This week, we post two pieces on the efforts and interests of inter-religious understandings throughout Africa. The first piece is by Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Co-editor CIHA Blog and Professor of African and Gender Studies, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, on the importance of interconnections and multiculturalism. We highly recommend listening to the lecture and reading the article!
https://youtu.be/O4pZWD5bWqw?t=217
by Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Co-editor CIHA Blog and Professor of African and Gender Studies, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana.
Between the mid 1990s until 2001, Liberian women successfully compelled warring factions to end Liberia’s long civil war. Leymah Gbowee, a Lutheran Christian and the best known of the women’s activists, relates how she and others began the Christian Women’s Peace Initiative: “I had a dream and it was like a crazy dream. Like someone was actually telling me to get the women of the church together and pray for peace.”
She rallied “ordinary mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters,” from churches in the community to a meeting. Asatu Bah Kenneth, Assistant Director of the Liberian National Police, attended a meeting of the Initiative, the only Muslim woman in the church that day. She was inspired by the work of the Christian Women’s Peace Initiative and together with other Muslim women, formed the Liberian Muslim Women’s Organization to work towards peace.
These women from different faith backgrounds soon came together, and formed the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace. Their message and central question was:
“Can a bullet pick and choose? Does the bullet know Christian from Muslim?”
Clothed in white, they held prayer vigils at a fish market en route to president Charles Taylor’s office—he could not avoid seeing them. Eventually they succeeded in holding a meeting with Taylor who agreed to attend peace talks with the so-called “rebels”. Thereafter they also met with the rebels, who, in turn, also agreed to attend the peace talks in Ghana. The women raised money to send a contingent to Ghana to ensure that the peace talks were not derailed. And when the talks were moved from Accra, the capital where they had connections and support, to Akosombo, a small town built around it’s hydro-electric power generation and tourism, they took over the grounds of the Volta hotel there. I remember watching the peace talks on national TV. Present were representatives of the warring factions, ECOWAS, the Chief Negotiator, as well as the former Nigerian Head of State, Abdul Salam Abubakar. I remember seeing the women ambush Abdul Salam Abubakar and complaining that the men were enjoying comfortable beds and drinking wine while women and children in Liberia were suffering. They insisted that if the peace accord was not signed, they would not let the men leave the hotel. It was signed. For a full account read Nobel peace prize winner, Gbowee’s Mighty be our Powers.
Multi-culturalism is one of those concepts that means different things to different people. It is in good company with concepts such as equality, or even happiness –we believe we can recognize them when we see them but they are not so easy to define. For some the word multicultural is synonymous with the destruction, or pollution, of “our” culture by other (destructive) values. This perceived assault is perhaps justifiably met with apprehension, even fear. For others, multicultural means all that is positive about the sharing of God’s diversity in human creation. I would like to share my understanding and experience of our multicultural world; explore some facts about collaboration, learning and loss as cultures meet (and collide); and propose a pathway for love and healing in the biblical spirit of siblinghood.
Multi-culturalism
Multiculturalism refers to the existence, acceptance, promotion, and even legal determination of multiple cultural traditions within a single space or territory. Multi cultural territories may be joined or expanded—such as English and French Canada and English and French Cameroon—or multicultural spaces as a result of immigration. Multiculturalism sometimes promotes support for maintaining cultural uniqueness and diversity; or it promotes assimilating into a mythical melting pot. Mythical—because like Louisiana jambalaya, or West African jollof rice, there is a main ingredient, rice with the food, and a particular dominant culture within? the melting pot.
Some welcome the diversity and what it brings.
Others –usually the dominant group–fear “their” culture will be polluted, something we hear a lot among some political groups in Europe and the U.S. in relation to Immigration. For example, the National Front Party in France was long opposed to immigration, particularly immigration of Muslims from North and West Africa, and the Middle East. Although the current leader of the party, Marine Le Pen, has tried to move the party from the far right to a more moderate place, she has criticized Muslims for imposing their values on French society. Following the Arab Spring revolutions that blew across several North African countries, le Pen campaigned to halt migration of Tunisian and Libyan refugees to Europe.
But it is not only the dominant group that harbors fears. Minority groups fear that their unique cultural attributes will be swallowed up by dominant cultures and that as these become normalized and mainstreamed, minority cultures will die and successive generations will lose their identity. As a global pop culture develops and is spread by the media, older generations express fears of loss, and one often hears talk of certain cultural symbols—food, clothing, music, language expressions, for example—not being “our” culture.
Personally, I view multi-cultural as describing the different aspects of our unique traits that could find harmony. Ghana’s prominent educator, James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey, is credited as having said, during a mission to South Africa in the 1920s, that “If you play only the white notes on a piano you get only sharps; if only the black keys you get flats; but if you play the two together you get harmony and beautiful music”. He used this analogy to argue for both racial and gender equality. (He also famously argued: “The surest way to keep people down is to educate the men and neglect the women. If you educate a man you simply educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a family”).
I said “could” because we must be willing to view our living together as an effort to draw on what is positive in each other’s cultures, while working to undo what may have once had value but has since lost virtue with the passage of time.
My Muti-cultural Roots
I was born and raised in Ghana—a country of 50-70 ethnic groups and around 80 languages [scholars disagree whether each is a distinct ethnic group or language]. I speak Twi, and a bit of Ga, two of Ghana’s most common languages, German, market French, and of course Ghana’s official language English. My undergraduate training was in Ghana, my Masters in Ghana and Germany; and my PhD in the US. I have lectured in or visited over 35 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and South America.
My Asante father met my German mother in London in the 1950s—he from a well to do Catholic family, she a Lutheran from post-war Germany. My paternal grandfather was a member of the party pushing for immediate independence and nationalism—at odds with the general feeling among fellow Asantes, most of whom wanted to secede from a new Ghana and maintain a separate Asante state. My maternal grandmother supported Jewish people during the so-called Second World War.
I relate this personal history of the collision and merging of different worlds to show that the world is bigger than our small corner, or a corner that looks and feels like our corner. It is critical to feel others pain. We are all “Others” in some way.
The bombing in Belgium earlier this year caused 35 deaths, including the 3 bombers. Seventy-four people died in the bombing in Pakistan on Easter Sunday 2016. Fourteen people died in San Bernadino, the US, in 2015. Thousands have been killed by various fundamentalist and sectarian groups such as Boko Haram and ISIL.
These bombings don’t discriminate between Christians, Muslims and atheists, men and women, adults and children,
Other deaths do seem to discriminate, although, in some places like the US, mostly according to race:
- Police in the U.S. killed at least 102 unarmed black people in 2015 (nine cases led to charges)
- Thirty-seven percent of unarmed people killed by police were black in 2015 despite black people being only 13% of the U.S. population
- Sandra Bland’s death in police custody (July 2015) was followed by four more deaths of Black women in police custody in the next 17 days.
Thus, a message for Today is: Love and Healing in our Multicultural World
We need to recognize our interconnections, and how strength and beauty can come from them to cope with our past and present tragedies. What we have today is a culmination of events that have been going on for millennia as different groups have traveled, traded, migrated, engaged in wars, pillage and colonization, and provided aid and refuge. Here are some examples:
Music and dance
African slaves brought their music to the Americas – and the Americas sent jazz, soul, Samba and Afro-Cuban mixes back to Africa. We created Afrobeat and highlife which traveled to Europe and beyond. And today African American youth hip hop traveled back to West Africa were it influenced hip life, which in turn traveled to East Africa and influenced local genres.
Architecture and art forms:
In the 1900s, as a result of the French expansionism colonial project in Africa, many art works were carried from the continent to France. Picasso was influenced by these works and borrowed (or copied? Even plagiarized maybe?) widely from African art forms, especially African masks. For good or ill this influence stretched into European cubism. And architecture from early civilizations in Western Sudan, ancient Ghana, Mali, Songhai and Timbuktu profoundly influenced the styles of both Christian and Islamic architecture.
Herbs, medicines and healing practices and philosophies from all over the world have impacted so-called modern science—pharmacology and medical praxis.
Cultural Practices: The left handshake of the Boys scout movement is attributed to Asante warriors; ancient sign of brave and respect. One account: Lord Baden Powell’s encounter with the Asante emperor Prempeh I who offered his left hand. Religious worship has been impacted by African drums and dance movements.
For Christians like myself, our role is to reflect the grace and mercy of our savior. “There but for the grace of God go I”. We didn’t get to choose our families, or where we were born or how we were educated and socialized.
We were all created in God’s image. “God spoke: Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature… God created human beings […]created them godlike, reflecting God’s nature […] created them male and female” (Gen. 1:26–27, MSG). We are all, and each, sacred.
Several societies recognize our co-dependence. The Shona, for example, respond to a greeting asking ‘how are you?’ that goes something to the effect, “I am well if you are well”. The Akans recognize our interdependent well-being through reciprocal arrangements—the ‘poor’ also give to the ‘rich’ and the ‘rich’ don’t refuse to accept gifts from the ‘poor’. To do so would be an arrogant declaration that one would never be in need.
The acknowledgement of our interconnections are important for our survival as human beings, that spirit popularized by the concept of Ubuntu, “I am because you are”. Or, put another way, “I am my brother, my sister’s keeper”. This acknowledgement will prevent senseless shootings and their reprisals; will see homelessness and poverty as affecting us all not some faceless others; and will not distinguish pain and suffering by race, class, gender, creed or other forms of difference. In the realms of the sacred and secular, as men and women, Christian, Muslim and other faiths (including ‘non-believers’), black and white, we must recognize and acknowledge each other for who we are—fellow human beings. Only if we truly acknowledge this can there be healing and co-living in our multi-cultural world.
Akosua Adomako Ampofo is a Professor of African and Gender Studies at the University of Ghana (UG), and was until 2015 its Director. She considers herself an activist scholar, and was also the founding Director of the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy, CEGENSA, at UG and is currently a Visiting Senior Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Concordia University, Irvine. Adomako Ampofo’s teaching, research and advocacy address issues of African Knowledge systems; Higher education; Identity Politics; Gender-based Violence; Women’s work; Masculinities; and Gender Representations in Popular Culture.
Dr. Adomako Ampofo is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of CODESRIA, the (US) African Studies Association, Co-President of the Research Committee on Women and Society of the International Sociological Association, http://www.isa-sociology.org/rc32.htm; Founding Vice-president of the African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA), http://www.as-aa.org; Co-Editor, Critical Investigations into Humanitarianism in Africa blog, www.cihablog.com; and an honourary member of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. In 2010 Adomako Ampofo was awarded the Feminist Activism Award by Sociologists for Women and Society, SWS; in 2014 she was a Mellon Fellow at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town and in 2015 she delivered the African Studies Review Distinguished lecture at the African Studies Association meetings held in San Diego.
[1] From the Film Pray the Devil Back to Hell.
[2] This is an excerpt from a lecture delivered at Concordia University on April 4, 2016.
A good read Prof. The world is, indeed bigger than our small corner!