www.success-and-culture.net The purpose of this site is to try and get the world to start dealing with the interaction between culture and success in a mature and intelligent manner. Poll: Do you believe culture influences success? Yes 69.01% No 19.5% Uncertain 11.4% - Newest Articles - Per Capita Income Around the World Per capita income figures for the countries and regions of the world. Hind Swaraj, by M.K. Gandhi While rarely read this is Gandhi's most important written work. Civilization and Success The traditional explanation for the noticeable differences in income across cultures was to say that they differed in their level of civilization. - Categories - Civilization and Success Culture is to the group what personality is to the individual. Civilization is to the group what enlightenment is to the individual. By the Numbers A careful examination of the numbers is necessary to understand the relationship between success and culture. Third World and the Underclass The Third World is where the relationship between success and culture is revealed in the most brutal manner. Politics and Success The central political issue of our time is whether or not culture influences success. - All Articles - Per Capita Income Around the World Per capita income figures for the countries and regions of the world. Hind Swaraj, by M.K. Gandhi While rarely read this is Gandhi's most important written work. Civilization and Success The traditional explanation for the noticeable differences in income across cultures was to say that they differed in their level of civilization. Fundamentals of Prosperity This 1920 work by Roger Babson is a classic with in its genre. It promotes the traditional, pre-1960s explanation for the connection between success and culture. Zimbabwe: the World's Largest Test Tube Current events in Zimbabwe are giving us an unprecedented opportunity to measure and judge the effect of white settlement and colonization in Africa. US Incomes by Race, Ethnicity and Religion Average US Incomes by Race, Ethnicity and Religion. Are Calvinists Predestined to Succeed? Max Weber's claim that Protestantism is more conducive to success than Catholicism and that Calvinism is in particular more successful is widely repeated and rarely examined. Wealth and the Recogniton of Culture We need to recognize that culture is the personality of a group or race and we must see culture and having seen it, make it a work of art. The Recipient Class The moral justification for welfare is supposed to be that we are temporarily helping out our fellow man through a rough stretch of road or helping the disabled permanently. If it is to become a system for continually transferring wealth from one group to another the people behind this change owe us an explanation. Culturalism The great taboo of our age is not speaking about race, but speaking about culture. Bourgeois Bourgeoisie is more than just a term of abuse used by the Left, it refers to a real people who led real lives. Selections from the Federal Outlook Selections from a 1960's Rhodesian newspaper. How Africa Underdeveloped Africa Africa is the poorest place in the world. Why? Will Famine Come to Zimbabwe? The end of commercial farming in Zimbabwe could plunge the country into famine. The Tragedy of the Zimbabwe Commons Communally owned property always has and always will suffer from the 'tragedy of the commons' problem. Band Aid Africa recieves $15 billion a year in aid. Is it helping?

The African Child is the Father to the African Man

J. T. MUNDAY

It is probable that national traits of character depend more on the social environment and on the traditional culture of a people than on differences of natural endowment. An instance of innate and unchangeable natural differences, mental or moral, in various races, may well show an ignorance of the differences between their environments in the formative years of childhood and adolescence. The environment to be described is that of a tribe of Central Bantu living in Northern Rhodesia, the Lala; they live to the east of Broken Hill, between that town and the precipitous drop of the Muchinga escarpment 150 miles away. The Lala are closely related to the Lamba (the local tribe of the Copper Belt) and to the Aushi, who live round Fort Rosebery. The social organisation of these three tribes and of a number of others near them is very nearly uniform.

The Lala are organised into some forty matrilineal exogamous clans, that is there are some forty family names which the children inherit from their mothers, and a man and woman who have the same family name may not marry. As an example: a Bushpig man who has married an Anthill woman may have a son and a daughter by her, both of these will belong to the Anthill clan; these children may marry into any clan (including the Bushpigs) except the Anthill clan. A member of any of these clans regards all the other members of the clan as close relations, and for two members of one clan to marry would be incest. When a Native employee of the Lala or an allied clan tells his employer that he wants to go home because his "brother" has died, he means that a member of his clan (either male or female) has died, and he is using the only English word he knows to describe the close relationship between clan members. In his own language he has many and detailed ways of describing the relationships within his clan; roughly, a young man will call all young women who are of his clanname by the same name as he uses for his own blood sisters; all young men he will call "brother," all older women "mother," all older men "maternal uncle," and all youngsters "my nephews and nieces." A woman will, of course, call all children of her clan name "my children."

So close is the relationship felt to be between fellow clan members that a stranger coming, even from another tribe, and a distant one at that, if he has the same clan name, will be treated as a close relation; conversely, a member of another clan, though he be, to our minds, a fairly close blood relation, will he treated almost as though he were a foreigner. It is because of this feeling of a close tie between members of a clan, that the Central Bantu tend to live in small villages the majority of whose members are of the same clan. The relationships and mutual social rights and obligations between members of a clan are so clearly defined and understood that, in such a village, there is likely to be less social friction than there would be in a village where the inhabitants are drawn from of large number of clans.

These small villages are static neither in position nor in membership. The site of a village will be changed every four years or so, sometimes it will be moved a dozen miles; this in due to the staple crop being finger millet, and to the poor soil. To grow this crop, each year a considerable area of forest has to be lopped waist high, the branches and leaves are heaped into large bonfires, a dozen feet across, and then burnt; in the great circular patches of ashes left the millet is sown, sown one year only, and then the plantation is deserted. For a primitive people living on poor soil, with plenty or land available, this system probably does less permanent harm to the land than any other system known, because although very large areas of forest have to be cut yearly (up to 20 acres of trees to produce ash patches of an aggregate of one acre), the trees will have entirely regenerated within20 years. Not only this, but there is no danger of erosion or "wash" such as there is when a careless man cultivates maize or kafllrcorn, be he black or white, nor will there be areas where the forest has been killed by stumping. However, the trees near a village site soon become all used and the villagers have to move and build elsewhere.

From earliest childhood, then, the Central Bantu are accustomed to a life of frequent change. "We live here this year," they say, "hut we will move our village somewhere else in two years' time." This custom of movement has quite definite influences on the development of character, it produces a trait of carelessness in dealing with the buildings in the village, and also with the "natural amenities" of the neighbourhood. A small child who has to be taken out of the house during the night to be cleaned, will see his mother pull a handful of thatch out of the hut roof for a torch; he will see his father cut down a tree simply in order to pick the fruit easily (be it fruit from our point of view, or caterpillars). Neither the hut nor the tree will be needed next year, the village will have moved. Again the idea of private property in land is entirely unknown. Roughly certain areas belong to certain tribes, or to certain ehieftainships within a tribe, but there is no personal, or even clan, possession of uncultivated land When the frees of a deserted finger millet plantation have regenerated, any one may use that area again for cutting. One cannot expect children, who have been brought up where such are the immemorial customs, to grow up into men who easily learn to respect European property rights, nor yet into men who treat a European's house or fences or trees with respect and care, for at home such things last for a few years at most, and then are required no more.

Carelessness is a very noticeable trait in the Central Bantu; even his tools are not treated with care. In his village one may see an axe thrown down and left, the children throwing a basket about, or a stool just tossed into the grass. In the village almost everything, barkcloth, ironwork, baskets, wooden mortars and stools have been made by the user or his close relative, of local materials, and with no very arduous labour; if they are lost or destroyed, another can he made easily and quickly. Besides, if things are left lying about, there is no one to steal them, everyone in the village belongs to the same little group of relatives, and each lives in a hut whose doorway is open to all, and where the concealment of stolen goods is difficult.

In this way, then, a village frequently changes its site, its composition changes with varying frequency too. Every Central Bantu man shares the human desire "to get on." In his society many avenues are closed to advancement such as European society offers to the White man; the Central Bantu cannot aim at holding office such posts are hereditary, nor, as will be seen later, is it easy for an individual to acquire wealth; there are no classes as such, through which a man may rise in the social scale, nor are there skilled trades in which he may win fame (any reasonably capable person can produce all the commodities which tradition allows those of his or her sex to produce). The only avenue open to an ambitious man is to "build a village," that is to become a village headman.

It is the rule of the Administration in Northern Rhodesia that no new village may be registered unless at least nine taxpaying men agree to join with the wouldbe headman. It was intended, doubtless, as a minimum, it has tended to become the norm, and it is rarely that a village is found amongst the Lala with more than 20 such men. A normal middleaged man will begin to do everything in his power to stand well with such members of his clan who may be living in neighbouring villages with a view to persuading them at some future time to live in his village, if he should be able to build one up. After careful preparation, lasting perhaps for years, he will be able to go to the District Commissoneir with his chitupa and those of nine other men, and say: "Look at these, I want to build a village." To the new village will come some of his "sisters" who are widowed or divorced, also such of his "sisters" as "wear the trousers" will bring their husbands; all three classes will bring their children, and all, of course, are of the same clan as the headman. There will come, too, some of his "brothers," of the same clan as he, with their wives and younger children, though these last, as they grow up, will be sent to live with their maternal grandmothers elsewhere. It is likely that the new headman may be able to persuade one or two of his men friends of other clans to bring their wives and younger children. Then, too, there will come a number of boys and girls, of the headman's clan, who have been sent to live with their maternal grandmothers amongst his "sisters" and in his care. Last of all, as the years go by, a number of young men will come to marry the girls; these young men will live in the village for a number of years, perhaps for life if they are comfortable, for marriage amongst the Central Bantu is matrilocal, at least for the first years of married life. It is this custom of husbands living with their wives in their motherinlaws' villages which is the most marked difference between the agricultural Central Bantu who inhabit much of Northern Rhodesia and the cattle owning Southern Bantu who live in much of Southern Rhodesia, and who demand that the wife shall live in the husband's village.

In the Central Bantu village, of course, there can be no tradition of permanent habitation, there is no one who can say "My parents lived here, and my grandparents lived here, how could I live any where else?" The feeling is the exact opposite "I came here to oblige so and so; if I do not find it comfortable here I will go, somewhere else, there are plenty of villages which would be more than glad to have me; I might even build a village for myself". Under such conditions the village headman has to be continually on his guard against giving offence to his people; a word of reproof, however well deserved, will often be quite enough to send a valued villager elsewhere. Even if it is the headman's own young nephew who is the culprit, he will be taken quietly aside and reasoned with in private. Since the offender is well aware that no efficent action can be taken against him, short of driving him away, and since he knows that the headman dreads his loss above all else, even the most tactful remonstrance will probably be met with passive resistance those tactics which are so often used against the European employer, "the dumb insolence of the kaffir." If the headman were to lose his temper it would certainly mean the loss of one man, perhaps the beginning of the village breaking up; for the proverb says "the village with a burning hut will burn to the very edge," the anger of the headman will destroy the whole settlement, however much he has been goaded to wrath. The average Lala recognizes the a the authority only of two persons, his headman and his chief. The chief is in much the came position as the headman; if he "throws his weight about" he will find his following becoming less and less, for within the tribe there is traditionally little check on the movements of men from one chieftainship to another. Today, now there are no tribal wars, there is very little to hinder a man from moving even to another tribal area, and indeed every year a very large number do so; a man may also, if he is discontented, leave his tribe and go to live "at the Europeans'."

In the smaller group, that of the family of close blood relationship, there is also little effective discipline. The license allowed to children as to their place of residence is almost incomprehensible to Europeans. If an irate parent rebukes a young child, he will often simply leave his home and find a ready welcome with his grandmother or maternal uncle; or he will leave his mother or grandmother "who hates me," and go to live with "my other mother who loves me," in other words, with an easygoing sister of his mother.

Such a lack of effective authority in his environment is bound to influence the character of the growing African child. One does find, as one would expect, a hesitancy on the part of those who should be guided. It is very difficult for the Lala man to learn to occupy a position of authority in European employment; he finds firmness, let alone severity, most difficult to practice, because it is the opposite to all that he has been trained t0 believe should be the characteristics of a "good man." To the Central Bantu the "good man" is not a man whose morals are above reproach, but one who, when in authority, has a limitless forbearance. The employee, too, in subordinate jobs, will take a reproof from his employer only with the greatest difficulty, and that because of his very great prestige as a European; he will put up with a great deal (from his point of view) since he wants to earn some of the European's wealth, but even so, a "raw boy" who is reproved will quite likely ask for his pay, and think he can leave his employment, as he would leave a village under similar circumstances. For him to learn to take it reproof from a fellow African in a position of authority is very hard indeed.

An upbringing which prepares one to believe that one will be able to do much as one pleases for the rest of one's life prepares one ill for long continuous employment under one master, and indeed the Central Bantu are notorious for their desire for frequent change of employer, they are "touchy" and the smallest slight makes them want to live under a different authority. Their upbringing, however does not lead to unmitigated evil; from a very early age both boys and girls are selfreliant and have well developed personalities, there is very little "girlishness" or "boyishness" to distress us in the African, and never does one find a grown man "who is a boy at heart," that trying produce of civilisation "the middleaged young man."

Within the village group, the family group of blood relations appears in countless traditional stories. It is made up of an elderly woman and her brother, her husband and their daughters and sonsinlaw, together with the grandchildren. Such a picture is, of course, a simplification of the average family, but it can roughly be taken as a picture of countless families who live on the Plateau of Northern Rhodesiathe woman's brother is, of course, the village headman. This family forms an economic group, the father and sonsinlaw work together as a group; the mother and her daughters too work together as a group. Working in these close family groups the food was grown, the bark cloth made, the meals prepared; houses were built, iron was smelled and worked, and all the hundred and one small tasks of daily life were performed. Granted a great forbearance in the elders, little tact or skill in getting on with one's fellow men was needed in such a group of closely related persons, where each knew perfectly well his or her place. No individual could become very rich because not only was the produce of such a family group shared amongst its members, but also with any other group of the same clan which might be in want. The great mutual responsibility between members of a clan is called in Lala ukufutansyanya (to pay one another's fines), it is the responsibility of every member of a clan for the liabilities of every other member. In actual fact such responsibility is not usually recognised beyond three or four degrees of relationship; within those limits it is almost limitless.

It is hard to assess the results of such a system on character, It certainly leads to habits of openhanded generosity within the group, a sick or incapable clan member can find sure support; there are no "widows and orphans" in such a social organisation. It should, however, be remembered that the system, good as it is, only works within the clan, and indeed only within an extended family group; a sufferer can expect no help or mercy from those outside his clan. On the debit side must be placed the fact that the goahead man has no Incentive to work hard or intelligently in order to amass possessions, for he is expected to share them out within his family circle.

The fact that the Lala man or woman is brought up in a very limited circle indeed, added to the fact that every detail of his behaviour within that circle is ordered by custom, makes it difficult for him to know how to behave within a larger circle composed of strangers and members of clans other than his own. One has only to watch the selfconscious attitude of a young traveller who has reached a village of strangers to realise that his upbringing has ill prepared him for movement in the world outside his own family. It is probably due to this as much as to any other cause that the young African, who is so modest in his behaviour at home, is so often bumptious and unpleasant in European townships; the rules of behaviour that he learns in childhood are no help to him in his new environment. It is certainly true that if his behaviour shows awkwardness when he is amongst men of strange clans, his behaviour in the face of Europeans who are right outside the clan system leaves much more to be desired.

The fact that a young man who wishes to marry has to live, for at least a number of years, in his wife's village, whilst it has a very strong influence for good on the position of women, hardly comes within the subject of this article.

So far we have been considering the effect of his social environment on the character of the Central Bantu, very briefly his education must be also considered, The African child has a very thorough education, although it does not take place within the four walls of a school. His social education has been touched on, he learns to behave in his limited social circle by example and by precept; he has also a very thorough education in the endless lore of agriculture, or bird, of beast, and of medicine. His education in this last is for the most part prescientific; it is true that he is taught medicines and simples which are true evacuants, emetics, abortificients, and so on, all these are known and used. The bulk, however, of his medicines are prescientific; hare's dung is used as a medicine for diarrhoea because of its firm consistency, a prickly seed is worn on a string round the neck for dizziness because "that is what one's head feels like"; there are medicines for obtaining the favour of one's superiors, medicines hung in granaries which are thought to kill a thief even though he may not touch them, there are medicines for preventing the year's food supply from running short in the granary; there are medicines for this and medicines for that, there is even a medicine for preventing the trouble that might be expected at the birth of a child who "has two fathers."

The belief in the efficacy of "medicine" is inculcatedfrom earliest infancy and becomes almost eradicable; such a belief can do more than any other single agent to prevent the development of habits of industry and perseverance. Two mothers of families, after harvest, each have a granary "full" of grain, they have no means of measuring the capacity of the bin, nor do they keep a check on the number of baskets of grain which they have poured into their bins, nor do they know the area of the patches which they have cultivated. Daily "some" food is taken out of the bin, but it is an unmeasured quantity; the housewife under the Central Bantu method of housekeeping, when she is preparing the day's food, does not even know how many will eat of it, much less does she consider the quantity of food that a given number would require. The quantity of food prepared depends on how much food is available at the moment, on the health of the housewife and her feeling of energy, on the amount of trouble it will to prepare the particular food available, and on the weather (a hot day will reduce the quantity prepared), and above all on whether lie women have other work, such as harvesting, to do. Under such conditions it is inevitable that the granary of one family should be finished before that of the other, either because less was put into it it harvest, or because more has been taken out of it. The owner does not look at her shortage of food in this light, she accounts for her food running short before that of her neighbour by saying "medicine has been used." In her mind there are two possibilities, either her neighbour had a better medicine than her own for preventing the I food dwindling in the bin, or someone unknown has a grudge against her and is using medicine to destroy her food. It will never occur to her that the hunger of her family is due to her own laziness, carelessness or extravagance.

If the children of a nation are brought up to trust in "medicine," rather than industry and carefulness, for prosperity, the grownups of that nation are likely to be renowned neither for perseverance nor for hard work. Those who are opposed to the education of the

African might well bear this fact in mind; it is not only that the school pupil who is sitting for an examination will trust more to the medicine he has bought for winning the favour of the examiner than to his own hard work and intelligence, but also that the employee will trust to the same medicine rather than to his industry for winning the favour of his employer; he will even trust to a medicine which is used to prevent thieves from being found out, rather than to his own honesty.

It is true that the African labourer is unable to do a good day's work if he is underfed, and with this in view the Medical Department of Northern Rhodesia has been urging employers to supply their employees with a good balanced ration. It is, however, equally true that a nation cannot be renowned for its physical or mental developruent if the children are born of undernourished mothers, and in their youth and adolescence are given food deficient both in quality and quantitiy That the children of the Central Bantu, at least in the Bemba tribe, are indeed seriously undernourished has been demonstrated by Dr. Richards in her "Land, Labour and Diet in Northern Rhodesia." The need of the moment seems to be that the Administration ration of Northern Rhodesia should turn its attention rather from "administrating" to the possibilities of improving the diet of the

Central Bantu in their villages, where the labourers of the future are being born and bred; or even to the question as to whether there is sufficent land for the growth of such a diet.