Your acknowledgement of my efforts is most appreciated.
I did not read you as supporting the sad notion of discrimination against anyone.
You are certainly right in your making a distinction between osu and ohu, the expressly slave class.
One could distinguish between the two, however, by speaking of uhu as slaves to other humans but the osu as being slaves to deities.
The idea of slavery arises here bcs being osu was understood as permanently binding within a servitude that was socially denigrative, and in the past, even restrictive in terms of one's freedom of movement, a restriction described as not more involuntary than voluntary, a fundamental difference between monasticism and that version or stage of the osu practice.
Monastic restrictions are voluntarily undertaken by the monk in the understanding that such restrictions lead to an expanded expeeince of life through concentration on essentials.
. Osu restrictions, however, regardless of the various modes of entry into being osu, were seen as a price to be paid for a form of social fall, at best a voluntary entry into a social isolation the individual would not have entered into if not for the need to choose the lesser of two evils or as a burden borne by the descendants of the osu, who carry the caste and its associated stigma of their ancestor. Hermits and monks, on the o0ther hand, if they had children, did not transfer their status to their families.
I am yet to see any reference that corroborates Nwakanma's claim that one can opt out of being osu through an expensive ceremony which none could afford in the past. Even if that were so, cant any afford it now or is the knowledge lost among the priests and the osu?
Secondly, as Achebe's work evokes, particularly in Arrow of God and "The Madman"- these claims of deity injunctions- where do they really emanate from-human prerogatives or a non-human realm or a point of intersection between the two?
Those questions from Chidi touch on this subject- the Igbo self definition in relation to conceptions of spirit-human relations.
With reference to this-
'Yes there are some communities that still keep to that outdated culture; but these live in the past!'
Is that summation justified by the accounts coming from contemporary Ndigbo, such as the two Facebook groups dedicated to eradicating the osu phenomenon entirely or eradicating the practice of discriminating against them?
Can we ignore the cries of those people and their accounts of their experiences and observations?
Lat week, I ran into an Igbo Nigerian friend at a bank in Cambridge, England.
I told him I was writing about the osu.
His instant response: " I am not one!"
I laughed.
His instant dissasociation was so striking.
'How do you know you are not osu?'
'My grandfather would have told me'.
While people on USAAfrica are trying to place anti-osu problems in the past, in cyberspace, and far away from Igboland, in Cambridge, of all places, it makes itself felt.
I understand the rule among Ndigbo in Nigeria is to find out if an intended spouse is osu. If they are the other family withdraws straightaway.
We should see what Ndigbo are saying online in various fora.
Amazing.
Its a live topic.
How come a people who came out of the collective horror of the Nigerian Civil War, facing bullets and bombs that did not discriminate between osu and non-osu-diala or freeborn-still insist on perpetuating doctrines of superiority to their brethren?
This subject, along with controversies over Igbo citizenship in Nigeria, highlight complexities of being Igbo.
On one hand, we have questions about Igbo integration into Nigeria. On another hand, we have questions of Igbo internal integration in terms of caste.
There is rich food here for reflection, research and writing.
thanks
toyin
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 3:03 PM, Ifedioramma E. Nwana <ienwana@yahoo.com> wrote:
Thanks, Toyin,You actually researched, and I mean compliments. I did not set out to discuss the rights or wrongs, or even the morals, of tagging anybody created by the same God Who created me an Osu. Unless I have misunderstood your treatise, you seem to think that I was making a case for the practice in the Usu caste to persist. Mine was a mere lexical exercise only seeking to explain the difference in the words used by Ndi Igbo to express the two phenomena. Yes there are some communities that still keep to that outdated culture; but these live in the past! Honestly had it been that I was one, it would not have bothered me one bit having known what I do know about human creation. Afterr all these thinkings arise from our understanding of God's creation. Even as a young man it would not have mattered to me if the girl I fell in love with were called Osu by some ignorant persons. Some may say that I could say so from a position of a freeborn. But the Creator knows. I do not discriminate against any person on any prejudice. I call on all humans to treat one another as brothers and sisters, realising that, but for the grace of the Almighty, the person in the disadvantage could be me or you.Ifedioramma Eugene Mary NWANASent: Tuesday, 26 March 2013, 17:31
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade
Thanks, Ifedioramma.
Granted, in Igbo society, the names for slaves and for osu were different, as you and other sources point out.
At the same time, however, the dominant status of osu in Igbo society, past and present was a form of servitude and social denigration that may be described as slavery, as various writers agree.
It was a form of servitude because it involved a denigrative social status from which the osu and their descendants could not escape, a status based on dedication to deity in a spirit more suggestive of bondage than of empowerment.
True, as you state "An osu is one dedicated/sacrificed to a god; he or she is holy and one does not hurt him/her without incurring the wrath of the god to whom he/she is dedicated" this status went with a paradoxical denigration of the humanity of the osu. Their dedication to deity went with a dehumanization so much so that at its most extreme, interaction with them was seen as capable of bringing disaster and marrying them capable of bringing a curse into the family line.
This discrimination was so thorough that it followed the osu into the Westernization and Christianization of Igbo culture. The osu are described as the vanguard of Igbo Westernization, being the first to immerse themselves in the new order beceause it promised a sense of being regarded as full human being equal to other humans, an acceptance of a common humanity denied them by their fellow Ndigbo, who saw themselves as freeborn or diala while the osu were understood as lower than fully human bondspeople.
The osu paradox therefore continued. From being people dedicated to deities and performing sacred functions on behalf of the community and yet reviled as being subhuman and contaminated in as way that made association with them dangerous, they now became the cutting edge of the new Igbo intelligentsia and embodiments of a new order of economic power and yet, they were still discriminated against!
Imagine the irony-the very people who spearheaded the Igbo Westernisation Achebe uses as a central thrust of his description of the place of Ndigbo in Nigerian history, the people who enabled what he describes as Igbo ascendancy in modern Nigeria, were still regarded by their fellow Ndigbo as not fit for intimate association, as not fit to be allowed public leadership in Igbo communities and even as open to oppression from fellow Ndigbo, the last being suggested by the tragic story of the Omuode community in 1999.
The scope of this tragedy becomes clearer when one gives names of those described as osu.
Newswatch Magazine of September 18, 1989 ago ran a thorough study of the subject and gave some indications of some of these people.
It is dangerous to call anyone osu publicly on account of the stigma associated with it and because there is some legislation against it, so Newswatch used pregnant suggestions.
I remember clearly it mentioned 'a famous Igbo poet'.
Of course, the only 'famous Igbo poet' who does not need to be named is Christopher Okigbo, perhaps one of the world's greatest poets, a pioneer in the emerging field of animistic mysticism in his interpretation of the goddess Idoto of the village stream of which his grandfather was priest in terms of the "water spirit that waters all creation", a poet whose carer was cut short, his work in progress lost, when he was lost in action fighting on the Biafran side in the Nigerian Civil War, supposedly as he covered the rearguard of his men retreating from Nigerian forces. Ali Mazrui evokes the magnitude of this loss to the world in his Trial of Christopher Okigbo, in which the poet is challenged after dearth for sacrificing his creative potential to a cause outside his primary vocation the way he did.
Describing Christopher Okigbo as osu would thus include economist his brother Pius Okigbo, described by ex-Permanent Secretary Philip Asiodu as one of the greatest intellects in Nigerian history and as a key figure at Ojukwu's side at the fateful Aburi Accords, a presence that to Asiodu, suggested that Ojukwu grasped the importance of the Accord much better than Gowon, a grasp that made all the difference in the events that led up to the civil war.
Whether or not it is true that the the Okigbos are osu, the fact that Neswwatch could present a description that fits Okigbo suggests the depth of the social tragedy at play, a significant number of osu being described as being among the most successful Ndigbo.
Does it include Bart Nnanji, stellar engineer, ex-Nigerian Minister of Power and pioneer in private energy generation in Nigeria, issues around whose impending return to his community led to the attacks against the Omuode community in 1999?
In Broken Back Axle:Unspeakable Events In Biafra [Amazon link that enables one read a good part of the book] Obi N. Ignatius Ebbe presents the anti-osu discrimination problem in particularly poignant terms as being fundamental to the fall of Biafra through sabotage of Biafran efforts by osu who saw themselves as likely to continue to suffer discrimination at the hands of other Ndigbo even in a Biafra they had fought to create.
In my response to Chidi, I will describe the need to disengage the various strands of the description of what it means to be osu and the various strategies being adopted to engage with the problem.
Avoiding the dominant negative interpretation might not be likely to succeed because that perception is too strong, too old, too entrenched, it seems. More likely to succeed, as Okenwa Nwosu suggests in an essay I link in my response to Chidi, is to fight the denigrative interpretation directly.
One effort used is to claim the osu identity in the name of what is understood as an orginary valoristic significance before this was purportedly distorted. Another is to acknowledge the negative valuation but insist on focusing on positive possibilities inherent in the character of osu as sacred dedication and communal intercession. One can even develop a Osu Spirituality and Philosophy which I will outline, as one demonstration of the creativity of classical Igbo culture.
thanks
toyin
On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 8:40 PM, Ifedioramma E. Nwana <ienwana@yahoo.com> wrote:
Osu is different from slave. An osu is one dedicated/sacrificed to a god; he or she is holy and one does not hurt him/her without incurring the wrath of the god to whom he/she is dedicated. A slave is an ohu or oru. He/she belongs to another human and may, indeed, be able to purchase his/her freedom, become a free citizen and rise to any height.IEM NwanaFrom: OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, 19 March 2013, 21:37
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade
I read somewhere that the Asante used slaves in clearing the forests on which they built their communities.Is that true?What about the osu cast system in Igboland? To what degree were the osu not slaves? I know little about this but a pic I saw of an osu and a dibia on the Igbocybershrine blog a powerful and unforgettable pic, suggested something that reminded me of slavery.toyin
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 6:48 PM, Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdullah@gmail.com> wrote:Skip gates is not bill gates. And a slave mode of production was not dominant in any african society by 1500. It became dominant and hegemonic in some societies only in nineteen century--a result of their involvement in the european slave trade.History does not repeat itself: you do not swim in the same river twice. Agents of /in history make mistakes but it is not the historical process that is being reproduced. You cannot drink in the same cup twice!Ib Abdullah------On Mar 19, 2013 10:45 AM, "Ikhide" <xokigbo@yahoo.com> wrote:"There are some fundamental facts. First, no African kingdom used slavery as its principal mode of production. Africa has produced no economies based on slavery. It was left to Europe to create a system of slavery where humans were chattel to be used as tools in the development of wealth. Secondly, in all massive enterprises where there are oppressors and the oppressed there will be collaborators. It is no secret that some of Afriica's best minds, Fanon, Memni, Karenga, have isolated incidents of collaboration among victims of oppression. Blacks were police officers in the white minority regime of South Africa but one cannot blame apartheid on black people. So when Gates claims that Africans were involved in the slave trade one can accept this, but what one cannot accept is that Africans were equally culpable for the slave trade. Nor should one blame the Judenrats (Jewish Councils) of Germany for Nazi atrocities although they often collaborated with the Germans. Indians collaborated with the British colonialists in India and some Chinese collaborated with the Japanese in occupied China, and while there is no excuse there is certainly explanation for collaboration."
- Molefi Kete Asante
http://www.asante.net/articles/44/where-is-the-white-professor-located/
Hmmm/ It is incorrect that "no African kingdom used slavery as its principal mode of production." That is silly hagiography. There are many ways to counter Bill Gates without minimizing the role of Africans in the transatlantic slave trade. Africans are just as culpable as those that came to take away our siblings. *cycles away slowly*
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