Kä Mana

Godefroid Mana Kangudie (3 November 1953 – 15 July 2021), known by his pen name Kä Mana, was a Congolese writer, professor, and theologian.

He was one of the most famous philosophers in the Democratic Republic of Congo and served as President of the POLE Institute.

He succumbed to the effects of COVID-19 in July 2021 at the age of 67.

He lectured Ethics and Philosophy of Peace at Université Evangélique en Afrique, UEA Bukavu DRC.

Kä Mana was one of the most prolific writers of his time, in the DRC and Africa.

He also lectured at UPAC in Cameroon.

Some of his scholarly works include Changer la République Démocratique du Congo.

He was passionate about the youth and showed great devotion to young people's empowerment through education.

He was quite knowledgeable of the History of the DRC and Africa.

He was a fervent Africanist scholar who shared many points of view in common with other contemporary African public intellectuals like CheikhAnta Diop, Theophile Obenga, Achille Mbembe and Mudimbe Vumbi Yoka, whom he very much acknowledged in his writings and lectures.

He provided lectures and research supervision at different universities, including Université Evangélique en Afrique, UEA Bukavu, where Amani Kasherwa was one of his students.

Godefroid Kangudie Tshibembe (known as KÄ Mana) was a Congolese writer, professor, philosopher, and theologian.

Born on November 3, 1953, in Congo-Kinshasa, he passed away on July 15, 2021, in Goma.

Considered one of the most renowned philosophers and theologians, Professor Kä Mana was an impressive mind in scientific production, both in quantity and quality.

His pseudonym, Godefroid Mana Kangudie, is formed from the diminutive of his name "Kä" and his first name "Mana."

He held a doctorate in philosophy from the Université libre de Bruxelles and a doctorate in theology from the Université de Strasbourg.

He served as a pastor in the Reformed African Church (ERAF) and as a preacher in the Harrist Church (in 2005).

He served as President of the Pole Institute, an intercultural institute, in the Great Lakes region.

Kä Mana contemplated the contributions and failures of previous schools of thought in shaping his own discursive practices of reconstruction.

His intellectual foundation was built on African cultures and the concept of liberation.

He also addressed the discourse on God, impacting the socio-political life of Africans who allowed themselves to be informed and enlightened by reason.

Despite being a Lutheran pastor, he warned against the dangers of foreign-origin religions in African life, cautioning against "the warlike deviations of Christianity and Islam."

Kä Mana's theology of reconstruction aimed at the holistic transformation of individuals.

Besides analyzing crises, he focused on examining the perspectives from which people spoke.

His theological project was epistemic, critiquing African intellectuals for remaining trapped in Western thought, serving as a lens for interpreting African life.

Here he discussed the principles of collective stupefaction.

In his view, social crises in Africa coexisted with the existential crisis of the African intellectuals and the limitations of their tools.

He spoke of the disoriented psyche of the African intellectuals and sought tools to analyze "our own defeats, our glaring failures in development, liberation, and the construction of a society of prosperity, dignity, and happiness."

According to him, "The new Christ to be invented cannot be a Christ structured by our past defeats or our disintegrated values, but truly the Christ invented as the one who must come, a breath of lucidity, courage, and creativity to break free from the established religious system and to address the crucial challenges of the non-religious field where the Messiah would be a public, profane force of action and transformation."

Rediscovering Pharaonic sources, according to him, rehabilitated the psyche and humanity of Africans, envisioning a future independent of the "colonial library" (Mudimbe).

Rejecting imitation of the European 16th-century Renaissance, the Congolese philosopher and theologian deconstructed and recreated an African imaginary in his work, carrying a social project.

Kä Mana and the Theology of Reconstruction

A prolific author, Kä Mana, notably theorized the theology of reconstructing a crisis-ridden Africa.

According to the Congolese author, the continent's crisis is linked to a diseased imagination.

Modern Africans are torn between torn and devalued ancient self-awareness and imported myths that both "fascinate and sterilize."

These myths include the West, African identity, independence, political pluralism, and democracy.

For the Congolese author, the task is to transform them into "problems that make us reflect and convert them into energies that make us act, and change the energies into a new reason for living and dying as well as into new reasons to hope and believe fundamentally."

Proposing a strategy of "mental de-alienation" that considers cultural identity issues and specific African problems, he constructs them into a fertile reality.

This involves "remaining imaginatively sensitive to the inherent creativity in the task of being human."

Political Analyst