New society needs new imagination

Muthoni waKongolaA foreign culture has created an orientation that one day, called New Year’s Day and marked on 1 January, is one on which you make wishes and resolutions for the next 12 months. The rest of the year, we are expected to live by and implement these resolutions - some of which were made in happy times when alcohol was in sufficient supply and the environment was characterised by a feel-good atmosphere.

This is not an African style of planning. African planning has always been informed by reality, the environment and circumstances as informed by by kinship and community values.

To look at planning from a textbook universalist perspective cannot and has not worked for Africa.

In public policy discourse, a West African story is often repeated about a westerner who came to a village and saw women travelling long distances to the water point. This scene matched the textbook characterisation of the African patriarchal society in which women are abused as subordinates to men.

The anti-patriarchal European Samaritan took out money and brought piped water to the village.

This Samaritan returned to Europe, writing stories and granting interviews on how this intervention empowered women.

This Samaritan returned to the village two years later just to discover that women still travelled long distances distances to fetch water from the very same water source.

Disappointed by this development, the Samaritan sought understanding why this was taking place, with patriarchy still at the back of the mind.

The Samaritan was informed that women never had a problem with the distance as this activity was more than fetching water.

These trips actually served as opportunities for women to discuss their issues, keep each other informed and even as planning sessions.

It would mean that what was thought as an empowering initiative would actually have disempowered these rural women, had they abandoned these trips.

Planning must, therefore, be informed by reality, the environment, circumstances and societal values.

Anything short of that, as practiced by a consultant mindset, would be a textbook approach that will suffer the same fate as the West Africa story.

The world has different calendars, including the foreign one we have adopted for our society. The Chinese, for example, have a different calendar on which 1 January is not the beginning of the year.

A closer look at how Africans manage time would reveal that the seasons were an important determinant of time.

Without understanding the African approach to the concept of time, which is privileging substance over form and quality over quantity, allows stupid phrases such as “Africans do not respect time” or “African time” to be normalised.

A new society, even the modern one we aspire for, needs individuals who not only facilitate the wishes of the Samaritan, but also engage the Samaritan on the best possible format of empowerment that is informed by societal realities and values. We cannot mount any meaningful challenge in the new world with this mentality.

We will need new leaders with new imaginations to create a new society.

It seems clear that the elements we have kept for three decades are incapable of this new imagination needed for a new society.

Things end and as they do, new things must emerge. Even the engine of your favourite car will one day give in, regardless of how nice it looks from outside and the amount of love and affection you’ve given it.

Without a new imagination, we can forget about a new society. We must accept that things end!

*Muthoni waKongola is a native of Kongola in the Zambezi Region primarily concerned with analysing society and offering ideas for a better Namibia. She is reachable at [email protected] or @wakongola on X.