Issues

Ferdinand Berkhof | Thursday May 16, 2013 00:00

We live in a traditional society. Before I go any further, let me make a very clear distinction between 'tradition' and 'culture'. Culture is a living thing and changes all the time.

It is the way in which we speak, eat, dress, make music, the way we dance, act and live in general. Tradition on the other hand, is a rather static phenomenon, which is exactly why it has the potential to cause problems.Essentially, tradition prescribes how we should live, how we should do things, how we should run our lives. The problem with tradition is that it dictates us to do things in a certain way, not for any particular reason but 'because that is the way it is done'.

We do things in a certain way because it is the way our parents, grand-parents and great-grand-parents did them - no questions asked. And that's where the problem lies: no questions asked. No thinking outside the box. We do things in a certain way because that's how they are done; full stop.Young children are naturally inquisitive. They will ask and ask about all kinds of things; it's their way of exploring their new world.

It is a good trait in children, an important trait, meant to assist them in their development, meant to assist humanity in its progress. But in many African traditions it is suppressed. Children are told not to ask so many questions. Do as you are told. We do things in this way. Why? Because that's the way we do it, the way things have been done since time immemorial; it is our tradition.

And this is how tradition has the potential to stifle progress, to smother new ideas, to throttle advancement. The phrase 'it is against our tradition' has suffocated and continues to suffocate many even minor attempts at transforming or advancing our lives and societies.

On top of that comes religion. I'm not talking about the religions Africans adhered to before the arrival of the white man. I'm not talking about the concepts of Badimo and Modimo and similar notions. Essentially, 'white' religion was brought here as an instrument to introduce colonialism, to make it easier to control Africans during the colonial era.

Yes, those 'noble' missionaries brought reading and writing and a few other things. But more importantly, they instilled a sense of inferiority in Africans that in many cases persists to date. The missionaries paved the way for the European colonisers.The following quote beautifully illustrates my point in this respect. It is widely attributed to Jomo Kenyatta.

'When the white man arrived, we had the land and he had the bible. He taught us to pray with our eyes closed.When we opened our eyes, he had the land and we had the bible.' And that is exactly what happened.The missionaries were not the saints they are sometimes portrayed to have been. They were the people paving the way for the thieves and robbers that followed.

And it is ironic that while in Europe, where those missionaries came from, churches are becoming increasingly empty, while here in Africa this 'Western' religion is booming and many unscrupulous Africans are enriching themselves as 'priests' or 'prophets', taking advantage of people's desperation and gullibility, selling susceptible people nonsense like 'anointed water' which will take care of whatever it is they think they are suffering from.

Tradition and forcefully imported religion has held the development of this continent back for close to three centuries now. The sad part of it is that this continued repression of progress is increasingly caused by indigenous Africans. Let's wake up! www.mmegi.bw/blogs