6.4. Literature Review 9

6.4. Literature Review 9

Community, The custodians of the.

If one goes beyond the age of 50, one finds a group of individuals who have spent their lives working labour jobs such as gardening and mining. One finds individuals who cannot speak the English language, which is the primary language of education in post-apartheid South Africa. These individuals have an infinite amount of life experience to communicate yet lack any such skill to record the experience in written literature. They often do not desire to be recorded in any medium, preferring face-to-face oral interaction. It is a fact that African indigenous knowledge of days past exists primarily in people who experienced it or were taught it through word of mouth. From birth, many Africans are socialised to be part of a family and community, with rituals, songs, proverbs, fables and religious ceremonies playing a major role and passed on to succeeding generations through a predominantly oral history (Ross, 2010:45). The aged members of African communities have always played the role of teachers. It is common for them to live in or spend extended amounts of time visiting their children’s homes, even throughout their adulthood. This tradition facilitates the interaction between the young grandchildren and the old. As the parents go to their places of employment, the children spend their days playing under the scrutiny of the elders. The elders act as mediators and educators of good social conduct, stepping in when they see a need in the children’s social interactions. As this is a tradition found as a community structure, whether the young children are on the boundaries of their homes, the street, or in the homes of others, there are always elders supervising, talking with the young children and communicating their acquired life experience distilled into wisdom. Through the elders’ acquired experience and the community system they were also taught under, they develop their knowledge base. They have tested this knowledge base during their lives, and they have the benefit of experimentation in choosing which of the lessons are applicable and relevant. This means that the relevance of the wisdom of the community is maintained through being applied by its members. The elders often act as translators between the child who is still innocent and is beginning to learn, and the parent who has some experience yet still needs guidance. This helps facilitate a better relationship between the child and parent. Indigenous institutions of knowledge production, conservation, and sharing such as initiation schools, indigenous games, agricultural systems, dances and songs, storytelling, proverbs, et cetera, remain pillars of indigenous African ways of knowing. The wealth of knowledge that still exists among the elders and other knowledge holders in local African communities demonstrates the vibrant intellectualism to which African researchers and intellectuals should turn (Kaya, 2014:33).