The Sunday News
WHEN the decolonisation of African culture is mentioned what easily crosses the mind is the Himalayan task of de-Westernising African culture by cleaning it of negative western and colonial influences. That is an immensely important task on which not even half of the needed effort has been applied. For this article, that is a subject for another day, at least for now.
In his good book: Philosophy and an African Culture (1980), Ghanaian philosopher, Kwasi Wiredu, reflects on the responsibility of African philosophers in liberating African culture from three main problematic factors that let Africans down. These offending factors are Anachronism, Authoritarianism and Supernaturalism.
These factors are internal and traditional to African culture. By African culture Wiredu correctly refers to the total way of life of the African people, as represented in his book, The Akan people of Ghana. He does so in full understanding and knowledge that there is no one population of people that can be called the pure and the real Africans.
As such, a philosopher has to be clear that Africa has cultures and not one body of knowledge and practices that can be called authentic and pristine African culture.
Colonialists, in their imperial arrogance and colonial ignorance, made the mistake of understanding Africa as a one homogenous population of natives that could be divided and ruled as backward barbarians that had no culture to talk about except primitive traditions and customs. Culture, by the way, is so important to power and rule. It is so important that a story is often narrated that “when Joseph Goebbels heard culture being mentioned he pulled out his revolver.” Goebbels must have reacted thus because culture itself is a weapon that could be used for conquest as well as for liberation.
A people’s culture can take them backwards or forwards, it can harm or help them, and that is why Wiredu believes that African philosophers should work on African culture to liberate it from certain foibles and limitations.
The challenge of cultural anachronism in Africa Wiredu decries the problem than when African culture is spoken of what people immediately think of is “drums and dancing.” That is a problem because a people’s traditions and their art are a part of and not the whole of their culture. Compressing African culture to ethnic dressing, singing, dancing and other performances is to reduce culture from its whole to its parts, some small parts.
When Africans, in general think and speak culture, they often invoke the past of traditions and art. They rarely think of social habits and tendencies, political ideas and systems that are also a large part of culture.
The idea of thinking of culture in terms of art, the past and traditions, has had the effect of making African cultural activists fanatics of the past, and nativist that are sold to what can be called primitivism. Culture, in the primitivist and nativist scheme of things, is frozen into the past and celebrated on specific days and occasions as if it were an event when it is supposed to be a life experience.
Traditions are blown up and mistaken for culture itself and not the parts of it that they are. Certain traditional practices and habits, even if time has proven them wrong are dusted up and practiced and justified as “our culture” in Africa. In that way, most Africans tend to be attracted to cultures of outsiders and colonisers that appear on the outside to be modern and liberal, and then look down upon African culture as backward and embarrassing.
Cultural anachronism promotes coloniality and demotes indigenous culture and knowledge by making foreign cultures look attractive. What Wiredu suggests, in my view, is that African culture should be dynamic enough to compete successfully with other cultures in order to remain relevant in a fast-changing world system.
What does not bend tends to break under the pressure of competition for power and relevance. Importantly, besides Wiredu, some African philosophers have noted how western cultures have learnt a lot of positive aspects, especially ubuntu and communalism, from African cultures. The world needs African culture.
The challenge of authoritarianism in African culture It is in African culture where authority cannot be questioned and challenged without serious consequences. The unquestioning belief in authority and following of the same in whatever direction, even if it is the direction of catastrophe, is another fault of African culture, in the view of Wiredu.
Individual will, no matter how inventive or revolutionary, is not easily allowed to question or challenge authority in African affairs. Authority based on age, gender, religious and cultural position, political power and influence prevails over critical thinking. Questioning and invention are not affirmed in African cultural affairs where wisdom is valued more than knowledge and where experience is more important than intelligence.
New ideas are easily suspected and dismissible as tradition, what we have always done and done our way, is trusted and respected. Not questioning authority and tradition led Africans to be effectively colonised through their fear of the power, authority and sometimes the alleged holiness of the white colonisers.
Africans have been so trusting and so respecting of authority so much so that they even respected and trusted colonial invaders and settlers as saviours. And they did so without question until it was far too late when colonialism had naturalised and normalised itself into the continent.
As such some Africans, even scholars among them, entertain the belief that colonialism was inevitable, natural, normal and even beneficial. African cultural authoritarianism operates on a “might is right” basis that is frequently wrong and usually evil.
The challenge of African Supernaturalism happens when a people surrender their agency to the supernatural and the other-worldly. In the name of the supernatural such a people will do anything even if that thing is harmful or downright evil. Wiredu says supernaturalists rely on the supernatural for their daily morality.
For them something is good because a certain power or a certain god said it is good. What should be happening is that what is good for man and preserves human life in its collectivity should be good for any good god. God, otherwise, should like and bless all that which is good for man. A Kenyan philosopher, John Mbiti, famously said that “Africans are notoriously religious,” more religious that the people who gave them the religion in the first place. In being that religious Africans tend to lack the spirit and the reason that must accompany religiousness.
Being religious without being spiritual or being religious without being reasonable makes one a vessel of fanaticism and all kinds of cultic behaviours. Africa, today, is the land of all kinds of prophets and men of the gods that are religiously followed by huge populations of “faithful” but not rational masses that do strange things in the name of this and that religious leader.
Religion that is not accompanied by theology, the philosophy of religion, spiritual reason, becomes a sword in the hand of fanatics that will most likely abuse than use it. Under the spell of religion that has no spiritual reason Africans, like a herd of animals in the veld, get led by all sorts of dubious personages to perform some strange and even harmful behaviours. Supernaturalism, as close as it is to superstition, drives a people into a certain “insanity” that is retrogressive.
Decolonising African culture African culture, in the view of Wiredu, is too important to be left to anthropologists (study of human societies and cultures and their development) and sociologists. African philosophy, from its reserves of African wisdom and history, should be able to contribute to decolonising African culture by not only freeing it from unfavourable western influences, but also liberating it from some of its own toxic traditional legacies.
To decolonise African culture is, otherwise, to make it locally rooted but globally relevant and competitive, to teach other cultures as well as to learn from other cultures. This is so that African culture can do its part in contributing to the betterment of the world and all forms of life in it. Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Gezina, Pretoria, in South Africa. Contacts: [email protected]
