Sifelani Tsiko
Harare
Is there any way that we could do as Africans to come up with a basic indigenous conception of human rights?
[align=right] It is often assumed that the concept of human rights is new and seemingly "awkward" to Africans.[/align] But academics at the Indaba de-mystified this notion and traced important human rights concepts inherent in African communities that have, however, been marginalised by the dominant Western human rights discourse that deliberately ignore the fact that Africa has its own human rights culture.
The scholars agreed that colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism are major driving forces that annihilated African human rights.
"Human rights in Africa have been in existence for many centuries before the coming of the white man," said Maliya Sililo, a teacher and writer from Zambia. "Africans had a communal way of life, and group survival was emphasised.
"The African concept of human rights was found in praise dance, poetry and songs and in proverbs."
The Zambian scholar narrated how women would register their protest against abuse.
"Women pounding their grain would sing and deride a king or husband who abused them. In the Nyanja culture they had widespread use of proverbs as a way of restoring and fighting for their rights," she added.
"When a king abuses his verbal power, he loses the respect of the people," she said quoting a Nyanja proverb.
Sililo observed that even where Africans do not have terms to describe human rights, it does not mean that they do not exist in African culture.
"We don't have terms to describe human rights. But this does not imply that there were no human rights in indigenous African communities," she said.
"Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu," is one adage that rings true and resonates powerfully in Africa as it teaches human values in a truly African perspective.
Simply translated, the Zulu proverb means "a person is a person because of others" and has an English equivalent - "No man is an island."
Professor Ngwabi Bhebe, a renowned Zimbabwean scholar, gave an insight into how former colonial powers - Britain, France and Belgium "at independence foisted constitutions on Africans which had provisions for the protection of human rights deriving from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.
Then in 1981, he says, African leaders met under the auspices of the Organisation of African Unity in Nairobi and adopted the African Chapter on Human and Peoples' Rights.
In his paper titled: "Human Rights: African conceptions versus Western conceptions," Prof. Bhebe noted that both at independence and during the adoption of the African Human Rights Charter - Africans did not embrace, let alone put into practice human rights, in the form they were conceptualised and framed.
"They viewed the Bills of Rights provided in their constitutions as devices deliberately inserted by the departing colonial masters in order to protect the private property of the settlers and metropolitan investments against nationalisation and redistribution by the new African governments," he said.
The African Charter on Human Rights was therefore simply adopted to improve the "aid-worthiness" of African states in the eyes of western donors.
Prof Bhebe said that while the west narrows human rights to only the civil and political varieties, Africans, who had won independence and inherited impoverished economies skewed in favour of white settlers, insisted that international conventions on human rights should explicitly incorporate economic, social, cultural and self-determination rights.
"The proponents of the universality of western conceived human rights have so far failed to find either scientific or philosophical foundations for the claim that these rights are an integral part of human nature," he said.
Prof Bhebe urged Africans not to be fooled by people who say that Africans who propose alternative conceptions of human rights are driven by motives to shield abusers and violators of human rights.
He said such a suggestion "insults the intellectual integrity of African scholars and nationalist heroes such as Julius Nyerere who fought for justice both at home and abroad, at the same time as he insisted on an alternative system of values based on the African conception of human dignity."
Quoting Omsola Ojo, Professor Bhebe said, "Africans live by values and principles that are the very opposite of the western ones, so that they assume harmony, not divergence of interest . . . and are more inclined to think of their obligations to other members of society rather than their claims against them."
He concluded by saying that: "It is the practices of such double standards by western proponents of universal human rights that encourage cynical indifference to these so-called international standards among Africans.
"When the standards are trampled, violated or ignored by their self-proclaimed custodians in the West, it does not matter. But in Africa the same values become conditionalities for aid and even humanitarian assistance."
This is manifested in the demand by western countries for trade liberalisation in African economies when they steadfastly exclude African agricultural products through subsidies for their farmers.
One participant noted that this denies Africans economic rights.
Ahmed Motala of South Africa said indigenous African value systems "have the notion of human dignity. Ubuntu comes from human dignity. The very essence of human rights is a recognition that every human being has inherent dignity."
He added that the African Charter does not mean that the ownership of the ideas therein is also African.
Ngugi waMirii said Africans are not perceived to be fully human thus are denied the so-called human rights by global powers.
The human rights debate in Africa has been narrowed to personalities. Today, Zimbabwe, whose only "crime" is fighting to bestow dignity to its citizens by reclaiming the economic rights they were denied by colonialism, is accused of abusing human rights.
Ngugi said the Eurocentric human rights discourse is geared towards the preservation of ill-gotten western privileges.
President Robert Mugabe is being demonised for distributing land to landless peasants and more recently for carrying out clean-up operations to restore sanity in urban centres, and to build decent houses for the people - all of which are human rights pursuits.
Western countries, led by Britain, imposed illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe, and the sanctions have precipitated serious economic challenges for Zimbabweans - which are human rights abuses.
Ngugi added that over 400 British companies control 90 percent of the Zimbabwean economy. He said they should return the economy to Zimbabwe.
He added that human rights issues are tethered around the means of production, and because of this, the ownership of the means of production should be the fundamental human right for every African and not the superficial western concepts of "democracy, good governance, transparency and pluralism."
This elitist conception of human rights accounts for the failure by various regional groups to address and articulate the rights of Africans.
Dr Vimbai Chivaura of the University of Zimbabwe said that genuine African human rights existed in pre-colonial Africa and were found in human values, proverbs, songs, dance and an array of ceremonies that kept African communities together.
"Africans have never been regarded as bonafide human beings in western philosophy, western worldview, western scholarship, even by Marxists themselves, even by philosophers themselves, they have constructed the rights for human beings and their model of a human being was themselves," he said.
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"We did not inherit human rights from the West at all.[/align] "This is what we must all remember in our discussions."
Thus, there is need to develop our own human rights concepts in line with our cultural milieu.

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