A PEOPLE without culture are akin to a ship without a rudder, floating on the open sea.
Such a ship can be blown in any direction by prevailing winds.
The implications are frightening.
A rudderless ship is open to plunder by pirates prowling the open seas.
Such is African society after colonisation and conversion to foreign Western Christian values.
Through systematic cultural deconstruction and stigmatisation, the fabric that holds African societies together has been destroyed.
Africans have been induced by hook, crook and sheer brute force to abandon their cultures and religion; their tried and tested sustainable ways of life.
They are now rudderless ships with no home-grown norms and values.
Since the arrival of Western missionaries, Africans have been largely disconnected and alienated from their ancestral spirits and from God, Musikavanhu.
The daily prayer meetings, church services and revival crusades prevent people from settling down to re-examine their circumstances and re-establish contact with their social and spiritual world.
They refer to this perpetual state of social, spiritual and cultural agitation as ‘chirungu’, which literally translates as ‘the ways of the white people’.
As a result, Africans have been forced to abandon their cultural and religious rituals and ceremonies which ensured they lived in harmony with their neighbours and natural environment.
The white missionaries cleverly substituted the African God, Musikavanhu, with the white God whose teachings were said to be in the Bible, which Bible most Africans could not read.
They had to rely on the preacher’s biased interpretation of Bible verses to further the cause of colonisation.
Once the unsuspecting Africans erroneously believed that the God of the whiteman’s Bible was the same as their own Musikavanhu, they were ripe for religious and cultural slaughter.
They abandoned their religious and cultural rituals and ceremonies in exchange for so-called Christian teachings.
As a people, they became a rudderless ship in stormy waters.
The Church, through its Biblical teachings, has consistently refused to accept African culture and religion as legitimate.
The consequences of abandoning their own culture and religion have been devastating for the African people.
We now turn to examine the consequences of Africans abandoning their cultural/religious rituals at the behest or under the threat of the white colonising foreign Christian religion.
A ritual is a process or procedure that is carried out regularly and in the same manner for a particular purpose.
There are rituals related to marriages, rainfall, mining, health, restitution for crimes committed and many other facets of life.
Our aim is to show that by abandoning their African rituals, indigenous people have now become like lost sheep.
Their social and even economic lives have been severely disrupted to a point where the social fabric holding society together has been severely damaged almost beyond repair.
Abandonment of cultural rituals has resulted in the mass disruption of African societies.
This is because Africans, despite abandoning their culture and religion, have not been accepted into the white social or religious establishment.
Some examples will help illustrate that colonialism has destroyed African societies.
Colonialism and its gospel of capitalism brought with it individualism, including the foreign concept of a nuclear family.
The concept of family where parents, children and all the relatives were part of one family was one of the strongest bonding elements for social stability among indigenous people.
It has been destroyed.
In comes ‘chirungu’ where the man, his wife and biological children only constitute the so-called nuclear family; all others are peripheral extensions.
The extended family is a concept totally foreign to African culture.
Its adoption by the Westernised elite has had devastating consequences on Africa’s social fabric.
The African family concept provided a strong safety net for large numbers of related people.
There were no cousins; only brothers and sisters.
Ceremonies like ‘kurova guva’, to bring back into the family the spirits of the departed, brought together family members.
These gatherings provided opportunities for family members to bond, identify with each other and for the younger generations to learn the ways of their people from the elders.
The church and colonisers denounce such ceremonies and rituals as demonic.
The poor ‘converted’ Africans no longer gather for these and the social links among family members are broken.
It was the normal practice that the succession of chiefs in a given clan was discussed among the elders.
Spirit mediums are the repositories of the historical narrative of a given clan.
The spiritual head of the clan, the ‘svikiro’ or spirit medium is consulted to make the final determination as to who was the legitimate successor.
Since the coming of the missionaries and colonial governments, Government officials have used political considerations to install chiefs.
During the colonial period, sell-outs who supported the white Government were rewarded with chieftainships.
Unfortunately, such chiefs did not have the blessing of the people’s ancestral spirits.
Calamities and mishaps characterised the reigns of wrongly installed chiefs as religious and cultural rituals and ceremonies were not carried out properly.
Communities could fall prey to endemic diseases, drought or even be plagued by wild animals preying on their domestic animals.
This problem of unstable chieftaincies persists today as corrupt practices are sometimes used to install non-deserving, but well-connected individuals as chiefs.
These individuals do not follow traditional practices, thereby prejudicing their people.
Related to the above problem is the issue of rain-asking ceremonies.
Some so-called traditional leaders who are appointed un-procedurally (not according to correct traditional process), fail to carry out the requisite rituals.
Some may have converted to Christianity which shuns these important African rituals at the start of each cropping season.
The consequences of failing to conduct required ceremonies may include local droughts, thereby compromising the people’s food security.
When crimes such as murder are committed, Africans have special rituals that must be followed to resolve the problems.
Avenging spirits, called ‘ngozi’ will often trouble the family of the offender. Special rites must be conducted, including payment of restitution to the family of the deceased (kuripa ngozi).
If restitution is not paid, calamities will haunt the family of the offender.
Now, many converted to Christianity have refused to respect the traditional practice of ‘kuripa ngozi’ with dire consequences for innocent members.
No amount of praying or consulting of ‘minana’ prophets will appease the ‘ngozi’ spirits.
Within the marriage rites is a practice where a cow, ‘mombe youmai’, is paid to the mother in-law by ‘mukwasha’, the son-in-law.
If this is not done, social calamities will haunt the new family’s children.
Some ‘educated’ Africans will simply dismiss the rituals of paying mombe youmai as an archaic primitive practice.
Unfortunately the courts where these matters are determined are in the spirit world and there is no alternative solution, but to comply with the traditional rituals.
We have shown that many social, environmental and other development challenges can be avoided by following African traditional ceremonies and rituals.
The impact of colonialism has been to induce Africans to abandon these traditional practices.
The consequences have been devastating in many ways, especially as many have refused to comply for religious (Christian)) reasons or simply because they have become Europeanised and do not want to associate with ‘backward’ traditional practices.
It is time Africa digs deep into its rich history and experiences to identify and take advantage of indigenous technologies (practices) that have stood the test of time. Europe and America are spending millions to research African indigenous knowledge so as to use the African wisdom to compliment their own technologies!
Who says there is no good to come out of Africa?