Cultural Perceptions of Time in Africa Time

Cultural Perceptions of Time in Africa

Time is a foundational factor in every culture. The perception of time is different for most cultures and the determining factor to those differences is often based on the means of production. "Most cultures have some concept of time, although the way they deal with time may differ fundamentally." (Kokole 1994, 35) Tracing the perception of the concept of time in Africa can be seen as tracing the European racial prejudices of the intellect of the indigenous populations in the colonized regions of Africa. Much of the information regarding the development of time concepts in African culture is colonial and based on the European interlopers recorded ideas.

Some of those recorded ideas are those of missionaries and others are those of capitalist adventurers, with the intermittent mark of a very few true historians.

In Mali, as in many other parts of Africa, there are mixed systems of timereckoning: Islamic time overlays Bamana time, and French imported time overlays Islamic time. Whatever temporal structure people apply, they understand that the other systems impinge on their own. (Kone' 1994, 84)

One of the very first true historians recognized the correlation between an African oral tradition and European Calendar time to Sub-Saharan African culture. A great debt is owed to Emil Torday. The reenactment of the events of the day of discovery for Torday by Davidson in 1959, a pioneer in the tradition of western narrative history, serve as an excellent example of a proof of both historical record-keeping in Africa and the idea of organic time.

For the benefit of this European, one of the first they had ever set eyes on, the elders of the Bushongo recalled the legend and tradition of their past. That was not in the least difficult for them, since remembering the past was one of their duties. They unrolled their story in measured phrases. They went on and on. They were not to be hurried. They traversed the list of their kings, a list of one hundred and twenty names, right back to the god-king whose marvels had founded their nation.

(Davidson 1959, 3)

The establishment of cala nder time to a history of Africa came about while the Bushongo elders transverse the oral tradition of the kingdom of their people they came to a kingdom that was to them nearly uneventful yet to the European sense of history as linear the major even to f this kingdom was paramount to the recognition of developed culture in Africa prior to the colonial insurgence:

It was splendid, but was it history? Could any of these kings be given a date, be linked -- at least in time -- to the history of the rest of the world? Torday was an enthusiast and went on making notes, but he longed for a date. And quite suddenly they gave it to him.

As the elders were talking of the great events of various reigns,' he remembered afterwards, "and we came to the ninetyeighth chief, Bo Kama Bomanchala, they said that nothing remarkable had happened during his reign, except that one day at noon the sun went out, and there was absolute darkness for a short time. "When I heard this I lost all self-control. I jumped up and wanted to do something desperate. The elders thought that I had been stung by a scorpion. "It was only months later that the date of the eclipse became known to me... The thirtieth of March, 1680, when there was a total eclipse of the sun, passing exactly over Bushongo... "There was no possibility of confusion with another eclipse, because this was the only one visible in the region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."

(Davidson 1959, 3-4)

Yet, despite the early work of a true historian with the infinite patience and attention to detail of Torday in the early 20th century, the European school of thought was based on the almost universal assumption of indigenous Africans as intellectually inferior to Europeans and from this erroneous assumption came the idea that African cultures were unhistorical. It was well into the 20th century before these perceptions were challenged by modern academics.

The situation remained largely unchanged until the seminal works of Edward Evans-Pritchard. In his groundbreaking study "Nuer Time Reckoning" (1939), Evans-Pritchard established that the Nuer of southern Sudan recognized a number of temporal structures or "planes of rhythm," including physical, ecological, and social, all of which were integrated into their social formation. Above all, he demonstrated that time in Africa and other precapitalist societies -- and, for that matter, everywhere -- is a product of culture and the environment rather than intellectual capacity.

(Adjaye 1994, 4)

It is widely understood that European intellectuals did not begin to understand Africa and her diversity of culture as anything more than outside observers until well into the 20th century, some would say not until into the second half of the 20th century. African history to this point had been based almost wholly on the early colonial writings and the historical perspective of the African people themselves did not become widely observed until recent times.

The vastness of the continent makes clear one of the major difficulties that went almost unrecognized by early historians and that is the issue of the sheer number of cultures of differing ethnic, cultural, intellectual and perceptual histories. Nearly the entire continent's population was grouped together as a nameless homogeneous "native" African people. This is especially true of sub-Saharan African's with some exceptions made of those coastal Africans who had experienced more exposure to European travelers and traders. For these reasons as well as those mentioned above it is difficult to separate the true historical concepts of one or all of African culture from those of the perspective of European outsiders who have had an immeasurable impact on the culture or cultures being studied.

The task of the modern historian is the gleaning of the original sources for the grains of cultural perception that is the least likely to be influenced by the interjection of the European tradition. A note worth making about the issue of organic time and to dispel any simplistic ideas associated with the use of agrarian rather than quantitative time models was made by Kone' in 1994:

Although the Komo farming ritual and the Tswana king seedtime ritual are important in marking off the beginning of important times, they should not be taken as ritual time by which people are summoned to action. People observe the so-called ritual times because these times are doxic and because people see in them the potential for benefit. Even if the Komo, Dogon, and Tswana rituals described above were to disappear, their people would still know when to farm, because it is not the rituals that tell them when to farm, as the West believes. (Kone' 1994, 84)

It is far to simple to assume, as some westerners do that because a temporal system is based on ritual or tradition dictated by a natural cycle that it also dictates action.

Extensive work was done during the late 19th and early 20th centuries by American historians based on the perception of time and how it relates to labor and work ethic of dispossessed members of the African continent who became unwitting members of the American slave population. Most studies of this nature were undertaken to explain the ruling class' dissatisfaction with the production level associated with the African-American population before and after emancipation. Studies that were engaged in before emancipation were often at the will of those who were looking for further evidence to prove not only the right of the white man to subjugate the black man but the necessity based on their inferiority. In the African continent the impetus for such study was based on dissatisfaction of the level of production namely the work slow down, stoppages or labor contract issues, in this case the length of them.

The issue of labor has largely been the focus of many studies on the perception of time. Regardless of culture, ethnicity or point of origin the ideas surrounding the change from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy undoubtedly change the perceptions of a people. The changes of a societies form of production are clearly a source for change to its culture. It can also be said that any new proletariat often falls victim to the expectations of the labor regulators. It must be noted that whether through coercion, force, or simple economic necessity a populous becomes the proletariat of a stronger society changes will be profound. This is true of new immigrants to any culture and also of newly colonized peoples who almost instantly must live by the rules of another culture so unlike its own that the very fiber of reality must seem altered.

In this paper I will analyze the changes in time perception of three subsets of African regional culture. This examination will isolate three factors that are a large part of the dissemination of change in time awareness: changes in labor practices, changes in regional dynamics or relocation, and changes in affiliation in relation to loyalty to family or origin. The regional or ethnic subsets I will examine are: the Bantu-Kongo of modern Nigeria, the Nguni Zulus of modern South Africa, and the Akan of central and southern modern Ghana and parts of the adjoining eastern modern Cote d'Ivoire,. Additionally I will discuss other regional affiliations of Africa based on the importance of the issue the history of the particular culture gives testament to.

The Bantu-Kongo region is defined as: "Kongo" refers to a cultural, linguistic, and historical group of people that is descended from a larger body of Bantuspeaking communities who migrated south from the Benue-Cross river region of present-day Nigeria into the equatorial forest of West Central Africa and beyond." (Fu-kiau 1994, 17)

The three factors to be analyzed as foundational to the change in definition of cultural time perception, labor changes, relocation, and changes in family or regional loyalty are especially interesting here, as this region was already comprised of people who have undergone relocation. This relocation was ancient, gradual and serves as a cultural aspect fundamental to the identity of the region. Another distinction particular to the Kongo is the level of knowledge about the region that predates European colonialization. The evidence clearly suggests that not only was there a rich history in this very successful region but that this history outshines that of western civilization during the correlating timeline. Evidence of recent history makes clear that though the Kongo was one of the most successful of the Bantu nations its decline was rapid and directly correlates to the interjection of colonial Europeans. As early as 1960 European colonial government began to acknowledge the existence of a rich cultural heritage existing long before colonial rule, yet it is of interest that much of the archeological work done regionally was at the site of colonial entrepreneurial When they were mining tin they began to uncover so much artifact that its further analysis could not be neglected.

Surveyor of Antiquities was appointed in 1943 and has since made excavations at Ife in the Western Region and in Southern Zaria and areas on and near the Jos Plateau in the north where tin-mining operations have revealed valuable material. From the former site have come important finds in bronze and terracotta which display very considerable artistic achievement. In the north the material provides evidence of a culture which flourished some 2,000 years ago and which was probably associated with the working of iron.

1960, 27)

Regardless of acknowledgement by Europeans of rich and ancient African History it is clear that just such a history does exist. The perception of time as associated with ideas of progress based on wealth thought to be a European phenomenon. The truth is that this may only be true in a sense of capitalism. Just as there are fluctuations in economy in a capitalist society there are also fluctuations of wealth in any non-industrialized society. It is clear from the representations of time in the history of an oral tradition that the expectation of fluctuation is based more on the results of the natural rhythm of nature, in other words natural occurrences like the seasons, weather, unusual occurrences like a drought or even an eclipse the recognition of success as an issue of wealth is universal. In a non-industrial society wealth might be judged by the level of one's hunger or lack there of while in another it would be determined by the numbers that dictate economic health or lack there of.

In the Bantu-Kongo region it can be said that the culture and economy began a rapid decline as exposure to European colonialism began. The rapidity at which changes were assimilated in regards to relocation, a normally gradual or seasonal issue deteriorated the familial and location loyalties that would lie at the heart of a strong non-industrial culture. The rapid decline of the Kongo state can be clearly associated with European colonialism but the idea of permanent relocation the worst of which was the slave relocation to one of the other colonial nations, was a deteriorating factor that can be seen to be linked directly with the creation of a labor force.

Though not always as extreme as a the permanent relocation of a slave the expectations of wage labor relocation as permanent removed the gradual nature of migration from the family and location even in a cultural situation where migration was a dynamic of nearly all memorable history, which in the oral tradition was vast.

It has been mentioned previously, as a universal example of the forces of labor changes that South Africa's labor history follows the pattern of the degradation of cultural dynamics. Atkins quoted above in footnotes makes it clear that there is both little prior knowledge of that which came to South Africa before the Europeans and the fact that though the South African's were willing to engage in wage labor the results of the attempt at uniformity between the European work standard and the culture of the South African people clashed mightily and resulted in opinions and prejudices that continued to haunt the labor relations between blacks and whites in south Africa and the rest of western civilization almost to the end of Apartheid and possibly beyond. (footnotes 8-9)

Time was at the nexus of the "Kafir labor problem." No sooner was a work agreement made than confusion arose from the disparate notions of the white employer and his African employee regarding the computation of time. Otherwise said, the record of persistent desertions from service was in very many instances related to the fact that the terms of master-servant contracts, which were based on European units of measure, did not accord with the African mode of temporal reckoning.

(Atkins 1994, 123)

Like most other non-industrial societies the Zulu used a lunar calendar and also had a subsystem of holidays that beseeched the European settlers who relied on them for labor. It is particularly evident that these sorts of differing ideals about time negatively effected the growth of the sugar industry, one of the largest cash crops available to the South African European colonist. The workday length of the Zulu was dictated by sunrise and sunset for two reasons one being a belief in the need to rise after the dew has burned off the grass, a preventative for disease and two the belief in evil spirits that would attack anyone outside at night. During the intense labor period of sugar cane production continuous industry was required to complete the task with any great success.

It is generally known that the Kafir looks to the sun's course to regulate his hours of labour; that "puma langa" with him, commences about an hour after sunrise, and that "shuna langa" begins with the same time before sunset. It is difficult either to induce or compel him to work either before or after those periods of the day, which have received his arbitrary definition of sunrise and sunset.

Atkins1994, 129)

These conflicts in the ideas of workday length, lunar calendar, holiday work stoppage, translation differences between seasonal concepts like years constituted an almost insurmountable barrier between the colonists and the labor force. The only solution was a very precarious balancing act based on complex and careful communication between the native and the colonist, on occasion there was a successful exchange and on other occasions a worker would leave their employment six months prior to the time the colonist assumed they would be leaving. When communication broke down to an extreme there may have actually been conscription and forced labor practices or piece work (by the completion of the job) hiring rather than length of time hiring.

The South African Nguni Zulu seem to have been fairly adaptive to the idea of wage labor and the migratory changes that it caused. They attempted to maintain the standards of their culture that enforced family and home, returning with each seasonal work stoppage and maintaining the dictates of their representational ideas of calendar and the like. It would seem for a longer period of time they were living lives closer to their nature but in later years and due to natural disasters and tyrannical colonial representatives the Nguni endured the forced urbanization brought about by industrial, natural and political changes and the eventual establishment of the Apartheid system that subjugated the black proletariat majority until recent times. This eventual demise resulted in permanent fatality to pre-colonial cultural identity, and familial, location loyalties.

The Akan people have an expressly different sense of time and the documentation provides proof that the Akan recognize a multiple time structures and calendrical system. Though Adjaye notes that there has been detailed evidence and technological ability to analyze this complicated system the only studies that have done so are those that study the system from the perspective of how it fits into a more traditional European system, most notably a public education system and a system of diplomatic necessity.

The Akan use the term bere (Twi) or mber (Fante) to denote time. The conceptualization of bere/mber, however, has many manifestations, which include the specific time (of an event, for instance), a period, a season, and an epoch. The concept of time as a nonspecific notion also exists, as in the popular Akan proverbs bere di adannan ("time changes") and bere dane biblara ("time changes everything"). Time, to the Akan, then, is both a concrete reality and an abstraction. (Adjaye 1994, 58)

Though it is not difficult to understand these concepts it can be difficult to understand the way in which this idea plays out in the representation of time. There is a lack of clock time, can be the best way to describe the relativism of the time scale in this culture. Additionally, like may other African cultures the idea of before and after as a guide for when a specific event occurred in a timeline is paramount to the communication of time. It is common to hear a person describing the birth of a child by whether it was before or after a more global event, like a war. Though this might be difficult to understand by western ideas, where the year of an event and the event itself are almost mutually exclusive, rendering the western high school history student to the rigor of memorization games.

An example of just how personal the representation of the language that surrounds time is in the Akan culture is an explanation of the personal naming system. The naming system by design coincides with the days of the week and their inherent governing meaning or ideology. In some cultures the ideas surrounding the month or the year of birth, or even the order and gender they are born to in their birth family become important but this idea in western culture is not as evident as it can be seen to be in the Akan culture:

The first name that an Akan child often acquires is a name that is based on the day of the week on which he or she is born. This is know as kra din ("day name"). There are two corresponding sets of day names for males and females for each day of the week (Table 4.1).

The Akan believe that every weekday has its own controlling or influencing spirit force (kra), which gives its name to that particular day. Thus, Kwasiada (Sunday) actually means Kwasi's day (da), Edwoada (Monday) Edwo's day (da), Ebenada (Tuesday), Ebena's day, and so forth. Each spirit force has its own appellation and attributes that are associated with those appellations, and by inference it is believed that those attributes or behavioral characteristics are transferable to persons bearing the particular day name. The appellation for someone born on Sunday, for instance, is "Bodua," meaning, literally, the "tail of an animal." Therefore, a Sunday-born person is said to have the attribute of a "protector" in the sense that an animal uses its tail for protecting itself.

(Adjaye 1994, 59-60)

From this rather personal rendering of the explanation of the meaning of time, a person may be able to see the evident impact that an extreme altering of the nomenclature of time might do to the culture at large. In many cultures that have been effected by the global nature of the colonial era and that of today a nomenclature of this design would be replaced by a double naming system. One where the child would receive a birth name and then a westernized name that would render them more easily perceived in westernized systems of education and communication. An example of this would be traditional vs. American naming of native American children and another example of this sort of evident change would be the Asian idea that expresses the import of the family name before the personal name and the reversal of this when a person immigrates to a culture where the opposite is true.

In the Akan culture the perception of time made even more personal by the representation of the life clock:

The life span calendrical framework is based on two assumptions: first, that there is an internal rhythm or clock in a person's life that is punctuated by definite stages or events, such as birth, puberty, marriage, and death, and second, that most people not only pass through these stages of life but also experience them at approximately the same ages. Thus, a person is considered to reach puberty at about 13, and a woman (in traditional or rural settings) marries at about 16 or soon thereafter. Therefore, a person might be able to give some indication of his age by saying, for instance, that he was just experiencing puberty at the time of Ghana's independence (1957), that is, he was born around 1944. This system of dating has been used extensively during census enumerations in preliterate rural communities.