For The Nation To Live, The Tribe Must Die
So let us speak about identity. We are born into specific socio cultural contexts that mould our initial years. Our initial relationships, familial and other; our positions in our family, our community, our society... our relationship with authority, with our elders, with our peers... All of these are moulded by that specific socio cultural context that we are born into. Common history and language are key components or elements of cultural identity. These become the references that build the social being, the human being that we initially are.
So generally speaking, these socio cultural contexts, these resulting relationships can be seen as the ‘seeds’ of our identities, or our social beings. They can, and will expand, be built upon, change shape... but they are still the seeds of our future selves. We can look at the contexts within which these seeds are planted in a range of ways – socio cultural, economic, socio economic etc... and many of those contexts overlap. In considering the socio cultural contexts, ethnicity is a core framework and it is in this way that ‘tribe’ helps form the seeds of our identities.
It is clear that the many overlapping contexts of our early years means that sometimes our ‘tribes’ develop in different ways. Ethnicity provides one set of lenses; economic wealth or financial poverty might provide another; age and gender etc provide yet other lenses. Yet I would argue that some of those lenses are subsumed within the wider socio cultural lens of ‘tribe’.
If tribal norms then ‘seed’ our identities, is the argument that for a national identity to thrive, the tribal identity must die? Or that further, for pan Africanism to thrive, national identities must die? I would argue that this is not the case. Let’s look at the analogy of a seed. When a seed is planted, it does not die. With the right conditions, including soil, water, sun etc, the seed does not die. It is transformed into another living entity.
The seed transforms – at one point spreading its roots, and then growing out of the earth and forming a stem, eventually a trunk, branches and leaves. It all depends on what type of seed, but I think you will understand my point. Indeed, what is in the seed is what dictates the nature of the transformation that emerges from its sowing.
The very being of the seed maintains its identity in the transformation process. There is an Akan saying – ‘a crab does not give birth to a cow’. Thus the seed from an orange will produce an orange. The seed from an avocado will produce an avocado. The innate influences the transformation, yet does not kill in the transformation. And as human beings we are able to influence the transformation; to use old seeds to breed stronger hybrids; to develop new strains, new strengths.
By Maish