As pointed out earlier, the Haya people, just as any other African society prior to the inroads of world religions such as Christianity and Islam, since time immemorial have been strictly religious. Josiah Kibira (1964:107), the first African bishop among the Haya Lutheran Christians who also later became a first African president of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), writes: “Christianity didn‟t just fall into a vacuum in Buhaya … it was introduced into a complicated indigenous religion, culture, cult and philosophy” (cf.
Rweyemamu 1998:1).
Thus Christianity in Northwest Tanzania found the Haya with their Traditional Religion whereby they adored, venerated and worshipped God the Almighty, whom they called Katonda or Ruhanga35. Kahakwa (2010), a pastor and a theologian among the Haya in Northwest Tanzania who has explored the Haya interpretation of the Christian concept of God – Ruhanga, came out with the findings that the Haya had thought forms and patterns that illuminate the concept of the Trinitarian God when they evoked the Deity in threefold
35 Ruhanga comes out of the word Kuhanga in Haya language. Kuhanga denotes two things: 1. To create or to make something very carefully. 2. To speak – this is only used for a king. For a commoner it is kugamba – to speak. Therefore Haya people believe that Luhanga creates (hanga) through speaking (hanga). This means, according to Haya, the creator creates through or by his Word. (See Kibira 1974:111).
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form (Kazoba aka Ishe Ruhanga aka Tata Ntangaire”), a concept which facilitates a better Haya understanding of a Trinitarian God in the Christian version.
In line with Kahakwa, it is further fascinating to find out that probably it is not only the Haya people who had the notion and thought patterns that appear similar to the concept of the Trinity in their understanding of God, but other ethnic groups in neighbouring western Tanzanian also did. Earlier Byaruhanga-Akiki (1992:202-203), an outstanding theologian in the interlucustrine area in Uganda, a neighbouring country of Northwest Tanzania, wrote:
I became aware for the first time that in the traditional [understanding of God]
(Ruhanga) there existed a Trinitarian understanding of God that is almost the same as the Christian one … this was the first time that I had ever come across this claim, namely that the Banyankole and the Bakiga, Nyoro and Toro had a Trinitarian concept of God prior to the arrival of Christianity and that it had been so well and clearly stated compared to the Christian Trinitarian doctrine.
Kahakwa (2010:336-337), believes that God had prepared the Haya indigenous people to understand the Trinitarian God in Christian version when he writes:
… the reality of the Trinity which could be accessed in most if not all religions does not depend on human formulation or doctrines but essentially on God‟s initiatives, as it was revealed to humanity at different times and contexts. On this basis, Haya-Africans and Christians both claim to have experienced the same Trinitarian notion being experienced differently according to each given time and context. It entails Christianization of the later Trinitarian experience of God and indigenization of former‟s Trinitarian experience of God, for a better identification and perception of the Christian Trinitarian concept of God.
Captivated by such an understanding, he therefore suggested that Haya African Trinitarian invocation of the Deity could be applied to “interpret, indigenize and understand the Christian Trinitarian model with emphasis on highlighting the links and relations between and among aspects or persons according to each Trinitarian model …” (2010: 332-333).
The concept of God, and indeed the understanding of God in general in the Haya religion, preceded the Christian missionary work. The Christian missionaries used the same
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concept of God that existed since time immemorial to articulate the understanding of God of the Bible. Sundkler (1980:46) put it, “it was taken for granted that the idea of the existence of God – Ruhanga or Katonda, as the name later became in Christian vocabulary – was beyond discussion”. Christianity among the Haya did not bring a new concept but it applied the same concept from the Haya religion to refer to the God of Christianity. This fact justifies the argument that the same God whom the Haya, and indeed all Africans worshipped, was the same God – the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was later preached by missionary Christianity in Buhaya. What Mbiti, an outstanding scholar of African Traditional Religion, notes therefore applies to the Haya Traditional Religion. Mbiti (1980:818) contends:
The God described in the Bible is none other than the God who is already known in the framework of our traditional African religiosity. The missionary who introduced the Gospel to Africa in the 2000 years did not bring God to our continent. Instead God brought them. They proclaimed the name of Jesus. But they used the name of God who was already known by African people such as Mungu, Mulung, Katonda, Ngai, Olodumare, Asis, Ruwa, Ruhanga, Jock, Modimo, Unkulunkulu and thousands more. These were not empty names. They were names of one and the same God, the creator of the world, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Naturally the Haya people perceived God from their own worldview. The result of this is the anthropomorphic attributes ascribed to God related to his different functions as Father, Creator, Sustainer, Provider, Chief, Judge, Lord and so forth. The nature of God therefore is shown by numerous attributes ascribed to him. These appear in their prayers, myths, proverbs, songs, to mention but a few. The Haya perceive Ruhanga (God) as omnipresent, omnipotent, transcendental and immanent (cf. Mbiti 1980:33). Exemplifying this notion, Kabigumila (2005:49), a pastor and a theologian in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northwest Tanzania, in his Doctoral research writes:
The concept of God [among the Haya] can be …. defined into the etymological study of the name Owamaisho nk’ Olugega (the one who sees everywhere). The use of the term omniscient arises from the notion that God knows everything. We can discern the concept of an omniscient God if we study other conceptual attributes of God such as Katonda amanya Byona (God who knows all). To the
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Haya people that means God‟s knowledge is unlimited. God has full knowledge of everything, everywhere, always and in all creation.
To the Haya, God knows each behaviour and movement of every creature. He is the one who is in full control of every situation. He controls human thought and he is the one
“who governs all things that were known in the past, those that are known now and those that will be known in the future” (Kabigumila 2005: 49). This knowledge of God attests to the fact that the God whom the Haya worshipped prior to Christianity is the same God known to Christianity, who transcends human knowledge and who intervenes in every situation.
It is therefore clear that Christian Religion and other religions such as Islam, found them to be religious people. For them religion was a way of life. According to the Haya, life is in totality, there is no formal demarcation between the secular and religious, sacred and profane, no temporal and spiritual (Keshomshahara 2008:27). The term religion as some scholars like Kahakwa (2010) and Lynch (2006) have suggested is the imported concept among the Africans, in this case among the Haya as well. Lynch (2006:24) in Finding and losing faith is right when he points out that the term religion is a concept developed within western culture and doesn‟t seem to apply in some other parts of the world like Africa.
To understand better the religious philosophy of the Haya in particular and Africans in general, what Mbiti (1980: 818) observes may be helpful:
Wherever the African is, there is his religion: he carries it to the fields where he is sowing seeds or harvesting a new crop; he takes it with him to the beer party or to attend a funeral ceremony; and if he is educated he takes religion with him to the examination room at school or in the university; if he is a political he takes it to the parliament.
To Mbiti an African is strictly religious and for him dichotomization of life from religion is impossible. Religion and life in general are integrated. One cannot be without religion, for religion is life in the African way of life and thinking. Religion according to the society encompasses almost the whole sphere of life. What Mbiti observes above works in
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parallel with what Sundkler reports concerning the Haya Traditional Religion (1980:46-47):
For the Haya, existence consisted not of religion and other activities, for the one separated from the other, but religion was the totality of life – with one dimension, ritual, dominating all else. Hunting in the Savanna, sowing and harvesting in the fields, preparing beer in the Shamba, fishing on the lake, rain and sun, the fertility of women and the transition through death to another form of life – all these activities and stages were encompassed by ritual and received their characteristic rhythms from it. Here God was not a problem but the sum and total of life.
What Sundkler, and other scholars of African Religion like Mbiti observe with regards to African Religion being a totality of life, clearly suggests the reason why among the Haya and Africans in general the term religion did not exist. It was only later when the Haya had contact with the outside world that religion started to be referred to as edini, which is a Swahili term that was introduced later after the Arabic interaction with Tanzanian Africans. The word dini stems from Arabic background that has been used in our contemporary times to distinguish what is religious and secular (cf. Keshomshahara 2008:26).
In most cases when the term dini is used today in the Haya community it refers to two major religions, namely Christianity and Islam. The term dini being imported ideas from the foreign countries, as Sundkler (1980:46) points out, was precipitated by the foreigners‟
belief that Africans had no religion. So to them religion was Christianity and Islam, the common and foreign major religions in the Haya community. Missionary Christianity perpetuated this understanding among the Haya community. This indicates the absence of clear knowledge of missionary Christianity about the nature of Haya Traditional Religion.
However, some missionaries and theologians who worked in the Haya community assert that to the Haya religion is “neither speculative and abstract nor exclusive but is concretively and inclusively practiced” (Kahakwa 2003:44). The point made here is that religion among the Haya and indeed among the Africans is much more lived out than being intellectually theologized. To use the words of Sundkler, religion among the Haya
“is not so much thought out as danced out” (1980:47). It is experienced and participated
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and involves the entire community and so it is communal. Haya Traditional Religion was inclusive as it did not only include the living, but also the unborn and the departed.