/ 19 April 2010

Ethics brewed in an African pot

Ethics Brewed In An African Pot

As with a good recipe, the latest contributions to ‘living a good life’ draw on varied ingredients to offer memorable dishes.

Persons in Community: African Ethics in Global Culture
edited by Ronald Nicolson (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press)

African Ethics: An Anthology of Comparative and Applied Ethics
edited by Munyaradzi Felix Murove (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press)

As communities evolved in Africa, ethics have developed and grown through successive interactions with Christian missionaries in present-day Egypt and Ethiopia, with Muslim traders, missionaries and conquerors, and finally with the Western Catholic and Protestant traditions that accompanied the continent’s colonisation. More recently African ethics have also had to contend with values informed by African Initiated Churches, secular philosophies and a range of political ideologies imported from the West.

Unsurprisingly, a new distinctive approach to ethics has arisen: African ethics, which — as these two books show quite admirably — are diverse and complex in their interests and philosophical assumptions, and in their reaction to modern Western religious and secular moral thinking.

Both these books have their origins at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Ronald Nicolson’s book is the earlier, essentially an exploration of the relationship of African ethics to global ethics, whereas Munyaradzi Felix Murove’s is a massive, comprehensive anthology of writings in the field that in its latter half takes the subject into a range of themes in applied ethics.

Persons in Community (and the earlier chapters in African Ethics) sets out to define African ethics and put them in a global context. Here we find articles that explain the often controversial term ubuntu as the root of most African ethical discourse. If the foundation of African ethics is in the notion of humanness, what it is to be a person, ubuntu sees this humanness as personhood in community: a person is a person through other people.

Naturally this is itself a controversial notion. Does ubuntu diminish individuality and personal responsibility? Some would argue that it does, that it stands in the face of a long and respected tradition of individual person-focused ethics, running the risk of becoming totalitarian in practice if not in intention. A few would even say that this could be (and sometimes is) easily manipulated by unscrupulous leaders to dominate a community.

A more generous reading of ubuntu would argue that this is not the case, that it protects individuals from domination through one of the basic methods of African ethics, namely the notion of palaver. Palaver seeks a consensus by a process of dialogue rather than through simple majoritarian decision-making. I hope they are right. Although a strong supporter of African ethics, the Congolese moral theologian Bénézet Bujo has warned that since decolonisation many crooked African leaders have misused African traditions. They promote them when it suits their ends, down-playing communitarian and democratic aspects of tradition when it threatens their hold over power and resources. As with all moral systems, African ethics are open to manipulation.

The authors in both these books, including Bujo, highlight the positive dimension to African ethics rather than the negative. They include philosophers (Augustine Shutte, Mogobe Ramose, Lucinda Manda, Thaddeus Metz, Martin Prozesky and Murove, who contributes a number of pieces to African Ethics), theologians (Ezra Chitando, Ronald Nicolson, Neville Richardson, Bénézet Bujo, Musa Dube, Mokgethi Mothlabi), social scientists (William de Maria, Happy Kayuni, Kenneth Leonard, Nhlanhla Mkhize, John Mafunisa, Ali Mazrui, Richard Tambulasi), as well as NGO practitioners and religious leaders (Mvume Dandala, Barbara Nussbaum and Mluleki Mnyaka).

Whether black or white Africans, or non-Africans in a number of cases, they argue that African ethics have much to say to us today — wherever in the world we may be. What is striking about the articles in both these books is the way in which diverse traditions come together to form African ethics — African traditional religion rooted in the belief in one God and the intermediary role of the ancestors; culture and cultural practice, including traditions of fables and storytelling; a range of Catholic and Protestant Christian ethics; as well as a swath of ancient and modern Western philosophical traditions.

What emerges for me is the fact that there is no single African ethic, but a range of African ethical traditions ranging from the fairly secular to the overtly religious. This makes the subject delightfully complex yet ultimately rewarding. It represents healthy developments in philosophical and theological traditions, as well as innovative new departures that contribute something important to global ethics. Perhaps the greatest of these is the way in which religious and secular boundaries are usually broken down, often with the bonus of incorporating traditions of storytelling into what can often be quite a dry, rigid intellectual discipline that too frequently drains the life out of what ethics are supposed to be — people trying to address how to live a good life.

Persons in Community sets the scene brilliantly in its depiction of the nature and theory of African ethics set against the global intellectual background, and African Ethics in its latter sections presents a stunning array of approaches to particular questions: justice, human rights, democracy, medicine, business and the environmental question that has become so prominent recently. Here, too, we see diverse approaches to similar problems that offer varied insights and complex solutions. In short what one expects from any collection of applied ethics.

To lift and adapt a title of a recent book by the Nigerian theologian Agbonkhianmeghe E Orobator, both these books are “ethics brewed in an African pot”. Just as in any good recipe, the theological and philosophical ingredients are varied — some Western, some African, some Christian, some not — and are mixed together in varying amounts to create memorable dishes. It is obvious that theological and philosophical ethicists in Africa and elsewhere need to read these books — but unlike a lot of others that it is their professional duty to read, these books are excellent and lively reading.

The liveliness of the writing and the clarity with which almost all of the authors address their subjects also makes these books accessible to the ordinary reader. Ethics are, after all, about how to live a good life. It should also be good reading.