Professor Canaan Sodindo Banana and His Border-Crossing Antics

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Professor Canaan Sodindo Banana (5 March 1936 – 10 November 2003) was a complex person with a complex historical context that began with his birth from mixed parentage. His father, a practitioner of Christianity and a herbalist, further influenced him to see no difference between African ancestors and Hebrew patriarchs. He became a cleric in the Zimbabwean Methodist Church from where he was exposed to the World Council of Churches (WCC) Programme to Combat Racism (PCR). In 1971, he resigned from the church after it voted against the PCR, which he felt was justified. Instead, in 1973, he travelled to the United States, without a passport, probably to free himself from oppression. When he returned to Zimbabwe and joined politics, to fill the gap created by the arrest of nationalists, he was active in the United African National Congress (UANC), but frustrated by its moderate approach to the problem of racism, in 1976, he joined the radical Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). In 1998, when he was accused of sodomy, probably to deter him from joining the opposition for his sharp disagreements with former President Robert Mugabe, he crossed the South African border with Botswana without a passport. This article discusses the history of ethnicity, African identity and African Traditional Religion, Western Christianity, and the rise of African consciousness as well as the violence that emerged from the colonial powers in Banana’s life. This context shaped his character and personality, so much so that “what he became to us was a product of his historical context”. Banana defied the sense of security found in colonial borders, and his attempt to free himself from the constraints of hegemony were useful lessons for hid Kairos moments.

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