THE COLONIAL STATE

The years 1920 to 1960 are characterized by the transition from a colonial period to that of the Independent African state. Functioning in this context the churches were conditioned, sometimes marked, by this political frame-work. A few brief paragraphs must here serve to indicate, from the point of view of the churches, this signature of the period.

The British

In the 1920s the British established a relationship between administration and population through the system of Indirect Rule, thus ensuring the continued role of the chief. This system had been conceived by Lord Lugard while working in northern Nigeria with emirs and other prominent chiefs. The British administration was to exert its influence through the chiefs, a system that was kept in force until the 1950s. A country which experienced a prominent application of this system was Tanzania. Both Catholics and Protestants had to adapt themselves to the practice of Indirect Rule while it could work out differently depending on whether the chief was Catholic or Protestant: in principle this denominational difference was not supposed to tell but in practice the priest/pastor or missionary found that a Catholic or Protestant chief would react differently to a request for a school and church site according to his denominational affiliation.

The church in nineteenth-century Africa was dominated by the catechist-teacher.