The world of philosophy is that of wanderers and wonderers. The wander and wonder is a cyclical flurry of thought about this or that. Whoever you are, you are always wandering and wondering about life experiences to the point that you attach meaning to every experience that you go through in your life.
These experiences cumulatively form through thinking patterns leading to thinking processes that guide one to certain explanations and conclusions about their world. This consequently translates to a belief system or point of view so to speak.
This is the basis and starting point of what we end up calling a philosophy because when you are wandering and wondering asking the what, the how, and the why questions about life, all the while you are thinking.
The thinking process is unintentionally guided by the environment and predominantly the culture you belong to as it projects itself as the natural state of things. It is this thinking that is the pathway to philosophy.
Thinking in its basic form is defined as an explicit claim of what is perceived as true, it is problem-solving in another dimension as it facilitates the mental construction of action plans that proffer solutions to encountered challenges, thinking is also a kind of seeing the possible future, foresight.
Also, thinking is the assessment of the desirability of an option among given options, making a judgment call. Following is the strand of thinking where thinking becomes some sort of mental field funfair through which a person might wander aimlessly unmindful of their immediate surroundings to the point of being disconnected from them. Sometimes called building castles in the air.
Through these dimensions, thinking is an everyday endeavor that is not linear, everyone formulates their own world view which they can defend as their own way of understanding world-making, this one’s philosophy.
In essence, Thinking is defined by Holyoak and Morrison (2005) as the “...systematic transformation of mental representations of knowledge to characterize actual or possible states of the world [that happens in the mind], often in service of goals”. What happens to us, in our minds, serving us?
Our philosophies explain how things fit together and how they make the world around us more sensible. Some philosophies are more plausible than others as they give a worthwhile interrogation and justifiable explanations of the world we live in; some are just defensible as the benefits of freedom of expression and the open-minded society that has been globally propagated as the most ideal.
All philosophical questions and observations need to be questioned, interrogated, and challenged. We are here, then, to question, interrogate, and challenge the way we grow up as African children in what is commonly called ilokitshi (location) as an experience. Where the iPanstula Philosopher was born and predominantly raised.
The guiding question to my philosophical thirst is a question that was indirectly left for us to indulge in by Steve Biko the Black Consciousness Philosopher. The question asked by Biko was and still is, “What is Modern African Culture?” Considering the ‘bastardization’ of our African culture by the conquest and banditry of European colonization. In Biko’s words,
“I am against the belief that African culture is time-bound, the notion that with the conquest of the African, all his culture was obliterated. I am also against the belief that when one talks of African culture one is necessarily talking of the [pre-colonial era] culture. Obviously, the African culture has had to sustain severe blows and may have been battered nearly out of shape by the belligerent cultures it collided with, yet in essence even today one can easily find fundamental aspects of pure African culture. I am going to refer as well to what I have termed modern African culture.”
In the context of the above, and the world that I grew up in and live in we observe the above as the guiding premise of my philosophical initiative. I premise that, an African child grows up to live a contradictory life all their life. This is the overarching framework of how they live their lives. I support the premise by stating that, the mix-match of African values and Western values what we call Elokitshini mix masala continues to tamper in a contradictory way with the self-determination of the Africans. I conclude by saying we always find ourselves in no man’s land as we continue to define and self-determine ourselves, a catastrophic approach to life that has left many by the wayside.
Growing up in a world that is a brew of two different civilizations, one bossing the other as insignificant and irrelevant from the time of first contact. One remains resilient because it is the natural essential order of things. It is a great contradiction because it pulls an individual in different directions at every point of their existence as they navigate and negotiate the new world, they live in.
Professor Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni in one of his Facebook posts posted on the 21st of December 2017 at about 15h26 minutes asked a very crucial question that speaks to the greatest contradiction of all. He asked,
“How do we live in market-based and market-driven societies without abandoning our kinship-ship-based obligations and culture-determined behaviors that do not privilege profits but humaneness?”
This internal and external conflict plays itself out as everyday experiences at the individual and communal societal level. Inside out or within us is a storm always brewing. This concoction is the source of our philosophical analysis as it is a paralysis point, a point of strength, or anything in between the two extremes in a child growing up in Elokitshini (location). Hence, this great conflict is an interesting and challenging idea that needs to be explored and interrogated regarding how it impacts the life of an African child growing up in Elokitshini (location).
Pantsula Philosophy, therefore, indirectly springs from ilokitshi (location) in which the iPanstula Philosopher grew up, with religious inclinations or lack thereof. The social class from which the Pantsula Philosopher has been drawn, and the events that have shaped the Pantsula philosopher's education.
The observation that the Pantsula Philosopher lives in a world that tears him/her in different directions at every turn because of colonial conquest and African essentialism that operates in an urban setup, sets up the Pantsula for a collision course of identity crisis that has long-lasting conscious and unconscious repercussions carving into the coming generations and the generations before. As a result, this gives rise to a lot of philosophical questions of every kind.
The questions include, how one personally develops oneself factoring in the contradictory value systems of Western culture that was forcibly planted into the African and the African values that remain within the African as an essential part of them that cannot be distanced from themselves by virtue of them being African. For example, in relation to capitalism, how should one position oneself as a consumer, a producer, or a service provider?
Don’t forget that consumerism and its status outcome is the value position that was inculcated into the Africans as the system was being planted in the colonized world. Is the education system structured to be able to emancipate the Africans growing up in Elokitshini from the lure and shackles of consumerism or to understand capitalism in a way that is beneficial to them beyond the prevalent idea of just going to school with the intention of getting a job?
When it comes to religion how does one get to appreciate among other African religious traditions that the occasion of worship was part and parcel of our existence? It manifests in our daily lives; we believe that God was always in communication with us at every turn, and there was no logical qualification of having a particular building called a church in which worship would be conducted in isolation and on selected days. How do we deal with the ramifications of the Christian religious values that have been accepted as part of our everyday lives but are contradictory to essential African value systems? And which way do we go?
The sad reality is that with good intentions the modern African child would not be able to reconnect with those African values as they were viciously attacked to the point of rejection, most of them, as was well articulated by Chinua Achebe in “Things Fall Apart”.
There is a great distance of time and experience that has been created from the time of the subjugation of the Africans. To reconnect and appreciate us, in this brew, that is Modern African Culture, that we have not fully delineated, defined, grasped, and adopted for developmental purposes by way of factoring the contemporary world we live in and that it continues to elongate that distance and gravity of alienation.
Therefore, linked to Emile Durkheim’s concept of alienation the African child’s life story Elokitshini is the focus of Panstula's philosophy. Pantsula Philosophy is a story of desolation, misperception, and unguided youthful energy, ‘uncultured cultured middle class’, appearance versus reality mirrored in the broken world of ‘bastardization’ of European western culture and African traditional values, living for the material, a big fight if I want to get out, a big shout of I want to live it up, I want it all. Wishful thinking is more at play as pop culture dictates the pace of life Elokitshini.
The disconnection and isolation that individuals Elokitshini feel from their culture, the Western culture, their immediate environment, their religion, their education their socialization, and their ambitions. This detachment has led to a sense of purposelessness and a breakdown of social bonds caused by rapid social change, economic inequality, and breakdown in traditional social norms and institutions that have ultimately contributed to mental and emotional distress, which is seen in drug and alcohol abuse, sex addiction, large numbers of Ukuthwasa (initiation to become a traditional healer), large numbers of Ukuthwala (Superstitious means of attaining success) of late has become a phenomenon among many Elokitshini. Such is the life story of iPantsula and, Enter the Pantsula Philosopher from a Ekasi with love. Let us explore more in upcoming publications. From ekhoneni (place of socialising) with love.