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 Published
August 29th, 2010
I’m both impelled and compelled by my love for cultural traditions in all
its beauty and flamboyance to pass a few comments on the
article titled “The cultural clash over life and death” by
Kofi Akosah-Sarpong, a Ghanaian, published in the African
Herald Express, current edition, and accessible through this
link:
The cultural clash over life and death, for those who want to read the full article in order to get
a clearer perspective of the issues at stake.
Why this rejoinder? The rather dismissive and menacing tone of the
article has given me cause to respond to and dwell on an
issue that has been agitating my mind for some time now
about which I’m planning to do a full featured article in
the near future and for which this article has only provided
me with a veritable launch pad to unload some materials in
this brief rejoinder.
Understandably, therefore, this rejoinder goes beyond what was actually
written in the article, to the general condescending
attitudes of the African elites in general toward their own
culture in the name of modernity while at the same time
sheepishly aping other foreign cultures that continue to
invade the continent of Africa, contaminating and/or
decimating our cultural heritage in the process.
In the article, the author appears to have launched an
incipient war on African culture using as pretexts the cost
of funeral ceremonies and beliefs in demon spirits causing
road accidents and illnesses, which by the way, is not
peculiar to Africa but to other cultures all over the world
including the Christian traditions. Don’t Christians believe
in evil spirits inflicting pain and disease conditions on
humans? In fact it is at the core of Christian belief
system. Is that coming from African culture? I don’t think
so. But I do know that it is a universal belief shared by
millions of humans in other continents as well.
The author himself may not have meant bad in the article
itself, but he has unwittingly provided deadly ammunition
for those forces on the continent itself bent on destroying
the last vestiges of African culture. Therefore, my comments
are necessitated by the need to disabuse the minds of both
the mature and impressionable readers, who might see this as
a license to denigrate the culture, and to correct certain
misconceptions about cultural traditions in general and the
African culture in particular.
First, I appreciate the theme and the general drift of this article.
However, its conclusions are rather too sweeping,
non-discriminatory, and condescending and, therefore,
disturbing to a Pan Africanist like me. Much as one would
agree with the writer that certain cultural beliefs in
Africa in general, not just Ghanaian's, are
counterproductive, for example, the beliefs in demons
causing road accidents or illnesses in certain parts of the
continent, that's no reason to condemn African culture as a
whole.
Beliefs are what they’re and are subject to change with superior
evidence. Time there was when the earth was thought to be
flat and the Roman Catholic Church in Rome held on
tenaciously to that belief and even crucified the pioneer
Astronomer Galileo for questioning that belief. But beliefs
are just beliefs and nothing substantive as cultural
artifacts or celebrations and therefore not to be taken as a
people’s culture anymore than the belief in a flat earth
should be taken as a culture of the West before Galileo. In
other words beliefs are liable to be changed in the face of
superior evidence and not to be taken as permanent features
of any culture. Beliefs in the existence of Unidentified
Flying Objects (UFOs) coming from some alien beings from
other celestial abodes, for example, is liable to be
disproved in the course of time by contrary evidence, just
like Galileo did about the shape of the earth more than a
century ago.
The aspects of the African culture dealing with the costs of funeral
should not be used either to run down or condemn the culture
in general, or even at all. Funeral ceremonies are nothing
but grand finale celebrations of the lives of deceased
relatives who are considered worthy of receiving such
treatment. It’s no more than a send off party in grand style
by those who consider the deceased worthy while alive. There
is absolutely nothing wrong with the celebration of the life
of a deceased relative no matter the costs involved if the
relatives can afford it. It is not imposed on them by law
but purely out of their own free will informed by their own
financial abilities. No one forces an expensive funeral on
anybody. It's a one-time event that deserves to be
remarkable as eternal mark of respect for the deceased
person. In the West and East, millions of dollars are spent
to build mausoleums in honor of deceased personages and
that’s part of their culture.
Again, people throw expensive parties for the living including
birthdays, send offs and remembrance ceremonies, just to
mention but a few and no one complains about these
celebrations. It's all part of the culture and never
considered a waste or somebody thinking that the money used
for those celebrations should have been saved to build
factories to generate employment. That is myopic thinking.
There is no life without celebrations. It’s what make life
worth living, not factories or manufacturing plants, which
are economic drudgeries and necessities that people merely
tolerate for economic reasons only. Who wants to spend eight
hours in a factory if given the alternative to go have some
fun at a party or vacation or some cultural festival?
Every social activity has its place in a society and in the overall
cultural milieu. None should be sacrificed for the other or
downplayed. Marriage, funeral, religion, food, clothing,
shelter, occupation, healthcare, education, literature,
social and table manners are distinct cultural attributes
that distinguish one culture from another. And it’s
absolutely injurious to seek to destroy, belittle, or
undermine these cultural attributes under any pretexts
whatsoever.
The West and the East have their own elaborate cultural celebrations and
observances that are just as costly as African funeral
celebrations, if not more. A typical funeral ceremony in the
US, for example, costs several thousands of dollars and some
run into tens of thousands of dollars, even millions of
dollars in some cases, depending on the personality
involved. We were all witnesses to the Michael Jackson
funeral bash with the coffin alone costing a million dollar
or so as was indeed the funeral of late music legend James
Brown. African funerals are no exceptions and no one should
seek to downplay their social and cultural importance in the
African society in the name of saving money for investments.
Even so, not all funeral and wedding ceremonies in Africa cost thousands
of dollars. Again, it all depends on the personality
involved. The author of this article and those who denigrate
our culture in the name of science and modernity, need to be
told that funeral celebrations are not responsible for the
low economic development in Africa in general and Ghana in
particular. Culture is a potent economic activity generator
if wisely tapped. Culture is a source of foreign exchange in
terms of tourism if wisely developed.
We should look elsewhere for the cause of Africa's economic backwardness
not on culture. On the contrary, as the author himself has
admitted, funeral celebrations is "good for business" and
whatever is good for business is good for the economy. In
parts of the world including the United States for example,
Halloween, which has pagan origins, is good for business and
so is Valentine, Christmas and other religious observances
where people throw elaborate parties to celebrate these
events. Undeniably, these are all elements of culture. Is
anybody complaining about their costs? If no, why complain
about the cost of African funerals and I might add for good
measure too, African marriages, for that matter.
Does anybody care to know how much people in the Western and Eastern
worlds spend on wedding ceremonies? Some run into millions
of dollars, not just thousands of dollars. Does anybody care
to know how much people in the West and in East spend on
vacations year in year out, or for birthday parties year in
year out? Some run into thousands of dollars. Is that a
waste or what? No, it's not a waste, it's a celebration of
the living and the dead deserve no less. Life is meant to be
celebrated not just lived.
And come to think of it, it's not the dead that is doing all the eating
and drinking and dancing at their funerals, it's the living
for crying out loud! It’s the living that celebrate the life
of the dead and the only thing for the dead is a coffin! Is
that the problem? So it’s the living celebrating and
enjoying all the show and having all the fun just like in
any other celebration in the name of the dead. Why is that a
problem with having fun to unwind? How does that prevent
economic development? Oh, the money should have been saved
to promote economic development, we are told! The festivals
themselves are promoting economic development for crying out
loud! They promote the business of coffin makers, beer
distributors and breweries, music makers, and other artisans
and a whole host of other business activities.
Oh, the complaint is about the costs! Are we going to tell people not to
celebrate because of the costs? We might as well ban wedding
and birthday parties because of their costs? Someone should
realize that these things are economic drivers just like
vacations and tourism. It's a whole lot economic sense to
celebrate and spend because spending drives the economy.
Those who do not appreciate this fact are apt to complain
about costs of wedding, marriages and funerals all of which
are economic drivers and therefore good for the economy,
just as the factories and others.
Africans honor their elders and the dead and other races do that also.
The dead deserve that final honor once and for all. Funerals
are not thrown every year like birthday parties. It's a one
time event that involves not just one person but an entire
family. And when you look around you'll find that the people
who celebrate life whether for the living or for the dead,
are usually a progressive people. The Yorubas in Nigeria are
an example because celebrations are good for business and so
are cultural festivals of which funeral ceremonies are part
and parcel. Enough of this African cultural bashing. We’re
not doing ourselves any good running down our culture but
committing cultural suicide because there is no good or bad
culture. It is what it is. It is not a question of modernity
but of a people’s basic identity as distinct from other
humans on the face of the earth.
Even in places like the US which has been wrongly described as a
“cultural melting pot” people from other parts of the world
hold on to their cultural traditions. You name them: the
Jews, Japanese, Chinese, Hispanics, Indians, Europeans,
Pakistanis, Russians, hell yes, Africans, hold on
tenaciously to their cultures. These communities and racial
groups know too well that if they lose their cultural
identities they will lose their communal or racial
identities in the United States. There is no cultural
melting pot anywhere, only a mainstream culture living side
by side with subcultures that are encouraged to thrive in
the United States. And that’s what makes the country truly
unique in the world. Continental Africans will do well to
imbibe these realities in the US and stop trashing their own
cultures.
People should not be misguided into running down their culture in the
name of modernity. We are not more modern than the Chinese,
Japanese and the Indians. The Japanese, the Indians and the
Chinese are some of the most culturally observant people on
earth yet they are some of the most prosperous nations on
earth as well. There is a link.
Finally, I would like to remind the author that it is a dangerous thing
to look down or denigrate the culture of a people because
culture defines humanity and a people. And I must add also
that all authorities are in agreement that no culture is
superior to another. All cultures are a way of life and they
are what they are. As I had cause to tell a group of
African Americans in a discussion not even related to
culture as a subject, "Culture is stronger than color" and
it defines a people. Therefore, if you mess with your own
culture in the name of modernity, you mess with your own
identity and in the end become a complete non-entity. You’re
just a mass of biological cells floating around without
culture and therefore bereft of an identity.
It's my fervent hope, therefore, that those who are launching a war
against their culture as the Christian missionaries did on
the African culture some centuries ago and caused African
converts themselves to destroy their own culture just as
slave merchants caused Africans to sell their own people as
slaves, will learn a hard lesson from the rape of our
identity. Till date the Egyptians are still hunting their
cultural artifacts stolen and taken to other lands because
culture is a terrible thing to lose. We should be fighting
tooth and nail to preserve the remnants of our cultural
traditions not destroy them under any guise. Africans have
yet to recover from the destruction of their cultural
heritage by the colonialists and missionaries. African
Americans are still smarting from the rape of their African
culture centuries ago. We should not allow history to repeat
itself in the name of modernity. Once beaten twice shy. No,
never again!
I would therefore advise
Kofi
Akosah-Sarpong and his medical association
accomplice in Ghana to put the brakes on this suicidal
campaign and learn how to use culture to promote economic
development, self-pride and self-identity in a
multi-cultural world. And if we fail to heed this warning,
the African continent will suffer what I would term cultural
eclipse in the no distant future and the owners of the
foreign cultures we are shamelessly aping today will dismiss
us as a people without culture unworthy of any consideration
and use that as a pretext to re-colonize us an uncultured
people, because you’re nothing without culture.
And this should serve as a clarion call to all practitioners and
ambassadors of African culture to rise up to the challenge
posed by the enemies within who are seeking to destroy
whatever is left of African culture before Africa is totally
denuded of its cultural traditions as African Americans have
suffered terribly in the United States. A stitch in time
saves nine…
Franklin Otorofani, Esq. contact:
mudiagaone@yahoo.com
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