Shift from Western ways and free African knowledge
AFRICAN knowledge systems have come a long way – from being overlooked as valuable sciences or being misrepresented by Western scholars who saw themselves as the only suitable custodians of our experiences, ideals, history, culture, and knowledge.
Although a lot more needs to be done, we are seeing a rise in African intellectuals, practices and solutions. In the academy, we see this in the calls for decolonised education, which has emphasised the importance of southern African scholarly contributions.
We also see this shift towards reclaiming African solutions to deal with modern-day challenges. Practices such as visiting sangomas/traditional healers and the general practising of African traditional religion were seen as taboo or often labelled as hedonism. Many were forced to acknowledge their ancestors or perform sacrifices in private. But today, many are openly practising their cultural rituals.
Although not “scientifically verified”, the African herb called umhlonyane helped many during the Covid19 pandemic, during the major waves that overwhelmed and threatened to
cripple our health-care system. Umhlonyane is used by sangomas to boost the immune system, for patients with illnesses that attack the respiratory system, and many other things.
This kind of revitalisation and main-streaming of indigenous knowledge systems and epistemological pedagogies can undo challenges such as vaccine hesitancy and general distrust of biomedicine, while elevating
African knowledge. Despite these and many other positive strides that place African knowledge at the forefront, we are far from where we need to be as a continent.
There are many things we can draw from to make sense of why the progress is slow. We could draw from the usual arguments around the missing, undervalued African Renaissance. We could also argue that while African ideals are gaining prominence, they are often only invoked as an “alternative” or afterthought.
Even with umhlonyane, it was only from desperation that people turned to it. All these are valid, but we are limited by an epistemological slavery, where we use conflicting Western systems of knowledge production in producing African knowledge. We rely on Western schooling systems for how we engage with and use the knowledge, and even Western systems for how we store and preserve the knowledge.
In Africa, knowledge is communally produced, shared and owned. Western systems encourage the containment and individual ownership of knowledge.
Traditionally, African knowledge is often shared in the sense that producing and sharing this knowledge is done as a collective and is built into the day-to-day practices rather than being crafted as a separate experience in the way that mainstream Western education and research is done.
There is an important method of passing down useful skills that you still find in African households. As Zulus, we refer to it as ukuthunywa/thuma – the English translation of “running errands” does not adequately represent what it means. As a child growing up in a family of farmers, for example, you are taught how to be a farmer through these “errands”. When it came to storing and preserving knowledge, it was done in such a way that it was easily accessible. It would be stored as rock art, songs and performances, everyday crafts, and practices.
When we move away from ukuthunywa towards the more Western mainstream, some challenges arise. Students are almost exclusively taught in theoretical ways, separate from their everyday experiences, which makes it difficult to understand and value the knowledge and its place in society. Knowledge goes from being communally owned to being owned by a researcher or institution, which limits who has access to the information, who has the right to use it, and even limitations on how it can be used.
The freeing of our indigenous knowledge systems requires that we shift from looking outwards for solutions. For example, instead of looking towards dangerous fossil fuel and expensive Western renewable energy solutions to address our energy crisis, why not look inward and invest in our indigenous methods of creating cheaper, sustainable biogas using animal and food waste?
Imagine if we did it in ways that empowers black rural women who are the custodians of this knowledge, so that while dealing with the energy issues, we address poverty and environmental degradation. What would it look like if we nurture and encourage this and similar practices? Could other scientific innovations emerge from it? Could it grow to the level of informing global discourse? Could we finally be uhuru (free)?