Black men and women are the most post-modern subjects of all

References to African traditions and culture in the context of the controversy over The Spear, the painting portraying President Jacob Zuma with his penis showing, has brought back to mind one of the relatively big media stories of 2011.

This was the story triggered by the comments made by Mr Jimmy Manyi, President of the Black Management Forum and Head of Government Communication and Information Services.

I suspect the story went big because, in addition to Manyi, the other central protagonists involved in the event, were the minister in the presidency Mr Trevor Manuel, and Mr Paul Ngobeni, at the time legal adviser to the minister of defence.

But it also got traction because it was, like the perceived insult against African traditions by the depiction of Zuma’s imagined penis, yet another dreadful replay of the effects of the inherited misunderstandings of the racialised and tribalised pasts that made us into who we are.

Black people as a whole did not come out well from that story too.

Like other ugly stories of race, Manyi’s words and the exchanges that followed entrapped our imaginations because they played on the masochism and misrecognition that have become, since apartheid at least, an unhappy part of what is erroneously called African tradition or culture.

Read more here: http://www.timeslive.co.za/ilive/2012/05/29/black-men-and-women-are-the-most-post-modern-subjects-of-all-ilive

Tradition 101: Seminar 1, Footnote 1(c)

'Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name. The reformers of every age, whether political or religious or literary, have protested against the tyranny of the dead, and in doing so have called for innovation and insight in place of tradition. ... (T)he dichotomy between tradition and insight breaks down under the weight of history itself. A 'leap of progress' is not a running broad jump, which begins at the line of where we are now; it is a running broad jump to where we have been to where we go next. ... For during much of our history, insight has often come through the recitation and rearrangement of materials from tradition. .... The growth of insight - in science, in the arts, in philosophy and theology - has not come through progressively sloughing off more and more of tradition, as though insight would be purest and deepest when it finally freed itself of the dead past. It simply has not worked that way in the history of tradition, and it does not work that way now. By including the dead in the circle of discourse, we enrich the quality of the conversation. Of course we do not  listen only to the dead, nor are we a tape recording of the tradition. That really would be the dead faith of the living, not the living faith of the dead.' Jaroslav Pelikan, 1984 The vindication of tradition.

Myths and misconceptions of tradition

We are located on the southern tip of Africa. We are the heirs of the Enlightenment, its upside and horrors. Thus we believe some things about a concept that has come to define this continent.

If you have been attentive, you would have noticed the word tradition come up again and again and again. The work we do is about rethinking tradition, not to assert traditionalisms or to use tradition as a political tool. Instead what is needed is to refigure the following misconceptions and myths about tradition:

  

• Traditions are static
• Tradition is backward
• All traditions are bad
• Only certain people have tradition
• It is possible to live without tradition
• Tradition = culture = race

Would you agree? What is your definition of tradition?

Photo: Guy Stubbs.