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African Values and the Human Rights Debate: An African Perspective Author(s): Josiah A. M. Cobbah Source: Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Aug., 1987), pp. 309-331 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/761878 . Accessed: 12/01/2014 16:20

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HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

African Values and the Human Rights Debate: An African Perspective

Josiah A.M. Cobbah *

INTRODUCTION: CULTURE IN THE HUMAN RIGHTS DEBATE

There is an ongoing debate among scholars over whether or not the concept of human rights is entirely Western.' Questions that have been raised in- clude the following: Can we really expect non-Western peoples to embrace the international human rights instruments which are by and large Western in character? 2 If non-Western cultures do not possess the Western concep- tion of human rights, do they have other approaches to the enhancement of human dignity? 3 It is perhaps in the nature of such a discussion that these questions will never be satisfactorily answered. There seems to be some con- sensus, however, that the concept of human rights as generally understood is historically a Western concept. The more troubling questions facing Westerners and non-Westerners alike pertain to whether contemporary in- ternational human rights instruments, given their Western biases, can be said to apply to peoples from non-Western cultures.

Despite an increase in the discussion of human rights in Africa, very little exists in the form of literature that approaches the idea of human rights from

* An earlier draft of this article was presented at the Seventh Annual International Human Rights Symposium and Research Conference, Center for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University, New York, New York, 9-13 June 1986.

1. Dunstan M. Wai, "Human Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa," in Human Rights: Cultural and Ideological Perspectives, ed. Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab (New York: Praeger, 1979), 116; Jack Donnelly, "Human Rights and Human Dignity: An Analytic Critique of Non-Western Conceptions of Human Rights," American Political Science Review 76 (June 1982).

2. Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab, "Human Rights: A Western Construct with Limited Applicability," in Pollis and Schwab, note 1 above, 1-18.

3. Raimundo Pannikkar, "Is the Notion of Human Rights a Western Concept?" Diogenes 120 (Winter 1982): 75-102.

Human Rights Quarterly 9 (1987) 309-331 ? 1987 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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310 HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY Vol. 9

an African perspective. What most Africans have written on the subject tends to be either attempts to show that the Western concept exists in African cultures4 or Western-style condemnations of the abuse of human rights in Africa.s In addition to these African writers, Western "Africanist" scholars have made quite a contribution to the literature on Africa. These contributions have usually been of the second type, that is, condemnations of African regimes or African peoples for violating the basic human rights of segments of the African population.6 While the increase in the discussion of human rights in Africa is both timely and refreshing, a survey of the literature leaves one with the impression that scholars proceed on the assumption that although traditional concepts on the enhancement of human dignity are present in African culture, African societies have become modernized to a point where a discussion of these traditional concepts has become esoteric, or indeed a pretext by Africans to avoid the hard questions about human rights violations to which the Western world expects convincing answers.7 In other words, Africans have not attempted in any real sense to articulate for the international human rights community an African sense of human dignity or perhaps human rights, one that flows from an African perspective on the self and one that perhaps the rest of the international community can also use.

It is the aim of this paper to direct African and non-African scholars along a cross-cultural path. First, the natural rights origins of the Western human rights concept are examined to show that the concept denies culture in a very fundamental sense. The purpose of this analysis is to demonstrate that we should talk about rights within a cultural context. Second, an Africentric conception of human dignity is presented as a valid worldview which should inform the cross-cultural fertilization of ideas. The effects of Western ethnocentrism and the disregard for non-Western philosophical choices in international affairs are examined, leading to the conclusion that African communitarianism has ingredients that should aid the formulation of cross-cultural human rights norms. The contention is that Westerners may indeed have a lot to learn from Africans.

WHY WESTERNERS SHOULD STUDY AFRICAN CULTURES

In a recent article, Kent decries the domination of Anglo-American ethical theory by ethical individualism which has come to supplant the community

4. Wai, note 1 above. 5. See, e.g., Olusola Ojo and Amadu Sessay, "The O.A.U. and Human Rights: Prospects for

the 1980s and Beyond," Human Rights Quarterly 8 (February 1986): 89-103. 6. See, e.g., Rhoda Howard, Human Rights in Commonwealth Africa (Totawa, N.J.:

Rowman and Littlefield, 1986): chaps. 6 and 7. 7. See, e.g., Howard, note 6 above, 22-34.

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1987 An African Perspective 311

interest theory of Aquinas and other scholastics.8 Kent points out that through ethical individualism we are able to draw a distinction between "natural duties not to harm others and minimally altruistic acts and so called supererogatory acts of benevolence and mercy, of heroism and self- sacrifice." 9 Supererogatory acts are not required. They are performed as acts of charity and goodwill. Thus conservative U.S. constitutionalists argue that the concern for the needy falls under the heading of charity and has nothing to do with rights. Through this distinction the individual is insulated from group responsibility for the needy. Kent points out that if we view society as an organized community made up of individual members, then we can fathom individual and community obligations that supercede the simplistic logic of supererogation and ethical individualism.1o Kent thereby suggests a worldview that approximates African communalism.

Human rights ideas in international fora have historically been derived from a Western natural rights perspective. This perspective indeed denies the existence of the needy's right to economic sustenance and society's obligation to satisfy this right. The African sense of community obligation that goes beyond charity is just what is needed to foster economic rights and push the idea of economic rights beyond the demands of human rights ac- tivists and human rights textbooks. We need to take such non-Western con- ceptions seriously. Western social scientists are increasingly questioning the sanctity of the liberal individualist paradigm in their search for answers to contemporary Western problems. For example, some scholars have started to question the effect of individualism on important social institutions such as marriage and on the important societal functions of child care and the care of the aged. In this regard non-Western societies may have a lot to offer the West.

Even more pressing is the fact that with increasing immigration from the Third World to the Western world, Western political systems cannot in good conscience expect that non-Western peoples will always simply shed their traditional worldviews and take on the predominant worldview. In many cases social legislation will have to take into account the worldview of im- migrants with respect to important institutions such as family and marriage. Along these lines it has been suggested that one of the problems that U.S. society has with the "difficulties" of black family life in the United States is white America's basic ignorance of the bases of African-American kinship values in African traditional life."1 It can be expected that as the face of the United States changes from simply being white, Indian, and black, to feature

8. Edward Allen Kent, "Taking Human Rights Seriously," in Rationality in Thought and Ac- tion, ed. Martin Tammy and K.D. Irani (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 37.

9. Ibid., 38. 10. Ibid. 11. See Niara Sudarkasa, "African and Afro-American Family Structure: A Comparison,"

Black Scholar 11 (November/December 1980): 44.

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312 HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY Vol. 9

Hispanics and Asians, cross-cultural appreciation of human dignity concepts will become even more important. Figure 1 represents an attempt to syn- thesize an African worldview in comparison with a European one.

WESTERN LIBERALISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

To understand liberal political philosophy it is necessary to understand the medieval Western conception of society that preceded the liberal era. In medieval political thought the individual was seen basically in terms of his complementarity with other individuals, that is, as part of society. All associations were considered to be microcosmic forms of the divinely in- stituted harmony of the universe.12 Individuals were simply part of society in a holistic sense, ruled by the king and by God above all. Every individual made a contribution to the organization or community to which he be- longed and society functioned based on these contributions. Equality was not required "any more than the working of the human body or of the universe itself requires equality of its parts."13 In a sense the idea of an in- dividual identity separate from society did not imply a notion of opposition between the parts and the whole.

The political philosophy of liberalism was largely a reaction to this medieval thought.14 It was a philosophical opposition to traditional authority that was based on divine wisdom, religion, and the common law. The roots of the Western concept of human rights lie in liberalism. The original liberal theorists saw a direct connection between rights and human nature.15 Ac- cording to Hinchman, the writings of Hobbes and Locke inaugurated a new intellectual and political tradition in which the individual as a political actor was abstracted from the harmonious and holistic totality of medieval society. The old order thought of rights and duties only in terms of local, national, estate, or religious traditions. Rights, if they existed at all, existed only for the individual as a member of an established, ongoing community.16 Thus the lord had his rights, as did the peasant.17 Hobbes introduced the idea of human rights as a conception of human nature. The "state of nature" was a logical and rhetorical device upon which Hobbes built his political philosophy.'18 This state of nature was for Hobbes "an inference made from

12. Gerald E. Frug, "The City as a Legal Concept," Harvard Law Review 93 (April 1980): 1086.

13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 1087-90. 15. Lewis P. Hinchman, "The Origins of Human Rights: A Hegelian Perspective," Western

Political Quarterly 37 (March 1984): 8. 16. Ibid., 9. 17. Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon

Press, 1966), 466-467. 18. Hinchman, note 15 above, 10.

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1987 An African Perspective 313

the passions, chiefly the fear of violent death, the motive which he thought to be the most 'natural' or fundamental of all.""19

Hobbes' desire was to give us an understanding of what we would be like if we were divested of all our learned responses and all culture, in- cluding "family loyalty, patriotism, religious fervor or class honor that fre- quently override the more natural passion of fear."20 The state of nature then is one in which man heeds his natural passion for security and survival. In this state Hobbes sees man as possessing a natural right to all the objects of his desire.

Locke similarly rejected medieval notions of authority, but his state of nature incorporated strong suggestions that the market economy is more or less the "model for natural behavior, including the assertion of rights and the conclusion of agreements."21 Like Hobbes, Locke saw individuals, stripped of all historical loyalties and beliefs, who are out in the world in pursuit of their security. This process of abstraction is necessary in order to define a "right of nature."22 Hobbes saw this right as the "liberty each man has to use his own power as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature- that is to say, of his own life .... "23 Hobbes further defined liberty as the "absence of external impediments to mlotion."24 Consequently, having rights meant that there are no impediments to the individual's "natural motions" (motions that are governed solely by the desire for self-preservation). This right to "natural motions" meant that to establish civic order individuals had to give up their natural rights. The individual would surrender these rights only if he would gain some advantage.25

Hobbes posited that although humans are essentially selfish and wicked, human reason and necessity led the species into a community pact through which humans formally agreed to surrender their private rights to a divine ruler.26 Locke also refers to the awareness of humans that they should coexist. In Locke's scheme, however, there were two pacts. The first pact brought individuals together to form a community and the second pact ap- pointed an individual from among the community to become the ruler. For Locke, the ruler could govern as long as he remained acceptable to the com- munity.27 Similarly Rousseau espoused an agreement among individuals in which sovereignty continued to reside in the ordinary people. In effect, the

19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., 12. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., 12-13. 26. Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan (1651; reprint, London: Oxford University Press, 1909),

chaps. 12-15. 27. John Locke, Two Treatises of Civil Government Book II (London: Dent, 1953), 96-99.

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right of the ruler did not compromise the fundamental rights of individual community members.28

Aspects of this theory of natural rights form the basis for much of mainstream human rights scholarship. First, the theory of natural rights postulates the equality of all human beings. There is no hierarchy in nature. A second postulate is the inalienability of rights. This postulate provides for the security of the individual and provides the posture for the individual to fight intrusions on his rights by the state and by society. The individual, for example, has an inalienable right to own and keep property. Third, natural rights theory postulated individualism. As mentioned earlier, the individual is consumed by a desire for self-preservation in a state of nature, and it is this need for individual survival that leads to the social contract.

Perhaps it is the individualist postulate of natural rights theory that raises the most suspicions about the Western view of human dignity and liberty. For example, how do we deal with situations in which some people are disadvantaged? How do we deal with those who cannot compete because of physical or mental disabilities? With the introduction into the human rights discussion of economic rights and the right to develop, it has become imperative that Westerners seek to accommodate group rights concepts within their hitherto liberal and individualistic human rights framework. It is suggested here that Westerners can benefit from looking at other cultures and specifically at how those cultures approach the issue of human dignity.

THE SPREAD OF LIBERALISM

From the revolutionary ideas of Hobbes and Locke a new Western world evolved. The seventeenth and eighteenth century produced the English Peti- tion of Rights (1627), the U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776), the U.S. Constitution (1787), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789), and the U.S. Bill of Rights (1791). All these documents were based on the image of the autonomous man. A new age of popular sovereignty and in- dividual rights had started. Thus the Declaration of Independence could say that

all men are born equal . . . endowed . . . with certain inalienable rights.., among these..,. life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; men are born and remain free and equal in rights. The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights and liberty, the ownership of property, security and the right to resist oppression.

Autonomous man was possessed in nature with natural rights that were prior to and supreme over the sovereignty of all associations of which he is part, including the sovereign state.

28. Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract Book I (London: Dent, 1913), chaps. 6, 7.

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1987 An African Perspective 315

As should be expected, these ideological changes in the seventeenth and eighteenth century were accompanied by far-reaching socioeconomic changes in Europe. The communal bonds of feudalism gave way to in- dustrial capitalism and urbanization. Urban-based industrial proletariats made demands on government for political participation, and individual rights became the legal vehicle for preventing the state from its excesses.

In the United States, the settler mentality, the perceived virtues of in- dividual initiative, and competition fostered the idea of individual autonomy.29

The evolution of liberalism undermined the vitality of all groups that held an intermediate position between the individual and the State; "the sovereignty of the State and the Sovereignty of the Individual ... steadily [became] the two central axioms from which all theories of social structure would proceed, and whose relationship to each other would be the focus of all theoretical controversy."30 Frug has ably analyzed how the undermining of intermediary institutions has had an effect on the legal status of modern U.S. cities.31 As Frug sees it, liberalism eroded the corporate autonomy of in- termediate groupings such as the medieval towns, reinterpreting their cor- porateness merely to entail "the sum of its individual members and, simultaneously, a 'fictional' person created by, and therefore subject to, the state."32 The original Germanic conception of a corporation was that of an organic entity that is not reducible to a collection of individuals. The cor- poration as an association had a real existence in itself and was not a crea- tion of the State.33 Liberal thinkers abstracted man from this corporate wholeness and isolated the individual as one with rights not only against the sovereign state but against all sub-state entities.

Through colonialism, Western concepts of individual rights and law have found a place in many non-Western parts of the world. During the colonial period the political and legal systems of the colonial masters were superimposed upon the traditional and customary political and legal pro- cesses of African peoples. In British West Africa, for example, the policy of indirect rule ensured that although certain minor disputes could be settled in the customary manner, the English Common Law was the ultimate source of authority. In other words, the African native could in theory count on the Western due process of law in defense of his inalienable rights in a Western- style court.

African legal education and education in the social sciences were mainly in the liberal tradition. At the time of political independence the new

29. Pollis and Schwab, note 2 above, 3. 30. Otto Friedrich von Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages, trans. Frederic William

Maitland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900), 87. 31. Frug, note 12 above. 32. Ibid., 1089. 33. Gierke, note 30 above, 162-165.

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African countries inherited liberal states with all the paraphernalia of Western individual rights and constitutional law.

In December 1948, at a time when most of the population of Africa south of the Sahara was still under colonial domination, a General Assembly dominated by the Western world adopted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations. There is no doubt that the Declaration was a product of Western liberal ideology. As Pollis and Schwab point out, "the Declaration itself read like a political 'bill of rights,' and... that is precisely how it was viewed during the drafting stage."34 It is usually argued that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights together constitute an International Bill of Rights. If these international norms constitute customary international law then they bind people of all cultures.

LIBERALISM'S FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS: WHERE IS CULTURE?

Theorists of the Frankfurt School of Social Theory have questioned the assumption that one's passions and desires are emphatically one's own.3s In other words, "[w]hat if one compulsively adapts to cultural patterns and ideas out of an irrational desire to conform?"36 Along the same lines, Habermas draws a distinction between technical and political issues. To the extent that the issues prevailing in the political arena are technical and therefore beyond the faculties of the average citizen, individuals "may tend to abandon their own critical faculties to the supposedly higher wisdom of a technocratic elite."37 Another source of criticism comes from modern psychological thought which can envision a conflict-free and more humane society construct around careful measures of social control.A8

Hegel rejected the liberal theorists' classical idea of "man in the state of

nature."39 In Hegel's view Locke and Hobbes degraded the individual by peeling away the layers of society and culture,

leaving aside everything contingent until, finally, one comes by analysis to the abstraction called natural man.

If one thinks away everything which might even remotely be regarded as par- ticular or evanescent, such as what pertains to particular mores, history, culture,

34. Pollis and Schwab, note 2 above, 5. 35. Hinchman, note 15 above, 13. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 14. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 16.

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1987 An African Perspective 317

or even the state, than [sic] all that remains is man imagined as in the state of nature or else the pure abstraction of man with only his essential possibilities left.40

Hegel was disturbed by the claim of the classical liberals that the true nature of something so supremely complex as modern society should be sought in the abstraction of the "natural man."41 This method implies that the understanding of anything complex lies in reducing the complexity to its simple elements and perhaps to its beginnings.42 In the words of Hinchman,

Hegel distinguishes between the characteristic Lockeian question, "What is the origin of X" . . . and the question, "What is X?" What "X" is may in fact only come to light when we take into account the developed and articulated form of"X," in- cluding all the supposedly contingent elements of history, custom, the state, etc., which the state of nature approach peels away. In "taking apart" existing society, studying its "parts," then reconstructing it, Hobbes and Locke have left something out- not something accidental, but the very essence of man's social and political relationships. For this reason their project of grounding human rights in man's pre-political state appeared to Hegel fundamentally mistaken... Only if one could somehow purge human memory of everything not included in Hobbes' and Locke's state of nature, could one possibly re-condition men to think and act as the liberal theorists say they do, for example, solely and always for the sake of self-preservation .43

It is not my intention to do a full-blown analysis of Hegel's view of human rights in this paper. However, there could not be a more urgent call for seeing man as a cultural being. In this sense a cultural worldview may at the very least be a more useful framework within which we can understand human behavior and concepts of human dignity. Such a worldview that I suggest is very African and may even have validity in the West.

Notwithstanding the claims of the natural rights advocates, philosophers such as Hegel sought a correlation between rights claimed by one person and the potential duties imposed on other persons.44 Hegel argued that it is an indispensable precondition that rights and duties be correlative.45 For Hobbes, man was motivated above all by a fear of violent death.46 Hegel, however, depicted man's desiring consciousness as being "driven by the will to find confirmation of its own identity and selfhood in experience."47 Even if

40. Ibid., quoting G.W.F. Hegel, "Glauben and Wissen," Janaer Schrifkn 1801-1807 (1970): 445.

41. Ibid., 17. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., 19. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., n. 17. 47. Ibid.

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man was originally in a pre-political condition, such a condition is inevitably replaced by a condition in which human beings give recognition to each other and recognize rights as correlative to duties. In effect, from a pre- political "state of nature" man's struggle for self-awareness takes him from a crude desire to survive as an individual to a desire for clearer self-awareness.48 The new "self" then depends on the relationship of human beings to one another.49 "We began with 'natural' individuals who created a relationship, but we end with a relationship which 'creates' or at least 'defines' the individuals, making each be what he is."so

I suggest that a more solid foundation for modern human rights can be built on a conception of man in society rather than the Lockeian abstraction of natural rights. While it is true that conceptualizing human beings in society may mean giving up the convenience of equality in nature, it is necessary that we deal with society in real terms in order to effectuate our desire as an international community to understand and affect matters of human dignity and human rights. It is true, as Donnelly suggests, that the natural rights tradition of individualism does make a contribution, but we should understand the "participation in the practice of rights enmeshes in- dividuals in a network of social relationships and social structure. The autonomy of action that rights warrant and protect is autonomy within that network." 51

Some philosophers have argued for some kind of continuity between family relations and all social relations generally. For these philosophers the social contract theory of society appears one sided because it overem- phasizes quasi-contractual exchange of self interest as the basic constituent of social relations. For these philosophers, there are "relationships which are more significant than and prior to the merely legal one."52 For example, the family community is characterized by non-reciprocated, non-contractual dependence of children on parents. Betrand de Jouvenel was making this point when he wrote that "social contract theories are views of childless men who must have forgotten their own childhood."3 The philosopher Turner has also frowned on the fact that "our [Western] political theory assumes a society of tough-minded celibate males-no women, no families, no sexuality, no relationship other than those of the market."54 To redeem this situation Turner calls for the discovery of a whole world of critical political philosophy, which is "submerged as it is under a mass-market-minded prej-

48. Ibid., 20. 49. Ibid., 22. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid., 23. 52. Denys Turner, On the Philosophy of Karl Marx (Dublin: Scepter Books, 1968), 32. 53. Betrand de Jouvenel, The Pure Theory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1963), 45. 54. Turner, note 52 above, 33.

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1987 An African Perspective 319

udice, in the analysis of the political significance of sexuality."ss We are in fact still struggling with a complex array of social relations and the only ad- vantage we have with a philosophy of individualism is the deceiving advan- tage of avoiding the difficult questions.

It is true that the history of liberalism is fraught with examples of whole groups of individuals (women and blacks for example) who have systemat- ically been excluded from the full benefits of their theoretical individual rights. Through all this history, liberals held on to their principles of individ- ualism. Thus legal emancipation and functional individualism in the United States has failed to provide the equality and prosperity for women and African-Americans that many naively hoped for.

Thus it has become a relevant question whether the prevailing model of individualism provides an adequate theory for the goals of the women's movement and minorities in the United States.56 There is little doubt that to effectuate the goals of equal opportunity (and the actual realization of this opportunity) in the United States we have to recognize "the inescapably col- lective nature of our society" and the "pressing need to develop adequate collective political principles and theory."57 The problem, however, is that the ideology of individualism makes the development of such theory very difficult. To break the deadlock it should be helpful for Westerners to look to other cultures in order to reestablish the fact that our rights as individuals and as a society should eventually relate to our dignity as human beings. The recognition of this fact would open the way for a theory of community as "a complex and interdependent collectivity."58

In practical terms we are asking a cultural question when we pose the question: "What is the basic unit of society?" The avowed social contract theorists will say it is the individual. Aristotle and like minded philosophers will answer that it is the family. An African philosopher may answer that it is the extended family. As Turner points out

[t]here is at stake a basic clash of styles of thoughts, the one liberal and in- dividualist the other "communitarian" and "holist." The one sees the individual, and his freedom, his interest and his projects at the center of the field, society and social relationships as marginal to the hard irreducible core of his individuality, the other starts with the social relationships themselves and sees the individual as a function of them, regards the individual not as an independent being related only externally to others, but as a being whose whole nature is constituted by the character of the social relations in which he stands."9

55. Ibid. 56. See, e.g., Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "Women's Rights, Affirmative Action, and the Myth

of Individualism," The George Washington Law Review 54 (January and March 1986): 338-374.

57. Ibid., 340. 58. Ibid. 59. Turner, note 52 above, 36.

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Modern African society as analyzed and assessed by human rights scholars and activists clearly exhibits this clash of style in political thought. African societies are communitarian. It is only when we see these com- munities for what they are that we can understand their concepts of human dignity and further enhance or even modify these concepts.

AFRICAN CULTURE: RIGHTS AND ENTITLEMENT WITHIN A COMMUNITY

For the African, a philosophy of existence can be summed up as: "I am because we are, and because we are therefore I am."60 A comparison of African and Western social organization clearly reveals the cohesiveness of African society and the importance of kinship to the African lifestyle. Whereas Westerners are able to carry out family life in the form of the nuclear family and often in isolation from other kin, Africans do not have the concept of a nuclear family and operate within a broader arena of the ex- tended family.61

Within the organization of African social life one can discern various organizing principles. As a people, Africans emphasize groupness, sameness, and commonality. Rather than the survival of the fittest and con- trol over nature, the African worldview is tempered with the general guiding principle of the survival of the entire community and a sense of cooperation, interdependence, and collective responsibility.

The extended family unit, like family units in nearly all societies, assigns each family member a social role that permits the family to operate as a reproductive, economic, and socialization unit.62 These roles of kinship, however, are defined differently than in Western families and the behavior of kin toward one another is different than that which pertains in the West. In many African societies, for example, there is no distinction between a father and an uncle, or a brother and a cousin. Among the Akans of Ghana the English word "aunt" has no equivalent. For the Akan all aunts are mothers-i.e., older mothers and younger mothers. Likewise there is no equivalence for the English word "cousin" in the Akan language. A cousin is simply a brother or a sister. The differences that one finds in responsibilities toward different kin people usually revolve around whether the particular society is matrilineal or patrilineal.

These kinship terminologies, that is, the way relatives are named, are related to the ideals and expected behavioral patterns and norms that

60. John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 141. 61. Herbert J. Foster, "African Patterns in the Afro-American Family," Journal of Black Studies

14 (December 1983): 210. 62. Ibid., 211.

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1987 An African Perspective 321

govern family members. The kinship terminology defines and institu- tionalizes the family member's social role. "These roles are essentially rights which each kinship member customarily possesses, and duties which each kinship member has toward his kin." Viewed another way, the right of one kinship member is the duty of the other and the duty of the other kinship member is the right of another.63

Sudarkasa recently remarked that "[i]f there is one thing that anthropol- ogists should have learned from their study of African societies, it is that large and complex family groupings do not present to Africans the "problems" that they present to Europeans."64 Given the "naturalness" of the extended family to Africans, it is imperative that we seek to explore the implications of this reality rather than attempt to obscure the reality through conceptual analyses that seek to superimpose Western-derived individualistic paradigms.

The cohesion of the African family is derived in a large measure from the existence of explicit rules of appropriate behavior. As a family member, therefore, the African is made to "suffer" what will be considered as inconve- niences by the Westerner but at the same time the African holds an entitle- ment to visit the same on his kinsman. Sudarkasa has organized the com- plexity of rights and duties around four underlying principles: respect, restraint, responsibility, and reciprocity.6s

"Respect is the cardinal guiding principle for behavior within the family and in the society at large."66 Although African society is communal, it is hierarchical. Respect governs the behavior of family members toward the elders in the family. It has been said that the African child learns to respect his elders even before he learns to speak. In Akan society anyone older than you (even if by a day) should command your respect. This respect is manifested in greetings, bows, curtsies, and other gestures that signal recognition of seniority. As one grows up in the society, therefore, one ac- quires seniority rights and moves up in the hierarchy of the community. Seniority rights bear no relation to one's other attributes. These rights are strictly guaranteed. Ideally every member of the family with the exception of the very young enjoys some seniority rights.

Restraint is the principle that makes communalism within the family and within the wider society possible. This simply means that a person does not have complete freedom. Individual rights must always be balanced against the requirements of the group. The principle of restraint becomes evident in the differing patterns of communication. It is also evident in the sacrifices ex- pected of parents in order to provide for their children and sacrifices ex-

63. Ibid. 64. Sudarkasa, note 11 above, 44. 65. Ibid., 50. 66. Ibid.

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pected of grown children in order to provide for their parents. In terms of rights, the principle of restraint requires that family members remain flexible in terms of their own rights and always consider the requirements of the group as a whole.67

Responsibility is a much broader concept for African families than Western families, given their larger size. For the African "this offers a net- work of security, but it also imposes the burden of obligations."68

Reciprocity of generosity is expected in African society. It is assumed that acts of generosity among kinsfolk will be reciprocated in the short or long run. Sometimes, obligations of one generation can be carried over into the next generation.69

For the African, therefore, entitlements and obligations form the very basis of the kinship system. African observers are therefore quick to consider the hullabaloo over child care and the care of the aged as Western prob- lems. In African societies child care is a communal affair. The busy mother can always count on the entire community for support. The aged and the in- firm are guaranteed help and support within the extended family. Among the Akans, a destitute family member is seen as a disgrace to the entire fam- ily, and family members bear the responsibility to care for the needs of the disadvantaged through sharing.

In a society like the Akan, the pursuit of human dignity is not concerned with vindicating the right of any individual against the world. The African no- tion of family seeks a vindication of the communal well-being. The starting point is not the individual but the whole group including both the living and the dead.

Writing on political rights in traditional African society, Wai argued that African political systems were marked by checks and balances, relationships that ensured that rulers did not become dictatorial.70 Thus among the Akan one finds that the traditional political authority structure still engulfs family heads who have a consultative relationship with the chief. Traditionally, just as every member of the extended family had a distinct role to play as a member of the family, every extended family as a whole performed a given state function within the traditional political structure. The search for ap- pointees to specific state offices took places within specific extended families.71

Among the Akan there is a hierarchical political structure comprising an intricate network of chiefs and subchiefs, linguists, state craftsmen, state musicians, and warriors. Thus every individual in the system is predeter-

67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 70. Wai, note 1 above, 116. 71. See, e.g., Joseph B. Danquah, Akan Laws and Customs (London: Routledge, 1928), 182.

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1987 An African Perspective 323

mined to play a role in the total functioning of the society. Each office or role bears its own privileges. Given the absence of individualism, one accepts one's role in this network without comparison to the role of one's neighbor who may belong to another extended family and may thus occupy a "higher" spot in the hierarchy. In effect, the traditional Akan recognizes that in the functioning of society (for example in times of war) families may need to fall into a hierarchy to assure the smooth running and survival of the society.72

It should be pointed out that many of these traditional roles discussed above were in fact purely ceremonial or sometimes "emergency" roles. In everyday life people went about their business mainly within their extended families. They lived as farmers, fishermen, or craftsmen, catering to the needs of their families.

An important difference between African and Western cultures is that of the ownership of land. While private ownership of land is considered an in- alienable right within Western society, land in African society is communally held.73 For the human rights scholar, guaranteed access to communal land and the overall spirit of communication should have significance. Through the communal system one is guaranteed social security and at least minimum economic rights.

African communalism is more than a mere lifestyle. It is a worldview. It may indeed be an exaggeration to claim that the individual in African society is completely invisible within the clan or kin. The African jurist, Elias, pointed out that "[a]nyone who cares to look into the actual social relations between the individuals who make up the group-whether this is family, clan or tribe-will realize soon enough that disputes do take place in all manner of situations."74 The point is that problems revolving around individual disagreements and preferences are present but these disputes are resolved not on the basis of a worldview that posits individual autonomy. The African worldview places the individual within a continuum of the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.75 It is a worldview of group solidarity and collective responsibility. In effect, in the same way that people in other cultures are brought up to assert their independence from their community, the average African's worldview is one that places the individual within his community. This worldview is for all intents and purposes as valid as the European theories of individualism and the social contract.

72. For example, traditional Ashanti warfare strategy classified extended families into the ad- vance party, the rear guard, and the left and right flanks. Each division had its chief, sub- chiefs and commoners.

73. Taslim Olawale Elias, The Nature of African Customary Law (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956), 83.

74. Ibid., 82. 75. Mbiti, note 60 above.

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The questions that we should seek to answer are whether Africans need to "modernize" to become individuals in the Western sense and whether the modern liberal state with its Western traditions should be allowed to break up African traditional systems.

In other words, is it possible to enhance human dignity within the worldview of African culture without resorting to the unbridled in- dividualism of the West? The African worldview is not grounded in self- interest but in social learning and collective survival. In the Western world, however, the theories that have been advanced are those that ground all human motivation on self-interest. This trend is perhaps best illustrated in the psychological literature and in the practice of psychoanalysis. Freudian psychology teaches that everything we do ultimately serves our need to rid ourselves of unpleasant external stimulation and to exploit whatever we can use outside ourselves to satisfy our internal needs.76 In a Freudian sense, life revolves around the individual's biological needs. Restraints upon the chan- neling of all the individual's energy to self-satisfaction are seen as being fun- damentally at odds with the individual's nature. Thus Neo-Freudians have been said to approach "the individual psyche a little like the way free market conservatives view the economy."77 In other words, maximum psychological health is attainable only when "we just let everybody do their own thing. .. . ." 78 The modern Western psychologist sees Rousseau's noble

savage and Locke's man in nature, and approvingly seeks to return in- dividuals back to their romantic state in therapy. Maslow and Rogers could therefore conclude that a process of self-actualization will inevitably lead to the decline of restraining institutions such as government, the church, the school and marriage.79 It may in fact be argued that in the framework of mainstream modern Western psychology the African communal spirit can be seen to produce neurosis.

Some psychologists have questioned the basis of these egocentric Freudian assumptions. One wonders whether these assumptions have not indeed become ideological to the extent of making psychologists concoct "their own epicycle to save their egocentric theory."80 A minority of psychologists, who should have little difficulty appreciating African com- munal life, do see a social basis of behavior and an innate capacity for we- thinking that resides in the human species, alongside all other tendencies.8' Wallach and Wallach posed the question succinctly: "Is it not possible, even

76. Michael Wallach and Lise Wallach, "How Psychology Sanctions the Cult of Self," The Washington Monthly 16 (February 1985): 49.

77. Ibid. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid., 50. 80. Ibid., 51. 81. Ibid., 50.

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1987 An African Perspective 325

likely, that evolution has equipped us to act cooperatively-generously as well as in a self-centered fashion?"82

Throughout his life the African expresses his humanity in terms of his society. This is not necessarily to say that the African self flows with an overabundance of altruism. As mentioned earlier, the evidence is that African communal structures exhibit a strong element of reciprocity, and that a family responsibility may in fact be passed over from one generation to another. I do not argue here that self-centeredness is an entirely European or Western trait. My contention is that such self-centeredness is countered in African society by a deep and lasting socialization towards we-thinking resulting in a conception of the self that is unlike the Western conception. The psychology of such a worldview would be essentially different from a worldview that emphasizes and encourages individuality, uniqueness, dif- ferences, competition, and independence. Similarly it can be expected that the conception of human dignity will be different.

JUDGING AFRICA: THE ETHNOCENTRIC DIFFICULTY

In his very reflective paper, Pannikkar observed that "[n]o culture, tradition, ideology, or religion can today speak for the whole of humankind, let alone solve its problem. Dialogues and intercourse leading to a mutual fecunda- tion are necessary." 83 On the one hand, Pollis and Schwab have argued that "it is evident that in most States in the world, human rights as defined in the West are rejected or, more accurately are meaningless."84 Donnelly disagreed with Pollis and Schwab and argued that these claims by Pollis and Schwab are "strong claims" and "that for the most part they are not justified." 85 While plainly admitting that the historical roots of human rights are Western, Donnelly forcefully advanced the view that the concept has universal application. He suggested "that for most of the goals of the developing countries, as defined by these countries themselves, [Western] human rights are as effective or more effective then either traditional ap- proaches or modern non-human rights strategies."86 Speaking of the possibilities for an African communitarian model, Howard argued as Don- nelly did for the rejected of "this model of rural Africa." In Howard's view, if we base human rights policy on this model we shall be ignoring the changes which have occurred and are still occurring in the way Africans live.87

82. Ibid., 51. 83. Pannikkar, note 3 above, 75. 84. Pollis and Schwab, note 2 above, 13. 85. Donnelly, note 1 above, 313. 86. Ibid., 314. 87. Howard, note 6 above.

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Howard was clearly suspicious of the political elites of African countries who use these "[c]onstant references to communal society . . . to mask systematic violations of human rights in the interest of ruling elites."88

Donnelly and Howard are representative of Westerners who in the wisdom of their cultural heritage misunderstand the modern African prob- lem. To them the issue is how to make Africans "Westernize" faster and peacefully. They remind an African nationalist like this author of the prover- bial Western expert in Africa who quickly comes up with a solution that is essentially a toned down variation of the model he applied first in Iowa, then in Mexico, and lately in Pakistan. I am indeed reminded of the African animist in the Gold Coast, who after accepting the missionary's Christianity and becoming a preacher was not allowed by the Christian missionary to oc- cupy the Christian pulpit in African garments. Such garments were un- Christian. The European missionary did not find African religion redeeming. But converting to Christianity alone was not enough. To worship God the African had to dress in the image of the European. In fact to the missionary, Western clothes were synonymous with Christianity and indeed morality. The lesson was that you could not be a proud Kente-wearing African and satisfy the moral demands of Christianity. Similarly there may be African no- tions of human dignity, but since Africans are in the process of joining the modern (Western) world these notions are not appropriate and should be discarded. This kind of Western chauvinism reminded Pannikkar of human rights becoming "like the way technology is often introduced in many parts of the world: it is imported to solve the problems that is has itself created." 89

The problem of human rights abuses that Professor Howard seeks to ad- dress may be in the dysfunction that plagues the imposition of Western liberalism over communal African lifestyle. In other words, we may be see- ing these abuses because we are attempting too hard to make Westerners out of Africans. This is essentially Howard's argument. As for the African scholars who have mastered the litany of Western human rights and seek to apply the same to Africa in their quest to modernize the continent, I will only direct their attention to the fact that the individualistic assumptions of the Western human rights concept, like all their Western and non-Western philosophical concepts, are still being debated. Coming from a society in which the worldview emphasizes commonality rather than individuality we may have something to contribute to the international fecundation of con- cepts about human rights and human dignity. Nobles has insightfully characterized the difficulty of the African social scientist who operates from the alien (Western) framework:

88. Rhoda Howard, "Evaluating Human Rights in Africa: Some Problems of Implicit Com- parisons," Human Rights Quarterly 6 (May 1984): 175.

89. Pannikkar, note 3 above, 90.

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The worldview, normative assumptions, and referential frame upon which the paradigm is based, must, like the science they serve, be consistent with the culture and cultural substance of the people. When the paradigm is inconsistent with the cultural definition of the phenomena, the people who use it to assess and/or evaluate that phenomena become essentially conceptually incarcerated.90

African social scientists, politicians, human rights scholars, activists, and lawyers are seriously handicapped by this incarceration through their Western training and have to liberate themselves.

TOWARD A MUTUAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE

To facilitate cross-cultural discussion and understanding of the ways by which different societies guarantee the dignity of their members Pannikkar calls on human rights scholars to abandon conceptualizations that have as their starting point a view that Western culture is indisputably superior when it comes to human rights.91 The question is how different cultures satisfy needs that we have come to identify at the international level as necessary for the nurturing and maturity of human dignity. Simply put, Western and non-Western scholars should seek to overcome their gaping Western chauvinism and help admit other worldviews into the international discourse.

Close to 80 percent of Africans still live in the rural areas on the African continent. For these people the communal lifestyle with its responsibilities and entitlements has great meaning and value. For the African who lives in the relatively Westernized African city it is far from true that the worldview is now Western. Research indicates that the communal spirit is alive and thriving in the urban areas.92 For example, my research in Ghana indicates that dependency loads even among the poorest in the informal sector of the urban economy in Accra are very high. Despite the low level of well-being within this sector, kinsmen feel the obligation to meet their kinship duties and to recruit and support those who are less fortunate both in the urban area and in the rural areas.93

90. Na'im Akbar, "Africentric Social Sciences for Human Liberation," Journal of Black Studies 14 (June 1984): 396, quoting W. Nobels, "African Consciousness and Liberation Struggles: Implications for the Development and Construction of Scientific Paradigms," presented at Fanon Research and Development Conference, Port of Spain, Trinidad, 1978.

91. Pannikkar, note 3 above, 77. 92. Kenneth Little, West African Urbanization: A Study of Voluntary Associations in Social

Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). 93. Josiah A.M. Cobbah, "The Role of the Informal Sector in National Development and In-

tegration Processes" (Ph.D. diss, University of Cincinnati, 1985), 92-96.

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The worldview that predominates African societies provides an approach to human dignity that is not only different from the natural rights approach but may indeed serve to improve the quality of the human rights discussion at the international level. It can be argued, however, that while the paper has concentrated broadly on responsibilities and entitlements within African kinship systems, it is rather the political and civil abuses perpetrated by African dictator regimes on their opposition that is causing concern among human rights activists.94 In response it should be pointed out that this paper's approach is warranted for the following reason: the post-independence liberal state in Africa has not been flexible enough to ac- commodate the cultural nuances of Africans. African state constitutions have been everything but African. Fundamentally they have followed a natural right-individual rights approach, implicitly based on an expectation of a political transformation of Africans into Europeans. Having inherited the liberal state from the colonial past, African countries have been held by the international (Westernized) community to the tenets of Western liberalism. The approach taken in this paper is based on the belief that although Africans may have to accept the political boundaries they inherited from their colonial masters, they do not have to accept willy-nilly all the baggage of Western liberalism.

For example, from the perspective of Western democracies the one- party State in Africa has been condemned as being authoritarian and undemocratic. From the same perspective Western scholars and Western- ized scholars are increasingly analyzing the human rights abuses of the African woman,95 the African child, and the list goes on. There is no doubt that within African societies injustices of many types exist and human rights activists, both African and non-African, should be concerned about these in- justices. The question, however, remains as to how these injustices should be corrected.

It is my contention that to correct injustices within different cultural systems of the world it is not necessary to turn all people into Westerners. Western liberalism with its prescription of human rights has had a worth- while effect not only on Westerners but on many peoples of this world. It is, however, by no means the only rational way of living human life. There may indeed be a universal human nature, but as Pannikkar rightly pointed out: "Man's self-understanding, belongs equally to this human nature. Thus to single out one particular interpretation of it may be valid, but it is not uni- versal and may not apply to the entirety of human nature."'96 Instead of im- posing the Western philosophy of human rights on all cultures one's effort should be directed at searching out homeomorphic equivalents in different

94. Ojo and Sessay, note 5 above, 92-93. 95. Howard, note 6 above, chap. 6. 96. Pannikkar, note 3 above, 89-90.

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1987 An African Perspective 329

cultures."97 In other words, we should understand that homeomorphism is not the same as equivalence and strive to discover peculiar functional equivalence in different cultures."98 Until we do this Pannikkar warns us that:

the undoubtedly positive concept of Human Rights may turn out to be a Trojan horse, surreptitiously introduced into other civilizations which will then all but be obliged to accept those way of living, thinking and feeling for which Human Rights is the proper solution in cases of conflict.99

To begin the hermenetic understanding of human dignity and achieve truly international human rights norms it is imperative that scholars begin in earnest to examine comparatively, specific cultural behavior patterns, specific values, and specific structural features within different cultural systems. When this is done the generalizations that are rendered will not only be more convincing but will also be more useful for correcting injustice both inside and outside cultures. Such an approach will be a mutual learning experience for both Westerners and non-Westerners. Sudarkasa wrote on the study of African-American life: "So long as we continue our discussions at highly abstract levels, we make it possible for those who are doing the con- crete historical and sociological studies from Eurocentric perspectives to continue to misinterpret or misrepresent the data they uncover."100 This observation applies with equal force to African human rights scholars and for that matter to all who seek universal human rights concepts. Africans need not dismantle all that they inherited from their colonial past. However, keeping the colonial political boundaries intact need not mean that whatever goes on within those boundaries should be Western to be acceptable.

CONCLUSION: THE POSSIBILITIES FOR CROSS-CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING

The dialogue and intercourse that will lead to the mutual fecundation on human rights have indeed begun. Cultural reactivist viewpoints are gaining currency in the human rights discussion. The problem, however, is that the discussion is still Western and the African voices are still those of the Western educated political and academic elites who, like Donnelly, acknowledge the relativity of concepts but are trapped in their unquestion- ing acceptance of the Western concept in the name of modernization and images of a global (Western) village. For example, Donelly recently wrote a paper in which he held onto his view that human rights are Western, but at

97. Ibid., 77-78. 98. Ibid., 78. 99. Ibid., 90 (emphasis added).

100. Sudarkasa, note 11 above, 57-58.

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the same time he argued that all cultures should adopt the Western concept. He then posited a framework within which there would be a form of"weak relativism" which would recognize a comprehensive set of prima facie universal human rights and allow only relatively rare and strictly limited local variations and exceptions.1'1 This sounds fine except that Donnelly does not appear willing to give up a priori his Western cultural bias which leads him to universalize his own narrow definition of human rights. In other words, we are being told cultural relativism is all right, but it should be carried out only for the benefit of the non-Western cultures. One wonders if Donnelly feels Westerners have anything to gain in subjecting their "universal" con- cepts to the intercultural test of cultural relativity.

At a time when the debate over economic rights is raging in the West,

Figure 1. Comparative World-View Schematic

EUROPEAN WORLD-VIEW AFRICAN WORLD-VIEW

Individuality P h a lGroupness

Uniqueness Psycho-Behavioral Sameness Moda lities Differences Modalities Commonality

Competition Cooperation Individual Rights Values and Customs Collective

Separateness and Responsibility Independence Cooperateness and

Interdependence

Survival of the Fittest rSurvival of the Tribe Ethos

Control over Nature One with Nature

I Experimental Communality I Experimental Communality L---------

Taken from Wade W. Nobles, "Extended Self: Rethinking the So-Called Negro Self-Concept," Journal of Black Psychology 2 (February 1976): 19.

101. Donnelly, "Cultural Relativism and Universal Human Rights," Human Rights Quarterly 6 (November 1984): 401.

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1987 An African Perspective 331

the Africentric view of society may indeed be a helpful input into a reassess- ment of the duties that a moral society owes to the individual and vice versa. I submit that an Africentric approach is particularly suitable for taking economic rights seriously. Ultimately what is important to an international community of cultures is for all peoples to feel that all voices are genuinely being heard in the human rights discussion. I have attempted to point out that Africans do not espouse a philosophy of human dignity that is derived from a natural rights and individualist framework. African societies function within a communal structure whereby a person's dignity and honor flow from his or her transcendental role as a cultural being. Within a changing world, we can expect that some specific aspects of African lifestyles will change. It can be shown, however, that basic Africentric core values still re- main and that these values should be admitted into the international debate on human rights. The debate I believe should be on whether these cultural values provide human beings with human dignity. We should pose the problem in this light, rather than assuming an inevitable progression of non- Westerners toward Western lifestyles. If we do this then we can really begin to formulate authentic international human rights norms.

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