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Tribes/peoples mentioned
Abaluyia, Acholi, Akan, Akamba, Ankore, Ashanti, Azande, Bachwa, Baganda, Balese, Baluba, Banyarwanda, Banyoro, Bambuti, Bari, Barotse, Barundi, Basuto, Batoro, Bavenda, Basoga, Bushmen, Butawa, Chagga, Didinga, Dinka, Dorobo, Elgeyo, Ewe, Fajulu, Ga, Galla, Gikuyu, Gisu, Gofa, Hadzapi, Haya, Herero, Hottentots, Idoma, Igbira, Igbo, Ila, Ingassana, Jie, Jumjum, Kagoro, Kakwa, Katab, Katanga, Kiga, Kipsigis, Kpelle, Lodagaa, Langi, Lotuko, Lozi, Lugbara, Lunda, Luo, Luvedu, Madi, Maasai, Mamvu-Mangutu, Meban, Mende, Meru, Mondari, Nandi, Ndebele, Ngombe, Ngoni, Nuba, Nuer, Nupe, Nyakyusa, Ovambo, Ovimbundu, Pare, Sandawe, Shilluk, Shona, Sonjo, Suk, Tikar, Tiv, Toposa, Tonga, Tswana, Turu, Turkana, Udhuk, Vugusu, Walamo, Watumbatu, Wolof, Yansi, Yao, Yoruba, Zulu
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"I am because we are; and since we are, therefore I am."
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Africans have their own ontology, but it is a religious ontology, and to understand their religions we must penetrate that ontology. I propose to divide it up into five categories, but it is an extremely anthropocentric ontology in the sense that everything is seen in terms of its relation to man. These categories are:
- God as the ultimate explanation of the genesis and sustenance of both man and all things
- Spirits being made up of superhuman beings and the spirits of men who died a long time ago
- Man including human beings who are alive and those about to be born
- Animals and plants, or the remainder of biological life
- Phenomena and objects without biological life
(20)
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If, however, future events are certain to occur, or if they fall within the inevitable rhythm of nature, they at best constitute only potential time, not actual time. What is taking place now no doubt unfolds the future, but once an event has taken place, it is no longer in the future but in the present and the past. Actual time is therefore what is present and what is past. It moves "backward" rather than "forward"; and people set their minds not on future things, but chiefly on what has taken place.
This time orientation, governed as it is by the two main dimensions of the present and the past, dominates African understanding of the individual, the community and the universe which constitutes the five ontological categories mentioned above. Time has to be experienced in order to make sense or to become real. A person experiences time partly in his own individual life, and partly through the society which goes back many generations before his own birth. Since what is in the future has not been experienced, it does not make sense; it cannot, therefore, constitute part of time, and people do not know how to think about it-unless, of course, it is something which falls within the rhythm of natural phenomena. (23)
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In western or technological society, time is a commodity which must be utilized, sold and bought; but in traditional African life, time has to be created or produced. Man is not a slave of time; instead, he "makes" as much time as he wants. When foreigners, especially from Europe and Amer-ica, come to Africa and see people sitting down somewhere without, evidently, doing anything, they often remark, "These Africans waste their time by just sitting down idle!" Another common cry is, "Oh, Africans are always late!" It is easy to jump to such judgments, but they are judgments based on ignorance of what time means to African peoples. Those who are seen sitting down, are actually not wasting time, but either waiting for time or in the process of "producing" time. One does not want to belabour this small point, but certainly the basic concept of time underlies and influences the life and attitudes of African peoples in the villages, and to a great extent those who work or live in the cities as well. Among other things, the economic life of the people is deeply bound to their concept of time; and as we shall attempt to indicate, many of their religious concepts and practices are intimately connected with this fundamental concept of time. (24-25)
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To avoid the thought associations of the English words past, present and future, I propose to use two Swahili words, "Sasa" and "Zamani." In our chart of the verb tenses, Sasa covers the "now-period" of tenses 1 to 7. Sasa has the sense of immediacy, nearness, and "now-ness"; and is the period of immediate concern for the people, since that is "where of "when" they exist. What would be "future" is extremely brief. This has to be so because any meaningful event in the future must be so immediate and certain that people have almost experienced it. Therefore, if the event is remote, say beyond two years from now (tense number 4), then it cannot be conceived, it cannot be spoken of and the languages themselves have no verb tenses to cover that distant "future" dimension of time. When an event is far in the future, its reality is completely beyond or outside the horizon of the Sasa period. Therefore, in African thought, the Sasa "swallows" up what in western or linear concept of time would be considered as the future.
Events (which compose time) in the Sasa dimension must be either about to occur, or in the process of realization, or recently experienced. Sasa is the most meaningful period for the individual, because he has a personal recollection of the events or phenomena of this period, or he is about to experience them. Sasa is really an experiential extension of the Now-moment (tense number 4) stretched into the short future and into the unlimited past (or Zamani). Sasa is not mathematically or numerically constant. The older a person is, the longer is his Sasa period. The community also has its own Sasa, which is greater than that of the individual. But for both the community and the individual, the most vivid moment is the NOW point, the event of tense number 4. Sasa is the time region in which people are conscious of their existence, and within which they project themselves both into the short future and mainly into the past (Zamani). Sasa is in itself a complete or full time dimension, with its own short future, a dynamic present, and an experienced past. We might call it the Micro-Time (Little-Time). The Micro-Time is meaningful to the individual or the community only through their participating in it or experiencing it.
Zamani is not limited to what in English is called the past. It also has its own "past," "present" and "future," but on a wider scale. We might call it the Macro-Time (Big Time). Zamani overlaps with Sasa and the two are not separable. Sasa feeds or disappears into Zamani. But before events become incorporated into the Zamani, they have to become realized or actualized within the Sasa dimension. When this has taken place, then the events "move" backwards from the Sasa into the Zamani. So Zamani becomes the period beyond which nothing can go. Zamani is the graveyard of time, the period of termination, the dimension in which everything finds its halting point. It is the final storehouse for all phenomena and events, the ocean of time in which everything becomes absorbed into a reality that is neither after nor before. Both Sasa and Zamani have quality and quantity. People speak of them as big, small, little, short, long, etc., in relation to a particular event or phenomenon. Sasa generally binds individuals and their immediate environment together. It is the period of conscious living. On the other hand, Zamani is the period of the myth, giving a sense of foundation or "se-curity" to the Sasa period; and binding together all created things, so that all things are embraced within the Macro-Time. (28)
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Similarly, death is a process which removes a person grad. ually from the Sasa period to the Zamani. After the physical death, the individual continues to exist in the Sasa period and does not immediately disappear from it. He is remembered by relatives and friends who knew him in this life and who have survived him. They recall him by name, though not necessarily mentioning it, they remember his personality, his character, his words and incidents of his life. If he "appears" (as people believe), he is recognized by name. The departed appear mainly to the older members of their surviving families, and rarely or never to children. They appear to people whose Sasa period is the longest.
This recognition by name is extremely important. The appearance of the departed, and his being recognized by name, may continue for up to four or five generations, so long as someone is alive who once knew the departed personally and by name. When, however, the last person who knew the departed also dies, then the former passes out of the horizon of the Sasa period; and in effect he now becomes completely dead as far as family ties are concerned. He has sunk into the Zamani period. But while the departed person is remembered by name, he is not really dead: he is alive, and such a person I would call the living-dead. The living-dead is a person who is physically dead but alive in the men-ory of those who knew him in his life as well as being alive in the world of the spirits. So long as the living-dead is thus re membered, he is in the state of personal immortality. This personal immortality is externalized in the physical continuation of the individual through procreation, so that the children. bear the traits of their parents or progenitors. From the point. of view of the survivors, personal immortality is expressed of exteralized in acts like respecting the departed, giving bis of food to them, pouring out libation and carrying out instructions given by them either while they lived or when they appear. (32)
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For this reason, Africans are particularly tied to the land, because it is the concrete expression of both their Zamani and their Sasa. The land provides them with the roots of existence, as well as binding them mystically to their de-parted. People walk on the graves of their forefathers, and it is feared that anything separating them from these ties will bring disaster to family and community life. To remove Africans by force from their land is an act of such great injustice that no foreigner can fathom it. Even when people voluntarily leave their homes in the countryside and go to live or work in the cities, there is a fundamental severing of ties which cannot be repaired and which often creates psychological problems with which urban life cannot as yet cope. (35)
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When African peoples consider God to be omniscient, they are at the same time conferring upon Him the highest possible position of honour and respect, for wisdom commands great respect in African societies. In so doing, people admit that man's wisdom, however great, is limited, incomplete and acquired. On the other hand, God's omniscience is absolute, unlimited and intrinsically part of His eternal nature and being. To the Zulu and Banyarwanda, God is known as "the Wise One," and to the Akan as "He Who knows or sees all." It is a common saying among the Yoruba that "Only God is wise" and they believe that God is "the Discerner of hearts" Who "sees both the inside and outside of man." (39)
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Many societies like the Alkan, Baluba, Ngoni, Tonga and others, speak of Him as "the Great One," or "Great God," or "the Great King," or "the surpassingly great Spirit." The main Zulu name for God, Unkulunkulu, carries with it the sense of "the Great-great-One" and the same name is used by neighbouring peoples, such as the Ndebele for whom it means "the Greatest of the great."13 The attributes of transcendence and self-existence also point in this same direction of the supremacy and pre-eminence of God. (44)
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Animals and plants constitute human food, and their importance is obviously great. African peoples have many religious associations with them, some of which are linked with concepts of God. There are myths which tell how domestic animals originated at the same time or in the same way as man himself. Thus, the Zulu narrate that both men and cattle sprang from the same spot, and God instructed men saying, "Let them be your food; eat their flesh and their milk!" If lightning strikes cattle, people say that God has slaughtered for Himself from among His own food, and this is taken to be a blessing upon the village where it occurs. The Akamba hold that cattle, sheep and goats accompanied the first human beings whom God lowered from the sky. (65)
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Among many societies, the sun is considered to be a manifestation of God Himself, and the same word, or its cognate, is used for both. Examples of this may be cited from among the Chagga (Ruwa for both God and sun), peoples of the Ashanti hinterland (We for both), Luo (Chieng for both), Nandi (Asis for God, asista for sun) and Ankore (Kazooba for both). Among others, like the Azande, Haya, Igbo and Meban, the sun is personified as a divinity or spirit, and thought by some to be one of God's sons. There is no concrete indication that the sun is considered to be God, or God considered to be the sun, however closely these may be asso-ciated. At best the sun symbolizes aspects of God, such as His omniscience, His power, His everlasting endurance, and even His nature. (68)
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Some peoples, like the Lugbara and Langi, hold that rocks are a manifestation of God. The Luvedu claim that God left His footprints on certain rocks which are still soft and can be seen; and in one version of the creation of man, the Akamba tell that the first men were brought by God out of a rock which can still be seen today. A number of peoples like the Banyarwanda, Bari, Bavenda, Ingassana, Madi and Sonjo, are reported to have sacred stones and rocks, which are used for religious rites and observances. Sacred stones are often employed in rainmaking ceremonies. Many consider rocks and boulders to be the dwelling places of the spirits, the departed or the living-dead. Clay is said by the Bambuti, Shilluk, Barundi, Banyarwanda and Yoruba, to be or to have been used by God to form human beings. (71)
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The Yoruba have one thousand and seven hundred divinities (orisa), this being obviously the largest collection of divinities in a single African people. These divinities are associated with natural phenomena and objects, as well as with human activities and experiences. They are said to render to God "annual tributes of their substance in acknowledgment of His Lordship." (99)
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The Zulu are reported to have the so-called "Queen of heaven" who is said to be of great beauty. The rainbow, mist and rain are emanations of her glory, and she is surrounded by light. She is a virgin, and taught women how to make beer, among other useful arts. (101)
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Since the spirits have sunk into the horizon of the Zamani, they are within the state of collective immortality, relative to man's position. They have no family or personal ties with human beings, and are no longer the living-dead. As such, people fear them, although intrinsically the spirits are neither evil nor good. They have lost their human names, as far as men are concerned-i.e. those that once were human beings. To men, therefore, the spirits are strangers, foreigners, outsiders, and in the category of "things." They are often referred to as "ITs." Viewed anthropocentrically, the ontological mode of the spirits is a depersonalization and not a completion or maturation of the individual. Therefore, death is a loss, and the spirit mode of existence means the withering of the individual, so that his personality evaporates, his name disappears and he becomes less and not more of a person: a thing, a spirit and not a man any more. (103)
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To add to this complex situation of the Baganda concepts of the spirits, there is another form of spiritual beings-and-power known as mayembe (literally "horns"). These are objects, chiefly horns of buffaloes and bucks, used by diviners and medicine-men in their practice, which function when spirits are called or summoned by the owners of the mayembe. The spirits alone are not the mayembe, and yet the horns alone without the spirits cannot function as mayembe. It is the combination of the two that produces the mayembe; and the right method of reaching that combination is known only to the experts concerned. A powerful and skilled diviner can create his own mayembe which other diviners may borrow or consult even after he has died. Often the mayembe are given personal names, and it is these names which are called or sung when the diviners summon the spirits. Mayembe are used for all sorts of activities, including divination, diagnosing and healing diseases, "creating" more love between a man and his wife, finding lost articles, preventing attack by magic or by other mayembe from an enemy and so on. Some are more powerful than others, and one group known as kifaalu (mili-tary tank, tractor or rhino) which came into the picture during or immediately after the Second World War, is particularly feared and considered deadly. These are thought to have come either from Kenya or Rwanda. One diviner assured my students in 1967 that many Baganda possess kifaalu, but they are kept secretly since people employ them to haunt, kill or bewitch their enemies and offenders, such as those who take other men's wives or do not pay their debts. (115)
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It would seem that African image of the happy life is one in which God is among the people, His presence supplying them with food, shelter, peace, immortality or gift of the resurrection, and a moral code. For many peoples this is only in the golden age of the Zamani, and others have lost even the mythological sight of it. It is remarkable that out of these many myths concerning the primeval man and the loss of his original state, there is not a single myth, to my knowl-edge, which even attempts to suggest a solution or reversal of this great loss. Man accepted the separation between him and God; and in some societies God has been "left" in the distance of the Zamani, coming into the Sasa period only in times of men's crises and needs. In varying degrees the majority of African peoples (if not all) attempt to go after God in the acts of worship such as we have already outlined in chapter seven above. We saw, however, no evidence of man seeking after God for His own sake; or of the spirit of man "thirsting" after God as the pure and absolute expression of being.
Would it be legitimate to suggest, perhaps, that African acts of worship are basically utilitarian, searching primarily for the lost paradise rather than for God Himself? Since in these acts, people are searching for something past, something in the distant Zamani period, it follows that there cannot be myths about the future recovery of the lost paradise or reversal of the fait accompli. (127)
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The kinship system is like a vast network stretching laterally (horizontally) in every direction, to embrace everybody in any given local group. This means that each individual is a brother or sister, father or mother, grandmother or grandfather, or cousin, or brother-in-law, uncle or aunt, or something else, to everybody else. That means that everybody is related to everybody else, and there are many kinship terms to express the precise kind of relationship pertaining between two individuals. When two strangers meet in a village, one of the first duties is to sort out how they may be related to each other, and having discovered how the kinship system applies to them, they behave to each other according to the accepted behaviour set down by so-ciety. If they discover, for example, that they are "brothers," then they will treat each other as equals, or as an older and younger brother; if they are "uncle" and "nephew," then the "nephew" may be expected to give much respect to the "uncle" where this type of relationship is required by society. It is possible also that from that moment on, the individuals concerned will refer to each other by the kinship term of, for instance, "brother," "nephew," "uncle," "mother," with or without using their proper names. Such being the case then, a person has literally hundreds of "fathers," hundreds of "mothers," hundreds of "uncles," hundreds of "wives." hundreds of "sons and daughters." (136)
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Genealogical ties also serve social purposes, particularly in establishing relationships between individuals. By citing one's genealogical line, it is possible to see how that person is linked to other individuals in a given group. It is also on genealogical basis that organizational divisions have evolved among different peoples, demarcating the larger society into "clans," "gates," families, households and finally individuals.
The clan is the major subdivision of the "tribe." Some peoples may have up to a hundred clans. Clan systems are by no means uniform in Africa. There are patriarchal clans where descent is traced through the father; but there are also matriarchal clans, especially in parts of central, western and northern Africa, in which descent is traced through the mother. Clans are normally totemic, that is, each has an animal or part of it, a plant, a stone or mineral, which is regarded as its totem. Members of a particular clan observe special care in treating or handling their totem, so that, for example, they would not kill or eat it. The totem is the visible symbol of unity, of kinship, of belongingness, of togetherness and common affinity. Genealogies may be cited as far back as the original founder of the clan, if he has not been forgotten or if the genealogical line has not been broken through loss of memory. Some of the clans were founded by men and others by women, while others seem to have evolved in response to particular historical circumstances. (137)
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The Akamba describe this duty as "brooding over the initiates," the way that birds brood over their eggs before hatching. On the first day the candidates learn educational songs and encounter symbolic obstacles. On the second day they have to face a frightening monster known as "mbusya" (rhinoceros). In some parts of the country only the boys go through this experience, while in other parts both boys and girls do. This is a man-made structure of sticks and trees, from the inside of which someone makes fearful bellows like those of a big monster. The initiates do not know exactly what it is, for that is one of the secrets of the ceremony. Afterwards they are not allowed to divulge the matter to those who have not been initiated. They face this "rhinoceros" bravely, shooting it with bows and arrows in order to destroy it the way they would destroy a similar enemy. That night, the man and woman who performed the operation at the first ceremony, have a ritual sexual intercourse; and the parents of the candidates have a ritual sexual intercourse on the third and seventh nights. (162)
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As for the phenomenon of dying, we need to consider first the terms used to describe the actual act of dying. These terms show the concepts that people have concerning death. Among the Basoga, when a person has died, people say that: "he has breathed his last," "he has kept quiet," "he has gone," "he has gone down to the grave," "our friend was told by death to tie up his load and go," "he is dry as if from yesterday," "fe was snatched into two like a bristle stick"; and if it is an old man from another family, they say, "it is fair, he has died, he has eaten enough." Of a murderer's or witch's death, they say, "let him go, he has finished his job, another mouth has gone away." Concerning someone who is not liked, people say that death (walumbe) "has beaten him," "has made him finish food," "has made him sleep or lie down," "has made him dry," "has stiffened him," "has made him quiet," "has sneezed him," "has made him go far away," or "death has cut him down or forced him down."5 Among the Abaluyia death or dying is described as "sleeping" (for an old man, who dies peacefully), "falling by oneself" (if it is through suicide), "stepping into the sheet" (since the body is wrapped or covered with a skin or banana leaves before but not for burial), "wearing a sweater" (if killed by another person), "going to the place of the dead," "going home"; and for a hated person, "looking for an exit" or "lifting the leg." The Akamba used the following terms: "to follow the company of one's grandfathers," "to go home," "to stop snoring," "to be fetched or summoned," "to empty out the soul," "to sleep for ever and ever," "to dry up, wither or evaporate," "to pass away," "to be called," "to reject the people," "to reject food," "to be received or taken away," "to return or go back," "to terminate, be finished or end," "to have one's breath come to an end," "to depart or go," "to go where other people have gone," "to leave, forsakodor abandon," "to collapse, come to ruins," "to become God's property," and "to have a miscarriage" (for a person who dies at an early age). (204-205)
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Therefore, family shrines for the living-dead are found generally at or near the spot where the head or oldest member of the homestead is buried; and the cult of the living-dead is carried out within a close proximity to the actual burial place of the family. The land keeps together the Sasa of the living and the Zamani of the departed; and as we saw in the third chapter of this book, the same words are often used for both time and space. For African peoples, the ground has a religious charge, mystically uniting past and present generations, the Zamani and the Sasa. (210)
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The spirits and divinities that possess mediums belong to the time period of the Zamani. By entering individuals in the Sasa period, they become our contemporaries. The state of mediumship is one of contemporizing the past, bringing into human history the "personality" of beings essentially beyond the horizon of the Sasa period. This phenomenon is, however, temporary, and the two time periods slip apart when the state of possession is ended. The experience seems to generate ultra-human power which gives the medium ability to perform both physical and mental activities that would otherwise be extremely difficult or dangerous under normal circumstances. This possession is not on the whole harmful or resented by society; and except on rare occasions the medium resumes normal life when the state of possession is over. During possession the individual loses temporarily the control or exercise of his personality, and depicts or mirrors the influence or semi-personality of the spirit or divinity in him. Useful information is obtained from the spirit world, so people believe, whether or not that information is genuine. For that reason, mediums are associated with diviners or medicine-men or priests whose duty it is to re-ceive, relay or interpret the messages received via the mediums. (230)
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In African societies rain is regarded as a great blessing, and whenever it rains people rejoice (unless excessive rain damages crops or causes harmful flooding). Whether they are farmers or pastoralists, the entire livelihood of the people depends on rain. Near the Equator there are generally two rainy periods and two dry ones in the year. Further away from the Equator these two sets of seasons tend to merge and produce one long period of rain and one long dry season. In either situation, if the rain is delayed considerably it means that for that season there will either be insufficient harvest or none at all, and this causes a lot of anxiety to everyone. The seasons control the rhythm of community life, and in many societies the change of the seasons is marked or observed with ritual activities. There are rites to mark many occasions like the start of the rain, the planting ceremony, the first-fruits, the harvest of the crops, the beginning of the hunting or fishing season. These communal rites and activities are extremely important in strengthening community consciousness and solidarity, and are educational occasions for the young people concerning both social and spiritual matters. Rainmaking is one such communal rite, and rainmakers are some of the most important individuals in almost all African societies.
The Zulu speak of rainmakers as the "shepherds of heaven," and people do indeed look upon them as the shepherds of men, cattle and plants all of which depend on rain. The best description of the person and work of a monarchical rainmaker is on the Luvedu. The queen of the Luvedu is also their supreme rainmaker, and in this dual position she serves the country as the political head and the providential head of the kingdom. It is more because of her rainmaking, than her political position, that she is so renowned and respected. (234)
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On the subject of magic and witchcraft in Africa there is a great deal of literature.' And yet, one is struck and disappointed by the large amount of ignorance, prejudice and falsification which keeps coming out in modern books, newspapers and conversation on this subject. Discussion is cen-tred on two camps at opposite ends. The larger camp has those who expose their own ignorance, false ideas, exaggerated prejudices and a derogatory attitude which belittles and despises the whole concept of mystical power. The other is represented by a few scholars who seriously consider African views, fears, uses and manipulation of this power. Most of the distorted ideas have come through European and American popular writers, missionaries and colonial administrators.
Every African who has grown up in the traditional environment will, no doubt, know something about this mystical power which often is experienced, or manifests itself, in form of magic, divination, witchcraft and mysterious phenomena that seem to defy even immediate scientific explanation. (253)
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There is mystical power which causes people to walk on fire, to lie on thorns or nails, to send curses or harm, including death, from a distance, to change into animals (lycan-thropy), to spit on snakes and cause them to split open and die; power to stupefy thieves so that they can be caught red-handed; power to make inanimate objects turn into biologically living creatures; there is power that enables experts to see into secrets, hidden information or the future, or to detect thieves and other culprits. African peoples know this and try to apply it in these and many other ways. For that reason, they wear charms, eat "medicines" or get them rubbed into their bodies; they consult experts, especially the diviners and medicine-men to counteract the evil effects of this power or to obtain powerfully "charged" objects containing the same power. Some may even pay fantastic amounts of wealth to have a reasonable access to it, in one form or another. The majority, if not all, fear it, and many of them have encountered it in their normal life. This mystical power is not fiction: whatever it is, it is a reality, and one with which African peoples have to reckon. Everyone is directly or indirectly affected, for better or for worse, by beliefs and activities connected with this power, particularly in its manifestation as magic, sorcery and witchcraft. Without going into any exhaustive discussion, we may now draw our attention to magic, sorcery and witchcraft. (258)
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This does not contradict the belief that misfortunes are the work of some members, especially workers of magic, sorcery and witchcraft, against their fellow men. This village logic is quite normal in African thinking. I do not understand it, but I accept it. The Banyarwanda and Barundi express God's punitive acts in a proverb that "God exercises vengeance in silence."e The Nuer link sickness with the fault that lies behind it, and therefore sacrifice in order to stay the punitive consequences.
"In the one case the emphasis is on the actions from which one looks forward to the sickness which, when it comes, is identified with them. In the other case the emphasis is on the sickness and one looks backwards from it to faults which might have brought it about, even if one makes no attempt to discover what they were." The same might be said about many other African peoples. (275)
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The physical expansion of Europe into Africa exposed African peoples to the change taking place elsewhere. European conquest of Africa reached its formal climax with the Berlin Conference of 1885 at which the major powers of Europe politically shared out the whole of Africa apart from Ethiopia and Liberia. European ownership of Africa meant, among other things, the arrival of European settlers, business-men, gold and diamond diggers, colonial administration, the founding of new cities, the construction of railways and roads, the introduction of new laws and new economic systems. In short, whether consciously or unconsciously, Europe began to transform Africa and if possible to make it resemble itself in many respects. Even European names were substituted for African and religious names of local places and individuals. Mini Englands and mini Germanies, mini Frances and mini Italies, were being planted everywhere on our continent. Europe had divided up Africa, Europe meant to rule Africa and Europe began to change Africa. This was the new rhythm and no force could stop it. In some parts Africans tried to resist but they were overcome by Europeans who slaughtered them like beasts, who burnt down their villages, who put men and women into prisons, who forced them to quit their lands and become labourers in European farms or "house-boys" for European masters and mistresses. The new change started and continued in blood and tears, in suppression and humiliation, through honest and dishonest means, by consent and by force, by choice and by subjection. (284)
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Modern change has imported into Africa a future dimension of time. This is perhaps the most dynamic and dangerous discovery of African peoples in the twentieth century. Their hopes are stirred up and set on the future. They work for progress, they wait for an immediate realization of their hopes, and they create new myths of the future. It is here that we find the key to understanding African political, economic and ecclesiastical instability. Africa wants desperately to be involved in this future dimension. Emphasis is shifting from the Zamani and Sasa to the Sasa and Future; and we are part of the historical moment when this great change-over is being wrought. But somewhere there lies a deep illusion. The speed of casting off the scales of traditional life is much greater than the speed of wearing the garments of this future dimension of life. The illusion lies in the fact that these two entirely different processes are made or look identical. This lack of distinction between the two types of process remains in all spheres of modern African life, and so long as it re-mains, the situation will continue to be unstable if not dan-gerous, Present structures of political, economic, educational and Church life unfortunately favour the continuation, if not the perpetuation, of this illusion. Here, then, lies the dilemma and the tragedy of the rapid change in Africa. (289)
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In world politics, African countries talk much about taking a neutral position with regard to the east-west ideological and political conflict. My impression is that nobody can be neu-tral, and even the dead are not neutral. We receive economic and "advisory" aid from both capitalist and communist coun-tries. This aid is not given freely, for there is no aid without a bait, and few are the men who see that trap, and fewer still are those who can entirely escape it. There are political and economic ties which enslave us firmly to the countries by which the aid is given. In the long run any continued aid begins to undermine our potentialities. Some of the personnel is made up of secret agents; and foreign embassies are not altogether free from political interference, so that sometimes they engineer, suggest or help in coups which continue to take place in independent African countries. Our economic poverty makes us a great target for political and ideological propaganda from powerful nations, and we must be aware of this helpless situation. (292)
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The traditional solidarity in which the individual says "I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am," is constantly being smashed, undermined and in some respects de-stroyed. Emphasis is shifting from the "we" of traditional corporate life to the "I" of modern individualism. Schools, churches, economic competition and the future dimension of time with all its real and imaginary promises, are the main factors which, jointly or singly, are working to produce an orientation towards individualism and away from corporate-ness. So then, for example, amidst the many people who live in the cities, the individual discovers that he is alone. When he falls sick, perhaps only one or two other people know about it and come to see him; when he is hungry he finds that begging food from his neighbour is either shameful or unrewarding or both; when he gets bad news from his relatives in the countryside, he cries alone even if hundreds of other people rub shoulders with him in the factory or bus. The masses around the individual are both blind and deaf to him, they are indifferent and do not care about him as a person. Almost at every turn of his life the individual in the city and under modern change discovers constantly that he is alone or even lonely in the midst of large masses of people. He gets a new picture of himself and of other people. It is a painful dis-covery, especially for the many who are born in the country, grow up there and only in their late teens or early twenties go to work in the cities. This individualism makes a person aware of himself, but his self-consciousness is not founded upon either traditional solidarity which by its very nature and structure allowed little or no room for individualism, or another solidarity since nothing concrete has yet replaced what history is submerging. The individual simply discovers the existence of his individualism but does not know of what it consists. He has no language with which to perceive its nature and its destiny. (293-294)
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Négritude is a philosophical and cultural ideology, and foreign in origin. The phrase was first coined by the poet Aimé Césaire from the West Indies. It has since been elevated and given its philosophical content by another great poet, Léopold Sédar Senghor. Positively and negatively Senghor defines in various ways the concept of Négritude. "Négri-tude... is not the defence of a skin or a colour ...
Négritude is the awareness, defence and development of African cultural values. Négritude is a myth . . . It is the awareness by a particular social group of people of its own situation in the world, and the expression of it by means of the concrete image." He sees it in relation to political life: "It is democracy quickened by the sense of communion and brotherhood between men"; and in the cultural context, Négritude "is more deeply, in works of art, which are a people's most authentic expression of itself, it is sense of image and rhythm, sense of symbol and beauty." With a rather emotional outburst, Senghor tells us that "Négritude, then, is a part of Africanity. It is made of human warmth"; and he urges Africans to opt for Négritude and subscribe to it: "We ought not to be neutral towards Négritude. We must be for Négritude, with lucid passion..." Accordingly, only in so doing can African peoples make a contribution to the growth of what he calls Africanity and beyond that point to the construction of "the civilization of the universal." For
"Négritude is the sum total of the values of the civilization of the African world. It is not racialism, it is culture." (350)
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