AFRICAN THOUGHT-PATTERNS AND SYMBOLISM

A collection of quotations
Attie van Niekerk. 2003

A number of quotations about African thought-patterns and symbolism are presented, based on the assumption that the Bible originated in a context where there may have been similar or comparable motifs, e.g.:

“H Baumann in his book Creation and Primeval Time of Man in the Mythology of the African Peoples (1936,1964).... has set up the African myths of primitive time according to the motifs of the biblical accounts of the origins. There, too, occur the motifs of the offence, the origin of death, the origin of civilization, fratricide, the building of a tower” Claus Westermann: Creation 1971 London: SPCK, p10.

The quotations all reflect one major theme in African philosophy: the principle of unity and continuity.

The immanence that creates the underlying unity of all things…

Laurens van der Post quotes the following story of the Bushmen:

“When the Sun rose Dxui was a flower. The birds ate of him as a flower until the sun set. The night fell. He lay down and slept. The place was dark and the Sun rose Dxui tall as a tree was another and larger kind of flower, but when the night fell Dxui was Dxui. The sun rose and Dxui again was a flower - a light-colored flower that turned into a green fruit which ripened in time, but when the sun went down again Dxui was a man who rested. When the sun rose again, Dxui was Dxui and went away to become a palm...”

John V Taylor comments:

“So through one metamorphosis after another the tale unfolds, not of a divine making, for, inconsequently, birds, sun and so on were already there, but of a divine involvement. It is the immanence that creates the underlying unity of ah things” John y Taylor 1963: The primal vision SCM Press. p73.
                                 
Continuity

The well-known South African poet Mazisi Kunene stated in 1972:
“... in the nature of African society there is a sense of continuity, from the past, and the present, and the future, and this sense of continuity is in fact the basic philosophy of African life.”

Equilibrium of forces

According lo Axel-Ivar Berglund, a Swedish missionary who grew up in Zululand, the God of the Bible created everything and saw that it was good, “.... while from Umvelingqangi flows power, amandla, which is both creative, positive and strengthening and, on the other hand, vile, evil and destructive”(Berglund, “African concepts of health, sickness and heel”. In Listerud, G (ed): The report of the Umpulo consultation on the healing ministry of the church. Umpumulo, Natal 1967:41).

There is the equilibrium of forces, day and night, warm and cold, strong and weak, right and left, up and down, life and death, health and sickness:

“The one cannot exist without the other. The two are dependent on each other. In the same way that one cannot have a right if there is no left, so likewise one cannot have merely health if there has been no sickness. This mode of reasoning has as its background the complete problem of suffering. It is a way of explaining the question of suffering” (Berglund, 1967:47).

Sickness and health

Traditionally, life does not belong to the individual but to the clan. The experience of illness is consequently not so individualistic as it is Western culture. The individual is important because he/she carries the life of the clan from the one generation to the next. Life requires balance, harmony, health, and well-being.

"So important is the Zulu outlook on ímpilo’, life, that everything in society is there more-or-less merely to lake care of, encourage and stabilize the life of the tribe... Everything that disturbs the normal and prosperous flow of life force, amandla, in its creative ability of ‘ímpilo’ in a tribe, that thing is evil. Childlessness is one of the great evils because it touches the essential concepts of life and being ... Sickness is a step in the direction of death, a step that clearly points lo the activity of the evil powers” (Berglund, 1967:39,41).

Unity self and world

The philosopher K C Anyanwu wrote:
“The unity of the self and the world, mind and matter, is something magical because it defies any rational understanding. We can only say that the self and the world interpenetrate each other in such a way that we do not know where the self begins and ends for the world to begin the West seeks rational causality in all things. What happens if nature is alive, if spirit permeates the whole universe, if consciousness cannot grasp the factors of causality? Effects would then be interpreted as magical and so also the method...  Magic raises up the question of causality… .the whole truth about cause is magical, that is, it belongs to the non-material world” Anyanwu. K C 1984, in Ruch E A and Anyanwu, K C: African philosophy. Rome: Catholic Book Agency, pp 87-93.

‘Africans have had lo postulate external hostile powers and agencies more powerful than human beings, with which lo account for the misfortunes that confront them one is apt to look for the reason in a context outside that of physical cause and effect. Naturally, no questions are raised with regard to one's inability lo fulfill one’s ambitions, because causes are always externalized and personalized” Simon Maimela, 1985: Salvation in African Traditional Religions, in Missionalia, pp7,73.

Unity through rituals

Wole Soyinka writes: Religious rites satisfy the... needs of humans to swill, gorge and copulate on a scale such as Nature’s on her monstrous cycle of regeneration.... Man reaffirms his indebtedness to earth, dedicates himself to the demands of continuity and invokes the energies of productivity. Reabsorbed within the communal psyche he provokes the resources of nature: he is in turn replenished for the cyclic dram in his fragile individual potency” WoIe Soyinka, 1973: The Bacchae of Eurípides, a communion rite London, Eyre Methuen, Pxii.

Ezekiel Mphahlele said something similar:

“This game helped through ritual and song and poetry to approach the totality of life as he saw it. This in turn would lead him on to a sense of belonging in some ground pattern or design, a sense of continuity which connected him to his ancestors. This ground design would reflect a Supreme Genius he could only conceive when ritual and poetry imposed order on the environment so that man felt the interconnectedness of things” (‘Variations on a theme: race and colour: Présence Africaine, 83(3), p:24)

Unity with the world

From West-Africa comes this description of Leopold Senghor’s poetry:
“The song of the beating dark blood, the recounting of the tales at evening, the children asleep on their mother’s backs, and the weaving feet of dancers invoking the hour of ultimate night, all state the magic of this black mythical moment of existence in sharp contradiction to the opaque description of the light of Europe. Al this hour, al the call of the woman, the Earth Mother, the ancestors gather to talk to their children. The unity between the living and the dead enforces the eternal links... It is this same woman, naked, clothed in black sin, who expresses the principle of beauty ... the firm-fleshed ripe fruit… raptures of black wine, the rhythmic beat of the tom-tom   (Kofi Awoonor 1976, The breast of the earth. New York: Anchor Books. p166.)

Individual and community

Gabriël M Setiloane (1986: “Human values and rights - an African assessment”, Scriptura No 1 8) writes:

“The primary center of being is the community… Africans have a tremendous difficulty with the concept individual’. Does such a thing exist?”

J A van Wyk (1984: “Liberation theology in the African context” in Hofmeyr and Vorster. “News faces of Africa”, UNISA, Pretoria) remarks:

“The communal emphasis has caused many Africans to feel the center of their identity as being outside themselves, in the community.”

Jomo Kenyatta (1 985: “Facing Mount Kenya”, African Writers Series 219 Heinemann, London, pl19) comments on the Gikuyu tradition:

“Individualism is associated with black magic.... An individualist is hooked upon with suspicion.... one who works only for himself and is likely to end up as a wizard. He may lack assistance when be needs it.”

“.... there is no really individual affair, for everything has a moral and social reference...  corporate effort is the other side of corporate ownership; and corporate responsibility is illustrated in corporate work no less than in corporate sacrifice and prayer... an individualistic is looked upon with suspicion ... one who works only for himself and is likely to end up as a wizard”(pl 19).

Many other authors agree. G-C M Mutiso (1974: “Socio-political thought in African literature: Weusi?” MacMillan, London. 83) writes:

“The community, in African literature, dominates all aspects of African though. Dances are communal and worship is communal. Property was held communally before the colonial era and there are attempts today to reinstate that practice. This inbuilt bias toward the community means that individualism is always seen as a deviance...“
Mazisi Kunene (Duerden and Pieterse, African writers talking”. Heinernann, London. 1972, pp88-89) agrees:

“In Africa the emphasis is always on the symbol which to essence is the representation of the attitude of “the community. In Europe it has long been different: European society has for a long time been organized in individualistic terms, and the emphasis has always been on the individual, and the expressions and the exchange of conversations between individuals in art and drama.

The Household

“The circle is the most telling symbol of the African world view. To comprehend this to come close lo the African feeling of unity and harmony. The area circumscribed by the circle is unbroken and whole. It has no top or bottom, no more or less. All the dynamics in this area combine to form a balanced harmony. Sunrise, sunset, noon and midnight are held together in the circle. It separates what is outside from what is inside. Within life is a unity, held together by a hidden center. Should the circle be ruptured, the unity will disintegrate and life will be extinguished. Within there is shelter, outside there is defenselessness. The circle circumscribes order, any one outside of it has no place lo live.

“The right and left hand sides, the side of strength and that of weakness, stand next lo each other in equilibrium. Life and death balance each other; harmony of forces prevails.

“The African derives his confidence to face life from the unity of his world, through which he experiences what European existentialism wants lo achieve, the uncleft unity of subject and object, the interchangeability of inside and outside, the relation to one’s surroundings and the imbedding of the individual in the community. Thought and feeling, which exist side by side in the West, form a unity here” (Theo Sundermeier, Unio analogica. Understanding African dynamistíc patters of thought Missionalia 1973:120).

Unity with the land

“In Gikuyu life the earth is so visibly the mother of all things animate, and the generations are so closely linked together by their common participation in the land, that agricultural ritual, and reverence for ancestral spirits, must naturally play the foremost part lo re1igious ceremonial... Communion with the ancestral spirits is perpetuated through contact with the soil in which the ancestors of the tribe lie buried ... the earth is the most sacred thing above all that are dwelling or on it…” Ceremonies are performed to cause the rain to fall, to purify and bless the seeds, and again to purify the crops” (Kenyalta 1985: Facing Mount Kenya, Heinernann, pp 21,243-254,316).
“We always come back to our roots. The land is also the bedroom where we put our departed loved ones to bed. It is also the house of our ancestors. We always go back to them to have our dialogue with them, to retain and promote our sense of community. Without them we lose our sense of continuity and history. Without them and their land we float like a ship without an anchor and compass on a stormy sea....” (Mofokeng ca 1987 A black Chrislologv: a new beginning Journal of Black Theology in South Africa, p: II).

The search for unity

Kofi Awoonor summarises Chinua Achebe’s book “Things fall apart”:

“To Achebe, the African world before the arrival of Europe was a well integrated one, with dignity and honor... As a story of the tragic encounter between Africa and Europe, it is an attempt to capture and restate the pristine integrity which has been so traumatically shattered by that confrontation… Order and coherence are followed by that slow, imperceptible and disguised process of destruction and decay when the Christians come... the seeds of havoc are planted.”

The solution follows the problem definition:

“widening the circle .... ultimately will constitute the only human progress… the reunification of all things in a primary universal construct” Kofi Awoonor: Tradition and continuity in African literature, in Smith, Rowland (ed): Exile and Tradition, Longman and Dalhousie Press, London.)

W A de Klerk quoted a writer of the Black Consciousness Movement who spoke in similar terms:

“Blackness means widening the circle, absorbing and integrating instead of being absorbed and integrated… blacks must establish moral and actual authority over the whole” (W A de Klerk: 1 979. The Puritans in Africa, Penguin, p322).

Technology

The following statement by Ayn Rand is a good example of the modern Western view of technology:
“To lake the pounding violence of sixteen motors, she thought, the thrust of seven thousand tons of steel and freight, to withstand it, grip it and swing it round a curve... What made it possible? What power? The motors were a moral code cast in steel. The are alive, she thought, because they are the physical shape of the action of a living power of the mind that had been able lo grasp the whole of this complexity, to set its purpose, to give it form... the power of a living mind - the power of thought and choice and purpose” (Ayn Rand: Atlas shrugged).

This is a stark contrast lo the view of technology described by Camara Laye of French-Guinea. His father was an ironsmith, and his technology was taken up in his traditional culture. There was, for example, a small black snake that lived in a hole in the wall and often came so that the ironsmith could rub it on the head. This snake represented the guiding spirit of the family, and helped him to his work, as his father told him:

“Everything is transmitted to me to the course of the night, together with all the work I shall have lo perform, so that from the start, without having to cast about in my mind. I know how to repair whatever is brought to me; and it is these things that have established my renown as a craftsman... I owe it to the guiding spirit of our race (Camama Laye, The African Child, 1954:19).

In Africa today, there are al least three powerful spiritual worlds that, each in its own way, strive for the unification of ah things, each one according to its own principles:

Western society has moved disturbingly close to a culture in which everything - people, institutes, norms, behavior - are functionally streamlined to serve the goal of progress, of paradise regained through human efforts rule over reality
[B Goudswaardl

“... the widening of the circle into waves that ultimately will constitute the only human progress... the reunification of all things in a primary universal construct.”
[Kofi Awoonor, Ghana)

God decided to reconcile to himself all things on earth and in heaven through Christ.
[Colossians 1]

Conclusion

Postscript

The resilience of African thought-patterns is demonstrated in the answers that a demonstrated in the answers that a representative sample of urban residents gave to a questionnaire, in 1997 (see next page)

Question	Don’t know	Not at all	Agree a little	Agree a lot	
A fire or coal stove in the home brings and keeps my family together	1.6%	7.4%	10.6%	80.4%	
It is better to live in a 	zinc
house/shack than a traditional hut	5.4%	43.9%	14.6%	37.0%	
In our household we depend on our ancestors for our good fortune	6.0%	27.6%	16.6%	49.8%	
Fire brings us in contact with our ancestors	23.4%	24.2%	20.0%	32.4%	
Fire increases fertility	33.4%	23.8%	15.3%	26.8%	
Fire can harm an unborn child	31.6%	22.0%	13.4%	33.0%	
Fire is necessary to cleanse society of evil and of evil people	28.4%	26.2%	21.0%	24.0%	
Fire causes smoke that makes us sick 	3.4%	4.2%	8.8%	83.6%	
Electricity increases the danger of lightning striking the house	26.8%	26.2%	11.0%	36.0%	
I believe that if fire burns with a blue flame it is bad for your health	16.8%	6.2%	9.8%	67.2%	
People who succeed/get rich often only do so because of witchcraft	30.6%	42.0%	10.4%	17.0%	
A good	 funeral is essential as it prevents	the deceased	frorn
harming 	family who remain behind	10.4%	27.4%	31.2%	31.0%