Busia's Perspective on African Society and Culture | EthioLeaks

Feature Article of Friday, 24 Feb 2012

Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Following his counsel domestic stampeding out of Ghana by a Nkrumah-led Convention People?s Party (CPP), in a run-up to a 1960 Presidential Election, directed essentially during rubberstamping Nkrumah?s persecution underneath a guise of an Executive Presidency, a destiny Prime Minister K. A. Busia, afterwards personality of a categorical antithesis United Party (UP) in parliament, cumulative an appointment to an included chair during a African Studies Center during a world-famous University of Leiden, in a Netherlands. In his initial residence as ?Professor of a Sociology and Culture of Africa,? twentieth-century Africa?s initial amicable scientist reiterated Dag Hammerskjold?s understandable courtesy that Africa?s centrality to a crossroads universe of a 1960s could not be abandoned by a United Nations Organization of that Mr. Hammerskjold was a secretary-general: ?We are during a spin of a highway where a opinion will be of wilful significance, we believe, not usually for a destiny of this organization, though also for a destiny of Africa. And Africa might good in benefaction resources meant a world? (See K. A. Busia, The Sociology and Culture of Africa: Its Nature and Scope, University Press of Leiden, 1960. Print. 3).

Contrary to asocial attempts by his many fervent detractors to demonize a late and former Ghanaian leader, as one who was neocolonialist and parochially divisive in a bureau of his ideological agenda, Busia demonstrates an strident and useful appreciation vis-?-vis a organic togetherness of a incipient continent, even while also significantly revelation of a singular ethnic, informative and secular diversity. To a foregoing effect, a initial residence presenter observes: ?There are some experts who repudiate a probability of traffic with Africa as a whole in any context whatsoever, given of a size, and of a accumulation of tribes and peoples, governments and cultures found in Africa. ? It is indeed a vast Continent, covering 11,700,000 block miles, 40% incomparable than a [erstwhile] Soviet Union, and some-more than 3 times a distance of a United States, including Alaska. For a size, a estimated 280 million [people, in 1960] is sparse, in comparison with a competition densities of other Continents; though Africa claims some-more graphic peoples and cultures than any other Continent. ? Since a finish of a Paleolithic period, Africa has been inhabited by 5 races: Bushmanoid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid and Pygmoid. These races are personal on a basement of a multiple of inheritable earthy traits; they all go to a one species, Homo Sapiens, that includes all a peoples of a world. There is no systematic basement for a faith that some races are inferior, and some superior. Man represents usually one animal species? (3-4).

And graphic a supposed Afrocentrists and their programmatically compared Nkrumaist ideologues, Busia envisaged a zodiacally discredited routine of Apartheid in South Africa as an axiological normal that was prevalent all over a world, in practice, utterly in Europe, rather than an anomaly, or one that was rigidly and dually bifurcated into black and white. To this end, a author observes: ?This needs emphasizing in propinquity to African Studies. The doctrine of secular inequality is by no means cramped to a routine of apartheid in South Africa, though is useful in policies and practices in other countries too. It rests on a arrogance that there is an elemental disproportion in a ability of secular groups for a creation, training or instrumentation to culture. This would make Kipling?s: ?East is East, and West is West, and never a twain shall meet? germane to Culture? (4).

Rather, a Oxbridge-educated academician debunks a parable of secular and secular leverage by discursively expatiating on a theme as follows: ?Sociological studies have shown that there is no systematic support for this. In fact, a processes of acculturation in Africa uncover that moral, domestic and technical potentialities are not biologically determined. There are differences in enlightenment between secular and even secular groups in Africa, though they can be accounted for by differences in experience, for biological ability is created by a opportunities supposing by a informative and amicable environment. But there are domestic policies that aim during ensuring and perpetuating informative differences by denying Africans opportunities for participating entirely in a sum informative environment, and so training and bettering themselves to it. Yet an critical grant of informative anthropology and sociology to competition family is a ubiquitous agreement on a anticipating that enlightenment is learnt, and that given adequate opportunity, an sold or secular organisation can learn and master new informative patterns. This gives belligerent for optimism. Even for a many strident secular tensions in Africa, it offers a wish that a Western informative birthright can be mastered by Africans, and that a opposite secular groups vital in multiracial societies, such as in a Rhodesias [present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe] or in a Union of South Africa, can all attend in their common informative environment. Sociological studies of acculturation, of a processes of hit and mixture of a traits and patterns of opposite cultures, so assume significance in rebellious a unsentimental problems of competition family in Africa? (4-5).

In other words, Busia was really distant forward of his Nkrumaist detractors in perspicuously noticing a needed need for Africans to evenly and gradually favour what Americans have come to commend as a ?melting pot? of socio-cultural and multiethnic and multiracial synergy as a means of healthily expediting a modernization and technological growth of postcolonial Africa. Outside of southern Africa, where European settler participation was many some-more limited, Busia, implicitly, famous synergistic informative organicity in terms of globalization or ?global villagization,? in a auspicious courtesy of a immortalized Canadian media idealist Marshall McLuhan.

Furthermore, for Busia, a kind of geopolitically judicious nationalism advocated by President Nkrumah, for example, had no poignant basement in chronological reality; for Africa?s centrality as a incipient cauldron of tellurian tellurian civilization necessitated a synergistic thrust of tellurian growth in a contemporary era. This organic and expanded trend in meditative might really many have sensitive a Ghanaian leader-scholar?s some-more useful and accommodating opinion towards a unpleasant and progressing apartheid regimes in southern Africa: ?The cultures of Africa are not easy to systematise in as graphic categories as a languages. Africa is substantially a cradle of mankind. Every year, uninformed archeological justification shows it to have been a initial home of man, from a really emergence of informative history. It is claimed that Dr. Leakey?s Zinjanthropus, or East Africa Man, found in a Olduvai Gorge, was a world?s beginning man, and lived some-more than 600,000 years ago. The initial feat of a Neolithic rural civilization in Africa goes behind 7,000 years. Different races have so lived and interacted in Africa for thousands of years, and survivals of intensely aged informative inventions and ways of life seem alongside many some-more new informative developments? (5). Even so, Busia is empirically picturesque adequate to also observe that such seminal technological and informative achievements, as pioneered on a African continent, were by no means closed or abandoned of profitable and even poignant unfamiliar contributions: ?Through Egypt, Ethiopia and North Africa came influences of a ancient cultures of a Mediterranean; by Madagascar, a ancient cultures of Asia; and in complicated times, a aroused impact of European cultures has been felt everywhere in Africa? (5).

In a margin of religion, a good amicable thinker and idealist is of a organisation faith that a African is as transparent and philosophical in opinion as any other class of humanity: ?In his progressing studies of a Negroes of Dutch Guiana and a United States, Herskovitz pioneered a margin of good seductiveness for studies of a freeing of African culture.? Subsequent studies of sacrament and amicable classification in Brazil, in Dutch and British Guiana, in Cuba, a West Indies, and Surinam have reliable that African religions, song and dance can tarry underneath a many serious conditions of uprooting and transplanting; and syncretisms of African sacrament and rites of a Christian Church in these regions as good as in Africa itself give justification of a vitality of some aspects of African culture. There is an substantial support of Africa?s grant to universe civilization. It is a widely common finish of African peoples to make even larger contributions to a ever augmenting common birthright of Man?(8). The author also, in utterly standard anthropomorphic vein, envisages a contemporary African experience, generally vis-?-vis Africa?s aroused confront with a culturally fierce and imperialist West, as a template for bargain evolutionary trends in ideological and informative model shifts: ?Studies of a normal are exciting, and of chronological interest; though we contingency not stop there, if we are to bargain with a formidable problems of informative adjustments that African peoples have to make in a contemporary situation, or that a rest of a universe contingency make to contemporary Africa. The normal cultures of Africa are of value in providing a chronological bottom for bargain a some-more new events and ongoing trends of a benefaction day?(8).

Even so, Busia is also discerning to indicate to a obligatory need for a ?study of Africa ? or African Studies ? to be towering from a comparatively obsolete standing of anthropology into a sociology, or a comparatively some-more applicable and modernized sub-discipline. To this end, a initial Ghanaian to be named to a august standing of ?professor? during Ghana?s flagship academy, a University of Ghana, observes: ?In ?Civilization on Trial? Toynbee likely that destiny historians would contend that ?the good eventuality of a 20th Century was a impact of Western civilization on all other vital societies of a universe of that day. They will contend [that] this impact was so absolute and so pervasive that it incited a lives of all a victims upside down and inside out inspiring a behavior, outlook, feelings and beliefs of sold men, women and children in an insinuate way, touching chords in tellurian souls that are not overwhelmed by some-more outmost forces, however hulking and terrifying.? The impact of Western civilization on a peoples of Africa affords a many renowned painting of a effects described by Toynbee ? ?it has incited lives upside down and inside out,? and done Africa an obligatory and severe margin for sociological studies. we consider a Chair determined in a University for a Afrika Studiecentrum is justifiably designated as a Chair for a Sociology and Culture of Africa, given it draws courtesy thereby to a obligatory need to extend a investigate to Africa as it is today; Africa as it has been done by a ruinous impact of European grant and technology, European rule, commerce, and education, and a propagation of Christianity by European missionaries?(8-9).

Busia also highlights dual socioeconomic trends that have dominated twentieth-century Africa, namely, a fast mutation towards domestic autonomy from colonial imperialism and a thespian model change in a mercantile mode of development: ?The dual many renowned facilities of a new story of Africa are a swell toward domestic autonomy from colonial status, and a routine of transforming normal and especially keep economies to complicated ones. Problems of mercantile growth dawn vast in all discussions on Africa. Both [of] these facilities give preparation a pivotal role, for a need for lerned crew for executive and technical posts becomes apparent and urgent?(9). And a good thinker and amicable scientist ought to have famous this as good as any African academician and/or amicable scientist, being that a destiny Prime Minister Busia was a initial of dual Gold Coasters in colonial Ghana to be allocated as district administrators by a British colonial overlords, a other being a destiny renowned career diplomat, Mr. A. L. Adu. Likewise, on a domestic front, Busia famous dual vital ideological trends, namely, a trend towards approved federalism or a decentralized complement of approved governance, on a one hand, and a one-party dictatorship, pioneered by Ghana?s President Nkrumah, that came to browbeat a continental African domestic landscape via a 1960s, 70s and 80s, damaged in a several countries by adventurist troops dictatorships. On a latter score, this is what a male who led Ghana?s initial authentic approved supervision had to say: ?Especially given World War II, a fast acceleration of domestic and mercantile growth in Africa has had a measure of a amicable revolution. Measures of mercantile growth have influenced a densities, distribution, mobility and stratification of populations. Political changes have altered patterns of authority, allegiance, and amicable groupings. New nations and domestic forms have emerged. Some of a new states are building one-party peremptory forms, in that normal rulers are being swept divided or swamped in a tide of change; others, profitable some-more courtesy to internal story and tradition, find both swell and fortitude in sovereign forms; and in others, normal monarchies find to beam and regulate over a unavoidable change. Thus states like Ghana and Guinea, or Nigeria, or Ethiopia, or Uganda yield students of domestic systems with new typological models. ? New ideologies and aspirations, too, are among a army of change, bringing Africa into contemporary ideological conflicts. All these poise problems for a amicable sciences; for fact-finding, analysis, interpretation, bargain and comparison?(9-10).

In a rarely sensitive opinion of Busia, even in a face of epic new-fashioned transformation, there is to be famous a conspicuous centripetal and countervailing force pulling a African towards ancient African civilization and informative practices. In other words, postcolonial Western-oriented growth is by no means a pacifist and hereditary course though a veritably curvilineal discourse between verified normal values and beliefs, and a mostly element and behavior-altering army unconditional a whole continent from abroad: ?I impute to these theories in sold because, along with a skeleton and activities designed for change, there are also examples of a unwavering lapse to a past golden age, in hunt of Africa?s possess amicable heritage, and for norms secure in a good past, whose revival, it is hoped, will again safeguard loftiness and stability. ? The choice of a names of Ghana and Mali for a dual new states in Africa, and a philosophical judgment of ?negritude? of African intellectuals might be given as examples of traditionalism. Ghana goes behind to an African sovereignty that flourished in Western Sudan between 1000 and 1500 AD. It was replaced as a widespread state of West Africa by Mali that reached a tallness of a energy and loftiness in a 14th Century, underneath King Kankan Musa whose management widespread from a seashore of Senegal to a segment of Niamey. Mali reached a grade of civilization that bewildered Arab travelers, and won a venerate of a Mediterranean countries of a Middle Ages, given of a fanciful wealth. The choice of these names tells us that even where a breeze of change is a hurricane, brakes might be supposing by a lift of a past. ? Hence a unwavering hunt for thickets of a past, hitherto ignored? (10-11).

For Busia, growth is organically stoical of material, psychical and devout components and ought to be envisaged as such, during slightest in a context of African sociology and culture: ?The truth of negritude of African intellectuals, either we determine with it or brawl a validity, should move it home to us that a peoples of Africa are seeking not usually element culture, though also non-material values secure in their possess past, that will minister to fortitude and sound progress, and inhabitant pride. ? The investigate of a Culture and Sociology of Africa contingency inescapably courtesy itself with values, not usually given a right grouping of a dignified and amicable life is a ultimate idea of tellurian endeavor, though also given Africa is endangered with a function of opposite groups towards one another. The relations and tensions between secular and secular groups is a matter of sold significance in East, Central and South Africa.? Because of a substantial grade of informative variability among a peoples of Africa, a tyro of African multitude can't equivocate seeking to what border a values of these several cultures are similar, and to what border they are dissimilar. This, it is clear, poses a elemental doubt for general relations? (11-12). On a definition and design parameters of what constitutes ?African Sociology,? this is what Busia has to say: ?It is my hope, therefore, that in a investigate of a Sociology and Culture of Africa, we shall be pity in a query of a peoples of Africa to conquer poverty, illness and ignorance; in their onslaught for fortitude and assent in ever-widening groups, augmenting in their range, complexity and heterogeneity; in their essay towards creativeness in art and science; in their emotional for acceptance as equals in a worldwide Brotherhood of Man?(12-13).

In this 16-page residence on a Sociology of African History and Culture, a good African thinker and idealist calls for a use of a amicable grant that is humanistic and useful in thrust: ?I have oral of methodology and theories and systems in a Social Sciences. These are abstractions. They are unpractical tools, and not a reality. Sometimes, in a engrossment with theories and systems, a existence is preoccupied out of recognition; even out of existence. But a amicable sciences are tellurian sciences. In a hunt for laws and systems, for concepts and objectivity, we do good to remember constantly that a studies courtesy tellurian beings; that they bargain essentially with group and women, with their complacency and suffering; with assent and conflict in amicable relations; with assent and war. Should a Social Sciences turn usually a matter of a head, spooky usually with a hunt for epitome theories and intellectually gratifying systems, though a tellurian heart that shares tellurian adore and suffering, they will destroy to offer mankind?(12). Busia also pays intense reverence to a initial Ghanaian (and African) to be academically compared with a University of Leiden, Jacobus Eliza Johannes Capitein, 223 years before a former?s professorial appointment in 1960. Busia is also, as was to be circumstantially expected, full of loquacious and even fulsome praises for his European hosts: ?The University of Leiden is one of a many shining seats of training in Europe. On a 22nd [of] Jun 1737, Jacobus Eliza Johannes Capitein, an African from my country, came to investigate here during Leiden. we feel it a good honour, not usually to myself, though to my nation also, that we should be allocated a highbrow here over dual hundred years after a initial of my countrymen to investigate here was enrolled as a tyro during Leiden. It is humbling to consider of a plea and eventuality for investigate and grant that [this] bureau presents. ? We in Africa owe a good debt to this University and other seats of training in Europe. we courtesy my appointment here as an eventuality to uncover in a tiny approach something of a low thankfulness we feel to[wards] this and other good universities of Europe that have done it probable for us to turn heirs with we of a knowledge of a ages?(13).

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing during Nassau Community College of a State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of ?Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana? (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###

Source: http://www.ethioleaks.org/2012/02/24/busias-perspective-on-african-society-and-culture-2/

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