African cultural values
1. Sense of Community
A popular African proverb comes to mind here to express the African sense of community. It says: "Go the way that many people go; if you go alone, you will have reason to lament"1. The African idea of security and its value depends on personal identification with and within the community. Communalism in Africa is a system that is both suprasensible and material in its terms of reference. Both are found in a society that is believed by the Africans to be originally "godmade" because it transcends the people who live in it now, and it is "Man-made" because it cannot be culturally understood independent of those who live in it now2. Therefore, the authentic African is known and identified in, by and through his community.
The community is the custodian of the individual, hence he must go where the community goes . In the material term of reference, the individual must go to the "community centre" or village square which is a social, political, judicial and religious centre. It is the communal meeting place for political discussions, communal tribunals, sports and games. It is therefore a traditional place of congregation for the entire community. In this sense the community is "man-made". Again, the important events in and around the community are well known to its members. And because at the community centre, their tutelary deity often has a shrine, the centres therefore become also the centre of communal religious worship, sacrifices and festivities. In this sense the community there gathered becomes "god-made".
2. Sense of Good human relation
Relationship between individuals recognises their worth as human beings and not only what they possess or what they can do for each other. However, these can come as secondary considerations, in terms of reciprocity and in terms of inter-personal relationship. People help one another without demanding immediate or an exact equivalent remuneration. Everyone is mindful that each person has something to contribute to his welfare, some time and some how. A Hausa13 proverb illustrates this point clearly. It says: “Friendship with the ferryman right from the dry season means that when the rains come, you will be the first to cross". This proverb emphasizes constancy in friendship. In it, the worth of the ferryman, as a human being is not determined solely by what he can offer during the rains, hence he must be befriended right from the dry season when his occupation is not in strict demand.
3. Sense of the sacredness of Life
The African does not like violence per se. This is because shedding of blood is abhorred. People who were killed were those whose continued existence was a threat to the life of others and to the peace of the community. In such cases, the principle that it is better for one man to die than for all the community to perish, applied. War was only taken to as a last resort, that is when all formal and normal courses of action to search for peace had failed. Murder was not encouraged, especially within the clan. lf a man conscientiously killed another man within the community, he was killed himself. But if he killed a kinsman inadvertently, he was exiled for some long period.
However, murder is officially committed during war or in self defence. In this case, the murderer is not expected to eat until he has ritually washed the blood of the slain man off his hands. This ritual helps to free the murderer from the anger of the God’s. This is why “In many (African) tribes the killing of a kinsman, the antithesis of caring for him, was not only a crime but also an abomination. After the murderer had been executed, his family would have to perform sacrifices and rites to remove the stain of evil and ward off the anger of the gods”18 . In this light, unborn children are protected and, abortion is tabooed. Sources of life are sacred. Trees and animals believed to facilitate reincarnation are also sacred.
4. Sense of hospitality
The African sense of hospitality is one of the African values that is still quite alive. The Africans easily incorporate strangers and give them lands to settle hoping that they would go one day, and the land would revert to the owner. For the Africans, one cannot opt out of his original community completely. So they did not imagine that others could.
Africans have symbolic ways of expressing welcome. These are in forms of presentation of kola nuts, traditional gin, coconuts, etc; in various communities. These are given to a visitor to show that he is welcome and safe. Among the Igbo, the basis of hospitality is the generally accepted principle that a guest should not harm his host and that when he departs, he should not develop a hunch back on the way home.In traditional African culture, whenever there is food to be taken, everyone present is invited to participate even if the food was prepared for far less number of people without anticipating the arrival of visitors. It would be a height of incredible bad manners for one to eat anything however small, without sharing it with anyone else present, or at least expressing the intention to do so.
5. Sense of the sacred and of religion
In traditional African societies there were no atheists. This is because religion, in the indigenous African culture, was not an independent institution. It is an integral and inseparable part of the entire culture. Religion in the African sense was practical. One's entire action is reflective of one's religious concepts and practices as is seen in the ordering of society. This is because social morality is dependent on religion, and what Bolaji Idowu says of the Yoruba can pass for many African people. He says: “With the Yoruba, morality is certainly the fruit of religion. They do not make any attempt to separate the two; and it is impossible, for them to do so without disastrous consequences”21.
The traditional African culture fashions moral, religious and philosophical attitudes to life. All were interrelated in reality. The result of inseparability of religion from morality was that: “The ancient Africa was far from being an abode of laissez-faire morality.
6. Sense of time
In the African culture, time is polychronous in the sense that a person can do three or more things within a given period but simultaneously. Clock time thinks of them being done successively. For instance, a woman in a typical Igbo village could be doing her cooking, at the same time cracking her palm kernel, she may still within this period attend to her baby and would be prepared to attend to anything that may come up.It is not uncommon to hear people talking of "African time" to mean that Africans have no sense of punctuality. This statement always refers to the half-Europeanised and half deAfricanised Africans who are finding it difficult to adjust to the "clock-time" category. The traditional African is a master of time and not otherwise. This is why time is socialised, that is, time is programmed into socio-cultural norms of human behaviour and inter-personal relationship.Finally, it must be pointed out that on the one hand, Africans do have and conceive of time in the punctual sense. That is, at a particular time things must happen, have effect, or must be done. This can easily be discovered in African religious concepts. There are specific times sacrifices must be offered and no more. On the other hand, the African use of time does not sacrifice social duties and human relations on the alter of the clock time punctuality.
7. Sense of Respect for Authority and elders.
Africans generally have deep and ingrained respect for old age, and even when we can find nothing to admire in an old man, we will not easily forget that his grey hairs have earned him right to courtesy and politeness. Though it is natural for the African to respect, an elder, this respect in some cases, can be relative to what "we can find" and admire in an elder. It is true that respect for elders starts within one's immediate family. This is why the Yoruba say “Obileye”, which means, parents have dignity and respect.
The elders in Africa are respected for many reasons. For e.g. they are believed to be the teachers and directors of the young. The words of one's elders are greater than amulets, it means that they give more protection than the amulet does. In the same way, the Igbo say: He who listens to an elder is like one who consults an oracle. The oracles are believed to give the infallible truths, thus the elders are also believed to say the truth and their words and instructions are heeded to for the promotion of good behaviour among the young. A typical example of the practical moral effect of the elders' words are contained in this poem of Matei Markwei: “In our little village when elders are around, boys must not look at girls and girls must not look at boys because the elders say, that is not good”.
Furthermore, the elders are taken to be the repository of communal wisdom and therefore they are conceded leadership in the affairs of the people. One of the reasons for this is the nearness of the elders to the ancestors. And in the African concept, “Legitimate power lay in the office sanctioned by ancestral norms, not in the person; and the person lost his right to exact obedience once he abused that office”33. But the elders themselves respect authority and hardly abuse it, and often are committed to the demands of their office.
The respect given to the elders has its practical effect in the maintenance of custom and tradition. The young are always looking forward to being elders and they are often told that if a child respects an elder, he would be respected by the young when he becomes an elder. The care of the aged, as an African institution, is situated within the family. It is so cherished and so organised that there is no need, in the African setting, for nursing homes for the aged as exist today in Europe and America. The idea of old people's home and its introduction into Africa would lead to the abuse of the African sense of and respect for old age.
8. Sense of Language and proverbs
Language expressed in speech is an important vehicle of thought and culture. People express their thought in speech and both are determined, to a great extent, by their culture. The culture element in language has been noted by Swartz and Alland when they noted that different language organise the world differently, and that no individual is free to describe with absolute impartiality what he observes in other cultures because he must be constrained by certain modes of interpretation. The principle of "relativity" in this regard holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar36.
There is an African proverb which says that “the stranger who returns from a journey may tell all he has seen, but he cannot explain all”. This is because, for him to explain all, he must share the people's language categories. This is why translations are often defective. The famous Italian proverb says: “Traddutore traditore”, which means, a translator is a traitor. Put in another way, the French say: "Les traductions sont comme les femmes: lorsqu'elles sont helles, elles ne sont pas fideles, et losqu'elles sont fideles, elles ne sont pas belles". This, in English, runs thus: translations are like women: when they are beautiful, they are not faithful, and when they are faithful, they are not beautiful
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