Investigation of South African Black Theology and Its Lessons to Other African Christian Liberation Theologians

The Paper discusses South African kind of liberation theology called South African Black Theology showing that it is a unique liberation approach which has crucial lessons to other African Christian liberation theologians just as it too learns from them in mutual enrichment. It will explicate that liberation theology in this region of Africa concerns itself with the struggle and reaction against apartheid and the after effects of it together with other oppressive factors with the finality of emancipation towards freedom and re-establishment of life in Christ as the Liberator par excellence. This will mainly be done using secondary sources in libraries to get insights from renowned South African Black theology scholars like Boesak, Moore, Buthelezi, Tutu, Sebidi, Motlhabi, Mosala, Tlhagale, Goba and Mofokeng and a few others from North America like Conn and Wilmore. The term “black consciousness” will be accentuated as the key concept in their theologizing illumined by North American related slogans like “Black is Black,” “Black is Beautiful” and “Black Power.” It will be pointed out that the concept is further triggered by blacks’ “ontological” music with exponents like the legendary James Brown’s soul music of “I am Black and I am Proud”, Martin Luther King Jr of “I have a dream” and Marcom X- among others. It will further be elaborated as founded on socio-religio-cultural belief that Jesus is the “Black Messiah,” a title they attribute to Him functionally not ideologically hence its specificity. In this regard, a brief exposition of Mofokeng’s Black Christology will come in handy. The Paper will then end by drawing out SABT lessons to other African Christian liberation theologians. The Paper has two fundamental objectives. The first one is to explore and verify that South Africa has a unique mode of liberation theology which when properly perused has significant teaching to other African Christian liberation theologians. The second objective is to discuss South African Black Christology, with Mofokeng’s Black Christology as a model, to find out whether there are useful lessons to other African scholars. The main hypothesis is that South Africa has a unique mode of liberation theology which when properly perused has significant teaching to other African Christian liberation theologians. The second assumption is that South African Black Christology whereby Jesus is viewed as the “Black Messiah,” as exemplified by proponent Mofokeng, provides both positive aspects and shortcomings to learn from. The procedure the paper will follow to realize the above is: introductory remarks; distinctiveness of SABT; operationalizing key concepts in SABT; brief historical setting of SABT; black consciousness as the key concept and its meaning; six main sources of SABT; Jesus the “Black Messiah”; Mofokeng’s liberation black Christology within the context of SABT; SABT lessons to other African Christian liberation theologians; concluding remarks followed by references. Among the findings is that of intrinsic employment of an African title “Black Messiah” analogically attributed to Jesus in specifically liberational orientation since the other African titles analogically attributed to Jesus are fundamentally in Inculturation approach.