Our ignorance, irresponsibility and laziness don’t reflect true African culture

Jameson Maluleke

Introduction
On my way to work through Johannesburg mid-city one Sunday morning I saw an excessively drunk old umnumzane supporting himself with his "isagila" (knobkierie) as he peed into an empty concrete trash bin along Commissioner Street. At the wink of an eye a traffic officer's car stopped alongside him. "What the hell do you think you are doing!?" shouted the traffic officer behind the steering wheel, who happened to be a Van Vuuren.

"’Tis mai cowntree" stammered the old drunk as specks of saliva dangled from his mouth. "We’re free nauw," he added. It was only when the jolly old umnumzane was threatened with arrest that he hobbled away mouthing hell and damnation to the umlungu who disturbed him from answering the call of nature. I was once assigned to interview traditional healers and herbalists at Farady in Johannesburg about the moon eclipse. Traditional healers and herbalists are highly regarded as the guardians of traditional life in South Africa because of their proximity to the gods and traditional lifestyles. It was reported that the moon would move in front of the sun, and as a result the world would be covered with darkness for a while. What does the lunar eclipse spell to the nation? Are the gods angry with us? What is the meaning of all this? Without thinking much about the questions, the first healer responded: "Yes, the gods are angry because we Africans have forsaken the ways of our forefathers."

Well done. I went on to interview the second, third ... "People have thrown away their culture to embrace foreign culture." For a moment I was lost in thought. Other nations are exploring outer space, and some of them have been to the moon more than twice, while we are sadly stuck to the notion that celestial bodies (in this case the moon) are the medium for the gods to communicate their message to us.

"It is my culture"
In the years that followed, I was to hear the same phrase being repeated by men suffering from chronic infidelity. People shielded themselves with the "it is my culture" phrase whenever they found themselves in extramarital trouble. A Sotho saying has it that "a man is like an axe, it is there to be borrowed by anybody who wants to use it in the community." Zuma has recently told the Johannesburg High Court that according to the Zulu culture it is wrong for a man to desert a primed woman: "And I said to myself that I knew as we grew up in the Zulu culture that you don't just leave a woman in that situation” (SAPA 03/04/2006, 23:18). Perhaps we should take stock and reflect on what exactly culture is. How does one define it? No doubt there are so many definitions of culture that it may seem unnecessary even to attempt to define it. However, our discourse dictates that we clarify the issue of our discussion so that we may proceed with a clear vision of where we are heading.

I perceive culture as an activity involving words and deeds as well as perceptions. Murphy (1986:14) defines culture as the total body of tradition borne by a society and transmitted from generation to generation. It thus refers to the norms, values, standards by which people act, and it includes the ways distinctive in each society of ordering the world and rendering it intelligible. Culture is a set of mechanisms for survival, but it also provides us with a definition of reality. It is the matrix into which we are born, it is the anvil upon which our persons and destinies are forged.

What is referred to as African Culture in this paper is essentially customs, traditions and styles of living as practised by all indigenous ethnic groups in South Africa (Tsonga, Swazi, Ndebele, Sotho, Xhosa and Zulu). South African indigenous culture is characterised by diversity, but there are enough similarities in the way the different ethnic groups handle their subcultures for it to be possible for one to categorise them as African culture, or South African indigenous culture to be exact.

From the above definitions it is clear that culture is the totality of human activity and its thought. This brings us to the question: Does our irresponsibility echoes our abuse of culture?

Whether Africans are irresponsible, or a lazy lot, is debatable. I am convinced that some of our unbecoming actions and thinking as pointed out in this paper do not reflect African culture, as they contradict ubuntu (humanism) and are not in tandem with our identity. They are, at best, the worst kind of irresponsibility. What has gone into the mind of a cultured animal called a human being of African descent who tears nappies off a five-year-old baby girl and rapes her? When did baby girls ever become an Aids cure? A heartless sangoma (traditional doctor) shamelessly commits muti murder and cuts limbs from a writhing body, purportedly to heal his patients. Scientists and medical practitioners spend decades in laboratories researching a cure for Aids, cancer, heart problems, etc. Instead of spending some time in a laboratory, African medicine men rape or kill a man to cure another man. The mind is boggled. Psychologists or neurologists might have brains to unravel this mystery.

According to Onyeani (2000:2-5) Africans are non-productive, undisciplined slaves. We have to accept the fact that the black race, as constituted, basically is a consumer race, depending on other communities for our culture, our language, our food and our clothing. And despite our abundance of natural resources, we are economic slaves because we lack the "killer instinct and devil-may-care attitude" of the Caucasian and the "spider web economic mentality" of the Asian. Any unproductive person is essentially lazy and irresponsible. He is someone who hates to live by his blood, sweat and toil, to borrow the Churchillian phrase. Examples of our lack of the "killer instinct and devil-may-care attitude" abound. Call Bongani, the director-general of a national department, and ask him a simple question: “How many staff members do you have in your department?” He will refer you to his junior, Van Wyk, who functions as the encyclopaedia of the department. (Well, no offence is intended for the affirmative action). Early this year, a Transvaal judge president recused himself from the rape trial of the ANC deputy president, and his two deputies were also not available to preside on the trial. This allowed their junior, Judge Willem van der Merwe, the fourth in line in terms of their seniority, to shine in his judgement of the ANC deputy president. If this is not a lack of "killer instinct and devil-may-care attitude" on the part of the senior judges, I do not know what else to call it. (No offence intended for the affirmative action.) If our way of doing things is foreign to African culture, where does it come from?

Some blame the colonial legacy as the main cause, saying that Africans had been in captivity for so long that they have no sense of responsibility or confidence. Even in this age of freedom, they cannot implement their own plans or policies unless someone charges them with a cracking whip. Others say it all started with an African's longing for freedom in the seventies, which saw the invasion of African traditional life. Comrades with rich imagination used to impress upon fellow Africans that when they finally attained their freedom they would live like communists in the Soviet Union ( Russia). These comrades revealed to their brothers and sisters that in Russia of those years, marriage was non-existent, everything was free. One could drive whatever make of a car or sleep in a five-star hotel without having to pay a dime because everything belonged to the people's (communist) government. Africans were given an impression that freedom implies enjoying one's liberties without having to be answerable for one's deeds.

Umnumzane might not have heard of the Utopian life in Russia of the seventies, but his actions illustrate the indoctrination people had from the imaginative comrades. When freedom finally arrived in the 90s, Africans found themselves stagnating on the cultural bridge. Their road to cultural perfection became multidirectional, with the arch-traditionalists insisting on living like in the good old days of "isintu" when milk was called "amasi" and not "inkomazi," when a man was "indoda" and not a shadow of himself. Many members of this group still think of culture as static rather than dynamic. Isimanje-manje/sejwale-jwale (modernity) has no room in the traditional African world view in that it is ever-changing.

At the other end of the polarised scale we find those who aspire to keep up with the Joneses, the so-called "black on the outside and white in the inside – the coconuts", who detest their culture and indigenous languages as ancient and unintelligible.

There are also those who take life as it comes, without having to be bothered whether their priest preaches his Easter sermon wearing jeans and jackboots rather than a cassock.

The last group is made up of the ignorant, the opportunists, charlatans, parasites and the licentious who confuse their unbecoming habits with culture. As in the case of freedom, which is synonymous with irresponsibility for some of our fellow Africans, culture has come to signify a huge black shield to hide the wrongs of our society. The fact that the phrase "it is my culture" is tossed around by the ignorant and the enlightened alike is a case in point.

A Chinese or Romanian without any knowledge of African culture would automatically mistake our misdemeanour as our culture because he cannot distinguish between misbehaviour and culture within the African community.

Our identity
While I was a high school student in the 70s, my heart used to swell with pride when I heard that Africa is not only the cradle of mankind but the origin of civilisation as well, that mathematics is an Arabic invention rather than a Western one. Even today this story is still told with much zest. Of African civilisation and culture, Mbeki (1998) has had this to say:

I speak of African works of art in South Africa that are a thousand years old. I speak of the continuum in the fine arts that encompasses the varied artistic creations of the Nubians and the Egyptians, the Benin bronzes of Nigeria and the intricate sculptures of the Makonde of Tanzania and Mozambique. I speak of the centuries-old contributions to the evolution of the religious thought made by the Christians of Ethopia and the Muslims of Nigeria. I refer to the architectural monuments represented by the scuptured stones of Aksum in Ethiopia, the Egyptian sphinxes and pyramids, the Tunisian city of Carthage, and the Zimbabwe ruins, as well as the legacy of the ancient universities of Alexandria of Egypt, Fez of Morocco and, once more, Timbuktu of Mali.

Writing in the Business Day, May 18, 2006, Mangcu reveals that a white academic, Martin Bernal, has written about the the centrality of Egypt to civilisation. "It was generally accepted in Europe of Egypt as the ‘origins of all wisdom and arts.’” According to the KwaZulu-Natal Sibusiso Ndebele (SAPA May 23-24, 2006), some of the world's earlier civilisations and knowledge systems evolved in Africa. Imhotep, now regarded as the first modern-type medical doctor, and who lived in approximately 2500 BC, was an Egyptian. Africa has contributed to the advancement of mathematics and physics. Some of the world's earliest universities were on the continent of Africa. Some of the world's earlier systems of writing were invented in Africa. All these historical facts make our continent rich in heritage. It is also said that Simon of Cyrene was an African, and that one of the so-called three wise men from the East was also African. The frequency and intensity of the manner in which the arguments flow is a sign enough to justify just how strongly national leaders and intellectuals embrace the above assertions.

However, the debate whether Africa is the foundation of civilisation is outside the scope of this paper. Our concern here is how long Africans will continue to bask in their past glory. When will Africa be the master of its own destiny? When will her children allow her to have a smile of achievement rather than tears of an unending grief? Are we Africans going to be the vassals and carbon copies of other nations till to the end of the world?

I suppose the answer should come from all of us. From the period when the pyramids and the Zimbabwe ruins were constructed until now, not much has been recorded about Africans contributing to the growth of ancient civilisation. Onyeani (2000:4-5) says,

We delude ourselves about African kingdoms which had thrived before the onslaught of first the Arabs, and later the Caucasians. We talk about the pyramids of Egypt, the great empire of Mali and the learning capital of Timbuktu. Yes, I am constrained to agree that these were great legacies that our ancestors left us, but one cannot deny the fact that in the Middle Passage of the 19th century we stopped functioning as a people with intelligence and the instinct to defend ourselves.

Slavery and colonialism! Well, this blame syndrome is becoming redundant. History is cluttered with incidents of Africans selling their fellow men, women and children to the slave masters, and conducting tribal wars (difecane) against one another. In the introduction of his book, Onyeani (2000) points out the situation in African countries after independence.

Most African countries have been independent for more than 40 years. The promise of independence is yet to be fulfilled and we had thought that manna would fall from heaven. But rather than manna falling from heaven, what we have in Africa are wars, famine, disease, military dictatorships, human rights abuses, despotic leaders who prefer to loot the people’s treasuries for their own personal aggrandizement, leaders who prefer to force the adulation of the masses with the barrels of a gun rather than with the provision of simple amenities to the people. As things stand in Africa, the wheel of progress is turning very slowly. Intellectuals are reluctant to voice people's discontent for fear of losing their wealth and importance. I suppose only a peasants’ revolution will one day liberate these countries from the greedy and the gullible.

Conclusion
Some fellow South Africans who are talented in the blame game would strongly suggest that we say all these things into our beards because only a complete moron can afford to wash his dirty linen in public. Anybody who dares to open this pandora’s box would be labelled an anglophile and a hater of his own or a sell-out. Yet it is now high noon in the so-called African Century. One is tempted to ask if the snoring continent will ever wake up to face the scientific and technological challenges. If we don't do self-reflection, nobody else will bother to do it. We must deliver ourselves from the abyss of idleness, short-sightedness and carelessness infesting our body and mind.

References
Business Day, May 18, 2006. Xolela Mangcu's column.

Mbeki, T. 1998. African Renaissance, South Africa and the World. Paper presented at the United Nations University.

Murphy, Robert. 1986. Culture and Social Anthropology: An Overture. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Onyeani, Chika. 2000. Capitalist Nigger. The Road to Success - A Spider Web Doctrine. New York: Timbuktu Publishers.

South African Press Association (SAPA) April 03, 2006.

South African Press Association (SAPA) May 23- 24, 2006. KwaZulu-Natal Province Premier Sibusiso Ndebele's opening address at the African Renaissance and African Intellectuality Summit in KwaZulu-Natal.

The Citizen

LitNet: 21 June 2006

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