THE THIS-WORLDLY CHARACTER OF THE AFTERLIFE IN AFRICAN THOUGHT

There is a mildly paradoxical unanimity in African studies about the African belief in, and attitude toward, the afterlife. It is universally noted, on the one hand, that Africans generally believe that bodily death is not the end of life, but only the inauguration of life in another form. But, on the other hand, it is equally universally remarked that the African attitude to life is a this-worldly one. The paradox is, in fact, only apparent; but quite some conceptual clarifications are needed to see why.

The crucial conceptual issue concerns the nature of the after-world. In what sense is it an other world? Not all African peoples are given to talking about death and the afterlife,⁽⁷⁷⁾ but wherever there are any intimations at all of what life in the land of the dead is like, the similarities between that form of life and the earthly one are striking. The similarities are indeed so striking that the characterization of this life as `earthly' in contrast to the afterlife is already metaphysically inappropriate. In West Africa, for example, where people are not excessively reticent about eschatology, descriptions of the afterlife generally include explicit indications that the transition from this life to the next is by land travel; and of course, if you travel from one part of the earth by land, you can only arrive at another part of the earth. In traditional Africa boundaries are often marked by rivers. Not surprisingly, the high point of the post-mortem journey is the crossing of a river. Once having crossed the river, one enters the land of the departed and joins the society of the ancestors, a society which replicates the political order of pre-mortem society to the extent that rulers in the one retain their status in the other.

It would be interesting and relevant to speculate who or what this `one' is who is supposed to do the afterlife travelling, but it might be appropriate to call attention immediately to the this-worldly orientation of the conception itself of the afterlife. Remaining in West Africa for the time being, it is important to note that the whole point of going on the last journey is to become one of the ancestors. Now, the significance of the ancestors consists simply in this, that they watch over the affairs of the living members of their families, helping deserving ones and punishing the delinquent. If an ancestor is a ruler, the scope of his activities goes beyond his own family to the whole of his town or kingdom. In either case, ancestors are there to see to the good of the living. There is, of course, a reciprocal side to this. Reciprocity is a strong feature of African society; it is, in fact, a feature of any moral community. Accordingly, the living feel not only beholden to the ancestors for their help and protection, but also positively obliged to do honor to them and render service to them as appropriate.

How is honor done to the ancestors? In two connected ways, one general, the other particular. The first way is simply to live uprightly. Just to live uprightly is to be a source of honor to one's family, and one's ancestors constitute an integral part of one's family. Bad conduct, on the other hand, brings disgrace to the living family and displeasure to the ancestors. The ancestors, in their post-mortem condition, are credited with veritable moral perfection and are therefore not accessible to disgrace, but just because of their elevated moral status they are thought to be even more scandalized by wrong doing than the living elders of the family. Wrong doing may take three basic forms, namely, trifling with the moral law, falling foul of civil regulations or of the customs and taboos of the community, and failing to take as good a care of family affairs as in one lies.

The last heading may involve quite particularized imperatives or even injunctions. Perhaps a departed member of the family has left his successor a half-completed project together with adequate resources for its completion. To go ahead and complete it is to do honor to the dead. Or if he has left some debts to be paid, then that is an opportunity to uphold his honor. There may be dependents to be taken care of, or specific instructions may have been left before death for certain things to be done. These, and such like, form the second, more particular, way in which the living can do honor to the dead, or perhaps we ought to say the dead-but-living.⁽⁷⁸⁾

Since these matters imply definite duties, non-performance may elicit punishment from an ancestor, which usually takes the form of unaccountable illnesses.⁽⁷⁹⁾ These are, incidentally, the form of lapses from right conduct that the ancestors are most apt to punish. This restriction does not, however, indicate an abridged interest, on their part, in the general morality of their relatives; it just means that in the ethical division of labor there are other sources of sanctions. Nor does the restriction diminish the conviction of the living that right conduct redounds to the credit of their departed relations and, besides, warms their hearts.

In the way of direct services to themselves, the ancestors are remarkably undemanding. Occasional dedicatory drops of ceremonial schnapps or modest servings of food in the right place overnight from time to time seem to be all that is required. Nevertheless, such acts, especially those of libation, are of the last consequence, for it is through them that the living communicate their assurances of respect to the ancestors and solicit their timely assistance in connection with specific enterprises. In this way there is maintained an on-going relationship with the departed.

What then, to reopen a question previously raised but not explored, must the inhabitants of the land of the dead be like to sustain this social relationship with their mortal brethren? If we recall the land travel and river crossing, not to talk of the schnapps sipping and more solidified pickings, it must occur to us that they must be conceived as of a somewhat psycho-physical constitution.⁴⁽⁸⁰⁾ That they must have some analogue of a body is an inescapable inference from the physicalistic setting of their activities and, in any case, from embodied descriptions of sightings of dead individuals which, though rare, are culturally typical. It is no less apparent that they must have minds, since they are supposed to exercise the function of assessing the conduct of their relatives and apportioning blight or blessing as the case may require. After all, for at least some African peoples, such as the Akans of Ghana, mind is not an extensionless substance a la Descartes, but simply the capacity to do just such things.⁽⁸¹⁾ From all of this it emerges not only that the land of the dead is, geographically, not altogether dissimilar to our own but also that its population are rather like ourselves.⁽⁸²⁾

Actually, this is not a surprising idea, for it is a natural outgrowth of a conception of personhood which is entertained among the peoples of West Africa with only variations of detail and, indeed, among most African peoples with only slightly more substantial differences. According to this conception, a human being has two types of constituents. The first is the material body as commonly perceived; this presents no immediate conceptual problems. The second, on the other hand, is not easy to characterize; it is not of identically the same type as the material body, and yet it is not of a diametrically opposed category; it is, as the phrase goes, a cross between the two. This second factor of human personality is taken to be what accounts for our being alive or for our having a particular destiny; it is that whose presence means life and whose departure means death.⁽⁸³⁾ But it is itself conceived on the model of the living body or, better still, of the living person; so much so, that it is frequently spoken of as a replica of a person and credited with the office of a `guardian angel'.

The ontologically interesting thing about this kind of being is that although it is conceived in the image of a person, it is exempted from the grosser characteristics of the material body. Thus, it can appear at, or disappear from, places without regard to speed limits for matter in motion or to the laws of impenetrability. Moreover, it is capable of action at a distance in which a living person may be severely affected without perceptible contact. The question of perceivability brings us to an important property of the entities in question. They cannot be seen with the naked eye nor heard with the unaided ear, except on rare occasions when they themselves elect to make themselves sensibly accessible to particular persons; otherwise, they can be seen or heard only by people with medicinally heightened powers of sight and hearing.

Even so sketchy a characterization of the second basic constituent of a person in the West African conception should make it clear that it would be a substantial oversimplification to describe it as spiritual in the sense of this word which implies total immateriality. There is in the conception under discussion only a reduced materiality, and the reduction affects not its imagery, but its dynamics. Since at death it is this quasi-material entity which departs to the world of the dead, it is natural that talk of the afterlife should be replete with a this-worldly imagery. This remark is applicable to the thought not only of the peoples of West Africa but also of many other African peoples, perhaps of most or all African peoples. It certainly explains Okot p'Bitek's insistence, in the specific case of the Central Luo, that the `entities which they believed they encountered at the lineage shrines were not spirits but the ancestors as they were known before death' (my italics; recall the quotation from Bitek in footnote 6 above).

If, mindful of all the foregoing, we now return to the question: in what sense is the African world of the dead an other world? the answer must be that it is in no sense another world, but rather a part of this world, albeit a conceptually problematic part. The problem is that the attenuations of the materiality of the place of the dead and its residents seem to leave us with a material imagery without a solid anchorage. Nevertheless, this imagery has been marvelously efficacious in motivating conceptions of the cultural unity of the living with the dead in the thought of many African peoples. Given this conceptual framework, it becomes intelligible how this life can be seen as a preparation for an afterlife whose whole significance nevertheless consists in securing the welfare of the living. It follows, by an obvious transitivity, that in this way of thinking whatever the meaning of life is, it is to be defined in terms of the circumstances of this life.

AFRICAN AND WESTERN CONCEPTIONS OF THE AFTERLIFE COMPARED

I shall return to this last point below, but it might be helpful to cast a brief comparative glance at some other conceptions of life after death. Proceeding in the order of descending immateriality, we may note Plato's theory of survival after death. What survives physical death is the soul, which, for Plato, is an absolutely immaterial entity.⁽⁸⁴⁾ During the life of a mortal, this entity is `imprisoned' in the body so that death is actually something in the nature of a liberation. When this occurs the soul reverts to a totally rarefied realm of being containing the immaterial and changeless originals of which the things in this world are imperfect copies. There it becomes again directly conversant with the true realities which in mortal life it was at best only capable of remembering. This soul is, of course, indestructible, and enjoys both a pre-natal and post-mortem existence. However beautiful this conception may be, it offers no possibility of a social interaction between the dead and the living and is as far removed from African conceptions as anything can be. Indeed, I doubt that it can be translated into the African language of which I have an inside knowledge, namely, the Akan language (spoken in parts of Ghana and the Ivory Coast).

Within the Western intellectual tradition, however, there is a conception of immortality in which immaterial and quasimaterial factors are intermixed. This is the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body at Judgment Day. On this fateful day, mortal remains of dead people, the largest proportion of them long transformed into earth, will be reassembled and reanimated with their corresponding souls. One way or another, dead individuals will be reconstituted by body and soul being put together again in such a way as to recover their pre-mortem personal identities, with the one pleasant exception that the new editions of their bodies will be so vastly improved as not to be susceptible to any physical disabilities or carnal cravings. In this purified form they will live in eternal bliss, that is, if they are accorded salvation through the undeserved grace of God. In the alternative they shall be consigned, presumably in not so perfect bodies, to some extremely inconvenient mode of existence forever. St. Augustine, for one, was adamant on the justice of such eternal punishment. If it seems harsh, it is only because "in the weakness of our mortal condition there is wanting that highest and purest wisdom by which it can be perceived how great a wickedness was committed in the first transgression".⁽⁸⁵⁾

Three points arise, one of near similarity, two of outright contrast. If we view the resurrected people as whole individuals, they are quite similar to the inhabitants of African lands of the dead. The resurrected and saved are like mortal persons in imagery, but unlike them in their mode of action. St. Augustine (op. cit., Bk. xxii: 29-30) actually speaks of them as being "clothed in immortal and spiritual bodies" which "shall live no longer in a fleshy but a spiritual fashion." The Saint remarks furthermore, "What power of movement such bodies shall possess, I have not the audacity to conceive. . . . One thing is certain, the body shall forthwith be wherever the spirit wills, and the spirit shall will nothing which is unbecoming either to the spirit or to the body." The bodies in question are obviously neither purely material nor purely immaterial (which in any case would be self-contradictory) but, in truth, quasi-material. There is, then, some similarity here between the African and the traditional Christian images of the dead-but-living. The similarity, however, is only skin deep, for the "risen" Christian is a combination of an immaterial soul and a quasi-material body whereas the "departed" African is, by original constitution, a quasi-material being. Nor does the latter have to wait as a split person in some transitional realm till `the Day of Judgment' to attain the wholeness of post-mortem personality.

The absence in the eschatology of many African peoples of a day of judgment together with its inexorable sequel, positive or negative, marks a very significant difference with the Christian variety.⁽⁸⁶⁾ The Day of Judgment by definition is an apocalyptic watershed, bringing the end of the temporal phase of cosmic history. Thenceforward, this world is no more. Hence the question of the relationship of the inhabitants of this world with those of the next does not arise. This life is a preparation for the next, but not only that; it is a waiting for the next. That still is not all; the very meaning of this life consists in the fact that there is a next one. Historically, this point of view has been held quite widely in the Western world, though of course, not universally or always within the confines of orthodox Christianity. Jacques Choron in his interesting book, Death and Modern Man,⁽⁸⁷⁾ has collected a number of striking expressions of that view from some remarkable men. Here are a few: "If immortality be untrue, it matters little whether anything else be true or not" (Henry Thomas Buckle, nineteenth century historian); "If there is no immortality, I shall hurl myself into the sea" (Lord Tennyson); "Without the hope of an afterlife this life is not even worth the effort of getting dressed in the morning" (Prince Bismark); "without immortality . . . all the generations of mankind are fighting a forlorn hope . . . our life is blind and our death is fruitless (A.E. Taylor, a generation ago, one of the leaders in Platonic studies in Britain); "without the belief in the existence of the soul and its immortality human existence is `unnatural' and unbearable" (Dostoievsky).

AFRICAN CONCEPTIONS OF THE MEANING OF LIFE

From a logical point of view it is difficult to see how the meaning of life can consist in even more life, but the interesting thing for our discussion is that most traditional Africans are likely to find such sentiments extremely surprising. A Nuer or Dinka elder, for example, though he takes the existence of life after death for granted, does not set much store by it. Their's, according to Evans-Prichard⁽⁸⁸⁾ (talking of the Nuer) `is a this-worldly religion, a religion of abundant life and the fullness of days, and they neither pretend to know, nor . . . do they care what happens to them after death'. In the society of the Nuer, either by nature or by convention, `every man has at least one son and through this son his name is forever a link in a line of descent. This is the only form of immortality in which the Nuer are interested. They are not interested in the survival of the individual as a ghost, but in the social personality in the name' (ibid., p. 163). Godfrey Lienhardt⁽⁸⁹⁾ duplicates the same observation in connection with the Dinka. "Children and cattle multiplying and prospering from generation to generation are the ultimate value of Dinka life". Or, as he says earlier on, `Dinka greatly fear to die without issue in whom the survival of their names--the only kind of immortality they know--will be assured'.<sup>(90)</sup> Thus, to the traditional Dinka, `notions of individual personal immortality mean little'.⁽⁹¹⁾ Lienhardt's wording in these quotations might suggest that the Dinka do not believe in the existence of personal survival after death, but that cannot very well be his intent, for he himself gives accounts of how they try through various procedures to establish satisfactory relations with their departed ancestors. The point is simply that even though they do entertain that belief, that is not where they derive their sense of the worthwhileness of life. It is in this that the Nuer and Dinka are typical of Africans generally.

In not being specially thrilled at the possibility of eventually becoming ancestors in the country of the dead, the Dinka and Nuer are very much unlike, say, the Akans of Ghana and the Ivory Coast, the Yoruba of Nigeria and Benin or the Mende of Sierra Leone. In these regions the ancestors are highly prized and respected, and the notion of one day becoming an ancestor is indeed music to their ears. Yet, becoming an ancestor, as already pointed out, only enables one to help the living to realize human purposes. To a typical Akan, for example, a life that has meaning is one that makes reasonable achievements⁽⁹²⁾ in the direction of personal, family, and communal welfare. A life of that sort would be a meaningful one even if there were no belief in an afterlife. In point of fact, one's life after death does not figure in one's destiny. Human destiny begins and ends in this world. To hurl yourself into the sea simply because there is no life after death would strike a traditional Akan as equivalent to madness.

ln West Africa, indeed, living a full and meaningful life is a condition for becoming an ancestor.⁽⁹³⁾ This is probably not universally the case in Africa, but in the view of some peoples, such as the Akans of Ghana, a person whose life is cut short by an accident or an `unclean' disease or any other untoward circumstance does not gain immediate access to the country of the dead; he becomes a neighborhood ghost, an occasional source of frightening apparitions, until he can come back to be born again to try to work out a complete life. This, by the way, is the nearest approximation to purgatory in the Akan system. It is also one of the two forms of limited reincarnation postulated in that system. The second form is supposed to occur when a mother loses a baby and has another soon afterwards and there is a recurrence of the same sequence. In such circumstances, it is assumed that it is the same person that goes back and forth. Aside from those two types of cases, any talk of reincarnation is largely metaphorical. An Akan or Yoruba will speak of the second coming of an ancestor--to be sure there can be multiple comings of the same ancestor--and mean by this mainly that the new addition to the family bears striking physical or psychological resemblance to the ancestor in question. The literal component of meaning here would be that the influence of the ancestor himself is at work in the phenomenon.

It is not accidental that in such thought-systems belief in reincarnation is so definitively circumscribed. The ancestors being so important in the affairs of the living and status being enhanced by longevity, it is useful to have permanent ancestors. Any generalized and continuous turnover of ancestors would obviously detract from that scheme. Note again that this concept of immortality is a pragmatic one; it is immortality for the service of humankind. In this way of thinking a paradisal type of immortality in which people endlessly just enjoyed themselves (in however `spiritual' a fashion) without any responsibilities would be viewed as glorified idleness.

The African land of the dead, then, is not heaven in the Christian sense. The life of the ancestors is pictured as one of dignity and serenity, rather than of bliss. There are, of course, no temptations or tribulations in that life, but neither are there any excitements. The one preoccupation of that existence is with the good of the living wing of the family and clan. It is upon their ability to achieve this aim that the importance of the ancestors is predicated. Beneficial interaction with the community of the living, thus, is the first law of their being.

If we look for a substantially analogous concept of survival after death in Western thought, obviously it is not in orthodox Christianity that we will find it. The likeliest place would be in the theory of the astral body found in the literature of spiritualism. Death here is regarded as the departure of the soul, itself a kind of body, from the physical plane to another plane of existence, namely, the astral. The soul, in contradistinction from the physical body, is of a highly subtle constitution; but it is still basically corporeal. It is, moreover, of the form of the body, and although it is generally not visible to the ordinary eye, `those who have eyes' can see it and even hold converse with it. This gives the departed soul a certain sociability and helpfulness. Thus, it is not unknown for the dead to reveal the whereabouts of lost valuables or to help crime detection with crucial information, according to spiritualist claims. It may be said, accordingly, that in terms of ontological status and social relevance the astral survivor is akin to the inhabitant of the land of the dead as spoken of in African eschatology.

MORALITY AND THE ANCESTORS

In the Western tradition one can trace the notion of the soul as an astral body to Tertullian, the idiosyncratic early church father (160-220 A.D.). He argued that the conclusion that the soul is corporeal (though ethereal) can be inferred from the Christian doctrine of purgatory.⁽⁹⁴⁾ What contemporary spiritualism adds to Tertullian's conception is the social dimension. This social dimension is, however, unsystematic and desultory in comparison with that of the African idea of ancestors. The African ancestors rule their kin from the grave, so to speak; the same cannot be said of their astral counterparts. Because of their minimal social interactions with the living, the cultural significance of the latter (even among the persuaded) is not as great as that of the former.

What is the cultural significance of this? We have already mentioned the role of the ancestors in the enforcement of morals.⁽⁹⁵⁾ Morals, broadly construed, cover ethical rules proper as well as customs and taboos. It is with respect to their relevance to the last two kinds of rules of conduct, rather than to the first, that the ancestors have their greatest cultural significance. This is not because their status as guardians of the morality of their living relatives--morality being taken in the narrow sense--is not important, even though often restricted. The reason is twofold. First, in the case of morality, narrowly conceived, the ancestors can only enforce rules whose basis or validity is independent of their own wishes or decisions, whereas customs and taboos are frequently of their own making; and secondly, customs and taboos are more essential to the individuality of a culture than morality. These two considerations each require some elaboration, however brief they must be in the present context.

To take the question of morality (in the narrow sense), first: It is often supposed that in Africa morality is determined by the injunctions of the ancestors and other extra-human powers. This is usually inferred from the very evident influence that beliefs about these beings have upon African conduct. If `determine' is interpreted in a causal, psychological sense, the conclusion follows tautologically from the premiss, for the claim then amounts simply to the observation that the thought of the ancestors, as a matter of psychological fact, does actually cause traditional Africans to behave in certain ways. If, however, the alleged determination of morality by the ancestors is taken in a logical sense, the claim is false or, at any rate, not true of all African thought, for at least in the case of the Akans, the justification of moral rules consists solely in considerations concerning the harmonious adjustment of the interests of individuals with that of the community. The will of an ancestor, or a `god' or indeed, of God, may function as an incentive for an action, but never as its justification.⁽⁹⁶⁾

Customs, on the other hand, are frequent!y held to be justified simply on account of having been laid down by our ancestors long ago. Even here it is pertinent to note that the rules concerned are supposed to have been laid down by the ancestors while they lived, so that their interest in them after death is only a continuation of pre-mortem concerns. Furthermore, although the average mind does not look beyond precedence for the justification of customs, the really wise men of the group can point out their rationale. This is probably also true of taboos. On the face of it, a taboo is an arbitrary prohibition based on the will of some non-human power and backed by threats of unusual consequences. In fact, on deeper scrutiny, such rules may be found not to be without some rhyme or even reason. For the purpose of our present discussion, the important point here is that the reason for a custom or taboo is always pragmatic. A pragmatic reason is one which may justify a practice without making it universally obligatory. Moral reasons, by contrast, are universal. It is because of this universality that moral rules cannot figure in the differentia of a culture, for morality is too essential to human culture to vary from culture to culture. But some things do vary from culture to culture, and custom is certainly one such thing. Since the ancestors--however one looks at the matter--are crucial for the existence in African societies of customs and taboos, their importance in the individuation of African cultures is obvious.

Besides the general relevance of the ancestors to custom and taboo, there are in many African societies elaborate and protracted customs relating to the process by which a person becomes an ancestor. Death, unfortunately, is the first necessary condition for ancestorhood. When that event happens, people feel an obligation to give the deceased a fitting send-off to the land of the ancestors. This involves both spontaneous and formalized mourning and various funeral ceremonies. The scale of a funeral process, judged in terms of the intensity of the mourning, the largeness of attendance and the meticulousness of the formalities, is taken to reflect the respect in which the deceased is held. On this account, people will go to no end of trouble to ensure grand funeral rites for their deceased relatives. There is much less ado about dead bodies, however, among some ethnic groups in Africa. Among such people the mortal remains of the departed are disposed of with very businesslike dispatch. The population of Ghana, for example, includes groups practicing both extremes, as well as groups with intermediate funeral habits. The peoples of the Northern part of Ghana are extremely brisk in their manner of sending off the dead to their new home, while the Akans, among others, devote major effort and time to that procedure. The Yorubas of Nigeria are even more famous for their lavishness of attention and expense in this respect, and I have heard it said that the Luo of Kenya are not far behind. Among peoples of such an orientation, funerals are among the most important and visible observances in cultural life. Since, sadly, people keep on dying, they are, perhaps, the most continual.

THE SOCIAL AFTERMATH OF DEATH

Two aspects of the great preoccupation with the mourning of the dead and associated rites among many African peoples are worth noting. On the one hand, the outpourings of feeling on such occasions have resulted in some of the most beautiful traditional poetry in Africa.⁽⁹⁷⁾

Moreover, the frequent funeral gatherings offer constant opportunities for the exchange of assurances of sympathy and solidarity, and for concrete acts of mutual aid. On the other hand, in recent times the emphasis upon funerals has shown a tendency to degenerate into expensive exhibitionism, which, in view of the strong pressures for conformity in African societies, can drive even the reluctant to ruinous funeral expenses. In my opinion, we see here one of the most negative features of contemporary culture in some African countries.

The sense of tragedy in the face of death is, of course, not necessarily any less in communities with brief funeral rites than in those with extensive ones. The fact of death itself strikes many African peoples as something needing explanation beyond physical causes and effects: hence the many myths on the origin of death to be found in the folklore of many African peoples. The basic message of these myths is that the human species brought death upon themselves through their own disobedience of God. It should be observed, however, that, by and large, what particularly exercises the African mind is not the death of just anybody, but only the death of those who have attained adulthood but not ripe age. Thus, the death in old age of a person who has led a full and productive life is not strictly an occasion for mourning. The Akans would attend the funeral of such a person in white, instead of the customary black, brown, or red. This is taken as a mark of the recognition that the person was blessed by God with a full and completed term of life. In similar circumstances, the Yorubas actually speak of celebration rather than lamentation. The thought seems to be that when one has had ample time to work out one's destiny, it remains only to go and take one's place among the ancestors. On the other hand, for an individual who dies a minor, the question of joining the ancestors does not arise, and in many places there is not even the pretense of a funeral. Although a minor is recognized to be a human being, entitled, in an even greater degree than an adult, to help, affection, and all due consideration, still such an individual is not regarded as a full person and therefore cannot be a candidate for ancestorhood. Not even death is credited with the power to transform the immaturity of a child into the necessary maturity of an ancestor.

But death in immaturity, or, for that matter, at any stage short of ripe age, requires a special explanation. In the normal run of things a person should grow up, raise a family and also help his community in all desirable ways before giving up the ghost, or to speak in Akan terms, before giving up the `okra' (which is the Akan name for the life-principle). A life cut short, then, is an indication of an interruption of the normal sequence of events. Non-intelligent matter operates according to regular laws, which, of themselves, cannot account for such departures from normality. Only an intelligent agent or agency can cause such an estopal of the normal flow of affairs as the nipping of a whole life's potential in the bud. This is, in effect, the train of thought which leads the traditional African mind, when there has been a premature death, to inquire not whether some intelligent agency is involved but which.

Suppose a child playing with a loaded gun pulls the trigger accidentally and kills a promising young man. The gross mechanics of the situation does not elude the African mind, but why this particular young man and at this particular juncture of his life? If this question is answerable, it will be only in terms of reasons, purposes, intentions, etc. Our traditional African assumes that it can be answered,⁽⁹⁸⁾ since he considers that everything has a sufficient reason,⁽⁹⁹⁾ either by way of mechanical causation or by intelligent (or quasi-intelligent) design. This can be questioned, but that does not belong to our present purpose, which is to give some idea of the reverberations in African culture of the resultant mode of explaining what is taken to be anomalous death.

African ontologies almost always include a Supreme being and a whole hierarchy of extra-human beings and forces, many of whom (or which) are capable of abridging life in certain circumstances. There is, accordingly, a choice of explanations. Perhaps the young man has fallen victim to the envious machinations of a witch. Such a hypothesis, when seriously explored, can have the profoundest social consequences; for the suspicion would be bound to fall on some individual close by who henceforward becomes a spoken or unspoken enemy. The consequent tensions and dissensions constitute some of the most unhappy aspects of African communal life. Or perhaps the young man may have died as punishment from the ancestors for a grievous sin committed by him. He may, for example, have committed adultery with his uncle's wife, than which few greater enormities can be imagined in the family life of a people like, say, the Akans. The wages of sin, here too, sometimes is death.

There are still other possibilities of explanation, as one can easily surmise, but since all such explanations, beyond tentative suspicion, require extra-normal verification, the interesting thing to note here is that such modes of explanation inevitably call forth into existence the institution of divination, which is an extremely important component of many African cultures. Premature death, of course, is not the only problem requiring the expertise of diviners--there is no lack of others: sickness, personal adversities, or even communal reverses--but death is the most worrying of them. Divination occurs on varying scales and in varying degrees of development in probably all African societies; among the Yorubas it appears to have advanced almost to the level of a science complete with a sophisticated mathematical apparatus. It may be observed parenthetically that divination seems to take the place of revelation in many African cultures, a fact which accounts for the absence of prophets of God in the corresponding traditional religions. Our ancestors along with other types of beings are thought to vouchsafe adequate hints and advice to their people. The proliferation of prophets of God in the charismatic churches--a movement which has been sweeping across Africa in recent times like a wild fire, if we may be excused a rather mundane simile in connection with such a `spiritual' phenomenon--is another contemporary twist to a traditional African cultural trait. African divination seems to have domesticated Christian revelation!

CONCLUSION

It is apparent from all the above that, in one way or another, the idea of immortal ancestors dominates African thought about death and the afterlife. Will this belief in the ancestors survive rational investigation in the modern world? The question, perhaps, betrays a rationalistic over-optimism, for whole races do not indulge in intellectual self-examination. Unfortunately, however, they can be overtaken by intellectual events emanating from abroad. This is exactly what has happened in Africa. Her peoples--or a great proportion of them--have been overtaken by the intellectual packages embedded in Islam and Christianity. The question therefore should, perhaps, rather be: `Can the African belief in the ancestors and the associated cultural practices survive the impact of foreign cosmologies?' If such phenomena as religious conversion proceeded in a strictly logical fashion, it might be expected that the belief in question would, for large masses of contemporary Africans, be a thing of the past and that, in consequence, there would be quite radical alterations in their culture. In fact, however, what has often happened has been not alterations but accretions. Christian⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ practices regarding the mourning of the dead, for example, in spite of presupposing a different system of eschatology, have simply been added to traditional ones, thus compounding the extravagance of the funeral process where that tendency exists. This is typical of the general confusion in contemporary African life deriving from the uncritical acceptance of foreign ideas.

I might add that there is not necessarily anything wrong with accepting foreign ideas; what is regrettable is to take them without critical scrutiny. If the unexamined life is not worth living, then it can be easily appreciated that such an unexamining approach is unlikely to do anybody any good. In Africa today many of the living are dying through the chaos resulting, in practical life, from this intellectual situation. It would be comforting if there was an afterlife of peace and serenity. But unless we are to give in to wishful thinking, we must acknowledge that the question of the existence of an afterlife is one requiring both rigorous conceptual analysis and careful evaluation of evidence.