Thriving
Mogadishu had a mosque in the 13th century and supported Adal’s efforts against
Christian Ethiopia a century later; by then the people in Mombasa and Kilwa
were staunchly Muslim. Based on Bantu with strong Arabic influences, Swahili
was the main language in East Africa. The Book of the Zanj tells how Arab merchants had a Zanj
patron (sahib), who with
his tribe would support them in disputes with another Zanj. If an Arab stole
Zanj goods, the debt was paid by taking goods of another Arab. In the region of
the great lakes the Kitara empire was established by the warrior King Ndahura
and his son Wamara in the 14th century. However, a famine, followed by a plague
that devastated cattle, spread dissatisfaction, and Wamara’s military commander
Kagoro massacred the Bachwezi, ending their empire. By the 15th century the
ports of Sofala and Kilwa were becoming prosperous, trading ivory and gold for
Arab, Indian, and Chinese goods.
Bantu
flourished in the Kongo and crossed south of the Limpopo by the 11th century.
Kikuyu entered the eastern highlands during the 13th and 14th centuries.
Family, clan, community, and age group were important to the Kikuyu. District
councils of elders were formed, and from these were chosen a national council.
Group discussion and public opinion made government responsive. In central
Africa in the 16th century Tutsi and Hima rulers had vassals or clients similar
to the feudal system.
In
east Africa according to the Kilwa
Chronicle, Sulayman al-Hasan ibn Daud (r. 1170-88) developed the gold
trade into a rich empire. They built a stronger citadel, and many Arabs and
Persians settled there. Ibn Battuta visited in 1331 and was impressed by the
piety of the Muslims. The Pate
Chronicle recorded that Omar ibn Muhammad Fumo Mari (d. 1392)
conquered Lamu, Manda, and Malindi and that he went to war with Kilwa to expand
the Nabhani kingdom.
The
impressive buildings of the Great Zimbabwe were started about 1300. In the 14th
century Zimbabwe culture south of the Zambezi was governed by the Mbire, Bantus
from the Lake Tanganyika area who revitalized the Shona kingdom. Although about
1425 Karanga King Mutota attempted to conquer the plateau between the Zambezi
and the Limpopo, usually the spread of the Bantu seems to have been based on
their knowledge of working iron more than on military conquest. A village chief
with a council of elders usually governed. Spiritual beliefs and respect for
ancestors helped sustain traditions and strengthen sanctions. Mutota’s son
Matope became a powerful ruler, gaining the title mwanamutapa (lord of the plundered lands), which the
Portuguese later took over, calling it Monomotapa. Matope moved his capital
from the Great Zimbabwe to the north; deforestation and grazing had exhausted
the region, though oral tradition blamed a lack of salt. Changa and Togwa
rebelled against his empire. After Matope died about 1480, Changa was able to
establish an independent kingdom in the southern region that is now Zimbabwe.
Inland the Zambezi kingdom of Urozwi was beyond Portuguese influence; but in
the north Portuguese gold-seekers established military authority and markets in
Monomotapa near Mount Darwin.
In
1498 Vasco da Gama reached Mozambique and Mombasa. Kilwa had long prospered
from the gold trade at Sofala and was reached by Pedro Alvares Cabral in 1500.
Da Gama imposed tribute two years later, and in 1503 Ruy Lourenço Ravasco
collected tribute from Zanzibar. Nuno da Cunha plundered Mombasa again in 1528.
The Turks raided the east coast down to Malindi in 1540. By then posts were
established at Sena and Tete for gold mining up the river.
In
1585 Turks led by Emir ‘Ali Bey caused revolts from Mogadishu to Mombasa
against the Portuguese landlords; only Malindi remained loyal to Portugal.
Zimba cannibals overcame the towns of Sena and Tete on the Zambezi, and in 1587
they took Kilwa, killing 3,000 people. At Mombasa the Zimba slaughtered the
Muslim inhabitants; but they were halted at Malindi by the Bantu-speaking
Segeju and went home. This stimulated the Portuguese to take over Mombasa a
third time in 1589, and four years later they built Fort Jesus to administer
the region.
A
Portuguese captain made Malindi’s King al-Hasan bin Ahmad the Sultan of
Mombasa, but arrogant commandants irritated him. In 1614 he went to the
Portuguese Viceroy at Goa in India to complain. When he returned to Mombasa the
next year, he fled to the Nikiya tribe and was assassinated for a Portuguese
bribe. The highest ecclesiastical court in Portugal ruled that the King was
wrongly murdered and that his son Yusuf bin al-Hasan was his rightful heir.
Yusuf was then educated at Goa and baptized as Dom Jeronimo Chingulia by the
Augustinian order. He returned with a Portuguese wife to rule Mombasa in 1630.
The next year a Portuguese spy saw him praying like a Muslim at his father’s
grave and reported it to Portuguese Captain Pedro Leitao de Gamboa; but the spy
also informed King Yusuf about this.
Yusuf
stabbed the Captain as 300 of his followers took over Fort Jesus from the
garrison. Some who refused to convert to Islam were killed, and 400 were sold
as slaves. A Portuguese fleet with a thousand troops arrived the next year but
could not retake Mombasa. Yusuf captured two ships and fled to Pate. Portuguese
Captain Francisco de Seixas de Cabreira hunted him down there and rejected a
bribe of 4,000paradaos. He
punished Pate in 1636 by beheading 200 of their leaders and chopping down
10,000 coconut trees, demanding 8,000 paradaos; Siu and Manda were forced to pay heavy tribute and
destroy their defensive walls. Yusuf escaped, but while trying to get Turkish
support he died at Jidda in 1638.
Arabs
in Oman led by Nasir ibn Murshid rose up against the Portuguese in 1643 by
capturing the fort at Sohar. In 1650 they expelled the Portuguese from the
trading port of Muscat. They built a fleet and responded to appeals from
Mombasa by attacking the Portuguese on the island of Zanzibar in 1652. The
Otondos’ Queen of Pemba accepted the imam of Oman and paid tribute. Captain Cabreira from
Mombasa quickly arrived to burn her town and attack the Omani ships at Pemba.
In 1660 the Omani navy landed at Mombasa and drove the Portuguese into Fort
Jesus. In 1678 Portuguese Viceroy Dom Pedro de Almeida from Goa assaulted Pate
and set up his headquarters in the mosque. The Portuguese were supported by the
Faza King who brought a thousand Wagunya allies, though 200 of them mutinied
and were massacred. The soldiers raided Pate and the cities of Siu, Lamu, and
Manda, and Almeida ordered the four kings of these cities beheaded. After Omani
troops from four ships arrived three days later, the Portuguese fled, leaving
behind half of their ivory booty.
In
August 1686 Joao Antunes Portugal organized political support in Mombasa for an
attack on Pate but did not take the island until Arab ships withdrew a year
later. The people of Pate did not resist and promised to pay 17,000 crusados.
Within a few weeks Portugal arrested the King and twelve elders and sent them
to Goa, where they were executed on Christmas Day 1688. A year before that an
Arab fleet from Muscat had arrived at Pate, and Portugal had retreated back to
Mombasa. In 1694 warriors from the island of Pemba overthrew the Portuguese
masters. Two years later the Omani fleet besieged Mombasa as the population of
2,500 fled into Fort Jesus. Zanzibar’s Queen sent supplies to this last
Portuguese bastion in East Africa, but the Portuguese failed to relieve the
fort. They held out for 33 months, dying of hunger and smallpox before the last
thirteen survivors surrendered to the Arabs. The Omanis then sent garrisons to
Pemba, Kilwa, and other cities.
After
1500 Bito kings from Bunyoro sent out raiding parties, and their chiefs took
over tribes such as the Haya of Kiziba, Kooki, Toro, Busoga, and Buganda in the
region northwest of Lake Victoria. These chiefs set up independent kingdoms,
but they became overextended. This region suffered four terrible droughts that
began in 1588 and included a five-year famine that ended in 1621. People
believed these natural disasters were “sent by God” and so called this period
the Nyarubanga, during which
many people migrated. About 1650 Ankole defeated the Bunyoro army, and Ganda’s
King Katarega expanded his realm by war west to Mawokota, Gomba, Butambala, and
Singo. Bunyoro men were usually busy cultivating the land since they believed
it was wrong for women to do this work. The Ganda ate mostly bananas and could
leave the work of supplying food to the women.
Portuguese
explorers had reached the kingdom of the Kongo by 1483. Eight years later a
Kongo embassy went to Lisbon, and by 1506 King ManiKongo was baptized Nzinga
Mbemba Affonso; the Portuguese renamed his Mbanza capital Sao Salvador. The
Portuguese tried to impose a feudal hierarchy on this King. They sent an
embassy to Ngola in 1520, and Balthasar de Castro was held captive for six
years. In 1526 Affonso complained to his “royal brother” in Lisbon that their
population was being depleted as people were captured for slavery; he wanted
priests and teachers but no merchandise and no slave trading. Because of his
dislike of trading, eight merchants tried to assassinate him on Easter Sunday
in 1540; the bullets missed him but killed a noble and wounded two others.
Raiding the country for slaves made enemies in Mbundu, and four to five
thousand slaves were being shipped annually from the Kongo. In 1532 Portugal
required that all trade with the Ngola be through the Kongo.
Ngola
Inene requested missionaries in 1557, and three years later Jesuits arrived
with ambassador Paolo Dias; but the next year the Ngola stopped cooperating
with the Portuguese and held the Jesuits captive until 1565. Affonso II became
King of Kongo that year but was killed at mass. Jaga cannibals invaded the land
west of the Kwango River and sacked Sao Salvador in 1568; but the Kongo kingdom
was defended by 600 Portuguese musketeers from Sao Tomé, reinstating Kongo’s
King Alvaro I in 1574.
In
1571 the Portuguese chartered the royal colony of Angola (named after the
title ngola) around
Luanda, and three years later colonizers set out to settle in western Kimbundu.
The Jaga turned toward Angola and eventually settled in the area by the Kwango
they had conquered from Yaka. The Portuguese also wanted the silver from the
Ndongo mountains, and a century of wars over this began in 1575, causing Ndongo
to become depopulated. Paolo Dias de Novais had tried to found a colony on the
coast of Ndongo for mining silver in the Cunza valley; but this failed, and
Luanda became a center for the slave trade instead. The Portuguese suffered
major defeats by the Ngola in 1585 and five years later by a coalition army of
Ndongo, Kongo, Matamba, and Jaga.
About
1600 a Luba King named Kibinda Ilunga moved west and founded a new state among
the Lunda in the south by the Kasai River. The Portuguese sent reinforcements,
and in 1607 Angola’s Governor Manuel Pereira Forjaz was able to make peace with
Mbundu for four years; but his successor Bento Banha Cardoso launched campaigns
against Mbundu and their ngola.
By 1612 the Portuguese were shipping about 10,000 slaves a year from Angola. In
1618 Luis Mendes de Vasconcellos invaded the heartland of the Ndongo kingdom
and destroyed the royal compound.
Kongo’s
King Alvaro II (r. 1587-1614) asked for technical assistance from the
Portuguese but got little. Alvaro III (r. 1614-22) brought in the Jesuits in
1619, and their influence began to surpass that of the mestizo clergy. Kongo
and Angola quarreled over Luanda Island, and in 1622 Angola’s Governor Joao
Correia de Souza invaded the Kongo, trying to gain more slaves and territory
with mines. Mbundu’s Queen Nzinga Mbande (1580-1663) became the ruler, and the
next year she went to Luanda to negotiate peace, trade, and less slave
capturing. The Portuguese Governor baptized her, but Portuguese troops helping
her fight the plundering Imbangala warriors resulted in the Kimbundu fleeing to
the east, where she settled in Matamba. The Imbangala established the state of
Kasanje in the Kwango Valley. The wars between Angola and the Kongo would go on
for a half century.
Early
in the 17th century the Dutch had developed trade in Sohio, the western
province of Kongo, and in 1641 a Dutch slaving fleet captured Luanda. Queen
Nzinga protected Matamba from the Portuguese by making an alliance with the
Dutch. In 1648 Salvador Correia de Sa came from Brazil and drove the Dutch out
of Angola, forcing Nzinga to retreat back to Matamba, which developed into a
commercial center that included the slave trade. In 1651 Portugal’s King Joao
IV exempted Capuchins from laws against foreigners in his empire as long as
they asked his permission and sailed from Lisbon. Capuchins and the Jesuits
studied Bunda and other native dialects, and Vitralla published a short
grammar. In 1655 Nzinga sent warriors to attack a small Christian tribe led by
Pombo Somba on the Kongo border; but she repented and made peace with the
Portuguese. She persuaded her witchdoctors to accept her Christian faith.
Lisbon ratified the treaty in 1657, and Nzinga was baptized again at Luanda. In
1664 Ndongo ngolaAri II by
defeating local chiefs took control of trade routes in order to tax caravans
between Luanda and the Kongo; but in 1671 Luanda’s governor captured the Ndongo
royal family and sent them to a monastery in Portugal, building a fort in their
last capital.
Garcia
II (r. 1641-61) consolidated power over Kongo, and he invited Italian Capuchins
in 1645. When Georges de Geel was killed in 1653 for interfering with local
shrines, Garcia protected the Capuchins. He tried to make peace with Luanda’s
Governor Salvador de Sa, but they could not agree. Garcia died and was
succeeded by Antonio; but at Mbwila (Ambuila) in 1665 the Angolan army of 360
Europeans and 7,000 Africans defeated and killed Antonio and 400 nobles of
Kongo. In 1670 another army led by the Portuguese was defeated at Soyo in a
failed attempt to conquer Kongo. By then the Kongo region was exporting about
15,000 slaves each year. The Catholics preferred to sell slaves to the Dutch
because they took them to the Spanish Indies. In 1687 the English Royal African
Company complained to the Ngoyo kings they were being charged higher prices for
slaves. Two years later when the Soyo army attacked Ngoyo, British marines
tried to help defend Ngoyo but lost their artillery. Soyo and Ngoyo made a
treaty in 1690, and the British merchants were allowed to stay in Ngoyo.
In
1505 the Portuguese led by Francisco d’Almeida built a fort at Sofala near the
mouth of the Zambezi River before sacking and garrisoning Kilwa; Mombasa, Hoja,
and Brava were only plundered. On Mozambique Island the Portuguese built a
hospital, church, factory, warehouse and fort in 1507. By 1512 the Portuguese
garrison and Franciscans left Kilwa, and Sofala also suffered because of lack
of gold.
In
1558 the Portuguese built Fort Sao Sebastiao on Mozambique Island, sending
settlers up the Zambezi River to Sena and Tete. Mutapa’s Emperor ordered
Conçalo da Silveira killed in 1560 because he believed the missionary had led
Portuguese invaders. A year after Sebastiao became King of Portugal in 1568, he
sent Francisco Barreto to govern Mozambique and to explore the mineral
resources of themwanamutapa kingdom.
Led by Francisco Barrero, the Portuguese invaded the Zambezi lowlands in 1571
and massacred Muslim traders. Another Portuguese invasion three years later
forced Uteve’s ruler to pay tribute to Sofala. Yet the Mutapa state managed to
retain its independence on the eastern plateau. In 1573 the Portuguese gained
gold mines in a treaty with Nogomo, who wanted a garrison near his capital at
Masapa and trade with the coast.
In
1585 Portuguese soldiers tried to punish a Makua maurasa (chief) for his ravaging the coastland; but the
Makua slaughtered most of the detachment and established their capital at Tugulu
(Uticulo), which governed Macuana for three centuries. After mwanamutapa Gatsi Rusere (c.
1589-1627) succeeded Nogomo, the Zimba attacked his territory in the Zambezi
valley in 1592. When a tribe attacked his gold fields five years later, a
domestic conflict provoked a rebellion led by Matuzianhe. Gatsi Rusere got
assistance from Portuguese traders at Masapa, Tete, and Sena, and after 1599 he
allowed the Portuguese to enter his kingdom with guns. In 1607 the trader Diogo
Simoe Madeira persuaded Gatsi Rusere to cede the mineral wealth of his kingdom
to the crown of Portugal. Between Lake Malawi and the Zambezi mouth, Kalonga
Mzura made an alliance with the Portuguese in 1608 and fielded 4,000 warriors
to help defeat their rival Zimba, who were led by Chief Lundi.
Luba
kings rose to power in the Kongo grasslands in the 16th century. Some of them
wandered to Malawi and shared their form of government. The main Malawi chief
was called kalonga after
a Luba hero who led a migration. Kalonga Mzura sent 4,000 Malawi warriors to
help the Portuguese fight the Shona during their invasion in support of mwanamutapa Gatsi Rusere south
of the Zambezi in 1608. The same year the Makua helped the Portuguese defend
Fort Sao Sebastiao from a Dutch siege. The Portuguese returned the favor by
helping the Malawi against Mzura’s rival lundu. However, after Gatsi Rusere died, Mzura led the Malawi
across the Zambezi, expanding his territory toward the seaboard of Mozambique.
In 1628 an army of 250 Portuguese and a reported 30,000 Africans defeated Gatsi
Rusere’s successor Kapararidze, and the next year they killed many chiefs and
took power from the mwanamutapa,
making a treaty with Mavura, whom they put on the throne. In 1667 the
Portuguese official Manoel Barreto reported that the main reason the gold trade
had declined was because Portuguese violence caused the Africans to leave. In
1669 eighteen Omani ships invaded Mozambique but could not capture the
Portuguese fort.
Further
west the Portuguese did not penetrate the Urozwi of Zimbabwe until after the
Ngoni invaded in the 19th century. In 1684 their changamire (ruler) Dombo drove the Portuguese out of Sena
despite their guns. This enabled the mwanamutapa to invade the western territory of the Urozwi;
but in 1693 the mwanamutapa and
Urozwi joined together and killed many Portuguese soldiers and settlers at
Dambarare.
The
Portuguese signed treaties with chiefs in western Madagascar in 1613, and a
Jesuit mission went up the Manambovo River to Sadia three years later. A civil
war broke out and affected the founding of the Sakalava kingdom of Menabe. In
the Luso-Dutch treaty of 1641 the Portuguese claimed western Madagascar; but
mostly they used it to supply slaves to the Dutch East India Company, which had
taken over Mauritius for its timber. The French built Fort Dauphin in 1643, but
they abandoned it in 1674; their Governor Etienne de Flacourt (1648-58) wrote
two books about Madagascar. A census taken at Barbados in the West Indies at
the end of the 17th century found that half of their 32,473 slaves were from
Madagascar.
South
of Zimbabwe lived the Tsonga, Venda, and the Sotho, who believed that their
well-being depended on the health of their chief. The Ngoni cultivated the
soil, and the Khoikhoi kept herds and hunted along the southern coast of
Africa. In 1488 Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias met the Khoikhoi, and he
named the Cape of Good Hope. In 1500 he erected a cross but died in a storm. De
Almeida, the Portuguese viceroy of India, was killed fighting the Khoikhoi in
1510 at Table Bay. The pastoral Khoikhoi were called Hottentots, and the
short-statured San, who primarily hunted and gathered, were called Bushmen.
The
English explorer James Lancaster began bartering with the Khoikhoi in 1594.
Cornelius Matelief was the first Dutchman to barter for sheep at Table Bay in
1608. The Khoikhoi bartered cattle for copper and then brass. When the prices
went up, a Gorachouqua Khoikhoi named Goree was abducted in 1613 and taken to
London. He begged to return to his warm country. In 1617 he persuaded the
English to give their convict settlers guns to fight his enemy, the Cochoqua.
The outnumbered British withdrew, but Goree got the Dutch to raid the Cochoqua.
Goree still preferred the English, and in 1626 Dutch sailors killed him for
refusing to trade with them. A Khoikhoi named Autshumao went on a ship to Java
about 1631 and learned English. He was called Harry and passed messages to
English travelers at the Cape until he died in 1663. The Dutch ship Haerlem was wrecked at Table Bay
in 1647, and the sailors built a fortress on the beach.
In
1652 about ninety men led by Jan van Riebeeck established a refreshment station
at Table Bay for the Netherlands East India Company (VOC). Vegetables and fruit
were cultivated to help prevent sailors from getting scurvy. Riebeeck was
forbidden to capture slaves, but they began importing slaves from Angola and
Guinea in 1658. That year free farmers went on their first strike against the
Company, and the next year Goringhaiqua interpreter Doman led a Khoikhoi rebellion
against Dutch encroachment. The Dutch built a stone fort, planted an almond
hedge, and brought more settlers. In July 1673 Jeronimus Cruse raided Cochoqua
livestock, taking 800 cattle and 900 sheep. This and more land seizure provoked
the second Khoikhoi war that lasted four years. Horses imported from Batavia
(Java) gave the Dutch a military advantage, and in June 1677 Cochoqua chief
Gonnema promised to pay an annual tribute of 30 cattle. By 1679 the European
population was up to 259, and the Cape’s Governor Simon van der Stel (1679-99)
founded Stellenbosch to expand the colony.
In
1685 visiting commissioner Hendrik van Reede noted that 57 children had white
fathers; so he decreed that male slaves could buy their freedom for 100
guilders at age 25 and females at 22 if they could speak Dutch and joined the
Dutch Reformed Church. In 1688 two hundred Huguenots were granted land, mostly
at Franschhoek. Unable to compete in the labor market against slaves, Dutch
“trekboers” with Khoikhoi servants began wandering outside of the Company’s
control to find grazing land and water for their livestock. In 1690 four slaves
revolted at Stellenbosch; but three were killed, and the other was imprisoned.
Runaways and slaves caught stealing were often hanged. A slave using violence
against an owner could be tortured on the wheel that broke bones. Laws against
sexual relations between white men and slaves were often broken, and Europeans
occasionally married African women. Disobedient slaves could be flogged.
For
many centuries African culture has been primarily oral, and thus few written
sources can provide us with information about comprehensive ethical systems.
Yet these oral traditions have been carried on by each generation through
teaching, folklore, proverbs, and customs. Most of sub-Saharan Africa seems to
have similar beliefs and ethical traditions. Traditional African philosophy
perceives that spirits are what cause good and evil, that these spirits are not
only in living humans but in all life and in the invisible presence of the
ancestors. For Africans, the community of the tribe, clan, and family is more
important than the individual, because the individual depends on the group. The
actions of individuals affect not only themselves but the group. Thus African
ethics is more social than personal and more pragmatic than theoretical. Most
Africans believe that the guilt of one person can affect the entire household,
including the animals and property. Those who do wrong will eventually be
punished by God. To avoid worse effects, most traditional African tribes
punished sorcery, witchcraft, murder, incest, and adultery severely (often with
death), but minor crimes were punished by fines paid in cattle, sheep, or
money. Believing everything is interrelated, whenever misfortunes, illnesses,
and accidents occur, Africans search for the evil intentions that originally
caused them.
Taboos
are based on moral considerations, and so they avoid doing wrong in order to
prevent harm from occurring. The community may punish people for their wrong
actions with physical ordeals or fines. Africans make a distinction between
witchcraft and sorcery. Witchcraft comes from the inner self and may operate
without one even being consciously aware of its effect, but sorcery is a
technique that is consciously used to do harm, possibly for a price. However,
Africans generally believe that only those who desire evil, have bad
consciences, or are emotionally unstable are susceptible to sorcery. The
function of the medicine-man, medicine-woman, or witch doctor is to prevent the
negativity of witchcraft or sorcery from harming people by sending the magic
back to its source. The witch doctor cures those who are bewitched and attempts
to check the powers of witches and sorcerers. The Azande medicine-man cures the
sick and warns of danger because in the African belief the negativity (or evil)
is what causes both illness and moral harm. Ill will from jealousy or hatred
may cause wishing someone harm (witchcraft) or a more overt bad action. Thus
the healer seeks to discover the psychological cause of the illness. Africans
believe witches are morose, anti-social, and easily offended. To become a witch
doctor or diviner, the person must hear the call and undergo apprenticeship with
a diviner or medicine person, who is usually an herbalist.
The
Hausa people believe that being a good person (mutumin kirki) depends on character (hali), which is manifested in
various ways. Being truthful (gaskiya) is
perhaps the most important, and a Hausa proverb suggests that a lie can cause
more pain than a spear. Trust (amana) goes
along with keeping one’s word, and terrible shame can result from breaking a
promise. Generosity (karama) is
another Hausa virtue, and the giving spirit also implies cheerfulness.
Patience (hakuri) is
so essential in Hausaland that a common greeting is “How is the patience?”1 Hankali is described as common
sense, prudence, and correct behavior. The communitarian nature of African
ethics is indicated by the concept of kunya or shame. Ladabi can
be understood as courtesy or propriety. Mutunci is the aspect of goodness that respects the
feelings of others. Hikima means
wisdom and maturity, and adalci implies
justice and honesty.
For
the Yoruba the community is more important than the individual. Their economic
life was communal and based on the common ownership of land. Cooperative
endeavor (owe) is
essential to the Yoruba way of living. Another Yoruba saying indicates how they
believe ethics affects their community. If someone in the house is eating
poisonous insects and is not warned, the neighbors may lose sleep. This proverb
also implies that each person is responsible for helping one’s neighbors stay
on the right path. The Yoruba believe that God is the one who executes judgment
in silence. The Yorubas are concerned whether their behavior will bring honor
or shame on their family and group. Mutual helpfulness is essential to the
survival of the kin-group. The Yoruba also place great emphasis on
character (iwa), saying
that gentle character is what keeps the rope of life unbroken, or that good
character is the best protection. That they believe the soul resides in the
heart is indicated by their using the same word (okan) to mean either the soul or the physical heart. The
Yoruba could consult the Ifa oracle to find out if a death was caused by
witchcraft. Ifa was a legendary sage with healing power who founded the sacred
city of Ife-Ife. The Ifa oracle is similar to the Chinese Yi Jing, except that it has 256
permutations of two basic symbols in eight places instead of 64 in six places.
The
Akan people believe that all humans are children of God and that no one is a
child of the earth. The Asante instruct their future priests and require the
neophytes to follow a discipline that forbids them to drink alcohol, gossip,
quarrel or fight, pray to kill anyone, attend the chief’s court without being
summoned, or go out at night with other men. They are also required to salute
their elders with respect. The women could be trained to be mediums, but the
male priests usually did not allow themselves to be possessed. The Asante
believe that their ancestors are watching them and will hold them to account
when they depart from this life to the world of the spirits. The ancient
tradition of human sacrifice continued to be perpetrated by powerful rulers who
ordered servants to accompany them in their transition from this life to the
next. Such sacrifices were ordered by kings in Abomey, Kumasi, and Benin. Also
victims might be sent to carry a message to the land of the dead. Usually those
sacrificed were convicted criminals or war captives, who might even prefer this
fate to being sold into slavery. Such messengers were often well treated prior
to their execution.
Secret
societies such as the Oro acted as vigilantes, condemning evil-doers and then
executing them in Oro’s grove. Leopard societies might mark murdered bodies as
though they had been mauled by leopards, and some practiced cannibalism. In
addition to these judicial murders, some male secret societies exploited and
bullied women. Often Christian missionaries or Muslims attempted to reform
these abuses by teaching their religions. Secret societies may accept
Christians and Muslims, and they may become a parallel government working at night
to maintain ethical standards for the community.
Rites
of passage are performed for birth, puberty, marriage, and death. The naming of
children often seemed to imply an understanding of reincarnation. During
initiations males were usually circumcised, and females often suffered
clitoridectomy. The courage needed to undergo this pain marked a passage toward
adult life. Although circumcision does not have negative effects,
clitoridectomy has been criticized because it reduces the pleasure a woman
experiences in sexual intercourse. Africans generally have open and healthy
attitudes about sexuality, which is considered a gift of the ancestors from
God. Everyone is expected to marry, and fertility is strongly valued. Because
of this, adultery, incest, and homosexuality are usually considered taboo. For
social Africans marriage is between families as well as individuals, and
polygamy is allowed in order to produce more children. Africans are often
suspicious of those who remain single or eat alone. During initiations the
Bantu would teach the youngsters that friendship is always better than
possessions and that a man should tell people not to quarrel and stop people
from hurting each other. The Bantu language was widespread in southern and
central Africa, and their term for God(Njambi) only
exists in the singular, implying monotheism. The spiritual philosophy of
Africans recognizes that souls continue to exist after they leave the body at
death. Thus they continue to respect their ancestors and may aim to please them.
Mediums are trained to be channels for departed spirits and may bring their
messages from the other world.
Traditional
African ethics includes such qualities as community loyalty, helpfulness,
sharing, living in harmony, respecting people, and self-control. Africans
believed in increasing their power but are leery of anyone having unlimited
power. When things go wrong, the community works together to restore peace.
They believed that much human evil comes from envy. The Dogon say that the patient
person has peace and refreshes like water. The humanism of African culture is
contained in Nguni concepts such as ubuntu,
which implies community, reciprocity, solidarity, and social harmony. A famous
humanistic Nguni saying is that a human becomes human through other humans. The
Venda say that a person is born for others. Another old South African saying is
“Your pain is my pain; my wealth is your wealth; your salvation is my
salvation.”2
1.
“Mutumin Kirki: The
Concept of the Good Man in Hausa” by Anthony H. M. Kirk-Greene in African Philosophy: An Anthology, p.
124.
2.
“Ubuntu: Reflections of a South
African on Our Common Humanity” by Barbara Nussbaum in Reflections, Volume 4, Number 4, p.
26.
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