Of Africa by Soyinka Wole

Author:Soyinka, Wole [Soyinka, Wole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2012-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

6. Not a “Way of Life,” But a Guide to Existence

FIRST, IT WAS CHRISTIANITY, BUT latterly, and more assertively, Islam, that claims to be a total way of life, encompassing every aspect of human enterprise—ethics, aesthetics, jurisprudence, economics, engineering, healing sciences, etc. Nothing is left to secular intelligence, no human development unforeseen, no attribute unregistered within the provenance of either faith.

My childhood memory of Sunday sermonizing still retains images of a sweaty prelate at the pulpit, laboriously extracting the seeds of several disciplines from selected biblical passages and narratives. His illustrative passage for economics was predictably the parable of a merchant and his three servants to whom he gave different sums before proceeding on a journey. Two traded with their capital and made tidy profits while the third buried his deep in the ground for safekeeping. The last was duly rebuked, while the others received the ultimate approbation in the words—Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the kingdom of the Lord! The preacher rendered that benediction in such thunderous rapture—his voice echoed round and round the church in such depths of possession—that the words have remained with me till today. As for mathematics, I no longer recall his quod era demonstrandum, only that it never made a mathematician out of me, and my business aptitude guarantees that I am forever locked out of the kingdom of God.

Decades later, in the nineteen-eighties, it would be the turn of an Islamic cleric/politician to instruct Nigerians in the fundamentals of constitutionalism—the Koran, he declared, was “superior” to the nation’s constitution. In lyricism, as inspirational and visionary, he certainly had this writer firmly in his corner—alas, it was not these sublime qualities that our cleric intended. And some time later, when the nation was locked in a debate over whether or not to adopt the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programme, an association of Moslem women, duly instructed, declared authoritatively that the Koran was opposed to it. Most Nigerians were indeed opposed to SAP, but no one that I recall claimed authority from the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, or the Book of Ifa.

We shall concede a far more modest role for African religions in the lives of African humanity, a role that nonetheless offers a distinct world-view that lays claim to guidance—not dictates!—of its social conduct, human relations, and survival strategies. In response to the holistic, sometimes universalist claims of others, an exegesis of Orisa worship, the millennia-old religion of the West African Yoruba people, more ancient than Islam or Christianity, will attempt to guide us, co-opted befittingly as paradigm for African religions. It survived the Atlantic slave route and sank deep roots in South American and Caribbean spiritual earth. Even where this religion is encountered only on the margins of those societies, it is always with full devotional embrace—including pilgrimages to Source, Ile-Ife, in the land of the Yoruba. Orisa presence embraces Cuba, Dominica, Colombia, parts of the southern United States, Puerto Rico, Argentina, and, most vibrantly of all—Brazil. At the

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