Challenge of Culture in Africa: From Restoration to Integration

Restoring the Remnants

77 Restoring the Remnants B ut, fortunately, not everything was destroyed. In the arts, in the field of moral and social values, much remains that merits l to be admired and preserved. African sculpture, as everybody knows, has been an inspiration to modern European art. There exists in Africa a wealth of unrecorded traditional literature. The African tendency to give primacy to human, social, moral and spiritual considerations, as opposed to calculations of materiel gain or advantage, should be encouraged and reinforced. The straightforward candour, the simplicity and the naturalness of the African’s attitude towards his fellow men is to be preferred to the artificiality, the excessive cultivation, the sophistication and the over-fineness of European manners. The African conviction that the inculcation of manliness is a first principle of education should be restored and stressed in the face of the emasculating effects of pleasure loving western materialism. The spirit of African solidarity as the foundation and the bond of society must be protected, preserved and consolidated against the blight and the disintegrating effects of European individualism. There does exist, therefore, an African culture worthy of preservation. Furthermore, it is to be stressed that, in despite of intensive efforts at westernisation, this traditional culture remains the way of life of the vast majority of the African peoples, and that it constitutes the warp and woof of the thought of the said peoples. 78 Bernard N. Fonlon It is not therefore possible, were it even desirable, to raze this culture to the ground and to begin afresh to build on a new and foreign basis. From the very nature of things, therefore, account must be taken of African culture in the erection of the new African cultural edifice. In support of this thesis, Aime Cesaire, the renowned West Indian Negro poet, once said that the shortest and safest road to the future lies through the past. In other words, we would know cock-surely whither we should tend, if we knew as surely whence we have come. Furthermore, in teaching, it is laid down, as a first principle, that surest instruction goes from known to unknown, from within without, from home abroad. The culture that we have inherited from the past, therefore, must be the foundation on which the modern African cultural structure should be raised; the soil into which the new seed should be sown; the stem into which the new scion should be grafted; the sap that should enliven the entire organism. As I have said before, this culture was the object of imperialist mockery, it was despised and rejected; our first and primordial duty to-clay, therefore, in its regard, is to rehabilitate it. This advocation of the restauration of African culture must be accompanied, however, by a word of warning. The rehabilitation of African culture cannot be a mere archaeological enterprise; it will not answer to dig up the past and live it as it was. For, for one thing, like any other work of the hands of man, African culture is not without its imperfections; for another, times change and African culture must adapt itself, at every turn, to the changing times. 79 Challenge of Culture in Africa: From Restoration to Integration In restoring African culture, therefore, we must steer clear of two extremes: on the one hand, the imperialist arrogance which declared everything African as only fit for the scrapheap and the dust-bin, and, on the other hand, the overly enthusiastic and rather naive tendency to laud every aspect of African culture as if it were the quintessence of human achievement. There is, in the hymn to the Holy Spirit, in the Catholic Service for Pentecost Sunday, a passage which, to my mind, expresses very aptly what should be our policy on this important point of cultural rehabilitation: Lava quod est sordidum, riga quod est aridum, sana quod est sancium; fJecte quod est frigidum, fove quod est frigidum, rege quod es devium. Cleanse the sordid, water the arid, heal the wounded; render the rigid pliant, make the frigid warm, and the crooked straight. For, if this rehabilitation is to be worth the while, it must result in a culture shorn and purged of all that is filthy; it must be rendered fertile in order to foster growth, invention, and creative activity; it must pulse with health and vigour in all its members. Furthermore, while remaining true and faithful to itself, it...