Frequently asked questions about African psychology: another view

Abstract

The South African Journal of Psychology, in pages 273–279, of 2017, published a very important and commendable editorial by Kopano Ratele aimed at re-igniting the debate on issues surrounding ‘decades-old confusion about the definition, scope, impetus for, and ultimate aims of an African psychology within South Africa (SA)’. His incisive contribution in response to these issues was submitted under the title: Frequently asked questions about African psychology. In attempting to join this debate, the aim is not to challenge but to complement the fine responses made by Ratele (2017b) to the questions he had raised. Specifically, the aim of this article is to keep this important debate about the state of African psychology alive by showing that there are still some unexplored questions about African psychology that need to be raised and responded to. It is the conviction of the present author that it is through such debates that a better understanding of the meaning and scope, and vision and mission of the nascent academic discipline of African psychology could be achieved.

Keywords

Academic discipline African psychology African worldview coloniality decoloniality epistemic disobedience

The South African Journal of Psychology, in pages 273–279, of 2017, published a very important and commendable editorial by Kopano Ratele aimed at re-igniting the debate on issues surrounding ‘decades-old confusion about the definition, scope, impetus for, and ultimate aims of an African psychology within South Africa (SA)’ (Ratele, 2017b, p. 273). His incisive contribution in response to these issues was submitted under the title: Frequently asked questions about African psychology. In attempting to join this debate, the aim is not to challenge but to complement the fine responses made by Ratele (2017b) to the questions he had raised. Specifically, the aim of this article is to keep this important debate about the state of African psychology alive by showing that there are still some unexplored questions about African psychology that need to be raised and responded to. The present author is convinced that it is through such debates that a better understanding of the meaning and scope, and vision and mission of the nascent academic discipline of African psychology could be achieved.

Accordingly, the first of those questions about African psychology that are yet to be explored will now be raised; namely, why refer to African psychology as an academic discipline instead of seeing it as a perspective or an area of research under the canopy of Western psychology?

An adequate response to this question must begin with the task of defining the notion of ‘academic discipline’ in the first place. This is necessary to see the way in which the field of African psychology as perceived by the present author can be said to merit being referred to as an academic discipline.

In his article devoted to answering the question about what makes an academic discipline an academic discipline, Krishnan (2009) points out that the notion of ‘academic discipline’ is used as ‘a technical term for the organisation of learning and the systematic production of new knowledge’ (p. 9). However, he contends that, although ‘often disciplines are identified with taught subjects, but clearly not every subject taught at university can be called a discipline’. There is more to disciplines than the fact that something is a subject taught in an academic setting (p. 9).

To buttress this argument, he highlighted six distinguishing attributes of academic disciplines. These have been highlighted and analysed below to clarify how African psychology, understood as an academic discipline, fares on each one of these attributes.

According to Krishnan (2009, p. 9):

1. ‘Disciplines have a particular object of research (e.g., law, society, politics), though the object of research maybe shared with another discipline’.

Analysis: African psychology fares well on this attribute. Its object of research is Psychology of Africans (pre, colonial, and postcolonial) from an Africentric perspective (Mkhize, 2004a; Nwoye, 2014).

2. ‘Disciplines have a body of accumulated specialist knowledge referring to their object of research, which is specific to them and not generally shared with another discipline’.

Analysis (to be underlined like the rest: Although a nascent academic discipline, African psychology has inherited and recently developed a body of accumulated specialist knowledge referring to its object of research as identified above. Most of these accumulated specialist knowledge in the field of African psychology and related disciplines arises from the research and writings of its leading scholars and predecessors (both in continental Africa and in the diaspora), such as Bynum (1999/2012), Holdstock (1979, 1981, 1999, 2000), Baloyi and Ramose (2016), Berg (2003), Biko (1978), Bradbury-Jones, Ogik, Betts, Taylor, and Lund (2018), Césaire (1972), Fanon (1963, 1967), Jahn and Wilhelm-Solomon (2015), Jamison (2018), Kalu (1978), Long (2016, 2017), Mbiti (1969), Mkhize (2003, 2004a, 2004b, 2008), Mpofu (2013, 2014), Nobles, Baloyi and Sodi (2016), Nwoye (2002, 2006a, 2006b, 2013, 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2018), Nyamnjoh (2017a, 2017b), Okere, Njoku and Devisch (2005), Okere (2005), Ratele (2017a, 2017b), Zamora and Faris (1995) and Matoane (2012).

The above list, though not at all exhaustive, clearly shows that although African psychology in continental Africa can be said to be a nascent academic discipline, it is endowed with a solid inheritance of intellectual traditions of accumulated research and writings that can be taught to psychology degree students in universities in Africa and the wider world.

3. ‘Disciplines have theories and concepts that can organize the accumulated specialist knowledge effectively’.

Analysis: African psychology as a nascent discipline has still a lot to do in terms of theory development. But even here much is already being done in the literature to suggest that African psychology is a promising academic discipline. Among the major theories and concepts are those by Bynum (1999, 2012), Nwoye (2000, 2002a, 2006b, 2013, 2017b, 2017c), Okere (2005), Nyamnjoh (2017b) and Segalo (2014, 2018)

4. ‘Disciplines use specific terminologies or a specific technical language adjusted to their research object’.

Analysis: Being an heir to a rich intellectual tradition in the psychological humanities (Nwoye, 2020; Teo, 2017, 2019), African psychology has terminologies for articulating its vision and mission (Achebe, 1973, 1989; Mkhize, 2004a; Mpofu, 2013, 2014); epistemologies (Mignolo, 2009; Nwoye, 2015; Nyamnjoh, 2017b) and principles (Jamison, 2018; Kalu, 1978; Mbiti, 1969; Nyamnjoh, 2012, pp. 131–132, 2017a, 2017b) to draw from.

5. ‘Disciplines have developed specific research methods according to their specific research requirements’.

Analysis: Four specific critical methods drive the study of African psychology as a postcolonial academic discipline. These encompass: the deconstructive, the reconstructive, the constructive and the methodology of multi-directed partiality (Nwoye, in press). The first (the deconstructive methodology), is called into action when the aim of a particular research in African psychology is to excavate and challenge and correct the errors and distortions about Africa and its people propagated in some aspects of mainstream Western psychology (particularly in the literature of colonial psychiatry [See McCulloch, 1995]). The second, the reconstructive methodology, is considered relevant when the aim of a given research or scholarship in African psychology goes beyond the exercise of identifying and correcting existing distortions on the image of Africa and its people propagated in Western scholarship (Achebe, 1973), but more importantly the task of reversing and replacing such distortions with more corrective data (Achebe, 1958, 1973). Hence, African psychology operates not just as a reactive or protest psychology, but also as a reconstructive psychology. The third methodology (the constructive perspective) is considered crucial when the aim of a given research or scholarship in African psychology is driven by the need to create new theories and concepts, principles and assumptions, required for generating solutions to psychological problems of the contemporary African client, and to inject freshness and originality into the study of African psychology as an academic discipline grounded in African cultural and philosophical traditions (Matoane, 2012; Nwoye, 2000, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2017c; Segalo, 2014, 2018). In other words, this third orienting methodology of research in African psychology is particularly geared at guaranteeing the birth of new dimensions of thought and understanding on the nature of the Africentric (as opposed to the Eurocentric) humanity and experience in the study of psychology in Africa. The Eurocentric human being, according to Korang (2011) is a self-contained individual devoid of a background (Holdstock, 1981, 1999, 2000; Cushman, 1990); while an Africentric human being is an individual who recognizes that ‘one hand washes another hand’, or the existence and influences of a background (socio-cultural and spiritual) in his or her life world (Mbiti, 1969; Mkhize, 2004a; Nwoye, in press).

The fourth orienting methodology of research in African psychology is the one that can be referred to as the methodology of multi-directed partiality. That methodology draws attention to the fact that African psychology in its research and scholarship is not afraid to learn from and draw on all relevant human knowledge traditions and theoretical and conceptual perspectives (local and foreign) found within or outside the field of psychology. But this is with the proviso that such knowledge traditions either from the various African groups or the globalized world (wa Thiong’o, 2012) do not contradict or distort African reality and humanity.

Seen against the above, African psychology qualifies as a legitimate full-fledged (even if nascent) academic discipline with multiple methodological approaches and orienting frameworks in its research and scholarship.

6. ‘Disciplines must have some institutional manifestation in the form of subjects taught at universities or colleges, respective academic departments and professional associations connected to it’.

Analysis: In relation to the sixth requirement, the disciplinarity of African psychology is increasingly no longer in doubt. This is particularly so with the solid presence of the Forum of African Psychology (usually abbreviated as FAP). The FAP successfully held its first international conference at the University of Limpopo, South Africa, in March 2014 (Nwoye, 2018). The theme of that conference was: From psychology in Africa to African psychology. Speakers and participants at the conference came from both within and outside the continent. Such an event represents a clear institutional manifestation of the existence of African psychology as an academic discipline. Some of the other elements mentioned under the sixth attribute (like institutional manifestation in the form of some subjects taught at universities or colleges) are already occurring in some progressive universities in South Africa where courses or modules on African psychology within the psychology degree programmes are offered to psychology degree students (Nwoye, 2018).

These attestations demonstrate the basis for referring to African psychology as an academic discipline that has been called into being to argue against and partner with Western psychology imported to Africa in the promotion of relevant psychological knowledge in African universities.

What is the founding stimulus for the emergence of African psychology as a postcolonial academic discipline?

The foundational stimulus for the emergence of African psychology as a postcolonial academic discipline is the tragic consequences of ‘the disaster brought upon the African psyche in the period of subjection to alien races’ (Achebe, 1973, p. 3), through African encounter with Europe. This is a theme that Chinua Achebe has for many years made his own (Achebe, 1973, 1989, 1990). According to Irele (1978, 2001) and Mpofu (2013, 2014), Achebe’s novels and most of his essays deal with the social and psychological conflicts created by the incursion of the White man and his culture into the hitherto self-contained world of African society, and the disarray in the African consciousness that has followed (Irele, 1978). Seen in this perspective, African psychology as a postcolonial academic discipline has been called into being primarily by ‘a sense of historical grievance, and the need to situate our collective existence as Africans in the new perspective mapped out for our historical experience by the encounter with Europe’ (Irele, 2001, p. 46).

But the nascent academic discipline of African psychology is not alone in this mission. Many other postcolonial academic disciplines have emerged in several African universities, particularly in the humanities, to undertake a scholarship of corrective knowledge and memory healing of the people of Africa. Among those postcolonial academic disciplines include: African literature, African religion, African philosophy, African theology, African anthropology, African history and archaeology, African drama, African art, African music, and African psychology (Nwoye, 2017b). African psychology emerged against the background of Western colonialism and the problem of coloniality. That problem left in its’ trail the crisis of internalized colonialism (Utsey, Abrams, Opare-Henako, Bolden, & Williams III, 2014). This refers to the problem of colonial mentality under which Africans started to see themselves as inferior to the members of the White race; a peculiar psychological complex that has continued till today to adversely affect the self-esteem and the general mental health of Africans. Through the ethnocentric and prejudiced colonial educational system imposed on Africans during colonialism and its aftermath of coloniality (Mpofu, 2013), Africans were demeaned and taught to look down upon themselves and their culture; and to think, act and dress like Europeans. By condemning African culture through denigrating its language, dress code, music, names, dance, marriage, religion and other customs and traditions as primitive, colonialism and its aftermath, coloniality (Mpofu, 2013), alienated the people of Africa from their roots and instilled a deep-seated sense of inferiority into the African psyche (Achebe, 1973; Irele, 1978, 2001; Mkhize, Ndimande-Hlongwa, Nwoye, Mtyende, & Akintola, 2016; Utsey et al., 2014).

Against this unacceptable scenario, African psychology as a postcolonial academic discipline came into being, among other things, to contribute its own quota (through systematic research and writings aimed at rehabilitation of black African culture and human subjectivity). In this way, alongside other African-centred postcolonial disciplines, it strives towards the task of challenging the denigrating perspective of the colonialist image of Africa and to restore the self-esteem of Africans. Seen in this ideological perspective, one of the primary objectives of African psychology as a postcolonial academic discipline is to promote the reclamation of the dignity of the African past and culture with the ultimate aim of helping African society, as Chinua Achebe aptly put it, ‘to regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self-abasement’ (Achebe, 1973, p. 3; Irele, 1978, 2001; Mpofu, 2013, 2014).

Of course, this attempt by African psychology and its sister postcolonial disciplines to rise to the responsibility of re-establishing the lost dignity and the psychological freedom of the Black people of Africa is grounded on the belief highlighted by Achebe (1973), that although people oftentimes say that today things have changed a lot since the period of colonialism, ‘but it would be foolish to pretend that we have fully recovered from the traumatic effects of our first confrontation with Europe’ (p. 3). This observation relates, in particular, to the loss of the self-confidence of Africans that was brought about by the colonial pathology of depicting Africa as a place without culture, a cultural desert and a continent where old people think like children. Commenting in this regard, McCulloch (1995), in his book titled Colonial Psychiatry and the ‘African Mind’, avers that one of the most prominent Western psychiatrists who worked in Kenya, East Africa, namely John C. Carothers wrote several articles (Carothers, 1940, 1947, 1951), thereafter codified in a book (Carothers, 1953, p. 6) published by the World Health Organization, in which he disseminated the disparaging impression that ‘until the age of seven or eight years, the African developed in the same way as the European, but then the process of development suddenly comes to a halt’ (Carothers, 1953, p. 6); for this reason, he (Carothers), concluded that ‘the adult African mind only attained up to the level of Piaget’s second stage, the Pre-Operational stage’ (p. 6). McCulloch (1995), commenting on Carothers’s report highlighted above asserts that his damning conclusion gave the sanction of a scientific truth to the view already held by many White settlers in Kenya and the then South Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to the effect that ‘the adult African was simply a child’ (p. 60).

In its attempt to reject this demeaning image of Africa (Achebe, 1973), African psychology in collaboration with other postcolonial academic disciplines in the humanities, sees as one of its fundamental themes the need to develop a counter-discourse or a new order of psychological knowledge about Africa and its people. This responsibility calls for ‘the task of re-education and regeneration that must be done’ (Achebe, 1989, 1990, p. 45). In attending to such a task, scholars in African psychology (Baloyi & Ramose, 2016; Bomoyi & Mkhize, 2016; Makunga et al., 2011; Mkhize, 2004; Nobles et al., 2016; Nwoye, 2006b, 2017b, 2017c, 2018), aim to create a coherent and dignified platform (through systematic research and writings) in which contemporary Africans operating in the field of African psychology can claim a new agency and voice to speak for themselves in communicating to the world about the nature of the life of the mind in Africa.

This particular orientation is in line with the view credited to Okot p’Bitek (1971), who in his book, African religions in Western scholarship, had observed that given the negative attitudes of Western peoples to Africans, his intention in the book was to urge African scholars (including in the context of this discussion, African psychologists): ‘ . . . to expose and destroy all false ideas about African peoples and culture that have been perpetuated by Western scholarship’ (p. vii).

What are the limitations of mainstream Western (Euro-American) psychology for the effective and holistic study of the life of the mind and culture in Africa?

To the mind of the present author, the question about why it is said that mainstream Euro-American or traditional Western psychology is not good enough to promote the effective understanding of the psychology and behaviour of the ancient and contemporary African people can be answered by highlighting some key limitations of mainstream Western psychology (Nwoye, 2018) that make it unable to serve as a psychology that can speak for all of humanity (wa Thiong’o, 2012). Among these limitations include its:

1. Failure to recognize the complexity of the human being that constitutes the focus of African psychological research and scholarship. It is, of course, not the first time this problem has been highlighted in the literature. For instance, it has for many years been raised against the adequacy of traditional Western psychology even by the progressive Western scholars of psychology (Teo, 2009; see also Parker & Spears, 1996). And it is the same limitation that Freeman (2019) was alluding to when he remarked that

Much of psychological science has eliminated from view some of those very features of human reality that render it human. In doing so, it has therefore dehumanized the human, all the while imagining that its objectness is coextensive with its realness. Again, therefore, the problem isn’t only that the discipline hasn’t been sufficiently pluralistic, in the sense of welcoming new and different approaches to inquiry. It’s that much of what we have been left with presents a crude and false image of who and what we are. (p. 17)

Agreeing with the sentiments highlighted above by Freeman (2019), Holdstock (1981) several years ago remarked that ‘Concern is continually being expressed in the larger psychological community regarding the ability of the science of psychology to deal with significant behavioural issues’ (p. 124).

Petrinovich (1979; as cited by Holdstock, 1981, p. 124) equally

raised questions about such issues as the adequacy of traditional research designs to yield generalizations beyond the particular experimental paradigm, the exclusion of ecological variables from the psychological equation and generally, whether it is at all possible to prevent the essence of human existence from getting lost in the way we approach our science.

The above citations corroborate the point made earlier, namely, that Western psychology offers a limited science of the human being and should, therefore, not be held up to the world as the model or the standard through which effective psychology of the human can be achieved.

2. Over-emphasis on the notion that psychology follows the paradigm of the physical, rather than a human science.

This point is an age-old complaint against the traditional western approach to the study of psychology. Commenting in this regard, Heidegger (1977, p. 174) has argued that there is something ‘concealed’ in the view of (natural science) understood as the theory of the real. ‘Theory identifies the real . . . and fixes it into one object area (p. 174)’. Consequently, ‘Scientific representation is never able to encompass the coming to presence of nature; for the objectness of nature is, antecedently, only one way in which nature exhibits itself’ (p. 174).

According to Freeman (2019, p. 13), Heidegger is discussing physics here, and his point would seem to be a relatively straightforward one: Physics does not, and cannot, deal with the ‘whole’ of nature but only a portion of it. ‘Nature thus remains for the science of physics that which cannot be gotten around’ (Heidegger, 1977, p. 174).

Indeed, for Freeman (2019),

When it comes to human reality, we can surmise, this situation would seem that much more unassailable. It too is that which cannot be gotten around. It exceeds whatever theoretical enclosure we might wish to provide in order to contain it. This is not necessarily a fault of science. Science itself is, arguably, predicated upon such enclosure, we ought not to fault it for what it is patently unprepared to do. And it is patently unprepared to address the living presence of human reality. (p. 14)

What is argued in this article is that African psychology must free itself from the mainstream (traditional Western) psychology’s restrictive approach to the study of psychology as a physical science. African psychology embraces an open philosophy approach (Shanks & Tilley (1987)) to the study of psychology.

3. Tendency to limit the subject matter of psychology to only the quantifiable, measurable and observable realities, ignoring attention to the study of spirituality and invisible realities, such as the ancestors, that are valorized in African worldview.

This limitation has severally been voiced by Black psychologists in the United States (Akbar, 2004; Jamison, 2018); and, of course, by progressive Western psychologists in North America, such as Gergen, Josselson, and Freeman (2015), Thomas Teo (2009) and Mark Freeman (2014, 2019). It is, for instance, in relation to this limitation that Freeman (2019) in his important article highlighted earlier has this to say:

. . . the view of psychology as science that has been promulgated has indeed sought to monopolize the discipline, not only on the plane of method and theory but on the plane of reality itself. It has thus built an edifice based on its own insisted-upon definitions and conceptions of reality. This edifice is a monolith: and even if it has been “softened” to some degree by the emergence of qualitative methods and related pursuits, it remains no less a monolith for all that. Its basic credo: We are to inquire into that which can be objectified, measured, parsed – that is, into that which seemingly can (emphasis in the original) be gotten around; only then, the story goes, will we be building the science so desired. This credo has its place. But it need not, and should not, monopolize the discipline. For, in promoting its definitions of what is real and mistaking these definitions for reality itself, it has shrunken, quite violently, the very space of thinking about and exploring the human condition. (pp. 19–20)

Corroborating the above assertion by Freeman (2019), Holdstock (1981, p. 123), in an article entitled Psychology in South Africa belongs to the colonial era. Arrogance or ignorance?, pointed out that

Psychology must certainly rate as one of the most irrelevant endeavours in South African society today. In some aspects we merely reflect, although in sharpened form, the dilemma applied and theoretical psychology face throughout the western world. For instance, we continue to elaborate the sickness model and emphasize pathology at the expense of paying sufficient attention to the potential of the vast majority of people who function quite adequately. We persist in emphasizing the one-to-one method of therapy and underemphasize group and community approaches as well as the value of the self as therapeutic change agent.

Continuing, the same Holdstock (1981) noted that

Additional dilemmas which psychology in South Africa shares with psychology elsewhere in the West relate to the emphasis on and trust in logico-deductive reasoning, the ideal of objectivity, and the compartmentalization of life into watertight units – the increasing fragmentation so apparent in the western world. However, whereas critical appraisal forms part of traditional psychology at its point of origin, ours has been a blind acceptance of and obedience to the premises of psychology laid down on foreign soil. (pp. 123–124)

Given the above, African psychology as conceptualized in this article cannot be expected to model its way of doing psychology from the traditional Western approach to the study of psychology which from Freeman’s (2019) and Holdstock’s (1981) attestations set above is considered very limiting.

4. Reliance on questionnaire studies of United States university undergraduates (as spokes-persons for humanity), as its main source of data collection for formulation of its theories about human beings.

It is this very point that Arnett (2008) was alluding to in his article entitled ‘The neglected 95%: Why American Psychology needs to become less American’, published in American Psychologist, volume 63, pages 602–614. Arnett’s article regrets that ‘psychological research published in APA journals focuses too narrowly on Americans, who comprise less than 5% of the world’s population. The result is an understanding of psychology that is incomplete and does not adequately represent humanity’ (p. 602).

Arnett’s observation above vindicates the key assumption in this article; and that is that Western psychology imported to Africa should never be accepted as a model for doing psychology applicable to all individuals. Given this understanding, it hardly requires any further explanation why the present author strongly agrees with Danziger (2006) that traditional (Mainstream) Western psychology should be taken for what it is, namely, as an indigenous psychology of the West masquerading as a universal psychology. Hence, it is inappropriate to see African psychology as just a segment or an annexe of such a psychology.

Indirectly corroborating this conclusion, namely, that it is illogical to see the scope and method of African psychology as being sufficiently covered within the curriculum of Western psychology, Freeman (2014) opines that

To put the matter a bit more formally: (Western) Psychology, operating with the “ideal” of methodological detachment, tends to be largely monological in its orientation: The research subject is given a test or fills out a questionnaire or is observed through one of those one-way mirrors while the researcher remains behind the scenes. This more objectifying mode surely has its place, and in one sense of the word it is in the service of objectivity. But in another, deeper sense, it’s not. What is required here is a more dialogical or relational perspective, one that acknowledges the rich subjectivity needed to truly see and hear the people before us. (p. 122)

Given the above, African psychology sees the need to develop a more relevant psychology than that available in traditional Western psychology, that can help researchers and scholars in African psychology to truly see and hear the people of Africa that constitute the core subject matter of the psychology of Africans.

What are the major characteristics of the African worldview that ground the study of African psychology?

Several years ago, Holdstock (1981) lamented that

At no stage have we tried to understand the psychological principle underlying the life of the people in Africa. The possibility of such a reality has never even been conceived. Is our lack of knowledge of the spiritual and psychological richness of black Africa a reflection of our arrogance or ignorance? Are we lacking in respect for and empathy with black people, or are we simply not humble enough to credit the people of Africa with a psychological uniqueness of their own? Whatever the case may be, simply nothing is being done in psychology to expose our students to Africa’s psychological rhythm. (p. 126)

To correct the persistent error of omission pointed out above, one of the principal expectations in the scholarship of African psychology is to highlight the fundamental principles and perceptions about the world by which the majority of Africans live. Having a good understanding of the African worldview (or the belief systems that influence the African people’s way of living in the world) is essential for effective understanding of the working of the African mind.

Hence, an attempt must be made in this article to highlight some of the principal beliefs and assumptions that together constitute what is usually referred to as the African worldview. Among these beliefs and assumptions are the following:

1. Belief and emphasis in ‘the priority of the other’ (Freeman, 2014, p. i). Or, in the idea that ‘I am because others (God, nature, ancestors, parents, teachers and the community) are’ (Mbiti, 1969; Mkhize, 2004a; Nobles et al., 2016; Senghor & Kaal, 1962). This explains the background behind the assumption rampant in many parts of Africa that a person is a person through other people (Mkhize, 2004a). Based on this understanding, Africans believe in the priority of the community, and strive to belong and to avoid engaging in behaviours that will alienate them from the community of which they are a part.

2. Belief and emphasis in the phenomenon of self-inclusion. By this assumption is meant the fact that in contrast to the Eurocentric worldview (Cushman, 1990), in the African world view, there is an emphasis on the inclusive nature of the human being; or in the idea of the self as a participant in the lives of others (Nwoye, 2006b). Hence, in the African worldview, the self and the community are in symbiotic relationship, as one cannot exist without the other. Both are complementary to one another. In it, the understanding is that the community is there to serve the child so that when the child grows, she or he will in turn be of service to the growth and sustenance of the community (Holdstock, 2000; Mkhize, 2004a; Nobles et al., 2016; Nwoye, 2006b). This understanding is relevant in helping the practising African psychologist to detect an African child that may be prone to developing a relationship problem with his or her family or community. Illustrative examples are those runaway or street-connected children in Africa who manifest the tendency to live a life of absolute stubbornness or disobedience to their parents; opting to live the life of the streets than to submit to parental discipline and guidance.

3. Belief in the superiority of the whole over the part, and in the complementarity of opposites (e.g., male and female, young and old, night and day, rainy and dry season, visible and invisible realities, life and death, heaven and earth). The African worldview is characterized as a holistic worldview (Holdstock, 2000; Mkhize, 2004a; Nobles et al., 2016; Nwoye, 2006b) and Africans are made to remember that they are not equivalent to any of their body parts (including eyes, teeth, breasts, limbs and hair); and that when any of these are lost through accident or illness, the whole person still remains.

4. Belief in the existence of complex and interdependent ontology. This assumption teaches that in the African worldview, there is a belief in the existence of both material and spiritual realities; including the idea of the phenomenon of interpenetration between the two realms (Baloyi & Ramose, 2016; Holdstock, 1979, 2000; Mkhize, 2004a; Mkhize et al., 2016; Nobles et al., 2016; Nwoye, 2015a, 2015b). Through this understanding, Black Africans believe in the existence of the ancestral world of spirits; that these ancestors take pride in supervising the behaviours of their living family relatives in the earthly world. Influenced by this conviction, Black Africans fear to engage in behaviours that will anger their ancestors (Nwoye, 2017b).

5. Belief in the existence of pluralistic and standpoint epistemology. This means that, first, in the African worldview, there is an affirmation that all human knowledge is fundamentally situated, ‘culturally moulded and historically conditioned’ (Schafer, 1974, p. 459); and second, that there are many ways of knowing: including sensory and extrasensory (spiritual) knowing, or the kind of knowing that comes through the third eye or facilitated perception (Mkhize et al., 2016; Nwoye, 2006b, 2017c; Okere, 2005; Okere et al., 2005). Following this understanding, scholars in African psychology reject the hegemonic perspective of the Eurocentric tradition and believe that there are alternative ways of knowing other than that propagated by Eurocentrism. It is this understanding that Okere et al. (2005) were alluding to when they asserted that every knowledge is first and foremost a local knowledge, and that everyone’s knowledge is partial knowledge (Nwoye, 2015b), arising from a given standpoint or from the culture and the location in which the individual is situated.

6. Belief in the inherent self-worth of each human being. This perspective teaches that in African worldview, each individual human being is prized as highly as the other, because in each is found the elements that constitute a basic humanity. This belief makes it possible for people to retain their sense of self-importance even when the external aspects of the self (looks, material possessions and so on) are lost. This also explains why in the African worldview, children and old people are accorded special attention and care within the economy of the household (Mbiti, 1969).

7. Belief in the precariousness of human existence

This assumption highlights that in African worldview there is emphasis on the tragic sense of life; or a belief in the phenomenon of human vulnerability to the forces of nature and spirit, and to man-made tragedies like war and human wickedness, and to the unpredictable mishaps of life. In African worldview, for instance, there is a belief that the ancestors can be both consorts and adversaries, depending on whether they feel regularly honoured and remembered or disrespected and disregarded (Kalu, 1978; Morrison, 1984; Sodi & Bojuwoye, 2011). This understanding is at the root of the excessive religiosity of Black Africans and Black Africans’ tendency to fear unpredictable life events (Nwoye, 2013).

8. Belief in the principle of incompleteness in the universe (Nyamnjoh, 2017a, 2017b).

This principle teaches that in the African worldview, the understanding is that nothing in the universe, whether human or spirit, or the living and the dead, or the male and female, is sufficient unto itself or can exist in complete isolation from one another. Hence, according to the African worldview, the fundamental principles that govern human and spiritual existence are the principles of inclusivity and mutuality, and those of insufficiency and interdependence (Mkhize, 2004a).

The above-mentioned beliefs and assumptions illustrate the point earlier made, namely, that knowing a people’s worldview is essential for an in-depth understanding of their psychology and way of approach to life and the world (Holdstock, 1981). It affords one a ‘window’ into the nature of their subjectivity, such as their life assumptions, aspirations, existential concerns, sources of succour in emergencies, characteristic value orientation and ways of being-in, and interpreting the world (Senghor & Kaal, 1962).

Concluding remarks

One of the intended contributions of this article is to show that African psychology as a postcolonial academic discipline is grounded, among other things, on a social vision arising from the debate between White and Black over Black humanity. This is a subject that presents the African psychologist with the need to engage in the task of decoloniality as a challenge to the persisting problem of coloniality in the modern African experience. In his definition of the term coloniality, Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2007) states that

Coloniality is different from colonialism. Colonialism denotes a political and economic relation in which the sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power of another nation, which makes such a nation an empire. Coloniality, instead refers to long standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labour, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations. Thus Coloniality survives colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, . . . in cultural patterns, . . . in the self-image of people and so many other aspects of our modern experience. In a way, as modern subjects we breathe Coloniality all the time and every day. (p. 243)

In light of the above, African psychology draws inspiration from Chinua Achebe’s own approach to decoloniality in ‘defending Africa as a continent that has a wealth of history and humanity’ (Mpofu, 2014, p. 1). This, among other things, requires that the African psychology scholar practice what the Argentinean Semiotician, Walter Mignolo, has characterized as ‘epistemic disobedience’, which connotes a rebellious attitude to knowledge that gives recognition to the existence of a ‘pluriversal world’ (Mpofu, 2014, p. 19). In line with this perspective, the epistemic ideology of the African psychology scholar must entail the critical duty of following in the footsteps of Achebe, in refusing in imagination and expression, that Europe can have a monopoly of knowledge on Africa (Achebe, 1990). She or he (the African psychology scholar) must rather participate in the pursuit of a ‘pluriversal world’ that is a shelter to knowledges and not just one imperial and hegemonic knowledge (Mpofu, 2014) emanating from the West. Of course, the overall mission of African psychology in handling this task is not meant to degenerate into the exercise of supporting Afro-radicalists and third world fundamentalists in their extremism, targeted only at blaming colonialism for the ills of their societies and forgetting to critique internal societal fragilities within the continent (Long, 2017). Rather, part of the transformative and Africentric ideology of the African psychology discipline is to engage in critiquing Africa from within, denouncing corruption, violence and tin-pot dictatorships going on presently in the new nations of Africa that Long (2017) alluded to. But this balancing act must be matched with an invigorated resolution to confront Eurocentrism and its diminutive description of Africa and its people (Mpofu, 2014, p. 2).

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Augustine Nwoye

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