Einleitung: Tradition, traditionelle Institutionen und traditionelle Autoritäten in Afrika

Leonhard Harding

Africa Spectrum, 1998, vol. 33, issue 1, 5-17

Abstract: The term 'tradition' is very complex, because its meaning differs in various contexts and it is also often used to legitimize particular interests and goals. This is by no means different in the African context, especially since the African peoples, after years of colonial oppression, have to fall back upon elements from their own political and cultural experience to build their nations and to promote national consciousness. Thus, many political institutions from the past are today adapted into the modern state structure, a number of forms of political power are legitimized with reference to tradition, and many forms of behaviour and norms are retained deliberately. The manipulation of "tradition" for specific interests cannot be fully prevented. African intellectuals have different views on tradition; some speak of a living cultural heritage, others of a paralysing and stifling burden. They are all quite aware of the fact that people have to maintain their own culture and at the same time also have to take up impulses from other people. To demonstrate this conscious handling of tradition, a variety of texts is presented here that deal with tradition on the political institutional level, with common law, administration of justice, and also with traditional landownership. All of these examples contribute to the problem that, on the one hand, the modern state is built on norms, institutions and political procedures, which have to be legitimized on the basis of democratic principles, but on the other hand it has to obtain the loyalty of all different groups of the population, despite the fact that these do adhere to a large variety of regional traditions.

Date: 1998
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