Abstract
This article was in response to a friend's thread on facebook. The main debate was mainly premised on the issue of inheritance and succession and how they play in the narrow context to Zimbabwe but in the wider context to Africa. A contributor then talked about "modernity" and she seemed to be foisting the whole debate on that culture should liaise and be absorbed in the dictates of modernit and that reminded me of the debate that rages on in my own mind. I personally don't think "modernity" has anything to do with our value systems.
Our main problem as Africa has been our propensity to copy and paste other people's thoughts even when they are completely irrelevant to our own values. The issue of modernity is part of a long and very involving debate that also seeks answers about our own pride as a people. One of the arguments that I have proffered have been why we have failed for instance to codify our customary law and have a system that seeks to regulate even our marriages, issues such as “amalobolo” or “pfuma” are exceptional to us and somehow we need to have them regulated through a system that takes cognisance of the existence of the modern law for example and how it fits into our own systems. Modernity is a long debate but like any other philosophies, it is not the end itself.
All these thoughts are what other people’s thoughts and a true and modern African will question them rather than take them aboard. They need riveting, challenging and it is only when we start questioning existing knowledge that we will be able to move and thereby contribute positively to progressive thought. The debate between Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein must serve as the correct guide to why we must never accept anything said at face value.
I am not persuaded by scholars who push ideologies and quote ideologues without really looking at the aspects of how the ideologues seek to contribute to our own perspective. I think that limits the thought process by resigning it to templates by making preconceived ideas manuals that need to be followed rather than expose them to critique and therefore being open to change. This has been the dilemma of the African thought process; we are resigned to conformity and adherence. We are host to ideologues and their ideologies and we have never offered ourselves even to putting a different perspective and context to interpretation. We have taken aboard western ideas and western interpretations which has limited our own development.
The western hegemony
True we have been exposed to two western or Caucasian hegemonies in succession in the previous 4 centuries namely the British and American hegemonies. It is therefore conceivable that their values may have to proliferate into our own ways and that also partly explains how we have accepted their scholars and “thinkers” as our own heroes. I have surprised many people by saying that I don’t read Shakespeare, I have never read him and I also don’t want to ever read him. And as a politician people expect me to know something about the one that is quoted most I think it is Machiavelli. There is nothing wrong with that but my departure point is when we treat them as having the last word. We should try and push the boundaries of our knowledge to the next page and open a new chapter. We cannot be automated to clicking yes to everything we read.
That was how Japan, China and India developed. They have taken western knowledge and contextualised it. They have meaning yes, but they have Japanese, Indian and Chinese meaning. We don’t challenge western knowledge. When I was growing up I knew that a lion is a “big dog”, it is in the dog family. Yet western knowledge says a lion is a cat and we all agree. We fail to stand up and say “no a lion is a dog because......”Africa has more lions in the wild and surely they should know more yet we always play second fiddle. This is why African knowledge systems are not respected, in this era of globalisation we remain the ultimate consumer, we have nothing to offer the world and even our culture can still be defined by other people and refined to their standards. We are a client college consistently churning client scholars and leaders. Compare that with China, the world loves Chinese dishes, they respect both Mandarin and Cantonese dialects of Chinese which are growing in leaps and bounds, and they respect Buddhism as a religion. Similarly they have respect for Indian herbs and Yoga as a world system of meditation. A good example of how Transnational Corporations are conforming to Indian culture can be found in a recent Bloomberg article I stumbled across: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-08/google-infosys-fight-daughterly-guilt-to-lure-indian-women.html
Seeking space, pushing our perspective into the sphere
I am now burying the modernity and diversity argument with regards to the epistemological and astrological debate as a basis for the African finding an identity in contemporary terms. I think the argument that all aspects of African value systems will not fit the modernity bill is a moribund argument. It is an antithesis that fails to conceptualise two complexes namely the modernity complex and the relativity complex. Modernity itself is not universally accepted and so many aspects of it are being questioned with a lot of reversion in so many cases. It is neither a template nor or an alternative to a value system but it retains one thing; the period connotation. Modernity is clearly time phased and therefore has generational relevance. It is in fact the best example of dynamism and each generation has had its own version of modernity. Thus during the Victorian times they had their own modernity. Similarly Changamire Dombo’s generation had their own modernity and this is why Changamire Dombo was able to turn against the Mwene Mutapa and the Portuguese.
Something was wrong that did conform to the older generation but which certainly did not conform with the Changamire Dombos of that time. The same can be said of Tshaka, who stood by his mum against Senzangakhona, his father and completely disobeyed him. So was Mkabayi, Senzangakhona’s sister who defied her brother and was the real kingmaker among the Zulu. So is Ndimilwa, the great Rozvi daughter who refused to marry the chief of the Seke Vhuramayi people unless he agreed to accept her father’s name Zuruvi as his own praise line. Mzilikazi, answering the call of the modernity of his own time, saw no reason why all the cattle should be given to Tshaka and all soldiers be servants who lived only at Tshaka’s behest. Had we lived during their time we would have seen that those acts they performed were acts of people conforming to the shifting demands of their own era. So we must agree therefore that modernity is in a way a pegged to a periodical and not a fact of truth. But just like any dynamic, even if it is so robust it must still retain the properties from the past. This is where the relativity complex must come. Is the change we require really relative to us? And even when the answer to that is affirmative, we still must remember that even the relativism must have a scope. We cannot change all aspects of our culture just because those are the dictates of a periodical called modernity.
Be judge!
This article was in response to a friend's thread on facebook. The main debate was mainly premised on the issue of inheritance and succession and how they play in the narrow context to Zimbabwe but in the wider context to Africa. A contributor then talked about "modernity" and she seemed to be foisting the whole debate on that culture should liaise and be absorbed in the dictates of modernit and that reminded me of the debate that rages on in my own mind. I personally don't think "modernity" has anything to do with our value systems.
Our main problem as Africa has been our propensity to copy and paste other people's thoughts even when they are completely irrelevant to our own values. The issue of modernity is part of a long and very involving debate that also seeks answers about our own pride as a people. One of the arguments that I have proffered have been why we have failed for instance to codify our customary law and have a system that seeks to regulate even our marriages, issues such as “amalobolo” or “pfuma” are exceptional to us and somehow we need to have them regulated through a system that takes cognisance of the existence of the modern law for example and how it fits into our own systems. Modernity is a long debate but like any other philosophies, it is not the end itself.
All these thoughts are what other people’s thoughts and a true and modern African will question them rather than take them aboard. They need riveting, challenging and it is only when we start questioning existing knowledge that we will be able to move and thereby contribute positively to progressive thought. The debate between Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein must serve as the correct guide to why we must never accept anything said at face value.
I am not persuaded by scholars who push ideologies and quote ideologues without really looking at the aspects of how the ideologues seek to contribute to our own perspective. I think that limits the thought process by resigning it to templates by making preconceived ideas manuals that need to be followed rather than expose them to critique and therefore being open to change. This has been the dilemma of the African thought process; we are resigned to conformity and adherence. We are host to ideologues and their ideologies and we have never offered ourselves even to putting a different perspective and context to interpretation. We have taken aboard western ideas and western interpretations which has limited our own development.
The western hegemony
True we have been exposed to two western or Caucasian hegemonies in succession in the previous 4 centuries namely the British and American hegemonies. It is therefore conceivable that their values may have to proliferate into our own ways and that also partly explains how we have accepted their scholars and “thinkers” as our own heroes. I have surprised many people by saying that I don’t read Shakespeare, I have never read him and I also don’t want to ever read him. And as a politician people expect me to know something about the one that is quoted most I think it is Machiavelli. There is nothing wrong with that but my departure point is when we treat them as having the last word. We should try and push the boundaries of our knowledge to the next page and open a new chapter. We cannot be automated to clicking yes to everything we read.
That was how Japan, China and India developed. They have taken western knowledge and contextualised it. They have meaning yes, but they have Japanese, Indian and Chinese meaning. We don’t challenge western knowledge. When I was growing up I knew that a lion is a “big dog”, it is in the dog family. Yet western knowledge says a lion is a cat and we all agree. We fail to stand up and say “no a lion is a dog because......”Africa has more lions in the wild and surely they should know more yet we always play second fiddle. This is why African knowledge systems are not respected, in this era of globalisation we remain the ultimate consumer, we have nothing to offer the world and even our culture can still be defined by other people and refined to their standards. We are a client college consistently churning client scholars and leaders. Compare that with China, the world loves Chinese dishes, they respect both Mandarin and Cantonese dialects of Chinese which are growing in leaps and bounds, and they respect Buddhism as a religion. Similarly they have respect for Indian herbs and Yoga as a world system of meditation. A good example of how Transnational Corporations are conforming to Indian culture can be found in a recent Bloomberg article I stumbled across: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-08/google-infosys-fight-daughterly-guilt-to-lure-indian-women.html
Seeking space, pushing our perspective into the sphere
I am now burying the modernity and diversity argument with regards to the epistemological and astrological debate as a basis for the African finding an identity in contemporary terms. I think the argument that all aspects of African value systems will not fit the modernity bill is a moribund argument. It is an antithesis that fails to conceptualise two complexes namely the modernity complex and the relativity complex. Modernity itself is not universally accepted and so many aspects of it are being questioned with a lot of reversion in so many cases. It is neither a template nor or an alternative to a value system but it retains one thing; the period connotation. Modernity is clearly time phased and therefore has generational relevance. It is in fact the best example of dynamism and each generation has had its own version of modernity. Thus during the Victorian times they had their own modernity. Similarly Changamire Dombo’s generation had their own modernity and this is why Changamire Dombo was able to turn against the Mwene Mutapa and the Portuguese.
Something was wrong that did conform to the older generation but which certainly did not conform with the Changamire Dombos of that time. The same can be said of Tshaka, who stood by his mum against Senzangakhona, his father and completely disobeyed him. So was Mkabayi, Senzangakhona’s sister who defied her brother and was the real kingmaker among the Zulu. So is Ndimilwa, the great Rozvi daughter who refused to marry the chief of the Seke Vhuramayi people unless he agreed to accept her father’s name Zuruvi as his own praise line. Mzilikazi, answering the call of the modernity of his own time, saw no reason why all the cattle should be given to Tshaka and all soldiers be servants who lived only at Tshaka’s behest. Had we lived during their time we would have seen that those acts they performed were acts of people conforming to the shifting demands of their own era. So we must agree therefore that modernity is in a way a pegged to a periodical and not a fact of truth. But just like any dynamic, even if it is so robust it must still retain the properties from the past. This is where the relativity complex must come. Is the change we require really relative to us? And even when the answer to that is affirmative, we still must remember that even the relativism must have a scope. We cannot change all aspects of our culture just because those are the dictates of a periodical called modernity.
Be judge!
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