enough to publish on the Covenant blog. If you are interested you can find the article here.

Enduring Colonialism?

Over the past year there have been a number of historical commentaries in the mainstream press that endeavour to explain the philosophical underpinnings of such movements as Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall. Some are more convincing than others. One account that caught my attention was Simukai Chigudu's 'Colonialism had never really ended': my life in the shadow of Cecil Rhodes', with much of which I had no quarrel but which at times suffered from the same Manichaean tendencies that inform commentary of this kind. A month ago I wrote to Dr. Chigudu, assuming that, as one scholar to another, a conversation might develop that would be mutually beneficial. Since no reply has been forthcoming I must assume that Dr. Chigudu sees nothing worthy of a response, so I am posting it here.

From: BONNER, JEREMY
Sent: 16 February 2021 09:41
To: simukai.chigudu@qeh.ox.ac.uk <simukai.chigudu@qeh.ox.ac.uk>
Subject: My life in the shadow of Cecil Rhodes

 

Dear Dr. Chigudu,

I found the account that you provided to the Guardian most thought provoking. It has taken me a while to compose this, but, wearing my historian's hat, I thought I should articulate some of the concerns that it provoked in me.

One of the problems that I have with the narratives of institutional racism and white privilege that have arisen of late is the way in which they interrogate the past by the standards of the present and, at the same time, treat current mores as if they were indistinguishable from those of sixty years ago. The idea that some of my white working-class neighbours (I should note here that my background is certainly economically privileged) in the Northeast enjoy "white privilege" as compared with, for example, the present MP for Spelthorne (whose middle-class background is undoubtedly privileged) bears little relation to reality and I would further point out that in 1975 - when Kwasi Kwarteng was born - no Home Counties Conservative association would have considered adopting a candidate of colour, regardless of his or her political views. Does that mean that the UK is free from racism? Far from it, any more than it is free from ageism or prejudice against those with unpopular religious convictions (Muslims and traditionalist Christians alike), but that makes it no more institutionally racist than it is institutionally anti-religious.

Your thoughts on the situation in Zimbabwe inspire me to take the issue a little further. My understanding was that with the Lancaster House Agreement, Robert Mugabe reached an understanding with the white minority by which he secured to them their economically privileged status in exchange for a gentleman's agreement to stay out of politics and ensure that Zimbabwe remained the breadbasket of Africa, securing Zimbabwe against fifth columnists as it transitioned from an ally of South Africa to a frontline state. That state of affairs remained in effect until the 2000 referendum, which the MDC opposed less on the grounds of land reform than on the new powers assigned to the executive. You state at one point in your narrative that "Little to nothing was said (in the early 2000s), in the media or elsewhere, of Zimbabwe’s colonial legacy, or of the suffering of Black people under Mugabe’s regime." I can't speak with confidence to the first point, but reporting of the use of terror by the war veterans knew no colour bar and an event like Operation Murambatsvina did draw attention.

You also mention your learning for the first time of Gukurahundi. In recent years many negative aspects of postcolonial Africa (from the Rwanda genocide to Nigeria's Special Anti-Robbery Squad) have been explained with reference to colonial failings, and yet there are African states that have - for the most part - handled multi-party democracy well for most of their post-colonial history (Senegal and Botswana come to mind). Equally, the tradition of strongman politics seems to take a long time dying; I can remember in the early 1990s Frederick Chiluba vanquishing Kenneth Kaunda at the polls and almost immediately thereafter going after political opponents much as Kaunda had done in his political heyday - plus ca change. And then there are the tragedies like Gukurahundi that seem to defy easy explanations of a colonial legacy. I suppose one could argue that where colonial administrators played off one ethnic group against another, such animosities might subsequently spill over into violence, but was not Gukurahundi an attempt by Mugabe to eliminate the only alternative ethnic political power base (the Ndebele) in Zimbabwe? The fact that North Korean mercenaries were employed to do it speaks volumes. The remark of the Balliol academic that you quote was certainly obtuse (and unworthy of a scholar), particularly to someone whom they did not know, but I could have imagined saying much the same about the politics (and politicians) of Northern Ireland in the past (and even today). It doesn't have to be an expression of derision so much as one of despair. Look at the recent metamorphosis of Ahmed Abiy or the police state that is Eritrea. How do you fix that may not be the most delicate of questions, but one can surely not deny that something needs fixing? If the West tries to act (except in the case of apartheid, of course) it's denounced as colonialist, if it holds off, it's denounced as indifferent.   

I have never set much store by statues myself (except where the individual in question is of historical interest to me), but I can appreciate that some feel differently. The recent trend towards iconoclasm typified by Rhodes Must Fall, however, makes me uneasy. It seems to be driven by the same impulse to obliterate the past that you so eloquently document in discussing Rhodes's insistence that the Great Zimbabwe statues were not African in origin. Doubtless you would insist that the place for contextualizing such statues is in a museum not in the public square, but the truth is that iconoclasm rarely stops with the great offenders. We're already seeing a drive to eliminate public representations of many who have been found to offend against present-day orthodoxies of one sort or another and I see no signs of this trend relaxing. Far more efficacious is the erection of new statues that celebrate those previously excluded from the pantheon, and the introduction of suitable contextualization for those already on display. Human history is, ultimately, an exercise in documenting the interplay of darkness and light, of the demons and angels of human nature, as indeed your article makes very clear.

Sincerely,                  Jeremy Bonner