End-month news August 2025
Jimoharries@gmail.com
Dear Friends,
Please find my latest news below.
UK / Germany programme for October / November 2025
I am, God willing, to be in the UK 2nd October to 17th November, then in Germany 17th November to 27th November.
Some of my major visits are to include:
Andover: 2nd to 10th October, 24th to 31st October, 6th November to 11th November.
Norwich: 10th to 13th October.
York: 17th to 22nd October.
Wantage: 31st October to 6th November.
Germany: 17th to 27th November.
‘The Law in Africa’ – some thoughts on its nature
Legal systems in Africa are a complex affair. I want to write something on my take on this, as a non-lawyer. I have not researched this academically, but continually come across it in daily life.
The citizenship of many countries in Africa is made up of a wide variety of tribes. Zambia, if I remember rightly, about 70, Tanzania 120, Kenya 40, and so on. Every tribe will have laws that govern the way its members should live. Nationwide, transplanted on top of that, is a close imitation of the British or other European legal system.
People following their traditions frequently break the national law. Upholding the law may make little sense, or contradict the demands of their own laws. Much of the time such lawbreaking is ignored. Sometimes it is taken advantage of, so that legal bodies like the police can make an income demanding bribes so as to free people from the need to uphold the national law. Hence the presence of multiple legal systems produces corruption.
Native populations from Europe and the USA are used to having legal systems that function. That is to say, if a government passes a law, then very often it is upheld. This means that Western people coming to Africa typically want to uphold the (national) law. The national law will be familiar to and often make sense to people from Europe, as that is where it hails from.
Because the national law generally presupposes that it is being applied in a relatively wealthy European society, upholding the national law often requires significant funds. Whenever European people, including missionaries, and to an extant even absent donors, get involved in some activity in Africa, they are put and put themselves under pressure to keep the law, which requires generous funding. Local people interested in benefitting from the funding may add pressure to this end. One effect of this, is that Westerners in Africa who are forced to spend foreign money in order to operate legally become the patrons to many African people. Unfortunately, such patronage relationships can contribute to Western people’s being ignorant – people are careful about being too honest to the hand that feeds them.
Attempts at adhering to traditional practices resulting in breaking the law presses foreigners to avoid close association with local people and their ways of life. This is just one area in which post-colonialism resembles a ball chained to the ankles of and a noose around the neck of many African people.
How does this system work out in practice? Examples are everywhere to be seen. One widespread practice, the police stop vehicles on the road and take bribes because they know that should they actually uphold the law they will certainly find fault and the driver’s fine will be far above the magnitude of the bribe. Bribe money is the oil that facilitates the running of the two (or 41, 71, or 121) legal systems in parallel. Lynchings also occupy space between alternative legal systems – knowing the vagaries of the legal system, communities may prefer to lynch people in place of subjecting them to a corrupt process that can have innocent people charged and dangerous offenders released.
What should be done about the above situation? In the long term a key alternative to a kind of ongoing mass chaos which for many reasons result in high levels of morbidity and mortality, must be to translate legal systems into African languages. The fact that this has, to my knowledge, nowhere been done, shows the massive difficulty involved in actually applying European and Arabic legal systems to African ways of living. This emphasises the arbitrariness of many legal processes: Everything hangs on the relatively arbitrary means used to translate from indigenous languages into English (French etc.) legalese. Such arbitrariness deters people from valuing national legal systems, taking them seriously, or adopting them as their own.
I do not claim to have a simple solution to all of the above. I believe the place to begin, as far as I as a Westerner am concerned, must be for Western people to be better informed. This requires Westerners to get close familiar experience of African ways of life, something that very few these days do. In turn, this requires Westerners to use entirely African languages in certain contexts, and to not use outside resources to buy their way around. By this means, some Westerners will be informed in ways that may have them potentially able to contribute to reform in Africa.
Reading up on Safeguarding
I encourage my readers to look at these articles, that examine issues of safeguarding in international perspective:
Grohmann, Marcus. “Religious liberties of missionaries under pressure from within: The unsettling nature and the potential of vulnerable approaches to mission.” Norsk Tidsskrift for Misjonsvitenskap 77, no. 1 (2024): 5–21. https://www.academia.edu/126476717/Religious_liberties_of_missionaries_under_pressure_from_within_The_unsettling_nature_and_the_potential_of_vulnerable_approaches_to_mission?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Harries, Jim, “Preventing Abuses in the International Aid Sector: A Global Effort, and a British-Based Case Study.” Global Missiology 20, no. 3 (July 2023): 11–20. http://ojs.globalmissiology.org/index.php/english/article/view/2778/6979
My Mother
I would appreciate prayers for my mother. She has had poor eyesight, poor hearing, and been weak of late. She has now been diagnosed as just having had a stroke. At the moment she remains in hospital. She is apparently unable to recognize even family members, and is very confused. Give thanks for my siblings in the UK, who are doing a great job looking after mum, and planning things and so on.
Child wants to come home
Please pray, for one of my children here in Kenya, still under 18, who really wants to come home, that the authorities will allow this.
One Month
I have just come back from visiting the Bossons (see picture above), a British couple doing ministry and theological teaching in Kampala, Uganda. Give thanks for a valuable time with them. I now have a month in which to do ministry in my home area, which I am very much looking forward to, before making my UK trip.
Yours,
Jim