Study Guide and Text Supplement for Chapter 10, Multicultural Views: Africa and African Diaspora

After apartheid was officially brought to an end in South Africa, President Nelson Mandela appointed Desmond Tutu as head of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Rather than conduct trials that would convict and punish those who engaged in atrocities during the apartheid era, the Commission turned to a restorative notion of justice. Those guilty of atrocities under apartheid were forgiven In exchange for admission of wrongdoing and an apology. During the hearings of the Commission, many South Africans learned for the first time where their relatives had been buried.

                Mohandas Gandhi developed non-cooperation as a method for opposing colonial oppression. Before he returned to India from England, Gandhi stayed for an extended period in South Africa leading non-violent opposition to the exploitation of workers. When Gandhi returned to India, he applied the methods of non-violent resistance to British colonial rule. Gandhi’s efforts were followed by Britain’s departure from India.

                Martin Luther King was part of the African diaspora in the United States that faced the dehumanizing practices of segregation. He traveled to India, where he studied with Gandhi and became familiar with the methods of non-violence and non-cooperation. When King returned to the U.S., he successfully led the civil rights movement in the United States that culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Segregation was brought to a legal end with the passage of the passage of this act.

Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968. Arun Ghandi, grandson of Mohandas Ghandi, founded the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Memphis, Tennessee in 1991.  In 2007, the Institute moved to Rochester, New York.

                The African-American author Lucius Outlaw attributes imperialist practices to the worldviews of foundationalism. Both Christian dualism and scientific materialism are foundationalist worldviews that have supported practices of colonial oppression. Cultures of indigenous peoples have been undermined by Christian missionaries, and indigenous peoples themselves have been military targets in colonial wars.

                In the name of bringing civilization to “uncivilized” peoples, colonizers have suppressed indigenous cultures. Colonizers have forcibly removed entire populations of indigenous peoples from their homelands and sold them into slavery. Justification for such brutalities has invoked the language of “state of nature” and “state of civilization.” Peoples viewed as closer to a state of nature have been regarded as inferior—in culture, tradition, and in their very persons. The imposition of another way of life (Christian in one form, democratic in another form) has been viewed as bringing people from a state of nature to a state of civilization.

                As former colonial peoples have probed the roots of colonial oppression, they have warned against the dangers of foundationalist views. Certainties attached to such views have led some people to turn to worldviews that do not claim knowledge of ultimate realities—whether dualism or materialism is the ultimate nature of reality, whether God exists, and whether immortal souls exist.

                The observations of colonial peoples suggest a non-foundationalist approach to such questions. Vine Deloria’s comment that Euro-Americans view nature as hostile and Lucius Outlaw’s observation that foundationalism has been a virtual accomplice to imperialist projects point to major flaws in the consequences of adopting foundationalist worldviews.

                Foundationalist worldviews can create an illusion of certainty that supports unspeakable cruelties. Claims to know what ultimately is real, the victims observe, remove humans from nature. Vine Deloria notes that religion does not answer ultimate questions; rather, it creates a sense of wonder and prompts humans to ask questions. People can commit atrocities in the name of religion or science when they interpret the worldviews of their religious and scientific leaders as factual truth rather than as thought experiments.

                The positions of Franz Fanon and Peter Katjavivi represent the voices of desperation. Peter Katjavivi supported violent resistance to colonial rule. When asked about his position, he replied: “What would you do if your people were targeted for extermination?”  People whose lives and ways of life are being threatened will act in self-defense. When once they recognize that they are the targets of cultural oppression, they will advocate a violent resistance in the name of being taken seriously.

The Yoruba tradition in West Africa includes an origin story of a beingless being who was smashed to pieces by a stone pushed by a rebellious slave. An original harmony was destroyed, according to the story, and humans search for a way to restore to wholeness the beingless being.

Only when people are treated with respect can harmony or a sense of wholeness be restored, according to the responses represented by Fanon and Katjavivi. When people and their ways of life are classified as in a “state of nature” and in need of improvement, neither the people nor their cultures are shown respect. The brutalities that are then inflicted in the name of “civilization” parallel the treatment that is often accorded to non-human animals. 

Africans have witnessed the rise and fall of many cultures on the African continent. Having experienced both cities and agricultural villages, many Africans have favored the agricultural way of life. A Nigerian scholar, Oty Agbajoh-Laoye, commented that the city is a product of empire. Agricultural villages have ways of sustaining themselves, but cities collapse when empires collapse. The ancient wisdom of the people of the African continent, where human life arose eons ago, is speaking to “civilized” industrial cultures today. And Africans offer the reminder that the voices of our ancestors are to be taken seriously.