Professor Edward Kissi,
Shalom Aleichem !
Our commonalities : First of all I have a wonderful friend here in Sweden, from Ghana, by the name of Micah Kissi // Micah Kissi of Ewe ethnicity. He is very religious ( a holy man) and I'm sure that with respect to the work that you are doing, he would be prone to be quoting Jesus, that "Blessed are the peacemakers, because they will be called sons of God"
The devil, in contrast, likes blood and is always busy promoting bloodbaths. A contradiction coming up: The bard sings that sometimes Satan comes as a "Man of Peace"
Of what you requested, here is the first of the four that I can think of at the moment:
Sierra Leone , where, for example we have the Great Scarcies and the Little Scarcies River As you know, rivers are landmarks that sometimes serve as borders and this story, mythical or real, could be situated in another African country in which a river divides people into North and South habitats, such rivers sometimes separating Tribe X in the north from Tribe Y on the southern bank. The story goes that when the Tribe X boy is circa 12 years old, as part of his rite of passage into young manhood, his father takes him aside to confide in him some adult tribal truths that he should now be old enough to deal with. "Son", he says," Now you have to be very careful. You see the people on the Northern side of this river, stay away from them , but if you ever get close, you will observe that their lips are red: They are cannibals"
At his coming of age ceremony, the same warning is given to the Tribe Y boy, and that's how an equilibrium of mutual distrust and fear is created in the children at such a young, impressionable age, maybe forever.
Surely, for African and Muslim parties to any conflict, the requirements for salvation in both Christianity and Islam are a much higher authority than " indigenous/cultural prohibitions"?
Just asking.
Most probably, the truth is that
"From the east, from the west
From the south to the north
Ah, na the same people
I say, "From the south, from the north
From the west to the east
Na the same people" (Tony Allen : Secret Agent
On Saturday 14 September 2024 at 20:42:54 UTC+2 Edward Kissi wrote:
Kinsman Cornelius, you raise some excellent questions here. Your pessimism is also apt because as I noted, the frequency of atrocities in our community of humans casts doubt on our ability to prevent or contain these catastrophes. Neverthekess, my thinking is that there must be some African indigenous knowledge that contains pathways to addressing my research and teaching interests.
I spoke last week on zoom with a peace education activist in the DRC and asked him about the dehumanization and targeting of albinos in his country and asked if there are indigenous/cultural prohibitions on that attitude. He told he had not thought about that but one wise-saying comes into his mind which he shared. It was a defense of albino identity but one that was different from my Kwawu people's anti-albino cultural attitudes. These are the commonalities and contradixtions I am interested in. So Cornelius, I need four of them from you.
A luta continua : Biko Agozino vs the evil criminal justice system !
I'm impressed by this avant-garde, Igbo witticism from the ancestral reservoir of wisdom, to wit ,
"Proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten."
It would seem that through colonialism, English Language Dominance ( English Language Imperialism) and Christian Missionary Activities, the word " anus" is not so decorous, not the kind of word you'd ever hear at Sunday School. In fact is it not a miracle that Ojogbon let it through the moderator's sensitive linguistic filter?
" her own anus in the sky" indeed, the height of hubris
We now know that Chidi is coming from the same ancestral reservoir with his
"The sky
Urinates,
Downpour!"
But back to the real matter at hand. In the same spirit but less vulgar - from Brer Brecht ( one of Baba Soyinka's favourites) :
"When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out 'stop!' When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer."
For you, me, Tinubu, Trump, we, Kamala, the female witches, all of us :
The Interrogation of the Good, by Bertolt Brecht On Saturday 14 September 2024 at 00:08:50 UTC+2 Biko Agozino wrote:
Dibie na agwo otule, o debelu ike ya na elu? Igbo proverb meaning, The witch who concocts diarrhea, is she hiding her own anus in the sky? Or as Marley sang, when the rain falls, it won't fall on one man's housetop. Remember that.
Biko
On Friday 13 September 2024 at 16:39:23 GMT-4, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <
ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
Wonderful. There are a good number of these
As many of you know, I have been involved in research and teaching on the Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights, Genocide-prevention, Atrocity-prevention, and the prevention of identity-based violence for many years. Some may even be aware of my article in African Security Review in which I argue for a concept of "moral pan-Africanism" as a framework for sustainable regional peace and security in Africa.
In recent years, I have worked with many international organizations, museums, and academic institutions to find practical community-based solutions to genocide and identity-based violence. Sadly, these atrocities continue in all human societies with maddening regularity. Some would argue that their recurrence, despite the large body of scholarship and teaching on their causes, prevention, and impact, expose the limitations of genocide-prevention research and activism, or the incorrigible nature of humans as perpetrators.
As someone who grew up in a village in Ghana organized on community cultural and moral logics embedded in proverbs, folklores, and axioms, I am aware of values-laden proverbs that served my community well. Some of these community proverbs highlighted the "intersectionality" of human life, the moral necessity to defend the dignity of every human being, and the harm to self and society inherent in hate-speech. On intersectionality of human destinies, my Kwawu people say that "obi afumkwan nkye na asi obi de mu". This could be translated into English as: it does not take long for one person's path to his farm to intersect with another's. This community view that our lives are interconnected and what has been done to others can also be done to us made people in my local community admonish anyone who incited violence against others. On harm to oneself and community when people maltreat their fellow human beings, the Kwawu have a warning: wo twa wo tekrema we a na wonwee nam biara. Crudely translated: when you cut your tongue and eat it, you have not eaten any meat. Or, elegantly, if you roast your tongue for dinner you have not eaten any meaningful meal. You have harmed yourself and your community instead.
Certainly, these community maxims never banished conflict in Kwawu society but they warned against it. They provided theoretical frameworks for the prevention of atrocities.
I have been thinking of compiling and comparing such community-driven responses to atrocities, genocide and identity-based violence in Africa. Therefore, I am looking for many African community proverbs, maxims, stories, etc, that "discouraged" violence against groups based on their identity (ethnicity, beliefs, appearance, etc), or advocated inter-group harmony as the foundation of community security. Or proverbs and maxims that "encouraged" such violence and how that is explained.
My aim here is to look deeper into African societies and discover valuable traditions, values, mores, etc, that have been overlooked by genocide and identity-based violence researchers. I want to examine the commonalities in these community values and think about how communities can be viable partners in genocide-prevention and the prevention of identity-based violence in Africa. I want to use these as conceptual bedrocks for teaching a course on "applied genocide-prevention" in a certificate program for genocide-prevention practitioners.
I need your help! You can share your community anti-atrocity proverbs, maxims, axioms (and their English translations) in this forum or you can share them privately with me at ekis...@gmail.com, or eki...@usf.edu. You will be credited for your contribution.
Edward Kissi
Edward Kissi, Ph.D
Professor
School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies
University of South Florida
4202 East Fowler Avenue
Tampa, Florida 33620
813 974-7784
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Africans and the Holocaust
Integrating sub-Saharan Africa into a historical and cultural study of the Holocaust
Caught between the Union Jack and the Nazi Swastika: African Protests over Ambiguous Status under British Imperialism and Potential Transfer to Nazi Colonialism
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