Africa has changed. And not for the better. The traditional state has all but crumbled, and the future of the continent rests on nothing but a multitude of people whose belief systems are now solidly foreign to the land. Their thinking is un-African and their tastes are rooted in the soils abroad. Is it Islam, or is it Christianity, or is it the doctrine of a market economy we have inherited from a painful colonial past?
From whence will Africa’s salvation come?
The tension between the Old and the New has ceased. It used to be even palpable, which nonetheless still generated a hope in the Old that the children of Africa, whose brains have been stolen, and replaced with central processing units that only take in commands and execute them with speed and at ease, would yet return and awake from the stupor of the matrix.
One African cannot recognize the other.
Islam and Christianity have even made it all too convenient to be in fear of one’s neighbor. Your neighbor can be a witch, a demon, or Satan himself. Or so we are taught and indoctrinated in these places where Africans troop to worship Yahweh or Allah – or whoever it is that they are.
Worse, for absolutely no religious or spiritual reason, the modern African now considers a Vodu practitioner, a follower of a mischievous spirit. Add to that, many modern Africans today have an agenda – to convert every single member of their families to Christianity or Islam, or else.
Our children no longer learn their history. They are stored in Boarding Schools, Mission Schools, where they don’t even have a chance to pick the Red or the Blue pill. They cannot tell you the name of the great grandmother who challenged Colonial Occupation. They don’t know the name of the great grandfather who fought against slave raiding rebel abductions of people. But, they can tell you about Abraham, Ishmael, Jacob and they too hope that one day, by God’s grace they can pay homage to a land far, far away, called Bethlehem.
“You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” ― Morpheus, to Neo, The Matrix, 1999.
Their parents can no longer live next door to an Amaga (Ga for a Vodu statuette). They will not sit in the same taxi with a Trornor (Ewe Vodu priest) nor would they be caught engaging an Okomfo (Akan Vodu priest) in deliberations concerning the future of renewable energy and renewable materials for the village. No.
Perhaps, the traditional African way of life is to blame.
There has never been a period in Africa’s long history where religion has been separate and distinguishable from the culture, the rule of law and the Scientific Theories of the various African Academies of Science throughout antiquity. Even the beacons of African Science, Hesy-Ra, Merit-Ptah, and the Father of Medicine, Imhotep Jaimhotep (c. 2650–2600 BC) himself, to whom many African intellectuals still pour libation to daily, were Chief Priests of various renowned Temples throughout ancient Egypt.
Imhotep Jaimhotep – the one who comes in peace, is with peace – was the Chancellor of the King of Egypt, Doctor, First in line after the King of Upper Egypt, Administrator of the Great Palace, Hereditary nobleman, High Priest of Heliopolis, Builder, Chief Carpenter, Chief Sculptor, and Maker of Vases in Chief.
This intimate part of the African genius, inseparable, is the religious underpinning of the culture. Which has thus served as the foundation upon which Christianity and Islam have bred the new current of mysticism against the African way of life and sowed the spiritual distrust for traditional African religions.
The unfortunate period of Colonial Occupation didn’t help. It exacerbated the problem to monstrous proportions.
In keeping with the traditions of Africa, the Church and the Mosque equally tapped into the religiosity of African culture and then turned it against itself. The new African, now indignant of the practices of Vodu, rather than seek to transform it, or even modernize it to suit, sought rather to demonize it with a backup doctrine that was foreign and antithetical to the essence of African-ness.
The Gods of the Rivers and of the Seas were questioned, even challenged – people begun to go fishing on the days of rest for the Gods – the ceremonial Ancestral dishes laid at the footsteps of traditional tombs and cults were taken and eaten by folks who claimed they had no dinner; the rule of law in traditional Africa was threatened, the extended family was under siege and the chiefs, having converted themselves into all sorts of Roman Catholicism, became ceremonial thugs than any rendition of the respectable position in the pantheon of African tradition laid down since the Pharaohs of Nubia.
Christianity and Islam hence became the tools to fight traditional Africa. As if that was bad enough, they became the only tools available to the educated African to critique, assess and suggest modifications to the African way of life.
By the time the kind of transformation the new African – now educated, or rather, schooled in the Missionary Coventries and Monasteries of Islam and Christianity – now living in the Big City sought had become a reality for the individual and family, it had succeeded already in wiping away any remnant of the customs and traditions of a people who had come to give so much to Africa and the rest of the world in terms of culture, science, religion and the rule of law.
By this token, it has become far more expedient for the modern African to think of himself first as a Christian, or a Moslem, second as Nigerian, or Ghanaian, and lastly as African. It is more prudent in the eyes of the new African to enroll their children in Piano Classes than seek the Xylophone player in his village to teach their children African folk songs without much ado about the capital flight from his village and the continued decline of the traditional market economy of his traditional area.
Never mind that once that Xylophone player is dead, a specie that has taken more than 10,000 years to develop and train, is lost forever in the vast expanse of the flow of time and space. The Xylophone master becomes extinct.
For after all, the Xylophone master, skilled in the singing and composition of satanic rhythms alone, is of no use to the new African who now believes that the Hymns of the Church of England are more capable of catapulting him and his nuclear family from the doldrums and stupor of a Hamitic (cursed) Religion that is Vodu, into the forever enervating abyss of Europe’s newfound material capitalism.
All Churches and Mosques, including the Heads of State of some African nations, have now banned the pouring of Libation – a custom that has underscored Africa’s 12,000 illustrious year history in bringing civilization to the rest of the world. There is not a single Christian who does not scoff at their Grandmother for suggesting to pour libation at a child’s Outdooring, forgetting that Outdooring, itself, as a tradition, is not a particularly Christian idea.
There is not one modern African who thinks that pouring libation to the Ancestors, their Gods, and our Gods, is befitting of a Circumcision ceremony for a baby boy without reverence to the fact that circumcision itself is not a Christian idea. It is intrinsically African.
Nor is there one modern African family today who would send its fourteen year old daughter back to the village to partake in a right de passage such as the Krobo Dipo Ceremony. No.
With Islam and Christianity, we have become afraid not only of our own traditions, customs and rituals, we have become afraid of our own people, and of ourselves.
In an age where Churches and Mosques dot every corner of our streets, where traditional African religions have been booted out and have no place in the circumscription of societal goals, there have come to only exist, a hitherto non-existent occurrence, mentally ill patients roaming and loitering, beggars, the poor, and children without homes, all of whom could never have been imagined under traditional African society.
Alas, why?
We no longer know how to take care of our own even if we wanted. We no longer want to take care of our own if we had the means. We have become Neanderthals – no culture, no society and no humanity – just the instinct to eat, shit, hate, kill, destroy, sleep, fuck and die!
Islam and modern Christianity did not come to Africa to save lives; they came to destroy what was left of an Africa, after a painful and exploitative colonial period.
Narmer Amenuti talks the walk here in this studious approach to the Afrolytics of Foreign Religiosity in Africa and what the consequences portend for a future that could still be based on the traditions, customs and rituals of our African-ness. This piece is heavy-laden with nuance, albeit still debatable. I don’t think Narmer Amenuti shies away from constructive debate. I will be surprised if no one challenges him on his African Prophetic ideas about the way forward in Africa. Let me be the first to iterate the first challenge to this school of thought. Can the Mission school be all that bad? After all, we know how to read and write – that alone, whether the first scripts and writers originated from Africa or not, should count for something. No?
The mission schools taught us to read and write in foreign languages mostly and in the long run the disadvantages outweighs the advantages. The mission schools taught us to turn away from our Africaness. We therefore become zombies manipulated from afar.
I like the use of the expression ceremonial thugs to describe most of our chiefs. That is even being diplomatic to them! These chiefs who sell ancestral stool lands for trinkets and funny triflings.
I like that expression as well – Ceremonial Thugs. Oh yes, I know all about these ceremonial thugs, it is a PC term, I agree. What these children have done to Asante Lands remain to be addressed some time in the near future. I can’t wait to see such dirty little nincompoops answer for their hideous behaviors in the last century.
This is an excellent article. So much work needs to be done to repair the minds of our brothers and sisters. But the truth and information is coming. Hotep
Akosua M. Abeka, yes that should count for something. The problem is that, that is the only part of the new African that counts for anything. You see the new African and all you see is Mission School.
Narmer Amenuti I absolutely concur. Something must give, if we can’t seem to make a way forward, then the Mission must give way to another one – preferably an African Mission.
Interesting read and interesting pov expressed by the article. Thanks for sharing Akosua M. Abeka. My take on this, the modern day world is a Euro Centric world built to promote and reinforce white superiority. In this world order the dominant culture will always win, while lesser subservient ones will be left to thrive in museums of natural history long gone and forgotten.
LOL Ares Mars! You are absolutely right! I couldn’t put it better. Do you think though that we should do something about it? I always ask myself, what would Yaa Asantewaa do? So for the men of Ghana, you have to ask yourselves, what can you do to stop this from happening? Is your life worth fighting for the change we want?
Akosua i just chose to be a passive reader to this article with no comment till you brought to bear a question “So for the men of Ghana, what can we do to stop this from happening”?
To work against the current of the sea waves has not been joke and will never be a joke because it present direction has purpose built in principle to a benefit for a circle,when ignoring the ethical implication.
So it has to be made clear if you want to stop or revers the metaphorical waves in my context, then a momentum mightier than such a force should be generated to create a different direction.
And do most of the claimed soldiers have the requisite skills and equipment to create such new force. That is the Problem? But as the War lord for Economic freedom and Economic Justice of Africa still building my intellectual weapons and will hear from us soon.
Akosua M. Abeka with all that said though I am not a big advocate for returning back to the “old ways”. I strongly believe there was a real problem with the culture of African societies pre colonialism and slavery. The cultures of that period was deeply rooted in superstition and for the most part divisiveness. We have never been a homogeneous group and I attribute that to the culture. When Europeans showed up they had a field day picking apart the whole continent because of this. It’s easy to point the finger but as far as the conditions of black people globally I would say we were co-conspirators in our own demise.
Neither do I subscribe to Ares Mars present proporsal because every culture creation has within it an embedded philosophical principle for a purpose. Example the trees were gods as presume by our ancestors; was one of the unique attempt to condemn uneccessary deforestation a way to protect the ecosystem.
So to totally abounden our culture for a new concept, lacking the underlining philosophy was greatest error of our fore fathers.
What it only needed, was modification to tune to time of advancement.
Tweneboah Senzu agreed, am not an authority on the cultures across the African continent. And you may very well be right about the original intent behind a lot of these practices. There may have been a higher purpose behind them. Only suggesting that maybe, just maybe some of these practices did us no good. Some may have actually contributed to our un doing.
I agree with you, Tweneboah Senzu, and in a way, with you, Ares Mars. These are the conversation we need to seriously begin to engage in. Much of what we have come to know about African culture, from the 1400s through to the 1900s, were largely written and studied by westerners. When they say African society was superstitious, I say, for whom? When they say African society was animist, I say, to whom? Our grandparents and their great grandparents did not think they were foolish to believe in fables. Like Tweneboah Senzu said, if they regarded the River to be a God, they did so from the fulcrum of their understanding that the waters cannot be polluted. That is Science! The Mississippi River in the USA has been totally polluted today according to western Science. They have signs that you fish at your own risk – that the fishes contain such hazardous amounts of carcinogens. Hell, no one can swim in that river. Now, these Europeans are the ones tooting their newfound Science everywhere but if the Mississippi was a River in Africa it would not have become DEAD. At what points did our customs and traditions begin to be rolled away by folks who now looked upon them as Superstitious? Early 1900s. Prior to that, no one could even fish in the Bosomtwi without a traditional permit, which meant, you were monitored. Now, you can defecate in the Lake without consequence. Why? It’s no longer a God! I hope the Volta does not become the Mississippi. But it will if we continue to believe that our Ancestors were wrong in the way they envisioned the world. It will if we continue to think that western view and interpretation of science is the only model. Our ancestors had their own model. Albeit, it wasn’t the way others would think about science. But it was a model that had kept the world safe, clean and habitable for 11,000 years! White people are going to manage, with their new models in hand, to destroy the world in only the 400 years they have become a little enlightened through African Science. So I ask you, whose model is the right one for posterity, Europe’s or Africa’s? I would chose our Ancestors grasp of the concepts of Environmental Protection, Global Warming, Sustainable Agriculture, Zero Tolerance for GMOs, Zero Tolerance for Nuclear/Atomic Bombs, Socialist/Communal Market Economies, etc. any day over the Material Capitalism of the West. Any day, I will chose my Ancestor’s ideas! Why? They are superior! They keep us safe, they keep us clean and the keep the planet from the threat of destruction. Let’s go back and try it. If it doesn’t work, let’s find a new way, like Ares Mars said. But we have to go back and try! We’ve go to!
Akosua M. Abeka well thought out and constructed response.
Akosua M. Abeka I see what you are saying. If we judge cultures by the Western based ideologies that we have been raised to follow, these cultures will always fall short. They might have been brilliant in the way their societies evolved but will never make sense as they don’t fit in the Euro model.
Ares Mars, uuuh, you got it Brother! I am with you. By the way, you put it better, more succinctly, and straight to point. Great!
So, European culture never made sense to us, until we were forced through our ancestors to accept in the processes of slave trade and colonisation.
And that is why among the novels I have read in life, the one I love most and appreciate the story pattern is “Things fall apart” publication by Prof.Chinua Achebe
Which indicate that the high priest of most of the kingdoms warn our ancestors of this day.
And place it in a prophetic context that calamity was going to befall upon the land on the generation to come