adminPathisa Nyathi
IN the last article we saw the exclusion of women from the office of chief. More importantly, we gave the justification or basis for that exclusion. For each cultural practice there was some belief or operationalised worldview. Thought underlies human actions, interactions, understanding and its physical and metaphysical origins, processes and effects.
For very long there have been misconceptions, some of them racist in origin, suggesting that Africans never possessed some philosophy of any kind. One of the leading African philosophers, Asante Molefi has this to say in that regard, “We know the
Africans have thought about the universe longer than any other people. The people of the world have been black longer than any other colour.”
Asante goes further to assert that philosophy itself originated in Africa and the first philosophers in the world were Africans.
The African tradition is intertwined with the earliest thought. Some people will want us to believe that philosophy originated in Greece. As a matter of fact, the pioneering Greek philosopher Thales had been to Egypt in Africa to learn philosophy. When Pythagoras approached him so he could teach him, he referred him to Egypt where Pythagoras remained for over two decades and returned to Greece once he had acquired knowledge, including the famed Pythagoras theorem in Geometry. Africans were already building pyramids, a grand geometrical feat by any account.
We mention all this so that we begin to appreciate that even as the Ndebele devised succession rules, they were applying their worldview or philosophy. Julian Cobbing, in his seminal doctoral thesis,
The Ndebele Under the Khumalos, submitted to the University of Lancaster wrote as follows, “After death the induna was succeeded by the eldest son from the ‘great house,’ (indlu enkulu) and a variety of safeguards were common to ensure that where a chief failed to father a son in the ‘indlu enkulu’ substitute fathers or mothers were found,”(Cobbing 1976: 63).
The deceased chief was indeed succeeded by the eldest qualifying son. One cardinal qualification was that the son was born in indlu enkulu, the senior house. Even then there could be some disqualification. If the eldest son was disabled, for example, he could not succeed his late father.
Once again here, the Ndebele expressed some cosmological underpinning for their cultural behaviour. As pointed out already, the status and performance of a nation was deemed to correspond to the circumstances of the head of state.
The practice is well understood: it was the eldest qualifying son who succeeded his father. We should not end there. Instead, we should pose a question, “why the eldest son?” What was the philosophical underpinning for that behaviour? We should not just take it as a given. Why was it not the youngest son? Why not some middle son?
The one qualification that the eldest son has is that he has been on earth the longest. He “saw the sun” earlier than the rest of the sons. It is thus all pinned down to age. The vital question then is about African ideas, or conceptualisation of age.
Where are we to glean African ideas about age? Perhaps before we do that we may do well by citing some example where age was an important consideration outside of chiefly succession. When men or women ate communally it was the eldest person who picked a piece of meat first, odobha kuqala. Their ages then decided the order for the rest. The youngest was the last to have his/her pick.
African philosophy is expressed particularly in central and southern Africa as ubuntu, hunhu, which is some socio-political philosophy. Proverbs and folktales, as components of oral traditions, are some of the sources of African philosophy and values. For example, the Ndebele have a proverb which goes, “Inyathi or indlela ibuzwa kwabaphambili.” Literally, the proverb underpins the importance of seeking advice about the behaviour of a buffalo from the elders (hunters). It is the elders who know the way, (indlela).
Africa posits that age is a critical factor in gaining knowledge and wisdom.
The one important idea to appreciate is how time is reckoned. The Beginning or Source, (phambili), refers to something that, in European terms, lies in the past. To the Africans the past is Phambili (ahead). I am older that Reverend Paul Bayethe Damasane. In Ndebele, indeed African conceptualisation of time, I am phambili while the Reverend Damasane is emuva.
What this means is that I am nearer the Source than him. But where is the Source? Phambili or Source or the Beginning is in reference to some distant past. Those born nearer Source are phambili. In European conceptualisation that is behind.
Wisdom is acquired in reference to one’s proximity to Source. It was this conceptualisation that led the Reverend Damasane and I to coin the expression, “IPhambili leNdebele liseMuva.”
This conceptualisation spills into the realm of the dear departed ancestors. They are Phambili, having garnered knowledge and wisdom before we were born. Their spiritual power derives from their being nearer Source. They too are not of the same age. Those that lived a longer time ago are senior spirits purely on the basis of their having been born nearer Source or the Beginning. This, in African Thought, is the conceptualisation of God, the Source and the Beginning and thus the Almighty, the Wise and the Knowledgeable. Indeed, the Omnipresent!
The past is glorified and is the source of wisdom. The elders are therefore closer to Source and possess more wisdom and knowledge. This is true of other African peoples. Wisdom is directly proportional to one’s length of sojourn or habitation on earth.
This is how age and related wisdom and age are perceived: more days/years, more wisdom. “What an old man sees seated, a youth does not see standing,” so goes a proverb by a West African people of the Niger Delta.
Clearly, such an idea embraces the rest of black Africa. It is in the same vein that when an old person dies in a community, it has been said a library has gone on fire. A library has books that contain knowledge. The same is not said when a young person dies.
The narrative rendered above goes to show why the eldest son succeeded his father, assuming of course that he has come of age. If the eldest qualifying son was still a minor, a regent, older than the son, was appointed to take care of chieftainship affairs. Age comes with knowledge and wisdom. Given this expose, it does not come as a surprise therefore, that the eldest qualifying son succeeds his late father.
If there is one lesson to be learnt from this narrative, it is that there is always need to seek the philosophy, belief or worldview that legitimates, informs and conditions cultural behaviour. If we do that, we certainly stand a better chance of understanding the African and his ways. To do otherwise and ignore the African worldview when dealing with Africans smacks of intellectual imperialism and academic arrogance.
Online Reporter