by Thokozile Gurganious

Created on: October 06, 2010   Last Updated: October 07, 2010

African cultures are dying because of the rapid modernization taking place in the continent.  The young are moving out of the rural areas/country side in search of employment opportunities. In the city, they meet people from all over the country and other countries, not just those from their part of the country. They give a little of their culture to the strangers they meet in the city, while they also receive the cultures of the other people. There is, in essence, dying of cultures and a blending of cultures to form new cultures.  African cultures are also dying because many of them conflict with national, regional and international human rights standards and laws. Take for example the cultural practice of female genital mutilation. This practice is dying because human rights organizations and world governments are discouraging it because of the health, psychological and emotional dangers that it poses to women.  The practice of wife inheritance that is practiced in many African cultures is also dangerous and is discouraged in this era of the scourge of Aids. The cultural practice of female genital elongation by the Bakalanga people of Botswana is also dying because of urbanization, the break of the traditional extended family and women’s health issues.

The Bakgatla people, in both Botswana and South Africa, have cultural practices called “Bogwera” and “Bojale”.  In Botswana, the cultural practices were abandoned for 20 years, but in 2009 they were resumed as a “reawakening of the soul”. In 2009, over 3000 young boys and about 1200 young girls turned up for the start of the journey into the wilderness at the Bakgatla capital in Botswana, Mochudi (about 10 miles from Bokaa village, where the writer hails from, although she is not a member of the Bakgatla ethnic group). Mochudi is an interesting village, and a visitor must be warned that the Bakgatla people’s totem is a baboon, and therefore baboons in that village, are revered and treated as royalty. The little fellows infest streets on the outskirts of the village, but a visitor must be careful about how he or she handles them even when they “misbehave” like when they invade the hospital and steal from patients or from parked cars. This is because any bad treatment of these animals can easily be viewed as an insult to the locals since the animal is their totem.

The bogwera practice is an initiation of boys into manhood, while the

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