In this episode of the LifeSite Africa podcast, we are joined by the Executive Director of Life Site Africa, John Henry Kwok. John Henry shares his story of how he became involved in the pro-family and pro-life movement in Africa.
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00:02:45.580Thank you for LifeSite Africa and how that might have a very significant impact.
00:02:52.200Well, thank you first for the opportunity, John Henry, to work with the LifeSite family and to bring some of the energy and I would indeed say innovation and wisdom and prayerfulness of the African continent into the full fold of the LifeSite family.
00:03:09.680About a year and a half ago, I think we first connected and my father had some history with the movement that gave rise to LifeSite News as a medical ethics commentator.
00:03:23.700And I was always involved in one way or another and I had a career as a diplomat and then in technology as a businessman, all of that being in Asia or most of it.
00:03:36.860And only more recently I had come to Africa because, again, it was the new continent with new opportunities.
00:03:43.280In this case, it was with some of the technology work and investment work that we were doing.
00:03:48.720And I found myself after moving around Africa a little bit, which is huge.
00:03:52.560It's three times the size of the continental U.S.
00:03:54.620And it's very diverse and extraordinarily diverse.
00:03:59.000Nairobi was the logical place because there were some very interesting innovations starting to happen in the area that I was involved in, which is more mobile technology, in the area of mobile banking and so forth and mobile payments.
00:04:11.380And so that's what brought me to Africa about 10 years ago.
00:04:14.260And then more recently, again, alluding to that history of interest and support for pro-family and pro-life, I felt strongly that there was a need for a greater connection of that which was happening in Africa, both in terms of the faith in general and those issues as they were evolving.
00:04:34.200And they were starting to be influenced by global forces for that to be connected to the greater world so that there could be both an awareness of experiences that had been had outside in managing and dealing with and confronting some of the challenges there, as well as indeed inspiration from Africa outward in terms of the enthusiasm and the energy and the spirit that they have for life.
00:04:57.640And so it was in that regard that we started about a year ago and we have our first associates now who are starting to get involved and trained and reporting and building up their cadre of experience.
00:05:11.220And it's been, you know, two steps forward, one step back, as it always is in an initial setting.
00:05:16.280But I think on the whole, and especially since the more the recent visit of yourself and Jim, I think it's been quite an interesting ride and we're just getting started.
00:05:35.540It's always a hard decision to make to, you know, expand, you know, the expenses.
00:05:40.560But you always wonder what you're called to do.
00:05:43.480And it was very interesting, the timing, because we did it, because really of your suggestion.
00:05:50.480And, you know, it was fortuitous for doing it at that point for you.
00:05:55.240But then after we book it, we find out that Pope Francis is indeed going there as well, shows up there while we're there.
00:06:05.120We're able to be, therefore, on that time schedule, able to react immediately to what's gone on with the plane interview on his return trip when we were still in Africa.
00:06:13.660And then a couple of weeks later, Jill Biden, the first lady of the United States, is there.
00:06:20.960And in all counts, they're pushing the same anti-life, anti-family agenda that we were just there with the bishops talking about.
00:06:29.080The Archbishop of Kampala, the Bishop of Ketui in Kenya.
00:06:31.720And so this was a totally providential timing, such that you had the answer.
00:06:40.140While the pope was calling out on, in late January, January 25th, calling out the bishops of Africa in need of conversion on these anti-sodomy laws.
00:06:50.180We were able to get to Africa very shortly thereafter and have the bishops explain their support for these anti-sodomy laws.
00:06:57.020He then goes away, you know, on on in the early February, again, calling for the same thing.
00:07:05.100And yet we have the answers at the same time.
00:07:07.300And then when Jill Biden's there promoting contraception and telling the young people to go and have bring the contraceptive message to their schools and the churches.
00:07:17.180We're able to garner the reaction from not only Kenyan politicians and but also from church leaders because we have these direct contacts in Africa.
00:07:29.280So it's been a very providential and very fortuitous for LifeSite interaction already right at the beginning of our working together.
00:07:38.800But take us deeper, if you will, into Africa and the benefit of being there for LifeSite, for those who love life and family.
00:07:50.600Well, I see it as from when we were working in the past, I worked in these global technology companies and they would talk about three time zones when they were developing their software to move through the different time zones.
00:08:02.180And, you know, they'd address all the markets and this was the big expensive vision.
00:08:07.320In a way, when we're looking at the global challenges of attacks on the on human dignity, both individually and collectively in the family and in the community, that's a global issue.
00:08:21.400And the defense of life and human dignity has to have a global response.
00:08:27.480And that global response is really impoverished if it isn't including the Africans.
00:08:34.040Now, not simply because of demographics, and we all know the history of that in recent decades.
00:08:39.980Religion in general, be it any of the Islamic or Christian, Protestant and Catholic, have all found fertile soil and they boomed, so to speak.
00:08:50.140And we all know about this numerically.
00:08:52.900And that's part of the demographic of youth of Africa as well.
00:08:56.300But I think more importantly, there's an insight which comes from an African sense of the balance between the individual and the community, which also is part of the response and also is part of the global solution set.
00:09:14.220And I think one of the lay leaders that we met was the head of the lawyers and the professional association in Nairobi who put that so well.
00:09:22.820You know, that in Asia, they have this genius of the rights and the dignity of the community.
00:09:29.220And in the West, they have the individualism and individual rights.
00:09:32.040And in Africa, we like to think we bring that together.
00:09:33.860That's an example of the innovation, if you will, or that different perspective that comes from the cradle of humanity.
00:09:41.360And so that as much as we are helping and they very much appreciate it, it's amazing how many people follow LifeSite in Africa.
00:09:48.880I think you found that in Nigeria and in Kenya and all over in South Africa.
00:09:55.840But at the same time, their ways of responding to and informing their thought and their belief on these challenges to human dignity, I think are inspiring as well for all of us.
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00:10:34.720One of the, I think, neatest opportunities that is there is that, you know, LifeSite's been around now for over 25 years.
00:10:46.460We've basically charted the decline and fall of the entire West, of America, of Canada, of all of Europe, basically losing it on life and family to an extent now that it's total insanity.
00:11:38.380I remember in school we started to have things change.
00:11:41.020And the way we went and prayed at Mass, you know, all of that swirl of change that came after the Vatican Council.
00:11:50.300And that's when I started to come into an awareness.
00:11:52.500And I feel we're roughly in that time right now, at least in Nairobi, which is one of the more developed urban centers.
00:12:00.960If you go to the countryside, it might be a little bit before the Vatican II, right, where there really is no understanding of, for example, transgenderism.
00:12:27.640But I think if you get into the city, obviously, like Nairobi, which is a major center of international engagement through the UN system and through, again, even in my sector in IT and technology,
00:12:38.260it's one of the three or four cities that would be a bridge heading Africa into the international environment.
00:12:48.060You see the shift in thinking and the influences and the resources of groups that would like to see Africa go in a certain direction from the West, clearly.
00:12:57.720But also, you could say, from China and from the Arab money and the Indians and all over the world.
00:13:02.860Well, now Africa seems to be a place where there's more attention being paid, whether it's for commercial interest or for an ideological attempt to sway their thinking.
00:13:13.140And I mean, that's patently true from the Biden administration, from Trudeau's efforts in Canada and from the whole of Europe to try and push Africa onto their ideological agenda for sure,
00:13:25.780as Pope Benedict used to say, an ideological colonization.
00:13:30.660And, you know, that is so evident, the kind of you want a loan, you have to attach to it the, you know, contraception, abortion, LGBT agenda.
00:13:43.040I mean, at this point, the Africans are, at least when it comes to the LGBT agenda, which is really trying to be pushed right now, it's still absolutely not.
00:13:52.240South Africa, of course, is different.
00:13:53.740They've made inroads there that, you know, look to be quite extreme.
00:13:58.140But the rest of Africa is still at that point where we might have been, you know, 20, 30 years ago.
00:14:08.640To a large extent, they've made inroads in the area of contraception.
00:14:13.480And that in speaking both with both the Archbishop of Kampala and the Bishop of Kutui both acknowledge, yeah, there's, you know, been infiltrated, if you will, on that score.
00:14:24.000But imagine that we have the ability still to intervene into a discussion which hasn't yet got there.
00:14:32.940Imagine having the ability to intervene in America in the late 1950s, early 1960s, before we went completely insane.
00:15:01.260So there is an incredible opportunity to be able to assist our brothers in Africa who in, you know, running the pro-life movement, running the movement to protect the family, which, by the way, are one movement in Africa, unlike here.
00:15:58.800And that is one of the areas where Africa gives back and is able to influence the West in a huge way.
00:16:06.860These bishops are still speaking, speaking the truth in plain English so that people can hear it and understand it and go, oh, that is the faith.
00:16:21.120And I, I remember my, my father back in the, as early as I can remember, late sixties, early seventies saying, those church leaders, you know, it's, that's the wellhead.
00:16:33.680And if they're not going to speak courageously and put themselves at risk and I guess their position at risk by saying that, which is inconvenient, you know, perhaps smelling up the room or whatever, to be blunt.
00:16:47.160Then where are the rest of the lay leaders from the different disciplines?
00:16:50.740And he was involved in the doctor's guild, the Catholic doctor's guild.
00:16:58.860They all worked together, but they were all, I mean, they all were, they had some priests of Father Colton and others, you know, that obviously were there and were feeding and providing.
00:17:10.680But when it came to the higher up in the, in the leadership, it was, um, a very frustrating experience.
00:17:16.840And that's why one of the main reasons why it's a different in Africa, whether you're a Catholic or indeed an Anglican or in the other denominations of the Christian faith and, and, and Islam as well.
00:17:29.240Um, they're pretty, they're pretty clear, uh, that this is against our human dignity.
00:17:35.260And more recently, and I think it's something to do with the red pilling that happened with, um, the whole COVID situation in Africa, where the virus, uh, the vaccines came very late to Africa.
00:17:49.040They weren't distributed initially alleged, uh, the international agencies were, were accused and you can Google this of, what do they call it?
00:17:58.280Uh, COVID apartheid because, uh, they weren't able to get at the early, uh, distribution of the vaccine, um, for logistics or financial reasons, more likely financial.
00:18:09.100And there were those complaining within, uh, the chattering classes in Africa, how typical, you know, um, they all, they have big hat, no horses.
00:18:17.780You know, they have a, they talk a good game, but in the end we don't get our, uh, and so, so we had a youthful demographic, median age 18 in sub-Saharan Africa.
00:18:26.300With the virus and its earlier versions ripping itself through the body politic or the, the society, uh, in, and then you had natural immunity installed.
00:18:38.640Um, everyone had a cold back in January of 2020.
00:18:43.700Some of it actually, even in December, remember large groups of African, uh, sorry, of, of Chinese laborers and managers coming for the various projects that are happening.
00:18:52.020And this is what's commonly believed to have inoculated the bulk of the Africans because those projects are all over Africa, right?
00:18:59.420So anyway, flash forward from the delay and the, and the access to the vaccines from, well, let's say early 2021 by early 2022.
00:19:12.520And of course they were near their stale date, right?
00:19:15.200And they were being rolled off for great publicity and press release of here, it's contributed.
00:19:20.660And by that point you had natural immunity.
00:19:23.360Plus you started to have leaking through the filters concerns about, uh, you know, maybe there's some problems with these vaccines as well.
00:19:31.840So long story short, the official claims are, even the official claims, which are as rosy as possible, are something like 10 to 15%, one shot or, or more.
00:19:43.180And then the fully vaxxed, the, you know, the full treatment with the booster is that's in single digits.
00:19:48.100Even in a city like Nairobi, a more advanced city, that's more hip and with it.
00:19:53.080Um, and then, uh, and more recently it's just like basically gone flat because there's, there's no incidents and in the hospitals, there's no, there's no issue.
00:20:03.660I mean, they did have, uh, in the initial phases, they certainly were those that were sick and those who were older and had comorbidities like you have everywhere else.
00:20:11.500But there aren't so many of those folks.
00:20:13.260And it's been argued that, um, why is it that Africa didn't get flattened as was predicted, you know, by those who were rightfully, I guess, worried.
00:20:22.380That they weren't getting the vaccine.
00:20:24.420Well, long story short, maybe the demographics and the natural immunity, you had this.
00:20:29.940Now you go forward a little bit further and you have that last summer, the WHO had the meeting where there was the vote.
00:20:37.260Uh, I may be off on my, uh, fine points on this, but my understanding is that the vote to allow for the WHO to have, uh, superseding authority on pandemic management was defeated.
00:20:51.420Essentially by, it was at Zambia backed by other African foreign ministers saying, uh, no, they didn't get the magic number, whatever it was, two thirds.
00:21:01.240And that was because there was a block of African votes.
00:21:03.580And that, I can tell you, was connected to the history I just relayed to you.
00:21:08.880Well, heck, you know, if it's the case that this was coming on and it was perhaps not ready for prime time as a medicine, not to say that it couldn't be, uh, we'd like to have, maintain our regional and or national say in these matters.
00:21:24.740You know, so once again, Africa giving back, right?
00:21:27.360So then we might be able to not go further into some errors.
00:21:32.280What's, what's truly beautiful is the sane voices on life and family coming not only from church leadership, but also from political leadership.
00:21:41.220So you have, you know, the, the press right now, I mean, just the other day, just after the visit of, uh, of Jill Biden, surprise, surprise, the Supreme Court in Kenya decides to allow for LGBT lobby groups to be registered in the country.
00:21:57.880But, okay, so bad news, but to hear the chorus of united complaint from all the politicians, from all of the church leadership, from every denomination of Christianity and from the Muslims and the whole of the populace, that's incredible.
00:23:08.360And, and I, I went on at maybe too much length on the, the whole dynamic of the COVID and that is in a sense, a red pill moment for African, not just African elites, but African populations.
00:23:22.780There was like, Hey, whoo, let's hold on the, hold the show here.
00:23:25.800So now comes this other sort of missile delivered from tube number two, right?
00:23:32.580From the global West, as you were, which is, I would argue that if that, if you, maybe this is a bit speculative, but if it weren't for that experience of the COVID and maybe there's always silver linings and tragic events, right?
00:23:47.200If it weren't for that sort of priming of the wariness collectively of Africans about, um, very helpful, not just suggestions, but movements of action, uh, that it's because of that reaction and that, that sort of, uh, collective giving your head a shake, you know, that we have this response as strong as it is.
00:24:16.240So like, and you can read that, the commentary as well, there is this sort of reemergence of what used to be referred to as the Pan-African spirit.
00:24:25.320And it's not so much in a Marxist or a free market context for economic, uh, way forward.
00:24:32.160It's in social, cultural, and familial.
00:24:35.080This is against, and they'll say African values.
00:24:38.640Now they may then say, add to that the appendix of Christian or Muslim, or indeed even nativist from, you know, pre, pre Western contact.
00:24:48.520This would have been, uh, rejected at any one of those levels of the fabric of their, of their spirit.
00:26:35.580Um, I would argue that the benefit is mutual because as we share, uh, some of the scars on our arms from the battles that we've, you know, been engaged in to stand up for the truth and, and for, uh, true justice and human dignity, um, the return is going to be multifold.
00:26:55.240And so that's part of the beauty of the whole exchange.
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00:27:30.080Thanks for watching and may God bless you.