Homo Urbanus Africanus

In 1950, there were 20 million city dwellers in Africa. Today, the number has gone up to 400 million and in 2050 it is projected that there will be more than a billion people. This radical evolution is due to rural migration, economics, border changes and above all population growth.

To describe this accelerated urbanising phenomenon, sociologists have coined a new term: "Homo urbanus." After Europe, the Americas and Asia, Africa's own urban revolution has begun. The most urbanised regions of the continent are found along the coastal areas of North Africa, West Africa, the Nile Valley and Ethiopia. In the Southern Africa region, the coast connects Cape Town to Maputo. Whilst some 40 percent of citizens live in megalopolises such as Cairo, Lagos, Kinshasa, Abidjan, Johannesburg, and Casablanca; the remaining 60 percent live in cities with less than 500,000 inhabitants.

A meeting place par excellence, the city is a melting pot of cultural and economic exchanges. It's also a space for individual expression where many easily escape social pressures. Eating habits have evolved in the city. In Dakar, like in Kinshasa, meals are being eaten more and more on the go; outside the traditional family setting. In Rabat and Casablanca, the middle class go grocery shopping in large malls while parents take their children to activity centers, have lunch at a restaurant and go to the gym for a boost of energy during the weekend. Costly pleasures far from the grasp of the less fortunate.

The city has also become the preferred place of expression for the younger generation (the average age of the African city dweller is 18) who are particularly affected by job insecurity, the failure of the education system and the end of the welfare state. While some are tempted by emigration, others are exploring new ways of affirming their identity by virtue of popular protests and economic resourcefulness.

Many have opted to become taxi drivers, tourist guides or resorted to touting on the streets. They exorcise their ill-feelings in slang) and music based on social realities. The youth's disquietness is also reflected in their struggle with marginalisation, the consumption of drugs and involvement in violent crime. A real challenge for African leaders.

More than ever, urban policies need to take into account citizens' needs in essential services such as drinking water and sanitation systems, electricity, medical access, education, sports and activities. Equally important is a continent wide economic policy focusing on the creation of jobs. This year, the youths were instrumental in the toppling of regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and they have started turning up the heat on Sub-Saharan Africa. Homo urbanus africanus takes change seriously.

Guardians of the Gates

Indigenous African culture honors gay men as having a higher vibrational level; which enables them to be guardians of the gateways to the Spirit world. The conventional Western view limits itself by focusing only on their sexual role. Among the Dagara of West Africa, for example, gender has very little to do with anatomy. It is purely energetic. In that context, a male who is physically male can vibrate female energy, and vice versa. That is where the real gender is. Anatomic differences are simply there to determine who contributes what for the continuity of the tribe.

The gay man is looked at primarily as a "gatekeeper." The Earth is looked at, from the tribal perspective, as a very delicate machine or consciousness, with high vibrational points; which certain men must be guardians of in order for the tribe to keep its continuity with the Spirits that dwell there, being Spirits of this world and Spirits of the other worlds. Any person who is at the link between this world and the other world experiences a state of vibrational consciousness which is far higher, and far different, from the one that a normal person would experience. This is really what makes a gay Dagara man gay. So when they are born they begin to vibrate in a way that Elders can detect and, sooner or later, they will follow them to the gateway that they are connected with.

By the same token, gay men often have children; because they’re fertile, just like heterosexual men. To then limit gay men to simple sexual orientation is really the worst harm that can be done to such a person. To decide that all he is, is a sexual being. Precisely because of the fact that the knowledge of indigenous medicine and ritual comes from gatekeepers, it’s its simply incorrect to take the position that gay men are the negative breed of a society. In a society that is profoundly dysfunctional, what happens is that gay men have their life purposes taken away from them; and what is left is this kind of sexual orientation which, in turn, is disturbing to the very society that created it.

Today, Western urbanized society is suffering from a gradual ecological attrition; and it is because the gatekeepers have been prevented from doing their jobs. They have been marginalized and isolated from the mainstream; having been separated from their natural roles. And because they have been fired, we accuse them for not doing anything. If we look at the earth differently, we will find out gradually that the gay men that are bothersome to mainstream society; are going to start taking their posts. They know what their jobs are. They are not of this world. They come from the Otherworld, and they were sent here to keep the gates open to the Otherworld, because if the gates are shut, this is when Mother Earth, will shake - and all of us will be in deep trouble.

Why is it then that, everywhere in the indigenous world, gay men are a blessing; and in the modern Western world they are cursed? Because, whenever a modern society wants to shut down another culture; it will attempt to marginalize the keepers of ritual. They know that this is where the life-pulse of that culture is. That’s pretty much what’s at work in the Third World, and what has happened to indigenous cultures all over the world. And, its not that gay men must be asked for forgiveness; that’s just tokenism. Rather, they serve as an example of the illness that modernity has brought to us; and that we must use that to begin working at healing ourselves. The gatekeepers will find their positions again; if we start to heal ourselves, they will remember.

Quotation Nation

May those from under our feet

breathe the warmth of community unto us

so that the peace we seek

mounts our bodies and sits upon the chairs of our hearts

sprinkling love and joy all around us.

Prayer of the African Medicine Man

Kounbaterzie Dabire Guinian

White Sangoma

The phenomenon of Europeans who have graduated as sangoma - the ancestrally guided spiritual healing system of South Africa - has become a contemporary cause célèbre, a matter for academic and popular debate. In some circles the idea is dismissed as inconceivable. African sangoma optimistically embrace the introduction of Europeans to their ranks as a natural and positive innovation. Biomedicine meanwhile generally dismisses sangoma healing ideas and practice and thus ignores the potential advantages of co-operation with this parallel healing system on which between 60 and 80% of the majority population still depend.

The integrative approach to medicine familiar in Asia and China has yet to be tried in Southern Africa, where efforts at collaboration between traditional and biomedical practice remain few and far between. Arguably cooperation is more problematic in relation to those traditional healers - such as the sangoma of South Africa - who attribute their healing gift to the spiritually defined agency of ancestral authority. Biomedicine appears relatively sanguine about the ‘re-education’ of traditional birth attendants and surgeons, for example - but is noticeably less quiescent, when it comes to the question of interactions with spiritually inspired healers. In South Africa, with a few notable exceptions, biomedical practitioners persist in refusing to take seriously sangoma practitioners and resort to calling them witchdoctors; a rejection which denies to sangoma the respect they willingly give to biomedicine.

This resistance, amongst Western trained practitioners, largely stems from the healing role of sangoma; which is integrally linked to the honing of communications with the potent agency of ancestral spirit. However, some African commentators query the existence of European ancestors. A question which then arises is how European sangoma experience ancestral others; are they, to take a rather obvious examples, African or European, both or other? And how do they communicate? The common answer is trance or semi trance, which is part of the experience of all sangoma and is familiar, idiosyncratic and spiritually personalised to the individual; irrespective of race. Trance gives temporary access to other, ancestral levels of consciousness and knowing, and as such is used by most sangoma in their diagnosis.

Another interesting question is; how do these European sangoma perceive their practice? Preliminary research suggests that most interpret sangoma as a form of healing rather than a religious expression. Some European sangoma interviewed bring to their training a prior religious faith, which they distinguish from sangoma, but find to be either renewed or strengthened by their experience. Whilst several note similarities between the role of sangoma and priest, they appear to have discovered a comfortable independence between their religious beliefs and sangoma practice. This position is generally reflected in the experience of the African sangoma, most of whom retain a powerful Christian faith whilst practicing as sangoma.

Does becoming a European sangoma constitute a hybrid experience? Preliminary conclusions draw on the essential idiosyncrasy which characterizes the ukuthwasa experience, in which each candidate to sangoma invokes the spirits of deceased family members, clan predecessors and a multitude of other, more numinous spiritual entities. This implies that every new sangoma, African or European, is a hybrid; a unique complex of ancestral strains and influences, a product of ancestrally derived hybridism. Finally, the inevitable traces of ancestral agency in the sangoma experience - its ancestral hybridism - renders every sangoma practitioner a hybrid, in the sense of being new, different and authentic.

In a democratic South Africa however, European sangoma have an opportunity to act as a channel or bridge between peoples and cultures; which were previously segregated. European sangoma can be contemporary healers of colonial wounds, and as mediators and translators between biomedicine and traditional medical practice, a function with particular significance in the context of HIV/AIDS interventions. By acting on behalf of their European ancestors (most of whom deliberately undermined and derogated African healing practice), the European sangoma of post-Apartheid may become a conduit for cultural and political acts of healing. Whilst individuals might not go so far as to practice sangoma as an ‘act of atonement’, few are unaware of the potential of a ‘micro-political’ transformation.

Obama & Africa

Barack Obama was put over the top today, in terms of electoral votes, and is now the anointed Democratic candidate in the race for the US Presidency. He is the first African-American presidential candidate in history, having defeated Hilary Clinton who was aiming to become the first female candidate. Obama holds dual US-Kenyan citizenship, which some feel could make him the ideal candidate for advancing an African agenda. Reality is never quote so simple though, we are talking about who gets to live in the White House after all.

We do know this; Obama was born to an American mother and a Kenyan father while they were both students at the University of Hawaii. He has spoken out against corruption on the continent (although his first cousin, Raila Odinga of Kenya, hasn't been doing him any favours). He is not a Muslim as portayed by the rightwing and seems to have a secular view of spiritual life. Although his foreign policy experience is very thin, having only served 4 years in the Senate, he has demonstrated a workmanlike grasp of issues. That he is a charismatic and gifted orator has also been well documented, bringing some flattering comparisons to Martin Luther King. His best seller, "The Audacity of Hope", gave more insight into his interracial experiences than policy thinking for a new America.

Perhaps Obama's greatest gift is that he has not yet been tainted by the political establishment. By far the youngest candidate for generations, he effortlessly connects with elusive young voters; both in the manner that he campaigns and on the issues he addresses. Unfortunately for him America does not just consist of young, urbanized minorities and therein lies the rub. He will have to convince an entire middle class that change is good, even if it's going to hurt. If they get behind him with their votes then maybe, just maybe, America can get it's domestic act together and start rehabilitating it's tarnished image around the globe. And that's what it really comes down to; is the world's most self-obsessed society ready for Obama?

Its unlikely that family connections with Africa will sway policy, but there is a significant moral dividend in placing the continent higher on the agenda. And although race should not matter, when you are an African-American candidate you are obliged to heed black history. The so-called "roots" issue is deeply ingrained in African-American culture. For Africa that's a long way from getting a leg up in terms of policy issues, however, Obama may just be the the kind of politician that can transcend the entrenched debate and take it to a new level. The presidential race will likely be dominated by domestic issues and the Iraq war, but the Republican machine doesn't fight fair and Obama will be examined like never before...and that will include his position on Africa.

The real question, of course, is what would Africa want from Obama should he be victorious in November? This doesn't appear to be a man that will give corrupt politicians a free pass, particularly if they're African. Frankly, it may well turn out to be a bit of a shock for the continent's league of dodgy leaders. So, progressive change agent meets the old guard; my money's on the young guy with the idealism. Common sense also dictates that Obama isn't going to hold with old style African politics, especially when he's clearly focused on overturning the same thing in his own country. That can only mean the writing's on the wall for every tin pot dictator and warlord still scarring the face of the mother continent.

Islam In Africa

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim - An African Perspective by Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Anthropology, Columbia University:

Islam and Christianity have one thing in common. Both share a deeply messianic orientation. Each has a conviction that it possesses the truth. Both have a sense of mission to civilize the world. Both consider the world beyond a sea of ignorance, one that needs to be redeemed. Think, for example, of the Arabic word al-Jahaliya, which I have always known to mean the domain of ignorance.This conviction is so deep-seated that it is even found in its secular version, as in the old colonial notion of "a civilizing mission," or in its more racialized version, "the White Man's Burden." Or simply, in the 19th century American conviction of a "manifest destiny."In both cultures, Christian and Muslim, these notions have been the subject of prolonged debates. Even if you should claim to know what is good for humanity, how do you proceed? By persuasion or force? Do you convince others of the validity of your truth or do you proceed by imposing it on them? The first alternative gives you reason and evangelism; the second gives you the Crusades.

Take the example of Islam, and the notion of Jihad, which roughly translated means struggle. A student of mine gave me a series of articles written by the Pakistani academic and journalist, Eqbal Ahmed, in the Karachi-based newspaper, Dawn. In one of these articles, Eqbal distinguished between two broad traditions in the understanding of Jihad. The first, called "little Jihad," thinks of Jihad as a struggle against external enemies of Islam. It is an Islamic version of the Christian notion of "just war". The second, called "big Jihad," thinks of Jihad as more of a spiritual struggle against the self in a contaminated world.

All of this is true, but I don't think it explains terrorism. I remain deeply skeptical that we can read people's political behavior from their religion, or from their culture. Remember, it was not so long ago that some claimed that the behavior of others could be read from their genes. Could it be true that an orthodox Muslim is a potential terrorist? Or, the same thing, that an Orthodox Jew is a potential terrorist and only a Reform Jew is capable of being tolerant of those who do not share his convictions?

I am aware that this does not exhaust the question of culture and politics. How do you make sense of politics that consciously wears the mantle of religion? Take, for example the politics of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, both of whom claim to be waging a Jihad, a just war against the enemies of Islam? How do we make sense of this? I want to suggest that we turn the cultural theory of politics on its head. Rather than see this politics as the outcome of an archaic culture, I suggest we see neither the culture not the politics as archaic, but both as very contemporary outcomes of equally contemporary conditions, relations and conflicts. Instead of dismissing history and politics as does culture talk, I suggest we place cultural debates in historical and political contexts. Terrorism is not a cultural residue in modern politics. Rather, terrorism is a modern construction. Even when it tries to harness one or another aspect of tradition and culture, it puts this at the service of a modern project.

Eqbal Ahmed writes of a television image from 1985, of Ronald Reagan meeting a group of turbaned men, all Afghani, all leaders of the Mujaheddin. After the meeting, Reagan brought them out into the White House lawn, and introduced them to the media in these words: "These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America's founding fathers." This was the moment when official America tried to harness one version of Islam in a struggle against the Soviet Union. Before exploring the politics of it, let me clarify the historical moment. 1975 was the year of American defeat in Indochina. 1975 was also the year the Portuguese empire collapsed in Africa. It was the year the center of gravity of the Cold War shifted from Southeast Asia to Southern Africa. The question was: who would pick up the pieces of the Portuguese empire, the US or the Soviet Union?

As the center of gravity of the Cold War shifted, from Southeast Asia to Southern Africa, there was also a shift in US strategy. The Nixon Doctrine had been forged towards the closing years of the Vietnam War but could not be implemented at that late stage - the doctrine that "Asian boys must fight Asian wars" - was really put into practice in Southern Africa. In practice, it translated into a US decision to harness, or even to cultivate, terrorism in the struggle against regimes it considered pro-Soviet. In Southern Africa, the immediate result was a partnership between the US and apartheid South Africa, accused by the UN of perpetrating "a crime against humanity." Reagan termed this new partnership "constructive engagement."South Africa became both conduit and partner of the US in the hot war against those governments in the region considered pro-Soviet.

This partnership bolstered a number of terrorist movements: Renamo in Mozambique, and Unita in Angola. Their terrorism was of a type Africa had never seen before. It was not simply that they were willing to tolerate a higher level of civilian casualties in military confrontations - what official America nowadays calls collateral damage. The new thing was that these terrorist movements specifically targeted civilians. It sought specifically to kill and maim civilians, but not all of them. Always, the idea was to leave a few to go and tell the story, to spread fear. The object of spreading fear was to paralyze government.

After the Cold War and right up to 9/11, the US and Britain compelled African countries to reconcile with terrorist movements. The demand was that governments must share power with terrorist organizations in the name of reconciliation - as in Mozambique, in Sierra Leone, and in Angola. If terrorism was an official American Cold War brew, it was turned into a local Sierra Leonean or Angolan or Mozambican or Afghani brew after the Cold War. Whose responsibility is it? Like Afghanistan, are these countries hosting terrorism, or are they also hostage to terrorism? I think both. Official America has a habit of not taking responsibility for its own actions. Instead, it habitually looks for a high moral pretext for inaction.

I was in Durban at the World Congress Against Racism (WCAR) when the US walked out of it. The Durban conference was about major crimes of the past, about racism, and xenophobia, and related crimes. I returned from Durban to listen to Condoleeza Rice talk about the need to forget slavery because, she said, the pursuit of civilized life requires that we forget the past.It is true that, unless we learn to forget, life will turn into revenge-seeking. Each of us will have nothing but a catalogue of wrongs done to a long line of ancestors. But civilization cannot be built on just forgetting. We must not only learn to forget, we must also not forget to learn. We must also memorialize, particularly monumental crimes. America was built on two monumental crimes: the genocide of the Native American and the enslavement of the African American. The tendency of official America is to memorialize other peoples' crimes and to forget its own - to seek a high moral ground as a pretext to ignore real issues.

I would like to conclude with the question of responsibility. It is a human tendency to look for others in times of adversity. We seek friends and allies in times of danger. But in times of prosperity, the short-sighted tend to walk away from others. This is why prosperity, and not adversity, is the real litmus test of how we define community. The contemporary history of Southern Africa, Central America, and Afghanistan testifies to this tendency.Modernity in politics is about moving from exclusion to inclusion, from repression to incorporation. By including those previously excluded, we give those previously alienated a stake in things. By doing so, we broaden the bounds of lived community, and of lived humanity. That perhaps is the real challenge today. It is the recognition that the good life cannot be lived in isolation.I think of civilization as a constant creation whereby we gradually expand the boundaries of community, the boundaries of those with whom we share the world - this is why it is so grotesque to see bombs and food parcels raining on the defenseless people of Afghanistan from the same source.

A View From The South

Looking back at the previous series of articles, its clear that international commentators are again focusing on Africa's "shortcomings". But are they, shortcomings that is? Its no secret that the continent has been the whipping boy for an assortment of raiders ranging from slavers to colonial powers, international agencies and multinational corporations. We all know how it goes: those that covet resources find a pliable co-conspirator, put financial and military muscle behind the candidate that ensures election to office, obtain sweetheart deals carefully disguised as aid or investment, maintain legitimacy through a combination of aggressive litigation and pervasive public relations exercises. If that's not enough, there's no shortage of latter day pirates that are willingly stepping into fray to strip their own people of what little they have left.

So, a veritable cancer ward of decay and decrepitude...on the surface at least. Yet in all of this squalor and tawdry politics, there remains an indomitable spirit amongst common people. Why don't they revolt or migrate in large numbers, particularly in view of their desperate circumstances? Can it be that they possess knowledge not readily accessible by others? On a certain level this stoicism speaks of great reserves, the ability to withstand unbelievable odds. Question is, why would you want to? Unless, you knew something non-Africans don't...Ubuntu, the pan-continental principle of togetherness.

Ubuntu has as it's core philosophy the principle: "I am what I am through others". Contrast this approach of "I belong therefore I am", with the western ethos of "I think therefore I am". Strip away all the external factors such as politics, economics and sociology; and this is what its going to come to in the great debate to determine our progress as a species. Resolving the confrontation between these two fundamental principles will reveal much about our willingness to succeed. The third world is playing it's role in this great drama, just as the first world is. The trick is not to get bogged down in the detail, but to resolve the big question. Can we come up with an alternative to our failing global system?

Its no coincidence that the faultlines are appearing in the third world. Crop production is up 7% on last year , yet food prices have doubled. Man's most basic ability, to feed himself, is controlled by corporate interests. Our environment is spinning out of control and excessive military force has replaced diplomacy. You don't have to be a critical thinker or geo-political pundit to know that we're in trouble on this third rock from the sun. So, the irony wouldn't be lost on us that we are making a return to the place where life for homo sapiens began...Africa.

Here on this blighted land we are coming full circle to face ourselves, and our report card doesn't look good. Our erstwhile philosophy of Ubuntu had been subordinated to material progress, and in the process we had lost our way. We have the intellectual and scientific means to cure our malaise, but it will be for nought if we don't reignite our inter-personal understanding. From this common understanding all is possible, our challenges will unify us and inspire a new order. It is so simple, yet that is the curse of it too. Can we teach ourselves that we don't actually own any of it, but are rather custodians of what our planet endows us with? The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the land and oceans that provide it.

We repeatedly give up when facing what we perceive to be this complex, insurmountable problem; when all we have to do is ask a simple question. Am I measuring my fellow humans by their hearts or their wallets? When we consider how monetary resources have been made paramount, we also need to acknowledge how that has relegated our ability to understand and value each other. It's no accident that monetarism is being confronted by humanism in Africa, and that this abused land holds the key to the future. When we look into the abyss, the abyss looks back into us too. In that moment we find the wisdom to change, and the eternal process continues.