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Amid such diversity, certain tribal customs developed almost universally. Unless he is citified indeed, for example, the African believes in the ubiquitous presence of both good and evil spirits, all of whom must be constantly appeased or deceived. However exotic to Westerners, African superstitions reflect past heroic efforts by very real people to cope with overwhelming dangers. Those efforts also produced strict rules of conduct for the general welfare. Even accidental homicide might bring exile; people suffering loathsome diseases were cast out to perish in the "bad bush." Within the village, male strength was celebrated through communal wrestling games, but real authority was carefully granted only to elders. Masked morality plays, songs and proverbs endlessly warned against those who broke tradition. Unchanging rites governed birth, puberty, marriage, death, inheritance—all giving tribal life a remarkable strength and cohesion.
Part of the cohesion still derives from the fact that long ago, most African tribes talked out problems to the point of group consensus—and chiefs or elders demanded a conformity that made individualism as difficult then as it makes dictatorship easy now. Few bothered about how a decision should be carried out; the main goal was tribal equilibrium, a heritage that has hindered rational planning all over Africa.
Lack of compassion for anyone outside one's immediate family or tribe became almost automatic. A non-tribesman was virtually a nonperson—and hence quite murderable. Belgium pacified the entire Europe-size Congo with a 20,000-man African force carefully made up so that its soldiers were never used in their own tribal regions. Their standard method was to round up all the inhabitants of a rebellious village, pack them into a few huts, open up with machine guns and then set the village afire. Such reprisals became so commonplace after independence, as Congolese murdered Congolese, that the world press hardly reported them.
Some people argue that the typical African's inability to externalize his personality in relation to strangers partly accounts for his inability to accept the abstract idea of nationhood. If so, European colonialists bear heavy blame. For one thing, they did little to end the Africans' isolation from one another. Most roads and railroads were built away from the interior, linking coastal cities and easing communications with the mother country. Back in the bush, enforced separation flowered into hundreds of cultural divergencies and peculiarities, all destined to make future unity exceedingly difficult. Moreover, colonial boundaries were drawn entirely according to European economic interests—not Africa's own ethnic realities. To compound future strife, most freed colonies were simply handed over to African regimes whose legitimacy had not been tested by revolutionary struggle.
Disloyal Opposition