Kanyoro (2002:55) maintains that it is important for Africans to identify those aspects of culture that benefit their well-being and those that deny them a worthy quality of life. Challenging culture is no easy task, yet, cultural practices should be questioned and assessed. Hence, she believes that every religious and cultural experience cannot be separated from the life experiences of people. The contact between God and humanity does not occur in a vacuum, but occurs in a historic and geographical space.
Croato (in Kanyoro, 2002:9) believes that “the context of a person affects the meaning attached to any communication event, verbal or otherwise”. Hence the first step towards change is to analyse, interpret and reflect on any cultural practice that is detrimental to humanity at large. The term “hermeneutics” literally means
3 Kanyoro suggests that iinculturation theology is contextual. It involves the present state of the world and is based on people‟s own named experience.
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“interpretations”. Cultural hermeneutics refers to the analysis and interpretation of how culture conditions peoples‟ understanding of reality in a specific time and place.
Since culture is the most important „authoritative canon‟ in the African worldview, cultural hermeneutics becomes imperative. Kanyoro (2002:55) emphasises that “it is essential that African people learn how to question, examine, and scrutinise culture”.
Gyeke (in Ogunbanjo and Knapp van Bogert, 2005:48), like Kanyoro, believes in the importance of analysing, reflecting, assessing and abandoning certain cultural practices. He argues that since culture is not static, it has the ability to change historically. In his book, Tradition and Modernity: Reflections on the African Experience, he explains how beliefs and practices are passed on from generation to generation. However, he maintains that to say that a belief or practice is handed down to a generation is to say that it is passed onto the next generation. He further adds that
“beliefs and practices are placed at the disposal of subsequent generations to criticize, accept, revise, refine, preserve, depreciate or abandon”. Therefore the first step towards changing cultural practices like female circumcision is to analyse, reflect on and interpret the practice of female circumcision.
According to Kanyoro (2002:66) cultural hermeneutics is a method of filtering the functional culture. Although there are many positive and useful elements in African religion and culture it also promotes negative cultural practices. All the elements that are considered as noble by the community do not necessarily benefit all members of the community. Cultural practices like female circumcision should be removed from the belief system because of the harm that it poses to girls and women. The rest of the belief system should be retained since it is beneficial to society. In the past, Kanyoro (2002:64-67) points out, male theologians concentrated on inter-religious issues in Africa. They focussed only on inculturation, remaining silent on how women were treated in African cultures. It appeared as if the women were not negatively affected
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by the cultural practices in African Traditional Religion. Presently, women theologians in Africa want culture to be examined under a strong microscope.
Kanyoro (2002:67) states that, “culture holds communities captive and communities hold individuals captive to the culture”. Hence, it is only when culture is examined with „such microscopic eyes‟ that it raises the question as to how one should sift the good from the bad. She believes that it is necessary for women to first identify those aspects of culture that are beneficial and wholesome, and to then denounce those that deny women wholeness and well-being.
5.4.1 The Application of the Theory of Cultural Hermeneutics to Female Circumcision
The theory of cultural hermeneutics is applicable to the practice of female circumcision. The practice of female circumcision, after being reflected upon and assessed as being detrimental to the health of women needs to be abandoned.
However, the writer of this thesis supports those who advocate that the entire initiation rite should continue in the respective communities due to its educational value, but only female circumcision should be omitted.
Hernlund (2000:245-248), co-editor of Female circumcision in Africa, for example, holds the view that it is important that those involved in campaigns only oppose one harmful element of „tradition‟ and do not reject the culture as a whole. At times speakers at anti – circumcision campaigns use the metaphor of the tentengo (sieve or winnowing basket) where one guards that which is beneficial in the culture while letting that which is harmful, fall away. She reveals that how a practical example of
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cultural hermeneutics examined in the aforementioned section was applied at a two- week youth camp on traditional practices in 1998 in Basse, Gambia. The director of the camp stressed the importance of preserving and following cultural practices and discarding harmful ones. The aim of the camp was to abandon the practice of female circumcision. All the procedures except the actual cutting of the initiation ritual were followed. Fifty six girls from Basse and the surrounding villages participated in the camp. At that gathering, the local Commissioner pointed out that the female initiation rite should continue for girls. He emphasized the education that the girls received during the initiation ritual was beneficial to them and to society at large. He also stressed the importance of retaining African Traditional Religion as a belief system.
Moreover, Ogunbanjo and Knapp Van Bogaert (2005:48), in their article: Ethical Issues in Family Practice: My Culture – Right or Wrong? situate the practice of female circumcision in a multi-religious and cultural context and condemn the practice of female circumcision on ethical grounds. However, they point out that it is only the practice of female circumcision that is under scrutiny. They maintain that this does not mean that an entire culture or a particular tradition within it is condemned or should be treated with contempt.
Furthermore, Kanyoro (2000:57) maintains that a critique of harmful cultural practices is only possible if an affirmation and appreciation of the religious and cultural world view of African Traditional Religion occurs. Therefore the need arises, to firstly, examine the ethics and worldview of Africans, and through reflection and action achieve transformation in society.
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