Time

Perhaps one of the most discussed concepts in relation to religion and philosophy in Africa is time. Time has been postulated as the distinctive element in defining the religious reality and philosophical thought of the African peoples. This was originally formulated by the famed African theologian and philosopher John S. Mbiti, who argued that the African concept of time is distinct from the Western mode of formulating time. Although critiqued by subsequent African scholars, the basic premise of the theory still holds.

It states that African time has two dimensions: a dynamic present (sasa) and an ever-increasing past (zamani), meaning that history for the African never moves forward, but ever backward. The future dimension is strictly limited to the near future, which in essence remains only a projection or extension of the present. Time in the African conception is not linear, but a cyclical motion that is partly governed by the rhythms of nature. Even when linearity seems to predominate certain modes of African time (e.g., birth-initiation-marriage-old age-death), it is only with the introduction of the Judeo-Christian concept of escbatology that a distant future emerges in African thinking.

Greek concepts cbronos (“wristwatch time” measured with precision) and kyros (event oriented time) might loosely exemplify the Western/African distinctions in relation to time. In contrast to the Western (Judeo-Christian) conceptualization of time as a linear projectile headed toward a telos (death and judgment), the African concept of time maintains something of a spiral that seems infinite, with death only as a doorway to the parallel universe of the spirits and the living dead. Always reaching to the past as its framework of reference, African time connects mostly with the present and hardly envisions a distant future.

Rather than relate to time as an abstract reality that exists outside of human experience, the African thinks of time as the product of human activity. “You make time!” Reality is not merely a product of time to which human experiences are appended. Rather, the opposite is the case. Time has to be formulated in relation to metaphysical reality to which it is subsumed. For this reason, time can only be articulated in relation to human experience and environmental realities (e.g., sunrise-sunset, seasons [wet and dry], festivals, and ceremonies). Instead of time being a dominant construct that controls life, relationships are the dominant criterion of human existence. So, although old age is viewed as divine blessing, it is only surpassed by how one spent life in relation to others. Rather than seeing time as an essence to be gained or lost, the African sees it as something to be harnessed, a positive reflection of reality.