Long ago, land in Africa was a public good. The idea of private property never included land in ancient Africa. It was conceived as being for the use of the people.
I came across a great book titled “Songs and tales from the dark continent, recorded from the singing and the sayings of C. Kamba Simango ... and Madikane Cele” by Natalie Curtis, published in 1920. This book is now in the public domain you can read some extract online if you are fan of history and folk tales and “dark matters.”
While reading some extracts I thought of my grand-parents, I thought about the many times when they were alive, when they took my uncles and I to hunting parties. We cross vast lands without the ubiquitous “keep posted” signs I came accross in "the south."
The great thing about fond memories is their capacity to make you dream, touch beauty and excitement with you mind. At least that’s what I felt.
Kamba’s story shows the dichotomy between a long gone Africa and a world that many of us are aspiring to. This is in a way reflected by the increasing interest in game reserves and the promotion of ecotourism.
Openness and less control in Africa of what nature has created was largely based on a set a simple but very complex rules. This became the source of unsettled perplexity and annoyance to missionaries. Natalie Curtis in her introduction to the book in 1919 support the thesis that missionaries and other Europeans who unconsciously found their relations with the natives complicated by legal transgressions foreign to white men. Whereas with the white race, the usual idea of justice meant punishment to the offender while the State assumes the position of avenger, the native Shanga'ne Ba'ntu law of Portuguese East Africa is based on reparation. For instance, if a man steals, he or his family must repair the theft by giving an equivalent to the robbed person, or to that person's relatives. If a man takes a human life, instead of forfeiting his own life, which would mean simply more death, he must repair the wrong by giving life to replace the life that he took: he or his family must give children to the family of the murdered person. For a man to have to give up his children is in itself a grave punishment and in a primitive State, where every individual is important to the work of field or household, to the care of cattle and to the defense of the people, one can well see how just would be this idea of restitution. In fact, the principle of life for life, rather than of death for death, and of reparation instead of vengeance, shows a constructive logic.
The communautarist sense of life that has been one of the fundamental characteristic of African societies is what is at stake in today’s modern world. Far from communism, more and more, in America and elsewhere people increasing refer to the proverb that “it takes a village to raise a child” to show how important it is to nurture a community life to build a strong bond among its members. This is particularly true in times of economic hardship. We now live in an area where more often than not, individual accomplishments tromp team work. In some cases team output is claimed by team leader as their personal accomplishments.
Communautarism in Africa was reflected – and still is – by the institution of polygamy, practically universal in Africa. This was a complex situation for Europeans, advocate of monogamy, since the practice of polygamy was inter-woven with economic and social fabric of native law, “each wife with her offspring having her particular place in the household and in the distribution and inheritance of property” Ms. Curtis wrote that Some writers have drawn analogies between the polygamous system of the Zulus and of the ancient Hebrews, arguing from marked similarities that the Blacks are remnants of that "lost tribe" which used to present so many easy
solutions to questions of race-origins before the science of ethnology had spoken.
In Black Africa, the vision of the European was severely narrowed. How could it be otherwise? Europeans judged what they saw on the basis of their own value system. It was the dark continent after all. The dream place for cutting edge exploration who made it in the history book upon their return. Some of those early explorers who made it back to the western world where badly treated despite their stunning accomplishments.
Take for instance the explorer Paul Du Chaillu, whose life story was – See recent New York time online article -- depicted in the image below during his expedition in Africa.
Paul Du Chaillu wandered in the thick forest of west Africa for 3 years and came back with tales that made him and instant household name only to see his peer tear him down because it was discovered that he had a hint of black blood in his veins. All his research was discredited but he managed to conduct another field trip that was finally accepted by British academic circles.
In Ancient Africa, The thick forest was a theater of contentious wishy-washy ideological battles.
In Ancient Africa, complexe situation where made simple. Proverbs became a nice way preserve knowledge and pass on wisdom to the next generation: here is one.
Ka kulili'la mu ha'na che ha'mba.
We weep in our hearts like the tortoise.
Meaning: The tortoise has no means of defence. He can only draw himself
into his shell and weep in his own heart where none can see, while he patiently awaits his fate. So under oppression and injustice we are defenceless, nor may we even show our tears, which must not fall down our cheeks, but only backward, silently, into our hearts.
This proverb refers to tyranny in every form, whether it is that of conquerors
over a people, rulers over a tribe, or thoughtless parents over children.
