“And the Greatest of These Is Hope”: Reframing the Global Refugee Crisis

Introduction

“What is your name?”; “Where are you from?”; “How long have you been here?”; “Do you like this country?”. Many refugees are asked these and a variety of other questions upon meeting a new acquaintance. I have been asked these and similar questions for the past 16 years in South Africa, having immigrated to the country in 2001. However, the story of my refugeeness did not begin with the journey to South Africa in 2001; it began way before I was even conceived. In effect, I was born an asylum seeker in Burundi, the country where my parents lived as refugees. In 1993, war broke out in Burundi and, a year after running to and from different places, we decided, in April 1994, to leave and go to a much safer country. Two options were available: Rwanda and the DRC. We went to the DRC. A few days later, the Rwandan genocide started.

In the DRC, we lived at the mercy of humanitarian handouts from charity organisations such as Caritas, Care International, World Vision and other UNHCR agencies because we were not just Congolese (then Zairean) citizens but returnees. While we were still eligible for such handouts as returnees, in 1996 war broke out in the DRC and our city, Uvira, was among the first to fall into the hands of the rebels. We had to leave and go to Swima, one of the villages southwards about 30 km from Uvira – and so we became internally displaced persons (IDPs). Three months later, while we were still being taken care of as IDPs, I was captured by the rebels and was used as a porter, which was the initial step to becoming a soldier, and so I was to a great extent a child soldier. I performed the portering duties and the following day I and a few other children escaped. We are in December 1996, and I am a still teenager. Upon returning to that village, we had to find a wooden boat so we could cross the mighty Lake Tanganyika. It took us three days from the day we started the journey across Tanganyika to the day we reached the shore in Kigoma, the nearest city in Tanzania – and so, we were boat people.

Upon arriving at the shore, we found the Tanzanian police ready to catch us for having entered the country illegally. Some amongst us ran away. I was one of them – and so we became illegal immigrants. Those of us who escaped being apprehended by the police went to the UNHCR’s office for assistance. The UNHCR packed us all and many others into an open lorry (we were roughly 50 people including children). We were sent to Nyarugusu, a concentration camp located approximately 250 km from Kigoma – and so we were once again refugees. The camp was one month old and housed some 80,000 people. Nyarugusu was a big forest believed to have always been conducive to wildlife habitation. In other words, no human being had ever lived there before. This explains why our visitors were initially frequently wild animals. It was, therefore, common practice to kill, for example, big snakes, antelopes, and monkeys. It was also common to hear the sounds of dangerous animals such as hyenas, lions, and tigers at night. It was common to see people cut down trees for each and every thing, including building, cooking, etc. Environmentalists called it deforestation; we called it survival. Being a tropical rainforest, Nyarugusu was among the coldest places. I did part of my schooling under trees, sitting on stones. Many lost hope and gave up. I built my own house with trees, bamboos, and mud, using some special bush grass called nyasi for the roof. Life was almost unbearable in the camp during the five years I spent there. I moved to South Africa in 2001, and life in this new setting came with its own challenges, including xenophobia and the treatment of those labelled amakwerekwere – a derogatory appellation with a dehumanising connotation used to refer to black foreigners in South Africa.

In brief, the refugee phenomenon has always been a part of my life. It has influenced my being, my becoming, and my belonging. All the challenges associated with the refugee status, including the pain of having left parents and other family members behind as well as the discriminatory immigration policies of certain governments, are all a part of my life story. However, mine is just one of the many stories of refugees’ lived experiences. That is to say, a life of liminality and prejudice is a familiar thread for the entire forcibly displaced population.

The Ugly Face of the Church

I must confess, in all my wanderings as a refugee, for those many years, I was never assisted by the church (apart from faith-based organisations such as World Vision and Caritas, and individual Christians). The only assistance I have ever received from any church directly or indirectly is spiritual accommodation – a shelter for my soul. In other words, the church has always taken care of my spiritual self without regard for the other aspects that constitute my holistic self. Why is this so? It appears that the church in Africa does not fully understand the concept of holism. It does not understand that a human person is a triune being; that is, a human person is a spiritual being, a physical being, and an emotional being. Taking care of my spiritual self and overlooking my emotional self is relegating the latter to nothingness. Caring for my spiritual and emotional selves at the expense of my physical self is reducing the latter to nobodiness. This indicates a sad and bitter truth about the church in Africa – saving souls from hell while condemning the body and the mind to hell. It is dis-engagement or dis-involvement. The church in Africa tends to think that loving me and leading me to faith in the Lord is enough to transform me holistically. In other words, the church overemphasises the primacy of love and faith over hope. And, as a result of such disengagement, the image of the church in Africa becomes damaged while its cutting edge in society loses its sharpness.

The African Kairos and the Primacy of Hope: Towards the Need to Reorder the Theological Triad

Even though love took prominence in the context of the Corinthian kairos, the criticality of hope in the Christian life remains beyond question. ¹ The passage “these three remain: faith, hope and love” (1 Corinthians 13:13a) represents three ingredients of the Christian identity. The triad, an integral mark of Christianity, is a precious blessing, and a special grace in the life of any Christian believer. ² It is doubt, indifference, and despair that deprive the human race of the triad.

When one’s faith is in shreds, hope sustains. ³ When love is exhausted, hope strengthens one’s resolve and urges one to take care of one’s neighbour without expectation of reward. ⁴ That is to say, the more hope one has, the stronger one’s faith will be; the more hope one has, the purer one’s love will be. In other words, the person we hope in and the things we hope for determine our faith and love. The three, applied together and rooted in the truth, make a believer abound in hope. Hope sustains the self when in despair, and teaches that there is reason to rejoice even amid desperation or when everything appears complicated. ⁵ In this way, it could be said that hope is the forgotten child of the triad faith, hope, and love, although the phrase “these three remain: faith, hope, and love” provides us with a possible hermeneutical consideration of equality within the theological triad.

Nevertheless, we see Paul departing from the initial structure of equality in his validation of the triad when he unexpectedly declares, “And the greatest of these is love” (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:13b). ⁶ Upon re-examination of the epistle to the Corinthians, one realises that the apostle was dealing with serious collective concerns. ⁷ As mentioned, it is important to understand that the apostle was speaking from a specific context, relevant for a specific kairos in history. The church in Corinth, to which the apostle wrote the epistle, required an emphasis on love due to the challenge of divisions within the church that the new believers were facing at that time. It was a time when some claimed to belong to Apollos and others to Paul, some to Cephas (Peter) and others to Jesus. Such divisions caught Paul’s attention and so he sought to address the issue by emphasising the importance of love to these new believers by telling them, “these three remain, but the greatest [in this context] is love”. In other words, it is in specific contexts that one element could be said to be greater than the others. It is in such a specific context within the Corinthian kairos that Paul declared love to be a more significant element than faith or hope. However, the three elements of the triad have equal significance in terms of their value and merit for the Christian life.

In brief, the apostle was unhappy and extremely disturbed by the divisions, discrimination, and conflicts in the church at Corinth – by the class separation, by the hostilities in the congregation – and this led him to encourage the Corinthian believers to increase the intensity of love in their midst, hence the statement, “the greatest of these is love”.

In view of this, there is a need to reconsider the refugee crisis within the kairos refugees live in, which is a kairos of dread – and the antidote of dread or fear is hope. It is time that we hope anew by putting our hopes into action without letting our fears discourage us or our peers tell us otherwise. Refugees often “hope against all hope” (cf. Romans 4:18), even if the circumstances of their refugeeness give no reason to do so or if there are no rational grounds for it. Empowering refugees with hope, therefore, is pivotal to building their capacity and ensuring their wellbeing.

In various countries that receive refugees, local authorities have not been involved constructively to alleviate refugees’ problems, and the political response often varies from negligence to hostility. ⁸ In view of this, the church is called on to respond to the requirements of those in need: those endangered by poverty, those systemically sidelined by the established structures those objectified by various forms of injustice, those living at the margins of society. According to Bowers-du Toit, responding to their needs is not “an act of goodwill”; it rather “remains a justice issue not a charity issue”. ⁹ This can also be said of the refugee phenomenon, which is characterised by a sense of poverty and marginalisation. ¹⁰ In other words, the church has a responsibility to play an active role in resisting the structures and systems that make any layer of the social fabric feel dehumanised. It has the responsibility to help the vulnerable and the marginalised “rise and walk on two legs” – to use Bowers-du Toit’s rhetoric. ¹¹ Enabling the disadvantaged to rise up on their own feet so they can walk by themselves is empowerment by hope.

In South Africa, the challenges facing refugee migrants are various but they do not thwart the refugees’ sense of hopefulness. Such challenges often include the English language, because a large number of refugee migrants come from non-English speaking countries, such as those from the African GLR and the Horn of Africa. A few empirical cases from fieldwork would exemplify this.

Bilawott ¹² is a refugee from the DRC. He faced the challenge of language when he first arrived in South Africa, but his language challenges were not a barrier to his resolve to strive for improved wellbeing. This is indicative of the fact that refugee migrants are empowered by the resilience and courage of their hope. In his own words, Bilawott had this to say:

When I arrived in South Africa, I had challenges in terms of mastering language skills that I needed overcome in order to integrate in society. I started working in low paying jobs such as car guard and started learning English language and computer literacy programmes which ultimately help me enrol at university.

Nevertheless, his tertiary education does not translate into employment. Gerard, another refugee from the DRC, faced the same challenge of unemployment due to language barriers. He, in turn, said, “I am currently unemployed after graduating. I consider myself a fulltime job seeker at the moment but I’m not worried because I know I’ll find something one day”. For him, therefore, unemployment is the main cause of stress and hopelessness but he still believes there is hope. The solidarity of refugee migrants is such that even though Gerard is not working, his fellow refugee migrants give him hope as they all look for jobs for him while they allow him to stay with them for free. They have hope that he will get something useful to do one day since he is educated. Should not the church do the same?

Conclusion: “Give Me Hope, Ekklesia!”

In spite of the fact that the life of refugees is characterised by unprecedented suffering, Apostle Paul indicates that suffering and pain are not an excuse for despair (Romans 5:3-5). That is, they are not to thwart our rejoicing in hope. Those who hope have enough to be pleased about despite the circumstantial challenges they encounter in the everyday. ¹³ In other words, hope makes rejoicing in suffering a real possibility. Those who hope for a better tomorrow rejoice unashamedly in the suffering of a “worse” today. Thus, it is despair that causes shame. From my own experience as a refugee, I can tell you that refugee migrants have resilient hope and we are not ashamed of our painful past and current suffering. Amidst all the conflicts and bloodshed in the African continent, and behind the living conditions of those affected by such violence, are narratives of hope, resilience, and courage.

Although refugees are often portrayed as helpless people whose source of revenue depends on the benevolence of others, they are agents of change and contribute to the economic development of their hosting countries at various degrees of significance. ¹⁴ Refugees have the ability to employ a whole range of coping mechanisms to ensure improved wellbeing. This they do not only for survival but also to give their life meaning through acquiring a sustainable means of supporting themselves. In spite of the challenges they have to surmount on a daily basis, their narratives express hope for a better tomorrow. ¹⁵ This explains why refugees put their hope into action as a livelihood strategy by seizing every available opportunity to build up new hope. In their quest for a better tomorrow, they rise above the dependence on relief and hand-outs from charitable organisations and, instead, engage in various trades, however insignificant, for their self-sustenance.

“Give me hope, Joanna” was a song sung by a Jamaican musician, Eddie Grant. He wrote the song to condemn apartheid (a policy that separated people by race and which intended to dehumanise black people) while prophetically declaring the hopeful fate of those for whom despondency was oppressively a daily affair. Using Grant’s rhetoric, it appears that every refugee today cries: “Give me hope, Ekklesia”. This in order to denounce the many dehumanising policies against refugees and, at the same time, to prophetically declare their hopeful fate. This is because theirs is a kairos of dread. Of course refugees want your prayers, of course they want your humanitarian handouts, of course they want your acts of charity, of course they want your Christian faith – however, what they need most in this kairos of dread is hope. Thus, for refugee migrants it is imperative to reorder the primacy of the theological triad in an attempt to highlight hope as the much-needed ingredient within their kairos of dread. Thus, it could be said without fear of falling into heterodoxy that, for refugee migrants, “these three remain: faith, hope, and love – and the greatest of these is hope”. In this regard, the church needs to become aware of the realities of life within which refugee migrants live so as to renew and increase their hope.