African Traditional Religion Approached From Its Own Viewpoint

BACKGROUND

This article is written by a Mosotho Roman Catholic Church priest, (Presbuteros a Greek word meaning an elder) who is a bona fide citizen of Lesotho and worked in this country ever since 1978 until today, where Christian denominations, through Christian religion, have for quite a long time, that is, from 1833 till today, been grappling with the Basotho culture, custom, folklore, tradition and practices with an intention of suppressing, oppressing, segregating and annihilating it through coercion, denial and subjugation.

The Roman Catholic Church arrived in 1862 and joined the religious war against Basotho folklore, culture and customs. As a result, since the arrival of the white Missionaries in 1833, Basotho have been forcibly practicing two religions, Traditional Basotho Religion, on the one hand, and the Eurocentric religions, on the other. These are unfortunately two divergent religious worldviews with differing mystical beings. Of this Luthuli writes:

But beneath the surface there is a spirit of defiance. The people of South Africa have never been a docile lot, least of all the African people. We have a long tradition of struggle for our national rights, reaching back to the very beginnings of white settlement and conquest 300 years ago. Our history is one of opposition to domination, of protest and refusal to submit to tyranny. (1987:18)

It has not been easy and genuine to approach, be it academic and/or denominational, and deal with another's religious worldview, to be objective, unbiased, nonjudgmental, unprejudiced, and very unfortunately this is mostly done out of arrogance and ignorance.

While utilizing other religious worldview's norms and principles, African traditional Religion has been ridiculed, scorned at and denied by all people who are not even aware that it is pre-Christian as well as pre-history.

We are aware that humankind was born in Africa some years ago, hence, their religion as well. Consequently, Mircea Eliade et al, rightly observes that:

Humankind was born in Africa about six million years ago. Today the continent shelters many peoples, who speak over 800 languages, of which some 730 have been classified. The inhabitants of Africa themselves have been submitted to other classifications as well, according for instance, to their “race” or to “cultural areas.”

The inadequacies of these criteria have been dominated over the past three decades. Although the delimitations of languages are not precise, the linguistic classification is by far preferable to any other. (1991:11)

By humankind we understand human species which recognises communal society as opposed to individualism and individuality, selfishness was priced and valued in the western worldview. Of this Machobane et al say:

We argue that the French missionaries found in Basotho a more communal society, on in which individualism, not individuality, that is self-centeredness, and acquisition of material thing, took second place to community welfare. In regard to civilizing mission found company in imperialism and support of agents. so that, Christianization and Westernization seemed to them to be logically the same thing. In short, the two “zations” found a shade under the same tree – a European tree. (2001:12-13)

Similarly, All African nations have their own myths of origin, like in the case of Basotho, a nation found in Southern Africa, which claims to originate from Ntsoana-Tsatsi, a mythical place. In fact almost all African nations are a river people. These myths of origin embody the origin of its people, the world, animals, gods, spirits, life and death, God as well as all sentient beings. Healey et al, writes:

Almost all African Ethnic Groups have creation myths or myths of origin. H. Baumann analyzed 2,000 African creation myths in a book that is available only in German. Most of these myths cover one or more of the following:

(a) Creation of the world, especially human beings, animals and the universe.

(b) Separation of God and human beings.
(c) Origin of death (1995:62)

The belief in the Ancestors has never been regarded as a genuine belief and/or a religion among different disciples in particular among sociologist, psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists as well as Christians. All the proponents of the aforementioned disciplines have for quite long, through the academic discourse, ventured into the African Traditional Religious worldview as if it is another academic subject of discovery including African people who were as well regarded as objects of discovery. However, we are aware that it has been resilient particularly in Africa where the missionaries as well as the colonizers attempted to annihilate it through denial, coercion, suppression, as well as segregation. It takes rationality to know that one cannot, in once compose mentis, talk about non-existence because there is no such.

Most people in Europe are used to thinking about religion in terms of God, holiness, religious visions, personal faith, prayer, sacraments, religious symbols, and/or mythology. Thus they define religion as a belief system or an organized community, such as a Church or a Mosque a Temple, a synagogue. However, for many people throughout the whole world, religion is not necessarily associated with a Church. Of this Radhakrishnan, an Indian philosopher says:

Hinduism is more a way of life than a form of thought. While it gives absolute liberty in the world of thought, it enjoins a strict code of practices. The theist and atheist, the skeptic and the agnostic, may all be Hindus if they accept the Hindu system of culture and life. Hinduism insists not on religious conformity but on a spiritual and ethical outlook in life. “The performer of the good – and not the believer in this or that view – can never get into an evil state.” In a very real sense, practice precedes theory. Only by doing the will does one know the doctrine. Whatever our theological beliefs and metaphysical opinions may be, we are all agreed that we should be kind and honest, grateful to our benefactors and sympathetic to the unfortunate. (1927:55)

To begin with, one needs to attempt a working definition of religion, much as we are aware that religion is a very difficult and/or complex term to define given the fact that among Africans religion and people are one entity as opposed to the duality prevalent within the western religious worldview. Of this Hammond-Tooke et al write:

Religion is perhaps a difficult term to define – but I suppose you will agree that it always involves the belief in beings (or a Being), immeasurably superior to men, who are aware in some way of the innermost thoughts of the heart and who have power to sustain their worshippers in the most difficult crises of life. It is this sense of dependence on the object of worship which seems to lie at the heart of all religion. (1981:22)

From the academic point of view religion can be defined as a system of symbols which are culturally inherited within which divine reality is rendered imaginatively credible while Africans define religion and people as one entity. In this case there no divide between African people and religion. However, academic discourse is not supposed to be mistaken for dogmatic formulae. On this issue Greetz writes that:

A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. (1966:4)

On the other hand, religion is basically concerned with both life and death due to the fact that it does not take for granted that the present life is the only one. We are aware that some religions are phenomenal and their beliefs and practices are ideally, shared and therefore, they are worshipped in public while others are private. Finally, religion is essentially concerned with ontological metaphysical existential issues such as the meaning of life, death and the after death, interpersonal, interrelatedness and interconnectedness of beings and forces. It is basically concerned with rites and rituals which serve purposes of maintaining the equilibrium between beings both mystical and corporeal.

It is axiomatic that among Basotho, as among the Africans on the Diaspora, there is no before life because there is no after it. Hence, life is a continuum and this is due to the perception of its mythology as well as its cosmogony whereby all spirits, mystical beings, gods, the living-dead, the living, God and all sentient beings are viewed to belong together within the same system with differing status. Of this Cumpsty writes:

If there are gods, then they are higher in the system than human beings in the same manner as human beings are higher than animals, but they all belong to the same system. (1991:178).

Therefore, African mythology never makes mention of a dichotomy as in the case of Euro-American worldview whereby all mystical beings are other than the world-out-there, the world of experience. By myth we mean a story whose symbolic creative force orders person's existence into a meaningful world. It is a perspective that has ultimate value and meaning for those who live in its ordering power. It should be noted that every nation has its own myth of origin which relates and refers the nation towards its founder. Therefore, our African Traditional Religious worldview uses mythology to express the nature of things as being Hlahla-Macholo and/or God. Thus from this context myth is not only a transforming power but rather a power which brings things into existence. Of this Guma writes that:

Unlike in Greek mythology where the underworld is radically different from that of the living, in that it is a dark and gloomy place peopled by untouchables, in Southern Sotho mythology it is similar to this world. The only difference is that it is a place of plenty, in which the various commodities of this life are found in abundance. (Op cit p8)

For instance, in the Christian tradition, there are fixed times for the worship of God; but the African ancestor-cult is not organized around celebrations of this kind. The individual is not obliged to united with others in order to honour the ancestors, for they are honoured in every deed and/or action which a person performs in the course of his/her daily life. Thus Africa knows no distinction between individual, social and political life; but life can only be fully enjoyed when the ancestors are remembered and honoured.

Ancestor Religion is essentially based on the axiom that the beginning and the end are one. The living and the dying are a single act because life is renewed by death. Ancestor Religion(s) and/or African Traditional Religion was pioneered by the University of Cape Town, in South Africa, that is, the coinage of the word and it was meat to serve academic purposes only.

This religion is about the death which means the end of one phase and the beginning of another. Thus, this is a belief that dead family members are still alive after death and they still retain the same status and position even after death, hence they warrant proper respect failing which they may impose punishment over the family and/or the clan members.

Therefore, the dead do not suffer extinction through death but rather they continue to live indefinitely. Death does not mean oblivion but rather it means continuum, that is, it is a rite of passage from the corporate to the mystical, from the temporal to the permanent, and from the mundane to the super-mundane life situation. It is axiomatic that Ancestor Religion is not the cult of the dead. I hope that we are cognizance of the existential fact that the beginning and the end are one. That the living and the dying are a single act because life is renewed by death, hence, the dead and the living, be them, spirits, gods, ancestors, are one and alive.

COMMUNITY OF THE LIVING AND THE LIVING-DEAD
Ancestor Religion is a concern about interrelatedness as well as interconnectedness between the dead person, his family, his clan, gods, God and his ancestors who happen to have died long ago as well as sentient beings.. All this constitutes a community of those who happen to belong together through rites and rituals. Thus Fortes rightly observes that:

Whenever it occurs, ancestor worship is rooted in domestic, kingship and descent relations, and institutions. (1965:122)

It is within this religious system whereby God is viewed to be a source of life and he dispenses it to all other beings. Therefore, life is a participation in God but it is always mediated by one standing over the recipient in the order of precedence as well as in the hierarchy of beings. God is first in the invisible world then comes our Ancestors while in the visible world we have our dead founding fathers of the clan then the dead heroes of the clan, as well as our earthly powers such as parents, kings, chiefs and older family members. The continuous interchange, interrelation between the visible and invisible worldview creates a community between the living, the living-dead, spirits, Ancestors, gods, God and all sentient beings. Of this Bujo says:

In short, there is a continuous exchange going on between the visible and the invisible worlds, between the living and the dead. Every member of a clan or family is obliged to maintain contact with the dead, but he is also obliged to keep alive his relationships with the living, whom the ancestors have established as their representatives. (1992:20)

All in all, God, ancestors and our elders transmit life to all in their respective positions and they are as a result empowered to lay down rules of conduct as well as taboos for the purposes of the welfare, wellness and wholeness of the who community of the African family. In simili modo, Basotho, as all Africans in the Diaspora, make mention of culture, customs and traditions, rites and rituals upon which the family and/or the clan is founded. Therefore we are able to talk about the African heritage embodied in oral literature, folk literature, folklore, folk media, oral art, oral civilization, oral literary forms, oral media, oral narrative language, oral society, oral tradition, orality, oramedia, orature, unwritten traditional literature as well as verbal arts. We are also able to make mention of our proverbs, riddles, idioms, poetry, stories, fables, sacred stories, sacred tales, myths, legends, plays, songs, prayers, folktales, cultural symbols, dreams, and personal testimonies.

Etymologically, taboo is a socio-cultural ethos, something sacred, set off, forbidden and/or marked off through culture, and as such it can heal or defile. It is a non-ordinary, non-rational, a Mysterium Trimendum, it is dangerous in that it can heal when properly observed and it can also kill when not properly observed. Thus it is a sacred power.

In Sesotho we have the following: Ntantane, Matŝela-nokana, Manyeme, Phapooane, Khubu, Ntloana-Lehlanya, lebete, Lehlakana, Likahare tsa nku, Booko, Koko, Mahe, litlhakoana, etc, which when properly observed help our society and redirect it. It is a demarcation and as such it is not a discursive issue.

Therefore, when children get stressed-up, parents suffer all cardiovascular diseases including stroke, the whole nation gets paralyzed, a national paralysis.

By Thabang Moloi (Rev)
Contact: P.O. Box 333
Mafeteng 900
Lesotho
Cell: (+266) 584 40 587

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bujo, B. (1992) African Theology, in its social context St. Paul Publications Nairobi (Kenya)

Cumpsty, J. (1991) Religions As Belonging Lanham MD. University Press of

America

Fortes, M. (1965) “Some reflections on ancestor worship in Africa”, in: Fortes, M. &

Guma, (1967) The Form, Content and Technique of Traditonal Literature in

Southern SothoVan Schaik (Pty) Ltd Pretoria. South Africa

Greetz, C.(1966) 'Religion as a Cultural System' in Banton (ed)

Healey, J. et al. (1995) Towards An African Narrative Theology. Paulines Publications Africa Kenya.

Hammond-Tooke, D. (1981) Ancestor Religion in Southern Africa (ed) Kuckertz) Lumko

Missiological Institute CACADA Transkei

Luthuli, A. “Aarthied: This Terrible Dream.” In David Mermelstein, (ed) Thwanti-Apartheid Reader. South Africa and the Struggle Against White Racist Rule. New York. 1987 Grove Press

Machobane L. et al: (2001) Essays on Religion and Culture Among Basotho. Mazenod printing Works - Lesotho

Mircea, E at el. (1991) The Eliade Guide to World Religions. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data. New York

Radhakrishnan, S. (1961) The Hindu View of Life (London: George Allen & Unwin

First published in 1927

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