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| Feature | No.65 October 2013 |

African Body Consciousness as a Context for promoting Physical Literacy: interrogating Perspectives and Experiences

Jepkorir Rose Chepyator-Thomso

Abstract

This paper provides a brief overview of the ways in which the body has been viewed through pre colonial, colonial and post colonial periods in Africa and opens the debate as to how far physical literacy might find resonance in the current context .

The concept of body consciousness and an understanding of what it entails is encapsulated in the cultural fabric of African societies, where human movement was revered for celebratory functions–wedding, initiation, and naming ceremonies– and for health purposes–diagnosis of body problems and signaling a health body–that characterized pre-colonial indigenous Africa. Ideas about the body changed considerably with the advent of colonialism, where human movement was valued and practiced differently across many colonial and post-colonial African environments. In contemporary Africa, human movement is expressed in form of competitive sports and as content in physical education, with considerable variations depending on government policy on education, predicaments associated with instruction and curricular implementation, and availability of human and material resources, as well as on problems of disruption or discontinuation of indigenous games and sports. The arguments set forward in this paper are along the concepts of human movement that cross many eras–indigenous, colonial and post-colonial African contexts–and within the arguments is an articulation of the nature of physical education and sport as expressions of physicality and physical literacy in the contemporary period. The paper concludes with suggestions for reform.

Many African children, like their counterparts elsewhere in global environments, participate in a variety of human movement patterns in form of play, game, and sport–grounded in a multitude of cultures–that correspond to diverse ethnic groups.

Human movement was part and parcel of cultural ways of life in indigenous African contexts, and fulfilled several functions: It was used to harmonize communities, challenge people’s prowess, settle disputes, preserve elements of culture, or bring about social change, whether politically or culturally. It was also used to demonstrate strength and vitality of individuals and as a diagnostic tool for understanding human illness. In terms of involvement in play and games, everyone had a right to play or compete in a variety of physical activities, albeit there was a separation at times by gender or by mixed gender and age groupings. The practice or involvement in human movement forms was imbedded in diversity characteristic of diverse ethnic communities, and was often formed an integral part of the traditional processes associated with practices of food gathering hunting and pastoral activities (Amusa & Toriola, 2010).

Indigenous Africa, in succinct terms, had play forms and sports that provided much exhilaration to the children and youth, and allowed for cross-cultural interactions. Engagement in physical activities enhanced development of cognitive and psychomotor skills, encouraged preservation of culture, promoted trans-generational understanding of age-grouping and social changes, and underscored the formation of identity among the children and the youth. From a young age children were active in generation of new knowledge that responded to social and cultural changes, and through their involvement in play game and sport forms, they commented on evolutionary changes in society. Furthermore participation in human movement activities helped punctuate cultural and social activities, unified people from differing communities, and facilitated travel beyond home environments, which helped expand minds of sport players and brought about an all around happiness and opportunities for learning.

Having enjoyed participation in indigenous play, games and sports in culture, lived through western formal schooling enforced through a mission school as informed by public educational policy, and witnessing the convoluted nature of contemporary education practiced in schools, I can certainly point out that the winds of change impacted my village community and the nation at large, a scenario that could be said of other African communities or contexts. Drastic winds of change came with colonialism, which impacted Africa economically, culturally, politically and socially. Broadly, colonialism occurred due to dire changes in the means of production in Europe, such as the industrial revolution and the end of slave-based economy, with Africa presenting opportunities for production of raw materials, and at the same time becoming a ready market for disposal of new manufactured goods from Europe (Ocheni & Nwankwo, 2012).

Colonialism by definition was embedded in conflict, with one society, one nation, or one group of people overtaking another, resulting in dire consequences as noted in historical literatures. Colonial period, which lasted between 1800s-1960s (Oncheni & Nwankwo, 2012), saw European countries carve out Africa into many territories, dividing communities and ethnic groups, and separating families along religious and social class lines. Whilst some of the European nations practiced direct rule, like France, and others used indirect rule, like Britain, all bringing significant changes to the African continent, with the defining moment being the Berlin Conference in 1884-1885, which altered the geopolitics of the entire African region (Candido, 2011). In French Africa, for instance, the form of colonialism practiced centered on assimilation and integration of values that were a prerequisite for one to become part and parcel of the French nation (Combeau-Mari, 2011b).

The European superpowers engineered new social relations to form a new work force in the colonies and they needed the institution of schooling, which worked to promote educational objectives and assimilatory practices that resulted in formation of new identities. The hallmarks of change were mission and colonial government schools, where most of the African children and youth got exposure to the outside world. Missionaries paved the way for Western culture (Ndee, 2010); they used schools as the instrument of assimilation, serving as the first-testing ground for the strategy of integration in the development of education and sport (Combeau-Mari, 2011b, p. 1696). Colonial use of sport was about change to bring out identity formation responsive to the needs of European nations, be it British, French or German. In Pierre de Coubertin’s perspective, “sport is a vigorous instrument of discipline [because] it engenders all kinds of good social qualities such as hygiene, cleanliness, order and self-control” (Combeau-Mari, 2011a, p. 1558). The European sporting traditions influenced indigenous sports cultures through the concepts of replacement or substitution. The members of the colonial service and missionaries advocated for the spread of European sports such as field hockey, cricket and football, all providing a means of inculcating “respect for the values of time, discipline and authority within the minds and spirits of the colonized” (Fair, 1997, p. 224). According to Ndee (2010), Western sports were introduced into Tanzania around1890s, when Germany and British replaced indigenous sports activities with sports such as football and gymnastics. In particular, German gymnastics were introduced in German East African society through school institutions such as Tanga and Mpwapwa, the oldest schools in Tanzania (Ndee, 2010).

Situating colonialism within an East African country, Kenya, former British colony, evidence points to impact on family dynamics and relationships. Using my family as an example, one form of colonialism happened through forced labor. For my case, there was the hut tax that was imposed on every family in my village, which had to be paid in coin currency-the Kenyan shilling-and the only way my father could pay the hut tax money was to work for Mr. Wright, who owned large parcel of land on the then White Highlands located on the Western region of Kenya. Members of the village community had been chased to what were then called ‘native reserves,’ leaving the large stretch of land for British colonials. Only men were allowed to work, leaving their families behind in the reserves. My father came home one-day a month, bringing a bag of maize (corn) flour for the family. Men who left for work in the white farmlands or the mines remains a defining characteristic of colonial Africa and continued to the postcolonial era in some parts of Africa. This impacted my involvement in indigenous games and sports because I had to help my mother with all of the household activities, as well as do my dad’s work. The consciousness of the body came to be valued based economic production, which resulted in the idea of physicality in form of games and sporting activities being considered to be of lesser value as physical work-crop and livestock production became associated with social class mobility and education in the village community.

What was the role of colonial education and physical education and sport in particular? Missionaries, both Catholics and Protestants, sought to evangelize the African population and promote academics to enable the Africans to read the bible, focusing on educating the whole child. Physical education and sport were considered essential “to the spiritual and intellectual formation of the children; they added physical culture and sport, a powerful means of implementing moral edification and instilling initiative” (Combeau-Mari, 2011a, p. 1562). Generally sport in the colonial environment fulfilled a social function, it served as an “instrument of colonization (of education and assimilation” (Combeau-Mari, 2011a, p. 1557) and also served as a mechanism of social control, as well as socialization into European sporting codes. Specifically sport was used to inculcate “respect and obedience for established rules” (Combeau-Mari, 2011a, p. 1557) as it happened in French ruled Madagascar, and was also used to meet military goals, as it happened in French Africa, where sport, gymnastics in particular, was used to recruit and train military men to defend the French nation. The Commission for sports in French Africa controlled physical education in schools and trained instructors to teach physical training in elementary and secondary schools and even expanded to cover extra-curricular activities, which were thought to “enrich and control sport associations” (Combeau-Mari, 2011, p. 1690). In German Africa, German gymnastics were used to teach the habitus of obedience and loyalty among the Africa children and youth, as well as to prepare them to be “physically strong, mentally subordinate and morally subversive youth, and using the military regime of gymnastics to mold Africans into useful soldiers” (Ndee, 2010, p. 836).

Sport, particularly the club system in South Africa, was used to promote solidarity through schools, with sporting codes of cricket, rugby football and athletics being targeted for “imperial proselytizing” by he conclusion of the end of the nineteenth century (Merritt, 2011, p. 2009). These sporting activities were for the whites only in South Africa, with blacks having access to sport through mission schools, as for instance the mission of Bishopstowe located in Pietermaritszberg, or as a result of contact with British soldiers, which occurred around 1930s (Merritt, 2011). As a product of a catholic missionary school, I attest to what I learned in terms of understanding the human body. The body consciousness valued rested squarely on western sports and dances in the school curriculum. At the time, I accepted this as a prerequisite for acceptance into the new and rapidly changing Kenyan society. I actually loved learning the activities and accepted them for comparative reasons-and to this day I can, if asked, teach highland Scottish dances and Irish jig. Thus lacking in the school curriculum were ethnic groups dances and sports to balance the curriculum, a scenario that characterize the period immediately following independence –1963.

Contemporary Africa is both indigenous and post-colonial, with majority of the communities characterizing post-independent period, where many European remnants in culture and education remain. Witnessing contemporary African contexts through a variety of literatures, and experiencing Western education during what others may consider roaring 1960s, where many African countries received independence from their colonizers, I can argue that there is much complexity that is unbecoming for one to articulate completely the nature of human movements as grounded in teachings of physical education and sporting activities. On the one hand, one form of complexity deals with beneficial aspects of the introduction of western sports–allowed Africans to unify and resist Western domination–and on the other hand, it deals with the creation of a hybrid cultures that have been actually empowering, and have allowed, however small, retention of indigenous activities that include games and sports–such board games and running, jumping and throwing activities that characterize the sport of track and field. What also remains, albeit in rare cases, is the use of human movement as a diagnostic instrument for illnesses and as a tool of recognition as one’s movement repertoires are considered unique individual signature. What follows next are broad understandings that underscore the status of school physical education and afterschool sport in post-colonial African contexts following reception of independence.

In post-colonial Africa socio-national development took center stage immediately following independence. Many governments used social institutions to bring about ethnic integration and national development. Former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela used the sport of rugby to mobilize black and white South Africans to come together as a nation, expressing that sport possesses a language that reaches widely in society, places a president or a politician cannot reach (Evans, 2010). The system of schooling with its integrative elements embedded in school curriculum was used to promote “national unity and mitigate territorial ethnic fragmentation” (Kpessa, Beland, Lecours, 2011, p. 2117) in the newly independent African nations, particularly given the arbitrariness of demarcation of boundaries associated with each territory or nation (Kpessa, Beland, Lecours, 2011). In decolonizing African contexts, ways to incorporate diversity from all angles, including indigenous and postcolonial situations, and consistent with Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999) understanding of colonialism, is about “centering our concerns and world views and then coming to know and understand theory and research from our own perspectives and for our own purposes” (p. 39). Along this frame of thought, the African body consciousness ought to be central in the school curriculum to encourage preservation and documentation of cultural changes in society, with introduced western sports and dance activities used comparatively to expand students’ horizons and exercise their competitive advantage in global sports competitions-such is the case with track running Kenya.

In the newly independent nations, education and sport were essentially used to unify communities or diverse ethnic groups and to promote identity formation among the youth. “For example in the country of Benin, West Africa, “sports are a political power,” very critical in the formation of new identities, with sport spaces allowing young people to “watch each other and manifest in themselves the phenomena of identification and identity” (Dakpo, Massiera, Gaglozoun, Niculescu, 2011, p. 320). Sport as space became central to social experiences of the people and also served as a way to gather thoughts and make plans to resist European occupation in Africa, particularly the sport of football. “Sport in Zanzibar, as elsewhere in the empire, often carried undertones of conflict and at times became overtly political. Yet football represented much more that a political battlefield to the players and spectators. For men in colonial Zanzibar, playing and watching football were often central social experiences” (Fair, 1997, p. 224). Human movement as sport has become prominent in postcolonial Africa because of its usefulness in meeting national development goals, which physical education as an end-in-itself struggled to get legitimacy on the schooling of the children and the youth.

Children and the youth ought to be entitled to learn and enjoy physical activity involvement both within and outside school environments. Human movement, regardless of its indigenousness or contemporariness, location or environment practiced, should be considered a human right in schools. Skillful movers often reap a lot of benefits from involvement in physical education and sport activities. In contemporary Africa, however, there are drawbacks in policy and practice that make school physical education to be at loggerheads with school administration and other subject teachers, as well as with some community leaders and members, who see physical education as non-consequential and sport as useful to the nation. Why? Physical activity as content in physical education in marginalized because it is perceived to be of a lesser value (non-examinable subject) in comparison to afterschool sporting activities as the case with Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya (Chepyator-Thomson & M’mbaha, 2013, Mgbor & Adodo, 2013; Ocansey, Sofo & Baba, 2013). Government leaders, teachers, parents, and students see physical education as lacking instrumental value, while sport values are visible to all in society (Chepyator-Thomson, 2013 in press)–Olympic and commonwealth performances, hence enhance nations’ international prestige. Sport is considered to provide a way to nurture and develop next Olympic level performers (Houlihan, 2002), with physical education being located on the margins of school realities, despite public policy that legalize its existence in the school curriculum. Consequently physical education is not taught as seriously as mathematics or biology.

Suggestions for reform to quell this happening partly rest on schools and communities and partly on government policy on education to require the creation of a new physical education program replete with movements as consistent with geography and diversity of the human population. While schools can become arenas for negotiating new ways of developing and implementing human movement patterns that engender fruitful connectivity among ethnic groups as consistent with tenets of democracy and promoting curricular diversity as responsive to culture and geography, the government should institutionalize particular systems of understanding body consciousness considered as content in physical education and grounding in public policy on education. The language of negotiation can embrace principles of pan-Africanism, incorporating them in the development of human movement in schools and society. Pan-Africanism is rooted in tenets of unification, particularly in reference to diverse people in Africa. A worldview often used in this instance is the concept of Afrocentricity, where “phenomena are viewed from the perspective of the African people” (Asante, 1991, p. 171). When ideas on Afrocentricity are utilized in teaching, development and implementation of school physical education, realization of indigenous outlook on physical education and sports activities help lessen the stigma associated with colonialism. Essentially schools and communities should serve as sites of empowerment, where the children and the youth get to engage in playful forms of movement, as well as participating in a variety of sporting activities, making human movement a human right, as echoed in writings about physical literacy where all are accorded opportunities for formation of positive social and ethnic relations and development of skills useful in individual health and society. Reflecting of indigenous Africa, in particular my cultural experience, human moment as a diagnostic tool for health purposes needs to be considered in the school curriculum, a tool that we can all use regardless of locality or national origin, or as a signature of individuality, helping empower the children and the youth in life endeavors.

References

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2. Asante, M. K. (1991). The Afrocentric idea in education. The Journal of Negro Education, 60(2), 170-180.

3. Candido, M. P. (2011). Sub-Saharan Africa: Jihads, Slave Trade and Early Colonialism in the long eighteenth century. Journal of Eighteenth Century Studies, 34(4), 543-550.

4. Chepyator-Thomson, J. R. (in press). Public Policy, Sport and Physical Education in English-Speaking Africa. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy Journal.

5. Chepyator-Thomson, J. R., M’mbaha, J. M. (2013). Education, physical education, and after-school sports programs in Kenya. In J. R. Chepyator-Thomson and Shan-Hui Hsu, Global perspectives on physical education and after-school sports programs (pp. 38-56). Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

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21. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. New York: Zed Books

Contact

Jepkorir Rose Chepyator-Thomso
Cultural Studies in Physical Activity Lab
Department of Kinesiology
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602
USA
E-Mail jchepyat@uga.edu

http://www.icsspe.org/