ONE of the most devastating impacts of Western colonialism is the destruction of family bonds within African communities.
The most telling evidence of weakening family bonds is provided by the shrinking size of the extended family.
In the typical African extended family, the first tier of close relatives includes grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins.
The second tier is made up of those related through marriage, perhaps best described as the in-laws.
The third tier of an African’s relatives are those of the same totem group or clan.
All other people will fit into one or other of these categories based on their totems, allowing Africans to identify relationships even with strangers.
In European communities, the nuclear family is paramount.
It consists of the husband (father), wife (mother) and their biological children.
Other relatives are considered as distant.
The closest relatives are one’s parents and siblings, meaning the children coming from the same womb.
In traditional African society, on the other hand, the husband, wife and their children are inextricably connected and intertwined with the relatives of both spouses to create one big family — the extended family.
Members of the extended family consider themselves to be closely related and avoid use of terms that suggest ‘distance’ between them.
For example, in Shona society, all my father’s brothers are also ‘designated as ‘baba’ (father) and must be given equal respect.
There are terms used to indicate if they are older (babamukuru) or younger (babamunini/mudiki) than my biological father, but in ordinary conversation they are all fathers, ‘vanababa’.
Similarly all my mother’s sisters are my ‘mothers’ and may be distinguished by age as ‘mainini’ if younger or ‘maiguru’ if older than my mother.
Among us the children, all the children of the above relatives are brothers and sisters just like my own siblings.
Respect is accorded by age.
‘Mukoma’ is the elder and ‘munin’ina’ is the younger brother or sister. These relations were very tight and close, creating strong bonds that had very significant implications for the survival of these African societies.
One always sought, and always got, strong support from these close relatives.
As African populations have been colonised and Westernised, the traditional structure of family relations has been severely disrupted and compromised. The Western European capitalist society is individualistic, in stark contrast to African societies that have traditionally used a communal approach to tackling life’s challenges.
Through Western education and the influence of Western Christianity and urbanisation, African families and communities have been rapidly disrupted and suffered physical alienation of families and individuals.
The so-called educated, anxious to be seen to be like the ‘elites’, the whites, also adopted the individualistic attitudes, creating distance between themselves and their ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’.
The ‘glue’ holding large extended families together has largely melted away, exposing individuals, families and small communities to the vagaries of hunger and poverty with little or no social support from the traditional African family set-up.
The weakening of family bonds has seen the resilience of African communities to socio-economic stresses rapidly deteriorating and exposing them to the ravages of hunger and poverty.
Today, we complain that girls have no counselling from aunts, ‘vanatete’, and boys lack counselling from uncles and grandfathers, ‘sekurus’.
The erosion of the ‘ukama’ institution, if we can call it that, has deprived our society of the requisite socio-cultural support that came with the strongly-linked and inter-twined ‘extended’ family.
Whereas in the traditional set-up, all parents were responsible for the proper up-bringing of all the community’s children, today we are like white people; one does not even know his/her neighbour.
The ‘ukama’ concept embraced even non-relatives within the community; we were all related.
We shall explore this dimension in the next episode of this series.
The Zunde raMambo approach where the chief and all his people worked together to create a food reserve was premised on close relationships that ensured individuals were not left to suffer alone.
But Western individualism and greed, vices that were foreign to African societies until the advent of European colonisers (vapambevhu and vapambepfumi), have taken root and now characterise the urbanised and often educated elites who make strenuous efforts to dissociate themselves from their rural roots.
In the process, ‘ukama’ or family relationships have been shattered.
The African children being raised in urban environments are physically and socially dissociated from their neighbours, relatives and rural roots.
They are no longer available to support their relatives.
It is now what the Shona refer to as ‘njakenjake’ or ‘one man for himself and the devil take the hindmost’.
We can examine how maintaining close relations benefitted the communities.
In terms of food security, one of the strong tenets among the Shona-speaking communities was: ‘Wako ndowako, kuseva unosiya muto’. This means one is obliged to share whatever food and other resources available with one’s relatives.
This speaks to a strong element of community resilience to outside shocks and stresses.
The above tenet was reinforced by another which said: ‘Ukama igasva, hunozadzisiwa nokudya’.
This one says just being related is not enough; true relationship is demonstrated by feeding the relative(s).
This family support ensured that in traditional societies, no one would starve as family members were obliged to share whatever food they had in stock.
Just to show how strong these African relationships were viewed, there is a Shona saying that: ‘Ukama haugezwe nesipo’.
That loosely translates to: One cannot wash off relationships with soap and water; they endure for life.
Another expression to emphasise the strength of relationships says: ‘Benzi nderako, kudzana unopururudza’.
This is to say: ‘If a madman stands up to dance on the stage, relatives will always applaud’. This speaks to support of family ties,
We can see from the few examples above that close relationships or ‘ukama’ within African communities were a strategy for communities to withstand adversity; probably the main pillar that supported resilience to socio-economic stresses.
In times of hunger, relatives shared food and survived.
Under attack from adversaries, relatives closed ranks to resist the common enemy.
In short, the resilience of African societies to disease, food insecurity, physical attack and any other threats to their existence rested largely on ‘ukama’, the strong bonds that united the extended family and clan or tribe together.
But today, despite all the sermons being preached in churches about brotherly love, individuals and communities are even drawn further apart by individualistic desires for wealth and influence.
The institutions of the Christian Church and even Islam have failed to promote ‘ukama’, close relations among people.
Instead, many wars are being fought based on religious differences. The so-called Christian and Moslem divide between the West and the East illustrates how religion is not and has never been a unifier.
The ancient crusades and the modern invasions of Moslem countries by the West all illustrate the deficiencies of religion in building enduring ‘ukama’ or lasting peace.
We say in Shona: ‘Chitendero chinoputsa ukama’ which is the direct opposite of what is supposed to happen.
Is it in dispute that foreign religions have destroyed our African central institution of the family and ‘ukama’?
Is it disputed that Africans were removed from the ‘good’ practice of ‘ukama’ and thrown into the ‘bad’ individualistic mode?
It is therefore not amiss to conclude that part of the reason African societies today are more vulnerable to socio-economic challenges is the serious erosion of the quantity and quality of ‘ukama’ or close family relationships.
In the next episode, we shall explore the ‘ukama’ concept further to see its links to our African religions, totems and the spiritual dimension of our existence as Africans.