‘A man is nothing without cattle’ is both a Maasai and Himba saying that shows the underlying importance of cattle in society. Family planning in some tribes revolves around the father’s cattle ambitions: the more girls you have, the more cattle you will receive in the form of a dowry when you marry them off. Five cows for each girl is hell of a deal and if you educate your daughter, she is worth much more, say twenty cows. I am taking the concept to the extreme to prove a point, the importance of cattle in African culture. With the Maasai, donkeys are viewed as the car to carry water, goats as meat and cows as the money. A man with a hundred cows and a falling down mud hut is considered to be wealthier than a man with fifty cows and a sturdy brick home. People do not invest their money in real estate, stocks or bonds. If they have money, they buy more cows. If managed properly, they could be very prosperous but the commercial view of management and the tribal view of management is very different. For instance, a local man has a yearling bull calf that, if taken to market now, could make a lot of money and allow him to buy three or four smaller calves, thus, improving his herd. But, that yearling calf is his status symbol. Status is not seen by how fancy his clothes are or what kind of car he drives, instead, by his cattle. If he sells his calve at the most opportune time, he will be losing his status in town as ‘the man with the best cattle in the village.’ A very big deal! This may sound absurd and it did to me at first, but it is a totally different value system. When this value system was established, there were no cars, cell phones, designer clothes or other material possessions we value today in modern society. Today, that value system is clashing with modern society as it encroaches into their society and their culture is quickly disappearing as a result. I admire them for clinging to their culture but because of this they are begining to suffer. What should they do: abandon their culture and accept modern ways or carry on with their traditional ways while continuing to suffer because of it? Either way, things are going to change for better or worse.
When I came to Africa, my goal was to analyze the current agricultural methods and its potential, specifically with cattle. In my struggle to answer this question, I found myself having to study the people and culture that is the driving force behind it because they areirrefutably linked. This can be said for agriculture around the world but I think the connection is stronger in tribal Africa than elsewhere. Why? In many parts of Africa tribal allegiances are still the driving force behind many decisions. Tribal taboos and witchcraft can the deciding factor in managing a herd in many instances. Tribal headmen are elected the democratic way by popular vote. This does not mean that they are the most qualified or the smartest in the community but the most respected-sounds like small town politics in the States doesn't it.
Picture this-- A small town in the desert of Namibia that is struggling to find its niche, its life-line, a way of life and has to elect a local headman to lead them out of their current economic crisis. There are many likely candidates: the most successful local African farmer that has been able to develop a commercially viable farming system, a white Afrikaner that runs many local businesses in the community, the principle of the secondary school, the janitor of the secondary school, and the local convenient store owner. Who would you choose as your headman, a mayor, a principle, a janitor or three variations of a businessman? The village I visited elected the janitor. Once elected, the headman is shown the utmost reverence and respect by the rest of the community. At a community meeting when the headman stands, everyone intently listens to what he has to say whether they truly believe in him or not. This is a major problem that carries over to agriculture. If an organization wants to help communities develop sustainable agriculture, must first speak to the local headman of the village, in this case the local janitor. I am not saying that being janitor is not an honorable profession. I am saying that there are more qualified people to be making decisions for the community at large.Another major hurdle in developing agriculture in Africa is changing the mentality of the local people. How do you make people change from communal to commercial agriculture? As the old African axiom goes, 'It's a wise man who cultivates just as much land as his wife can conveniently hoe!' The concept of producing three or four times what you need is totally foreign to many African people. That would require the foresight of planning for the future. Seeing what lies ahead is not ingrained in the brains of African culture. I had a hard time understanding this mentality for some time until someone laid it out for me. Traditionally speaking African people view time as a river. They are standing facing a river watching the water flow past. The water flowing past represents time. The water directly in front of them is the present, the water downstream the past and the water upstream the future. The western viewpoint is to see what happened in order to plan for the future, the water upstream. The African viewpoint is to focus on what can be seen, the water in front of you and the water downstream. The concept of planning to harvest five months ahead of time is ridiculous when they cannot feed their families today. This mentality is where the major disconnect occurs.The agricultural potential in Africa is enormous. This potential was identified and utilized during colonial times in Africa. Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and Zambia, was an agricultural paradise attracting some of the greatest agricultural minds in the world. The Portuguese took full advantage of the agricultural potential in Mozambique and Angola. The Belgiums did the same in the Congo. In many areas of Africa, agriculture has regressed from colonial times. Zimbabwe is in the process of reverting back to subsistence farming as we speak. The lush green fields that were once tilled by John Deere tractors and other state of the art farming equipment ten years ago is now managed using donkeys and oxen. And this is considered progress?
I am generalizing when I say agriculture in Africa. It is easy to list many problems in Africa as one and fail to differentiate the numerous countries that compose the second largest continent in the world. South Africa is different from the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa in many ways and agriculture is no different. South Africa has a booming beef industry that uses modern farming methods to cultivate the land. The farms could easily be mistaken for farms in the American West due to its similar landscape. There are also many developed farms in Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and parts of Mozambique that produce some of the best beef in the world. I chose to focus primarily on tribal agriculture in many instances because it was the most interesting to me and the most backwards. I believe the answer to these problems must come from cooperation between the modern farms, mostly run by people of Afrikaner and English decent, and the local tribal leaders. That is the approach the organization, Kunene for Christ, is trying to take in order to bring the local people out of substance living on the land. It can be done but first it will take reversing a hand-out mentality that has been developing for decades to motivate the local people into actually wanting to make a change. Only then can they hope to achieve viable commercial agriculture in the region and pull themselves out of their current economic despair.
