Foundational to my portrayal of knowledge is the assumption of a conception of being, upon which the portrayal epistemically depicts the nature of knowledge. To a significant extent, this is in keeping with the delineation of African epistem ology as the relation of knowledge and being. Straightforwardly, this is to say that the conception of knowledge in African epistemology presented here derives from widely held views about the universe among Africans. To be noted, however, is that views regarding the universe are central to in the belief systems and practices of various African cultural groups. Taken as such, the belief that serves the purposes for my analysis of knowledge in African epistemology is the belief about the nature of the cosmos. For clarity, the widely held belief about the cosmos can be roughly stated as the belief that the universe is an organic whole of material and immateriality components, composed of a hierarchy of existents. As such, by Ontologised knowledge, I show how knowledge derives from the African belief in a universe of organic wholeness or harmony of the corporeal and the incorporeal. For ease, I will refer to this belief as universe-of-harmony belief.4 This belief describes the conception of being that I take to be foundational to the conceptualisation of knowledge in African epistemology. I take this belief to be a reductive description of what being signifies in Africa for two reasons: (i) its widespread occurrence in the various cultures that are inclusive of the senses I take Africa and (ii) its foregroundness in the cultures that are represented, also, in the sense I take Africa. Before explicating on these reasons, let me expound on the senses in which I take Africa in the chapter.
In expounding the senses in which I take ‘Africa’, I begin by stating that aside how the senses are relevant to substantiating my claim that the universe-of harmony belief is foundational, what I say about the senses in which I take Africa is also an explication of the assumptions that help improve the comprehension of how I explicate knowledge in African epistemology. The first of the senses of ‘Africa’ refers to cultural nationalities whose belief systems or cultural practices provide for the ontological grounds for what I say about knowledge; and the second is in terms of the period I draw on to reflect the knowledge practice constitutive of African epistemology. As it would become evident, the senses in which I take Africa are not exclusive; for, while the first sense indicates the geo-cultural context of Africa, the second sense specifies the timeframe or period to which reference is made with respect to the geo-cultural context in the first sense.
As regards the former sense, I take ‘Africa’ to delineate the belief systems and customs of cultural nationalities south of the Sahara. Geographically, this would include cultural enclaves such as the
Zulu and Xhosa peoples in South Africa, the Basotho in Lesotho, the Shona in Zimbabwe, the Batswana in Botswana, the Nso’ in Cameroon, the Gikuyu and the Luo in Kenya, the Oromo and Maasai in Ethiopia, the Acoli in Uganda, the Chewa in Malawi, the Dinka in Sudan, the Baluba in the Congo, the Bemba in Zambia, the Yoruba, Igbo, Tiv, and Hausa in Nigeria, and the Akan in Ghana.
To be noted is that this sense of ‘Africa’ is much informed by the contiguity of cultures founded on, among others, geographical proximity. I however by no means imply that these cultures are homogeneous in their belief systems or cul tural practices; rather, my supposition is that beyond the details in ceremonial and ritual practices, that is, beyond the differences in the material aspects of their belief systems and cultural practices, these cultural nationalities possess beliefs and cul tural practices that are comparable in their formal aspects (see Metz 2022). In the latter sense, ‘Africa’ refers to the pre-colonial life-forms of Africans south of the Sahara. This is the timeframe or period to which reference is made in the second sense of Africa. In other words, ‘Africa’, here, speaks to the belief systems and cul tural practices of the ethnic nationalities south of the Sahara before the subjugating encounters with the cultures of countries mainly domiciled in the geograph ical region of Western Europe. I do not however here allude to any claim of the assertion that the Africa south of the Sahara of pre-colonial subjugation no longer exists. Rather, with not a few writers who affirm its existence,5 I contend that it persists; it persists side by side the life-form inaugurated by colonial encounters. In fact, it is the persistence of the pre-colonial life-form that continues to fund the reference made in expressions such as "African values are different from Western values."6 Having clarified the senses of Africa in my analysis, I turn to an explication of the two reasons why I take the universe-of-harmony belief to be a reductive description of being in Africa.
As regards the first reason, I take the universe-of-harmony belief to be a reduc tive description of how ‘what is’ is conceived in Africa because of its widespread acceptation in the various cultures of Africa south of the Sahara. Some instances here will suffice. Among the Akans of Ghana, there is the belief in the triad of Nyame, Nyankopon, and Odumankoma as the rulers of the universe. Roughly translated and understood, Nyame represents matter, Nyankopon the vital force or life, and Odumankoma consciousness or intellect. This triad understanding of nature in Akan culture can also be gleaned from the work of Philip F. W. Bartle, who lived among the Kwawu people and studied their way of life as an ethnographer. In his analysis, he showed the difference in the perception of reality of the Akan from that which is dominant in societies in western Europe. He writes of his coming to understand this difference thus:
What I came to realize was that my own [Western] way of seeing things was ‘either-or’, based on Socratic logic and reflected in the bipartite struc tural models of Levi-Strauss. In learning to think Akan, I began seeing things as ‘both-and’ as well as the previous ‘either-or’. Instead of classifying things as ‘profane-sacred’, for example, I discovered that there were two kinds of sacred: ‘sacred/white’ and ‘sacred/black’. Then what I had thought of as ‘pro fane’ later became, in a sense, ‘sacred/red’.
He further noted that his exposure to the worldview of the Akan revealed the conception of the universe as having three elements, two of which contrasted the Western understanding of the binary differences connoted in the relations of down-up, or left-right. The third of the elements, according to Bartle, sometimes went beyond this binary of difference but was also sometimes parallel or equivalent to the binary, yet different from the first two represented by such as "down-up or "left-right". In his words,
I saw that the concept of the human individual, too, had this three-fold nature, and reflected the concept of the universe. … At each step, I saw the latter a higher level of abstraction of the former. Armed with this tripartite model of the threefold individual at three levels, and the threefold universe at three levels, I could understand the tripartite structure of society and culture.
With respect to the second reason, the belief can be seen to permeate the life forms of the African cultures within which it occurs. For instance, among the Bambui of Cameroon, the practice of propitiating dead family members through celebrations and sacrifices is indispensable to the survival and future prosperity of the family. This is such that the failure to propitiate the dead is believed to result in misfortune, which can sometimes retard the future prosperity of the family. Indeed, for the Bambui people, families must be so attached to their ancestors to the extent that they believe that if they do not venerate them, they will be punished. The prac tice of the Bambui regarding the belief in propitiating dead family members can be seen to be foregrounded by what I have described as the universe-of-harmony belief. That is, propitiating dead family members indicates a belief in a universe of existents where the living is linked with other existents, such as the living-dead.
As a way of corroborating the foregoing, Fubah (2014) notes in his research and participation in some of the ceremonies for the dead and sacrifices in the Bambui Kingdom, through which he eventually discovered that apart from the natural family relationship, that rituals are also performed to strengthen the bond between the dead and their living kinsmen before they are buried. One of such rituals reported by Fubah (2014), in his study, is the ritual of placing on the deceased a drinking horn or cup and a flat stone on his or her forehead in order to transfer his or her power before burial to the drinking horn or cup (see Fubah 2014). This is meant to create a link between the deceased and his or her living kinsmen through the drinking horn and the stone when they are eventually handed to the deceased’s successor as tools for pouring libation to him or her and other family ancestors represented by the objects or those who preceded the last ancestor. The Bambui people use the horn or cup in communicating with their ancestors, especially in times of crisis, such as severe illnesses in the family, or in times of extreme joy, such as the giving of a daughter’s hand in marriage (Fubah 2014: 633). In another instance to show how the universe-of-harmony belief permeates the life-forms of the African cultures where it occurs, a study by Matuire on the Mbira dzavadzimu’s space within the Shona cosmology reveals that it is a common belief among the Zezuru, like most African ethnic group south of the Sahara, that death is not the end of life but a breakthrough into a totally new world of the invisible (Matuire 2011: 29). Indeed, for the Zezuru, the progeny-progenitor relationship depicts an everlasting relationship between the living and the dead and it ultimately acts as the basis of the Shona way of life. In the same vein of showing that the universe-of harmony belief permeates the life-forms of Africans, among the Ga of south-eastern Ghana, the act of libation is performed in a variety of situations. It forms an integral part of every kpele rite,7 every life crisis rite, every traditional and modern political ceremony, and it is used to confirm secular transactions and agreements (see Kilson 1969). Though the intention and content of libation differ according to the situ ation or context, the form is essentially the same in every rite and ceremony, and it depicts a belief in the connection between the living and their ancestors.
The foregoing analyses of Bartle, Fubah and Matuire, which indicate how widely spread and accepted the universe-of-harmony belief is, as well as how the belief pervades and foregrounds the belief systems in various cultures in Africa south of the Sahara, it, can be taken to reinforce the claim that the belief foundationally represent the African worldview about ‘what is’.