Dear Editor,
I read with keen interest Mr. Frederick Collins’ letter published in the Stabroek News, Monday, September 17, 2018 edition, captioned `I take issue with the blithe acceptance there is some kind of ‘Africa’ where a monolithic culture existed’.
Editor, I must admit that having read Collins’ reply I had second thoughts on whether to continue this discourse, but after much reflection, I concluded that your readers deserve it. In my previous letter (SN September 13th, 2018) I posed some pointed questions to Collins, among which was whether he sees himself as an African. As expected he failed to give a straight answer. His reference to “ancestral brother” probably is his admission of being African. Why this roundabout game? For me, his answer is important in determining the way I debate these issues with him. With due respect, if a person declares that he or she is not an African, in debating with that person I will factor that position into my approach. However, putting aside the above concern I will continue with the discourse.
Having acknowledged the original context of the discourse, Collins stated, “Tacuma took the trouble to establish a dichotomy between two sets of ‘Africans’ – those in Africa and those in the diaspora including Guyana.” This observation is true and I did so for a good reason: to emphasize the different outcomes of foreign domination of Africans in the diaspora and in Africa. My point is that enslavement and colonization of Africans in Guyana and the diaspora have produced a mass of people who have lost their “historical memory”. By that, I mean that our present worldview, which includes our religious views, is the product of European domination, and as a result, there is an absence of consciousness of an African worldview that existed before slavery.
While it is not my intention to get involved in examining other people’s experiences, I will use the following example to demonstrate the African dilemma. In Guyana when Hindus converted to Christianity they generally did so with knowledge of the Hindu religion, and a worldview indigenous to India which informed their decision. In contrast, the Africans were forced to accept Christianity, and those who practice that religion today are devoid of knowledge of indigenous African spirituality/ religion; unlike the Hindu, the African Christian had nothing from the Motherland to inform their choice.
On the other hand, Africans in the Motherland, in spite of colonization and foreign domination by European or Arab, when they accepted the conqueror’s religion it was used as a tool for social, economic and political survival in the context of conquest – but used the consciousness of their indigenous spirituality/religion and continued practice of it if not in public, in the privacy of their homes. To put it another way, they Africanised Eurocentric Christianity or Arab Islam by integrating it with indigenous spirituality. We in the diaspora are in no such position. In making this statement I am not denying the survival aspects of African indigenous religion.
It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge a meeting of minds between Collins and myself on the fact that there are implications of the observations I made and the positions I stated in my September 5th, 2018 letter for Africans and the African community. When Collins noted that my “ … claims had certain clear implications”, on this score he is correct; as I said in my letter, our absence of historical memory and our present worldview negatively affect every area of our lives. But while we have a meeting of minds on “implications”, Collins and I part company on what those implications are. However, I will not address those issues in this letter.
Collins wrote, “1. That behaviour patterns in African Guyanese must be diagnosed as self-hate but the parallel behaviour in others must have a different classification.” Here he seems to want to save the world, while I am interested in saving Africans. I had made my context clear – that my concern is with Africans in Guyana. Unlike Collins, I have no interest in “classifying” other people’s behaviour.
From Collins’ point of view, the most pertinent issue is stated in “3. That there is some kind of ’Africa’ where a monolithic culture existed before the coming of the white man with a single religious belief…..”. Leaving out his uncertainty about the existence of Africa. His major obsession is to prove that there is not a monolithic African culture with a single belief. However, nowhere in my letter did I make the claim that there was a monolithic African culture; this is of Collins’ own making. My argument is, to borrow Collins‘s word, a “monolithic” worldview. It is surprising that with his vast knowledge and wide reading as demonstrated by the numerous books cited in his letter, he fails to decipher my point on the existence of an African worldview.
For starters, cultures may be different in the sense that no society/country or nation does everything exactly the same way, but never to the extent that there are no similarities; and this is so in part because cultures evolve from societies and societies are made up of humans beings. So while there may not be a monolithic culture there can be monolithic practices and ideas cutting across a continent, which Africa is. A worldview in the context of my argument is African people’s primary achievements in perceiving the universe, and their place in time and space. An advanced cosmology, a philosophical conception of Creator/God, their position on the issue of “being and becoming”, duality, their esoteric knowledge, human beings the center of the universe. And humans striving for perfection through self- knowledge. These are a few issues that are common in Africans’ worldview. You arrive at this profound wisdom by discounting the nonessentials associated with African religions, Ancient or Traditional, and you contemplate their highest achievements in thinking and thought, reflected in the religious philosophy. There are common threads that cut across the continent before foreign domination that constitute an undeniable African worldview.
In closing I am recommending to F. Collins that he adds to his arsenal of books works by, Cheikh Anta Diop and Dr. Yosef A.A ben Jochannan who devoted their life and work to answering questions he raised. Another book to read is Foundations of African Thought by Chukwunyere Kamalu.
Yours faithfully,
Tacuma Ogunseye
