by: Liesl Stewart

“When you’re wanting to free animals, you have to free people. Because we are all interdependent. We want animals to live a free life, but we’re all chained to the system.“

Reverend Tsakani Sibanda shared these words when I recently interviewed her. Rev. Sibanda is a Church of the Nazarene ordained minister from the Limpopo province in South Africa. For the past few years, she has pastored a church in Khayelitsha, one of Cape Town’s largest township communities.¹ Her theology is forged daily in faithful service to her parishioners, some of whom are all too familiar with hunger and the health effects of malnutrition.

I went to her with questions about how to hold the care for farm animals together with care for human welfare, given that many of our neighbors live daily with the brutalities of poverty. I have often witnessed righteous anger from Black South Africans who experience white people as showing more care for the wellbeing of nonhuman animals than for their Black human neighbors. South African poet Phelelani Makhanya alluded to this sentiment in an open letter that he wrote in response to recent local and global racial violence:

Dear white people, We are not even begging for the flake of love and empathy you give to cats and dogs and rhinos and parrots. We are not even begging for the crumb of care you give to rose bushes and lawn.

A recent World Bank report rated South Africa the most unequal country in the world. South Africa is rich in minerals and precious metals, but only 10% of the country enjoys 80% of the country’s wealth. After centuries of violent colonization by European nations, the Apartheid government continued to oppress Black, Indigenous and other people of color for five decades by stripping away their rights and not treating them as fully human. The entrenchment of generational poverty and trauma has kept many people locked into cycles of poverty that seem ready to repeat for generations to come. According to the World Bank report, “The legacy of colonialism and apartheid, rooted in racial and spatial segregation, continues to reinforce inequality.”³
In this current wealth disparity, many people are food insecure. While a small portion of people wine and dine with carefree ease⁴, more than half of this country’s residents don’t have the household income to buy enough nutritious food to sustain good health.
South Africa is extreme, but there are deepening inequalities in many countries, with poverty often tied to ethnicity and race.⁵ I believe this conversation is relevant for many countries of the Global South and North.

For my own social location in South Africa, I am a middle-aged white woman who carries both US and South African passports. I live within the country’s top 10% stratum of wealth. My interest and work focus is to create more sustainable food systems that are rooted in kindness and care for Creation. Therefore, it’s my joy to write for CreatureKind. My values align with the organization’s mission to seek better lives for nonhuman animals that are farmed for food. I respect their intersectional theological message proclaiming good news for all of creation–the earth, ecosystems and ecologies, human and nonhuman animals, plantlife, buglife, and all those strange in-between forms of life we learn about on nature shows.

But, I live with a tension when I work to better the lives of farm animals who suffer within industrial farming systems. Given how much privilege and wealth lies with white people in this country and world, how can I focus on the welfare of farm animals when too many people live with the daily trauma of hunger? Who can have the capacity to care about farm animals when many people are facing immense material needs? Can we care about our human neighbors living with hunger, and also care about farm animals?

I took these questions to Rev. Sibanda who is one of the best theologians I know. Below, I have described parts of our conversation, which I’ve interspersed with direct quotes. As a white person, I need to listen to her words non-defensively and change my behavior as needed. I invite every white person reading this to join me.

According to Rev. Sibanda, people have created a hierarchy rooted in white supremacy, in which some humans are treated as less than human.

Rev. Sibanda: “That means you’re equating them to animals. We’ve seen that played out from slavery, from colonization, from Apartheid.”

In the biblical Creation story, written in Genesis 1:26, God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness.” A common Christian way to understand Genesis 1:26 is that to be human is to be formed in the image of the Creator. This understanding means that truth isn’t qualified by degree, nor by the distinction of race, culture, nationality, or geography. Rather, humanity is defined by God and not by any human powers or institutions.

Because many of us don’t fully understand the liberating truth that all human beings are created equally as image-bearers, some people are still treated, according to Rev. Sibanda, as “more equal than others,” and others are “dehumanized.”

Rev. Sibanda: “The anger that you will see in South Africa is because [Black] humans are still being treated as less than. They’re not [treated as] human yet.” This leads them to believe that for white people, “Animals are more human than human beings are. That’s where the problem is, where the pushback is for Black people.”
Rev. Sibanda: “The question that a lot of [Black] people have in anger is the question of how do we justify [people] wanting to care for animals but not wanting to care for human beings?”

Many people can’t see the intersectionality of these issues because, not only in South Africa but also globally, it’s easier to try to care for the earth and animals rather than care for other human beings.

Rev. Sibanda: “That’s harder work for us to do. When white colleagues [in the church] talk about justice, none of them want to sit and talk about the racism that’s right here right now. It’s harder to say, ‘Let’s really work on this white supremacist system,’ because actually dealing with it would mean a whole lot more losing of privilege, and that’s very hard for people to do.”

She believes the global food systems aren’t designed to appreciate and celebrate human life and capability.

Rev. Sibanda: “They are designed to feed the greed of individuals and countries that deem themselves as more powerful within the hierarchy. This is not about food anymore, this is about money. The exploitation that we have for the animals that we eat for food, for me it’s not that different from the exploitation that workers and laborers go through. So we’re exploiting all of Creation. We cannot seek the liberation of one without the other. When you’re wanting to free animals, you have to free people. Because we are all interdependent. We want animals to live a free life, but we’re all chained to the system.“

(I express my deep gratitude to Rev. Sibanda for this conversation!)

Christopher Carter, professor of Christian theology and ethics, unpacks the interdependence that Rev. Sibanda speaks of in great detail in his excellent book The Spirit of Soul Food: Race Faith, and Food Justice. “Anti-Black racism and the human/animal tension are inextricably linked.”⁶ He explains, “Nonhuman nature—particularly the nonhuman animals within it—is entangled within the same oppressive logic that continues to justify racism, violence, and the marginalization of Black and other people of color.”⁷

It’s the logic of white supremacy that pushes us to choose between caring for people or caring for animals, according to the values assigned. Wherever our geography or social location, it is ours to work for the liberation of all Creation, because we’re all interdependent and deeply loved by God.

As a white person, I commit myself to joining the work of dismantling the white supremacist system, including the ways I’ve personally participated and benefited. I commit myself to the work of identifying and renouncing my own theological opinions that are rooted in the false understanding that some people aren't fully made in the image of God. I can only work to liberate farmed animals from miserable lives and deaths if I’m simultaneously working for the liberation of all people.

^{1. The part of a town or city in South Africa where black people had to live because of Apartheid. (McMillan Dictionary)
↩}
^{2. Phelelani Makhanya, “Dear white people, we are going through a lot... can you please give us a break?” Independent Online, May 17, 2022, https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/opinion/dear-white-people-we-are- going-through-a-lot-can-you-please-give-us-a-break-862b0974-6604-4002-8c58-1b62625fdb3d. ↩}
^{3. South Africa most unequal country in the world: Report”, Aljazeera, March 10, 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/10/south-africa-most-unequal-country-in-the-world-report#:~:text=South%20Africa%20is%20the%20most,World%20Bank%20report%20has%20said.↩}
^{4. Ezekiel 16:49, (NASB”). This is one passage where God directly addresses the cause of Sodom’s demise, and links it directly with what is translated as pursuing lives of careless ease on the doorstep of poverty. ↩}
^{5. “The challenge of inequality in a rapidly changing world,” United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, UN.org, last accessed June 27, 2022. https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/ world-social-report/2020-2.html#:~:text=The%20challenge%20of%20inequality%20in,change%2C%20urbanization%20and%20international%20migration.↩}
^{6. Christopher Carter, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, 2021), 13. In fact, Rev. Dr. Carter goes into great detail about various thoughts shared by Rev. Sibanda here in this blog. His book is well worth a careful reading!↩}
^{7. Christopher Carter, The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, 2021), 23. ↩}