The content, handling and role of oral history in the Zion Christian Church

Abstract

The Zion Christian Church (ZCC) has been documented as an AIC the trope of Christian religion of which is tampered with Africanism. Such an Africanism encapsulates the valuing of oral history and other aspects of orature such as praise poetry. One way this AIC has preserved IKS through a form of domesticated Christian religion has been by means of aural preservation techniques and the reduction of oral history to writing. The paper aims to probe practices of oral history in the ZCC with the goal of determining how forcefully the history from below can pass comment on African church history of which the ZCC is a part, in a way managing to challenge a rehearsed historical narrative. Primarily, authoritative articles published in the build-up to the AIC’s celebration of its 100th anniversary containing testimonies of church members will be studied. Secondarily, case studies of the ZCC and other research publications on the AIC will be consulted critically in order for a more reliable historical comment on the ZCC to be formulated, drawing from the advantages of both oral and written histories after successfully divesting themselves of methodological weaknesses from both paradigms of history preservation.