Page 56 - Volume 1_Go home mzungu Go Home_merged with links

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Africa before the 'zuŋ u

Our land, Our People, Our culture !

The slave was entitled to legal protection. There were also avenues for social, political,
and economic mobility.
Dr Akosua Perbi (2001) 31

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"Children of slaves born into families could be integrated into the master's kinship group
and rise to prominent positions within society, even to the level of chief in some

instances."

"African Slavery and Other Forms of Social Oppression 32
on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Context of the Atlantic Slave-Trade,"
Walter Rodney
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As we will see, the m'zuŋ u trans-Atlantic slavery was on a scale never seen before in
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Africa. And its intrinsically m'zuŋ u commercial nature changed the concept of slavery, as
previously understood by Africans. Kinship slavery became chattel slavery. Slavery as a

business became more valuable, but the slave was a greatly diminished human being.

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Traditional African Religions

There is a diversity to traditional African religions that can be said to reflect their different

ethnic grouping. Generally, these traditions are oral rather than scriptural. In common with

many indigenous peoples, a central theme is animism, the belief that objects, places and
creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. A constant thread is a deep respect for

the dead and the use of magic and traditional African medicine. 33

Women play a much more prominent role in the practice of traditional African

religions than they do in the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths. As with other aspects of
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pre-m'zuŋ u Africa, the practice of traditional African religion was much more ordered than
the imagery conveyed by Hollywood. There is a brief paper by Kenneth Kojo Anti, "Women

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in Traditional African Religions", that provides a lot of detail on the role of women, and
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also gives a sense of just how religion fitted into pre-m'zuŋ u African society.
It also should help to provide some understanding of just how hard it can be to totally
eradicate Female Genital Mutilation. Activists might do well to understand that the practice,

however wrong, is linked to a sense of African identity. Resistance to change may well be