CONCEPTS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE IN TRADITIONAL AFRICA

INTRODUCTION

Generalizations about traditional Africa are always dangerous because of the distances of time and space that are involved. How far, for example, does " traditional Africa " co-exist with " modern Africa or is it wholly a thing of the past? The question is a difficult one. One cannot deny that there are many threads of continuity, linking the past with the present, the old social order with the new, but how important are the elements of discontinuity? One of the assumptions behind this paper is that the discontinuities are of diminishing importance and that traditional concepts survive because they find a new dimension and a new application in the modern situation. Traditional Africa " is now history, mainly oral history, but that does not mean to say it can be ignored. On the contrary, to recognize traditional concepts and to understand their workings in the modern Africa, it is first of all necessary to see them as part of a political and social order which no longer exists in its pure form. That is largely what we shall be doing in this paper.

Means of Promoting Cultural Democracy

Among the primary means devised to realize the aims of cultural democracy is community animation.

In many community animation projects, an artist-organizer uses both artistic and organizing skills to help the members of a community discover and express their own cultural identities and exercise control over their own cultural development. Other kinds of cultural workers have also worked as animateurs of cultural life, to use the French term by which the practice is known in international circles (where animation is often called animation socio-culturelle or, adopting the British form, "socio-cultural community development"). Many examples of animation practice are described in Webster's World of Cultural Action and in the Guide to the Cultural Landscape.

The Climate for Cultural Democracy

There are many obstacles to seeing the goals of cultural democracy realized. What's most important for advocates of cultural democracy is to keep the big picture in mind.

The writer Carlos Fuentes has characterized ours as an era of "cultures as the protagonists of history." Around the globe, everywhere we look, we see evidence of cultures refusing to buckle under to the homogenizing influence of the imperial powers, be they political or corporate. The century now ending has seen the appearance of an ever-growing number of independent states, increasing visibility of ethnic and cultural groups within states, and a global revolt against the technocratic and anti-humane values of western-style development. This big picture -- both global and historical -- is essential to keeping one's hopes up for cultural democracy in this last depressing decade of the 20th Century.