Educational progression from secondary school to university in Zambia, and I believe in Zimbabwe too, is based on scoring high marks on a series of questions set by the Examination Council of Zambia. Those who get low marks are left out and are usually doomed forever. Educcationally, high scorers are considered to be highly intelligent and failures as less intelligent. In line with Tonga culture, what is our definition of intelligent? Is it those children who have high marks in school or those who can harness cattle and cultivate our fields, and look after our cattle properly? Of the two children depicted above who would an elderly Tonga person consider intelligent? Additionally, what is/are Tonga words for intelligence?
kaani the word intelligence have different meanings in tonga like in english.an old man can regard someone who is deligent that is in domestic chores like cultivating fields,herding cattle and building huts as intelligent.i would like to take the above statement as the old meaning of intelligence in tonga.but now you will find that this word is gaining another meaning.today's generation attach the meaning of intelligence with the accademic capability of an individual.for example if you pass at school they will say you are intelligent.so the meaning of intelligence changes from generation to generation i can say in every culture
Mr. Nyathi, I am currently teaching Child development, a Psychology course at the University of Zambia. I have observed that children in Zambia are performing poorly on Intelligence Tests designed in the Western and such results are interpreted that Africans are have low intelligence compared to Westerners (Hernstein and Murry, 1994; The Bell Curve). Dont you think, we are being mismeasured by these tests. If that is the case, is it possible to come up with our own ways or tests. Western tests are full of test items that are familiar to us but peculiar to the west. Yet when we fail to figure out these items we are considered low achievers.
no africans are not dull if i could put it like this.the only thing which they do not consider is that english is our secondary language as a result we tend to fail to express our selves.it is just the same with them if we are to take pschology and teach it in tonga they may fail dismal.the problem with western countries is that they look down upon us and at the end they fail to appreciate whatever we do.the solution to this problem i think is that zambia must localise its examinations.what you should bear in mind is that these people are anti africans so they try their level best to drag africa behind by saying we are not intelligent. personally i think that africans are very intelligent.look every countries which were once colonies of the western countries the citizens of those countries can speak the foreign languages can't we say that it is part and parcel of intelligence.i think mr kaani what you could teach your students is that they must not accept to be made feel inferior.you know if someone tells you that you are dull you tend to internalise this and develop a negative attides towards your trials at the end you fail fail.african students we must prove that we are also ntelligent like western people we only differ in the skin colour. MISS NYATHI
JOSEPH KI-ZERBO: THE HISTORIAN AND HIS STRUGGLE
"In Africa, the lack of this (historical) knowledge has greatly contributed to underachievement and ‘mental underdevelopment.’
by Amy Niang
Graduate student Amy Niang meets well known history professor Joseph Ki-Zerbo at his home in Burkina Faso.
There is an incommensurable gap between the old and younger generation of Africans. We - African youth - have grown up, been made to believe that anything ‘traditional’ or ‘old’ is necessarily retrograde, often ‘unreliable.’
Young Africans, especially children of the Diaspora, do not have the advantage of communicating with their past, a handicap that inhibits a corrective study of African history and deepens their incapacity to take their destiny in hand. According to an African proverb, “he who is lost doesn’t know where he comes from.”
I had the immense honor to meet the first African to qualify as professor of history, Joseph Ki-Zerbo, at his house in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (West Africa). At 84 today, weakened by age and sickness, Ki-Zerbo still draws amazing strength and vitality from his deeply-rooted convictions. He may have been preaching in the desert for decades but men like him live by their principles and his writings find resonance. African and world scholars have understood his message.
Ki-Zerbo deplores the increasing extinction of African identity. According to him, the curse of Africa is not the chronic poverty of its countries but the ignorance of its children of the true history and the true values of the continent. Unless Africans start learning about their own continent, their own thought system and the essence of its traditions, they will remain locked into the stranglehold of cultural identity.
It’s high time Africans liberate themselves from cultural asphyxiation, high time they went in search of what it is to be African, to draw the necessary lessons from their own traditional history in order to apprehend the future with confidence. The approach will consist, for Africa, in re-conquering its confiscated identity for, according to Ki-Zerbo, “without identity, we are just a mere object of history, a prop in the play of globalization, an instrument used by the others. A utensil.”
Ki-Zerbo narrates African past not in the way of a nostalgic chronicler who wallows in past glory or dwells into an imaginary fantasyland of pre-colonial Africa. He uncovers the history he was not taught at La Sorbonne University in France.
According to Ki-Zerbo, throughout history strong beliefs in simple principles such as the importance of family over the individual, the respect of elders, the spirit of sharing and good neighborliness, human communion in joy and sadness, etc, have been the bedrock of existence for Africans. Unfortunately, the degradation of these principles has blighted prospects for Pan-Africanism and development. But Ki-Zerbo warns us that “liberation for Africa will be Pan-African or will not be.”
Today, the debate over Africa is enmeshed in endless and ineffectual squabbling over the legitimacy of pseudo-democracies and misleading conflicts. But Ki-Zerbo argues that “the conception of power as well as its management in today’s Africa has nothing African to it.” In fact, political formations in pre-colonial Africa are rich with institutions based on a division of power with the greater possible number of people.
Africans, he says, “believe that power should be divided among its incumbents. They also believe that stability could be preserved in the multiplication of power.” He debunks misconceptions about African history and dominant theories that deliberately confine the history of the continent to the slave trade and the colonial experience. He adds that historical knowledge is a condition to collective liberation as the linkage between historical knowledge and self-worth is undeniable. In Africa, the lack of this knowledge has greatly contributed to underachievement and ‘mental underdevelopment.’
Ki-Zerbo is a man of vision and a soothsayer but he does not read Africa’s future in the sand of its drying soil; he uses the dialectical process of history as an investigative method to uncover the true past of the continent in order to understand the underpinnings of Africa’s value systems. He then tells us what a de- structured society can expect to see: the import and application of values that do not fit its peoples, which eventually will lead to the destruction of cultural identity.
His unsparing analysis and sharp, perceptive, riveting, pertinent, careful and thorough study of Africa’s history as well as its relations with the West has yielded a great number of articles and monographs, among which have been the comprehensive “History of Black Africa” (1972) that laid the foundation of a lifetime of scholarship and commitment to restoring the history of Africa by Africans. He also supervised the publication of two of the monumental eight-volume “General History of Africa” (Méthodologie et Préhistoire Africaine, 1981) as a member of the Scientific Committee for UNESCO.
He explores Africa’s past, drawing from oral tradition that is, in essence, the source of history and traditions for many African writers such as Mali’s late Amadou Hampaté-Bâ, who once said: “When an old man dies in Africa, it is like a whole library burning down.”
Ki-Zerbo’s life struggle and relentless social and political activism are not just a message of hope for Africa. It is the deep conviction of a man who knows that African development cannot be elusive forever and that it will be ‘African’ in conception and application or will not be. This knowledge is what he wishes young Africans to oppose against heavy odds and unacceptable immobilization, against institutionalized ignorance and empty rhetoric.
* Amy Niang is a Senegalese graduate student at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. E-mail her at amy_niang@yahoo.com
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org