MIKI TASSENI
ORAL tradition is acknowledged as one among the principal methods in
which history is transmitted in African societies even after
independence, as few ethnic groups developed an articulate form of
writing in which to preserve the beliefs of the people, their history
and genealogy of their rulers, dynasties. While the Bible is
acknowledged as the word of God, it is in actual manner a specific
instance of such articulation, capable of being repeated for virtually
all other peoples around the world, if one accepts the idea that all
kingdoms arose from God. It isn’t hard to find similar features.
Chief Shogholo Chali of the Pare tribe in Kilimanjaro region, a
retired Commissioner for Culture and Language in the relevant ministry
(changing in structure over time) was of late interviewed by the
German worldwide radio channel, Deutsche Welle, on Pare traditions and
belief systems. What he said had a lot in common with a previous
interview over the Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation (TBC 1) with the
late Chief Abdallah Fundikira of the Nyamwezi, or an old legend that
at independence Mwalimu visited Chief Ruhumbika of the Bahaya. He
actually caused rain to fall, as Nyerere watched.
These incidents of the magical power of chiefs have variously been
interpreted merely as belief systems and nowhere have theologians been
at pains to show that this is part of the way in which the Lord God
interacted with people down the tunnels of history. While prior to the
Great Flood, put variously at 4900 or 4600 years before Christ, there
was nothing specifically divine about the presence of human societies,
there is always divine presence thereafter. Human society arose from
Ham, Shem and Japheth, and no cultural group in the world has other
roots aside from these three.
When the legends of the Pare, Nyamwezi, Bahaya and all others are
compared, that the chief almost always had magical powers around him,
either personally or conferred upon him by priests of the tribe, one
feature comes up. That the relationship between Moses and the Lord God
is replicated in most other societies, and in like manner, the
contention and conflicts around what they were given as law and what
they practice is similarly reproduced. The ‘forbidden fruit’ is found
in most societies, and most observe that ancient Tauratic law, “do not
let a woman witch stay alive.” They are all killed.
Owing to the fact that the power which Moses disposed on account of
his relationship with divinity is replicated in the hands of chiefs
all over the world, it is unavoidable that the same phenomenon was at
work in other societies. In that case the Bible clarifies what the
Lord God has been doing in human history by picking a test case of
Israeli people, the reason being that it is through that seed, of
Jacob, that the messiah was later to be born. Subsequently all would
obey him, as the Lord God reduces to naught all societies rejecting
the laws of fair play, justice, open societies, or refusing global
oneness.
When one explores further the legend of Pare beliefs, partially set
out in the interview with Chief Shogholo, more of it comes out in a
classical book published in Germany in two languages, English and
Kiswahili. The book is titled ‘Lute: Lwedi, luvivi,” that is, ‘The
Curse and the Blessing,’ an oral documentation of a series of
scenarios in south Pare taken during the early colonial period by
Jakob Janssen Dannholz, and later translated to Kiswahili under the
direction of the late Rev. Dr. Eliewaha Mshana, then ELCT bishop for
the Pare Diocese. There are gems of perception including linguistics.
For an individual who has been exposed to Greek literature as well as
feudal European legends for instance on the role of court jesters to
reveal the inner workings of the court, and familiar with this or that
school of structuralism in anthropology, reading ‘The Curse and the
Blessing’ is a revelation. Precisely the same rules of court jesters
apply, for instance when village chief Moshombo has put up an
elaborate plot to incriminate a poor woman and her husband so as to
defraud them of their cattle to be paid as fine into his big herd. A
court jester says ‘kiziomo, kizomo, none is above the law.’
The word ‘kiziomo’ is something that developed in ancient civilisation
as human societies developed elements of law, and it is precisely the
same term that in Greek is known as ‘axiom,’ and similarly in Latin
and English, or with marginal variations. In pronouncing the Greek or
English term, the letter ‘x’ is prononounced as ‘z’ as it is in
Kipare, and transposed in Arabic or Kiswahili as ‘kanuni,’ what in
Latin is also known as ‘canon law,’ that is, law arising from habit,
‘kanuni.’ In the narration, the crowd shouts after the court jester
‘kiziomo, kiziomo, none is above the law,’ until the chief drops the
case.
That is why in celebrating 49 years of Mwalimu’s important address at
the Kivukoni College in January 1962 it is helpful to keep these
things in mind, that the idea that Africans no more need to be taught
democracy or be converted to socialism, as they had all these
elements, be taken with a pinch of salt. There is clear evidence as
Chief Shogholo was saying in the interview, or for that matter Chief
Fundikira in his TBC 1 extensive appearance, that the chief was
custodian of people’s welfare, and for instance in Chief Shogholo’s
case, even his farm produces miraculously. Like Moses.
It is also quite evident in ‘The Curse and the Blessing’ that the
chiefs were engaged in all sorts of conspiracies to defraud people of
their little properties, pretending that they had broken the law, and
thus led to gradual accumulation of property in the hands of chiefs.
This also occasioned the phases of rise and fall of various kingdoms,
when devouring the property of the weak got the better of a chief’s
sentiments, failing to observe basic rules of justice. A new chief
arises, promising justice and collects around him a sizeable
following, purchases mercenaries, building up an empire at will.
So long as a chief remained within the traditional area of his people,
there were elements of justice in how chiefs governed, and creeping
elements of greed and corruption that constitute the basic premises of
the rot and corruption in modern African states. Suggestions that
Africa is corrupt due to taking systems of rule from other people are
wrong, as the corruption merely changes in its form rather than in its
nature or character. Krobo Edusei in Ghana was said to have been
sleeping in a golden bed, whether it was gold or gold-plated is beside
the point; was that tradition or modernity? Is it not the same
sentiment that leads to ensuring that all senior government officials
are provided with four wheel drives before note is taken of basic
medical supplies in public hospitals, presently?
If one takes the Bible as model, the manner in which traditional
chiefs ruled can be compared to the various kings of the Israeli
theocracy, that when a just chief comes to power, the worship of idols
and rendering of sacrifices to evil deities from peoples whom the Lord
had cleared out earlier, is diminished. When an evil chief takes
office, human sacrifices are increased, as the chief seeks to enhance
his power beyond what the tradition (the Torah, kiziomo, oral canon
law) provides for, and must place people in a stupor. Francois
Duvalier (Papa Doc) is an example of a witch-chief instead of one who
defends people from evil; reliance on witchcraft always arises from
the pursuit of injustice.
Examining the record in many African countries shows that while there
are elements of divinity among traditional chiefs, and even in
post-independence context a number of leaders had clearly something
extra in their charisma or sense of justice, rogue and witch heads of
state also exist. There was the story of human flesh being found in
ex-Ugandan rogue ruler Idi Amin’s fridges, while the savage civil war
in Angola, Mozambique, Liberia or the Lord’s Resistance Army campaign
of murder and enslavement is part of the worship of evil deities.
Pacification is needed, from outside.
Were it that students of African political economy examine the
spiritual side of African realities, they would be in a better
position to figure out just that is amiss in this or that context,
where a whole nation went wrong, such that calamity never leaves such
places. In the eastern part of the Congo it is said that regular
eating of chimpanzee meat is complemented by hunting down pygmies in
like manner as monkeys; in many cases warrior or rogue tribes eat of
their flesh. Examining the prophesy in Isaiah 18, such peoples (living
a large distance from Cush – that is Ethiopia – and whose country is
criss-crossed by rivers) will in future ‘take presents to the Lord of
armies at Mount Zion.’
In a recent paper (late 2009) Rev. Christopher Mtikila used the
prophesy in Isaiah 18 to suggest that Tanzania is the Canaan of this
part of Africa, seeing the prophesy as indicating a land of milk and
honey, literally. What actually the prophesy is saying is that the
Lord shall cut down the pride of all these people (haughty, warlike
people trampling all others underfoot) with calamity, pestilence,
plague until they throw out their idols and kneel at the Lord’s feet,
at Mt. Zion, which now compares with the cross of Jesus Christ. All
this was given in the prophesies of the Bahaullah, who urged world
oneness in the 19th century but emirs, kings rejected him; their
empires were blown up, all of them.
Current crises all over Africa relate to the difficulties that Africa
faces in imposing a basic law that is obeyed by all, whereas it relies
on Africa’s own traditions and psychological set up for such law to be
observed, which is impossible. That is why globalisation isn’t the
nemesis of African progress but its condition, where Africa places
itself under a wider law arising from the Gospel, which all the great
and proud empires debased, and then came round to accept it under the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was after the second atom
bomb over Nagasaki that the Japanese emperor, hitherto regarded as a
living symbol of the sun god (Amaterasu) signed on the dotted line
that he was no god. Africans will similarly sign on a dotted line,
accept private property and globalisation, for prosperity.