California's Fuller Theological Seminary President May Shed Light on Afrikaner Mystery

South African Skull Brings Questions To German and Afrikaner Traditions

By Ndugu Umbo Mosambanuto Schmidt CPW News Services

     The University World News’ Peta Lee has reported that a human skull found at Stellenbosch University in South Africa may show the extent to which the eugenics program of a Frankenstein-style science associated with the Nazification of Germany and the Cold Spring Harbor, New York human evolution studies migrated from Europe to South Africa.

     Taken from an admittedly obsolete section of Stellenbosch’s campus a skull and two hair and eye color charts from the volkekunde (anthropology) program was found while a current doctoral student, Handri Walters, was researching the history of the former department’s past.

    According to Dr. D.F. du Toit, formerly of the Stellenbosch Medical School, the skull belonged to a  middle aged woman of mixed race.

    The find has led scientists to begin an exploration into the role of science in race-based policies in South Africa’s academic history. 

     Stellenbosch’s past cannot be separated from the university's close connections to similar programs in Nazi Germany.  The discovery is expected to shed new light on the degree to which “weird science” was manufactured for the sake of a slanted and protected pedagogical and intellectual environment.  During Apartheid Stellenbosch was the heart and soul of Afrikaner intellectual and academic achievement.

     Momboozu Manofukan, a Chicagoan who immigrated from Central Africa and who audited classes in  1986 at McCormick Theological Seminary,  remembers a South African student in one of his classes being asked by Professor Don Wardlaw if he had ever preached in an Afrikaner church in South Africa.  “We were not allowed to speak Afrikaner,” said the student.   “Why not?” asked Wardlaw.  “It was not permitted," the student said.  “Do you speak Afrikaner?” Wardlaw asked.  “I do,” he said proudly.   “Then present your sermon this morning in Afrikaner.”   The student began his sermon, stopped and began weeping according to Manofukan.    Manofukan’s story has many parallels throughout South African culture and in Europe.

     A primary focus of a projected 5-year study to investigate the degree to which racial programming provided the backbone for Stellanbosch’s academic standards will explore the question of how widely used were the hair and eye color charts found at Stellenbosch.  These charts matched identical charts used at the Max Planck Society Archives in Berlin and apparently made their way to South Africa through interlocking academic channels.  The charts were found in a silver metal case bearing the name of Dr. Eugen Fischer.  Professor Stephen Robins, a member of the South African research study group, found an identical case at the Max Planck Archives according to Peta Lee’s report.

     Meanwhile, students from Fuller Theological Seminary's Houston, Texas campus are reportedly wondering if their new  President, Andrew Dearman, himself a visiting professor at not only Stellanbosch, but also at the University of Erhlengen-Nuremberg in Berlin, will be able to shed new light on this growing controversy. 

     Dearman left his professorship at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas, a school that was challenged by area Methodists to improve its inclusion of minorities, to take the new position with Fuller.  Fuller's leading organizer is the Rev. Dr. David G. McKechnie, a former pastor in a nearby parish and an interim pastor at the parishes of the Koch brothers in Kansas whose father, Fred Koch, was a founding member of the John Birch Society.  McKechnie has also been an interim pastor at Bel Air Presbyterian Church, the home congregation of former President Ronald Reagan.

     Among Fuller's officers are David L. Bere who also sits on the board of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and Richard J. Mouw who argued in 2012 that Mormonism, the faith of Mitt Romney with its own deep seated struggles with racism, is not a cult.

     The University of Erhlengen-Nuremberg in Berlin was the first German university to boast that the majority of its students were members of the Nazi Party.   Dr. Eugen Fischer was a director of Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics from 1927-1942 and became Hitler's most senior racial scientist.   Eugenics is a subject covered extensively in the meticulously documented book on the subject by Edwin Black, War Against the Weak.

     One student who wished to be identified only as "Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jr.",  said "yea, well, we had to get over our primitive beliefs in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fiery. This is no different.  They're all cross-wise with the Gospel, but if these bozos want to pay for our theological education so that we can poke 'em in the throat with the Gospel, that's fine with us."

     The student noted that within minutes of his campus lived former President and Reagan's Vice-President, George Herbert Walker Bush.  "Mr. Bush, known as 'Molloch' or 'Magog' in the Yale Skull and Bones fraternity that many say has it roots in the Germanic Thule tradition, lauded the reunification of Germany with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but Max Planck and Eugen Fischer were teaching in Germany less than 100 years ago.   That was, of course, before scientists determined that African Lucy (AKA: Australopithecus afarensis) was parent to us all.   U.S. paleoanthropologist, Donald Johanson, made the discovery of Lucy's bones in the Afar Triangle in 1974," said Mr. "Bonhoeffer".  

     “Lucy has a message that overcomes all cultural barriers,” Donald Johanson had said. “She is proof that the seven billion people in the world all have the same origin and that basically speaking, we are all Africans.”  Since 1974 DNA scientists have analyzed the fossil evidence to provide a strong scientific argument for an "Out of Africa" migration of the human species from a common ancestor also termed "Mitochondrial Eve".

     We are hoping and praying that with Germany's reunification has come a new level of maturity and sensibility that no longer hides deep seated insecurities amid a mythical Gordian spider web of anti-Christian and anti-humanitarian and anti-scientific mumbo jumbo that's as incomprehensible as the incantations of a Zulu witch doctor," said Manofucan.  "The Biblical story of Adam and Eve fleshes out in theological and mythic terms the development of humanity East of Eden where Cain slew Abel and raised forever questions about the lengths to which we will go to justify fratricidal tendencies," Manofucan concluded.  Manofucan was also leery of any claims that this common humanity will lead to greater understanding.  "The belief in evolution moving us toward a more civilized humanity is not born out by our nightly news," said Manofucan.  "Hitler was proof that there is a clear desire to become more and more like reptilians than like a specie envisioned by Jesus Christ or Carl Sagan."

     The Stellenbosch University released its own press statement on the discoveries and the investigation to follow.


*Update 4/13/2016:  the link to Stellenbosh University "press statement" cited has been broken.  Peta Lee's article did, however, cover the impetus for the statement....the lead of Stellenbosch University faculty in light of the findings.  Lee's article states:

     Now the research team’s aim is to explore the role of science in the race-based policies of South Africa’s history and, specifically, to what extent “racism in science” influenced the wider intellectual and pedagogical environment of Stellenbosch University in the past. During the apartheid era, Stellenbosch was considered the intellectual heart of Afrikanerdom. “The project is expected to take at least five years,” Professor Johan Hattingh, dean of the faculty of arts and social sciences, told University World News.