Elijah Masinde

Elijah Masinde (* around 1911 in the region around Bungoma in western Kenya; † 1987 in Bungoma) was the founder and leader of the political-religious group Dini ya Msambwa in western Kenya in the 1930s and 1940s and at the same time a prominent fighter against British colonial rule in Kenya .

Live and act

Elijah Masinde was born into a distinguished family belonging to the Bukusu , a subgroup of the Luhya ethnic group in western Kenya. As a youth he attended several mission schools and was baptized. He was also a talented soccer player and belonged to several teams. At the beginning of the 1930s he played among other things in the Kenya selection for the Gossage Cup , a tournament that was played between the British colonies of East Africa .

Bungoma, the center of the region in which Elijah Masinde was active

In the mid-1930s, Masinde had a vision . God, he announced in sermons, had appeared to him in a dream and had instructed him to found a new religion . This religion should be based on the contents and forms of the traditional religious ideas of the Luhya. This included certain rituals, cosmological ideas and social forms of life such as polygyny as well as the rejection of all Europeans and all European influences. The new religion, called Dini ya Msambwa , quickly gained many followers in the region. Masinde and his fellow believers traveled through the towns and preached in the marketplaces, called for resistance to regulations and laws of colonial administration , refused to pay taxes and proclaimed the divine prophecy that all Europeans would shortly be leaving the country.

From 1943 on, members of the group were repeatedly involved in provocations and conflicts with representatives of the colonial administration, and houses of Europeans were often set on fire. Elijah Masinde, who was particularly present with his fiery sermons and was suspected of involvement, was arrested in 1945 and transferred to the Nairobi mental hospital as a “religious obsessed” person. In 1947 Masinde was dismissed as inconspicuous and the group's anti-colonial activities increased rapidly. A year later the Dini ya Msambwa was banned and its leading members imprisoned. Elijah Masinde was exiled to the island of Lamu in the Indian Ocean .

The group's activities slowly decreased. Its members came not only from the home area of ​​Masindes, but increasingly also from other ethnic groups. The group found a particularly strong following among the Pokot in north-western Kenya . In the colonial administration, the suppression and - also by the secret service - surveillance of the Dini ya Msambwa was the most important task for internal security. When the activities of the Mau Mau movement in central Kenya increased at the beginning of the 1950s , it was assumed that there was a connection to Dini ya Msambwa, which presumably existed only loosely.

Elijah Masinde was released in 1962 shortly before Kenyan independence was achieved (1963). After independence, the Dini ya Msambwa group became increasingly isolated; its religious rules were considered backward, pagan and primitive by many Christian Bukusu. During the presidency of Jomo Kenyatta , Masinde was re-imprisoned for religious agitation and political opposition to the Kikuyu dominance in the government and remained in prison for 15 years.

Current assessment of Masinde in Kenya

Elijah Masinde is now considered a hero of the independence movement in Kenya , to whom great importance is repeatedly assigned in school books as well as in children's literature. Kenyan historiography has honored his work as a fighter against colonial rule on various occasions.

The Dini ya Msambwa is officially recognized in Kenya as a separate religion, but has only a few members and hardly any political character.

Socio-historical background

Religious-political groups like the Dini ya Msambwa existed in large numbers in Kenya during the colonial period, they were often small and short-lived, and rarely received comparable attention from the colonial administration. Even after independence, a number of independent religious groups were formed, such as the Mungiki , who rejected European influences, invoked traditional religion and culture and tried to influence political conditions .

Similar movements were not only in many other African countries, such as the Lumpa Church of Alice Lenshina in Zambia. Also among the natives of South America and North America they appeared in numerous forms in the course of colonization and conquest, for example the ghost dance movement among the Plain Indians in the USA at the end of the 19th century .

For a long time, scientific research saw them as an expression of non-European societies refusing to accept changes, which from a European point of view were progress. In fact, however, these groups integrated the changes into their self-image and incorporated Christianity into their cosmology. Therefore, terms such as syncretistic or sect were often used for them . At present, one rather avoids such terms, as they imply a contradiction between Christianity and non-European religions and assume that Christianity is a religion that did not result from any amalgamation and was not subject to any changes. Rather, these groups are understood as a strategy of socially and politically marginalized social classes in order to fight for participation in political power and influence on social transformations from which they exclude society.

literature

• Ezekiel Alembi: Elijah Masinde. Rebel with a cause . Nairobi 2000
• Vincent G. Simiyu: Elijah Masinde. A Biography , Nairobi / Kamoala 1997
• Audrey Wipper: Rural Rebels. A Study of Two Protest Movements in Kenya , Nairobi / London / New York 1977, pp. 88–304.
• Jan J. de Wolf: Differentiation and Integration in Western Kenya. A Study of Religious Innovation and Social Change among the Bukusu , Den Haag / Paris 1977.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Vincent G. Simiyu: Elijah Masinde. A Biography, Nairobi / Kamoala 1997, pp. 1-11.
2. ↑ Audrey Wipper: Rural Rebels. A Study of Two Protest Movements in Kenya, Nairobi / London / New York 1977, pp. 124-133.
3. ↑ For example in the children's book by Ezekiel Alembi: Elijah Masinde. Rebel with a cause. Nairobi 2000