Golden Rule in African Proverbs

PROVERBS ARE AN IMPORTANT PART OF YORUBA CULTURE. The Yoruba tribe live in Western Nigeria, although they may also be found in the eastern Republic of Benin, Ghana, and in Togo. There may be perhaps as many as 30 million Yoruba in West Africa, representing about 21 percent of that area's population. Many of the slaves that were brought to the Americas came from the Yoruba. The Yoruba are thus a significant people in both Africa and the African diaspora.

According to E. Bolaji Idowu, the Golden Rule is important to the Yoruba, and the Yoruba elders teach their young the importance of that rule. (cited in H.T.D. Rost, The Golden Rule, 21-22.) The importance of the Golden Rule in Yoruba culture may be somewhat unique in African culture, if Rost is to be believed, and an intensely tribal culture would suggest that the Golden Rule acts only intra-tribally, and may be tempered or altogether abandoned inter-tribally.

Yoruba Bronze Sculpture

As might be expected in a culture that was largely oral, the Golden Rule is stated by the Yoruba in proverbs, some of which are provided below. The source of these proverbs is Dr. Oyekan Owomoyela, Ryan Professor of African Literature at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, who maintains a web page at the University of Nebraska, "The Good Person: Excerpts from the Yoruba Proverb Treasury." A link to that web site is provided at the end of this posting.

Those Yoruba proverbs that approximate the Golden Rule are:

Bí a bá gé igi nígbó, ká fi ọ̀ràn ro ara ẹni wò.

When one fells a tree in the forest, one should apply the matter to oneself.

(Whenever one does something to another, one should put oneself in that person's shoes.)

Bí a bá rí òkú ìkà nílẹ̀, tí a fi ẹsẹ̀ tá; ìkà-á di méji.

If one sees the corpse of a wicked person on the ground and one kicks it, there are then two wicked people.

(If one returns evil for evil, one joins the ranks of the evil.)

Bí ó ti ńdun ọmọ ẹyẹ, bẹ́ẹ̀ ló ńdun ọmọ èèyàn

As the young of birds hurt, so the young of humans hurt.

(Others feel hurt, just as one does.)

Rost provides another proverb which I was unable to find in Professor Owomoyela's work, and so I cannot provide it in its original Yoruba form:

As sensitive to pain as are rats' little ones
So sensitive to pain are birds' little ones.

Similarly, Jeffrey Wattles provides one that bears some similarity to those quoted:

One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts.

The Yoruba proverbs appear to portray some of the animism of that culture. Animals and things appear almost to have a moral or spiritual life so as to inform that of man. So do trees, baby rats, and fledglings inform our behavior. Yet the proverbs suggest, in a vivid manner, that others feel pain and that others suffer, and that we ought to be sensitive to that pain and to that suffering in assessing our behavior toward them, from the branch in the forest, to the rat and bird, and a fortiori to our fellow man.

A rather poignant exception to Rost's statement that the Golden Rule is not common among the traditional religions or cultures of Africa is the prayer of the dying man in the Dinka tribe of Southern Sudan. The prayer is included in Desmond Tutu's An African Prayer Book.

And though I behold a man hate me,
I will love him.
O God, Father, help me, Father!
O God, Creator, help me, Father!
And even though I behold a man hate me,
I will love him.

In his book on the Golden Rule, Wattles quotes some other examples of African proverbs that incorporate Golden Rule thinking, including this one supposedly prevalent among the Bush Tribes in Tropical Africa:

If you neighbor's jackal escapes into your garden, you should return the animal to its owner; this is how you would want your neighbor to treat you.

Wattles, 9 (quoting C. C. Claridge, Wild Bush Tribes of Tropical Africa, 248, 259).

Less reliant upon proverbs is the formulation of the Golden Rule by the Bakongo, which I have not been able to locate in its original Kikongo form:

O man, what you do not like, do not to your fellows.

Wattles, 193, n. 11. This is manifestly a legal or moral maxim.

The Akan people of West Africa, the majority of whom live in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, also seem to have accepted a Golden Rule principle in their culture. According to the African philosopher Kwasi Wiredu ("The Moral Foundations of and African Culture"), the Akan have a Golden Rule principle which governs their "ethical talk."

Nea wo yonko de ye wo a erenye wo de no mfa nye no.

What you do not find acceptable if it were done to you by another, do not do to him or her.

The Akan also have other moral maxims or apothegms that relate to the Golden Rule, and we may also quote those:

Woamma wo yonko antwa nkrong a worentwa edu.
If you do not allow your neighbor to reach nine you will never reach ten.

Obi de aba; obi de nam kwan so.
Somebody's troubles have arrived; those of another are on the way.

Kwasea na ose, "Ye de meyonko, yenne me.
It is a fool that says, "My neighbor is the butt of the attack not me."

Abaa a yede boo Takyi no aa na ye de bebo Nyankomago.
The stick that was used to beat Takyi is the same that will be used to beat Nyankomago.*

Obi Kwan nkye na asi obi de mu.
One person's path will intersect with another's before too long.

*Takyi and Nyankomago are traditional Akan names.

Click here to see The Good Person: Excerpts from the Yoruba Proverb Treasury

Universal Ethic-Convergences 3-African Traditions and Islam

16. In the African traditions, the fundamental reality is life itself. That is the most precious good, and the ideal of the man consists in living sheltered from the worries even up until old age, but above all in remaining, even after the death, a life force continually reinforced in and with one’s progeny. In fact, life is seen as a dramatic experience. The human being, a microcosm within macrocosm, lives intensely the drama of the confrontation between life and death. The mission which completes him, which ensures him the victory of life over death, orients and determines his entire ethical task. So man ought to identify, in the consequent ethical horizon, all the allies of life, to grapple them to his cause so as to ensure the actual survival which is simultaneously the victory of life. This is the deep meaning of the traditional African religions. The African ethic reveals itself as an anthropocentric and vibrant ethic: the desired acts are those susceptible of favoring openness to life, of preserving it, of protecting it, of developing or increasing the potential life of the community; these are the acts that are considered good. Those acts considered harmful to the life of the individuals or the community are judged as evil. The traditional African religions thus appear essentially anthropocentric, but careful observation united with reflection indicates that the place accorded to living man and the cult of the ancestors constitute an enclosure within the same boundaries. The traditional African religions reach their summit in God, source of the life, Creator of everything that exists.



17. Islam considers itself the restoration of the original natural religion. It sees in Mohammed the last prophet sent by God to lead definitively men again toward the right way of life. Mohammed however was preceded by others: "there is not a people but a warner has gone among them.”(12) Islam attributes to itself therefore a universal vocation and it addresses itself to all men who are considered "naturally" muslim. The Islamic law, indissolubly public, moral, and religious, is understood as a law given directly by God. The Muslim ethic is therefore fundamentally a morality of obedience. To do good means to obey the commandments; to do ill means to disobey them. Human reason intervenes to recognize the revealed character of the Law and to extract from it the concrete the legal implications. True, in the 9th century, the mu`tazilah or mutazilite school proclaimed the idea according to which "the good and the evil is in the thing itself," that is to say, some behaviors are good or bad in themselves, prior to the divine law commands them or forbids them. The mutazilites maintained that human beings could know through the use of reason what is good or bad. According to them, man knows spontaneously that injustice or lying is bad, and that it is obligatory to return a loan, to remove oneself from harm, or to show appreciation to one’s benefactors, the principal one of which is God. But the Ash’ari school or asharites, which are dominant in the Sunni orthodoxy, support a contrary theory. Proponents of occasionalism who do not recognize any consistency in nature, they advance the notion that only the positive revelation of God defines good and evil, the just and the unjust. Between the prescriptions of this divine positive law, may be found significant elements of the moral patrimony of humanity, and they bear significant relationship with the Decalogue.(13)



(12) Qur'an, sura 35, 24; cf. sura 13, 7. (Shakir, M. H, trans.)
(13) Qur'an, sura 17, 22-38: "Do not associate with Allah any other god, lest you sit down despised, neglected. And your Lord has commanded that you shall not serve (any) but Him, and goodness to your parents. If either or both of them reach old age with you, say not to them (so much as) "Ugh" nor chide them, and speak to them a generous word. And make yourself submissively gentle to them with compassion, and say: O my Lord! have compassion on them, as they brought me up (when I was) little. Your Lord knows best what is in your minds; if you are good, then He is surely Forgiving to those who turn (to Him) frequently. And give to the near of kin his due and (to) the needy and the wayfarer, and do not squander wastefully. Surely the squanderers are the fellows of the Shaitans and the Shaitan is ever ungrateful to his Lord. And if you turn away from them to seek mercy from your Lord, which you hope for, speak to them a gentle word. And do not make your hand to be shackled to your neck nor stretch it forth to the utmost (limit) of its stretching forth, lest you should (afterwards) sit down blamed, stripped off. Surely your Lord makes plentiful the means of subsistence for whom He pleases and He straightens (them); surely He is ever Aware of, Seeing, His servants. And do not kill your children for fear of poverty; We give them sustenance and yourselves (too); surely to kill them is a great wrong. And go not nigh to fornication; surely it is an indecency and an evil way. And do not kill any one whom Allah has forbidden, except for a just cause, and whoever is slain unjustly . . . . And draw not near to the property of the orphan except in a goodly way till he attains his maturity and fulfill the promise; surely (every) promise shall be questioned about. And give full measure when you measure out, and weigh with a true balance; this is fair and better in the end. And follow not that of which you have not the knowledge; surely the hearing and the sight and the heart, all of these, shall be questioned about that. And do not go about in the land exultingly, for you cannot cut through the earth nor reach the mountains in height. All this -- the evil of it -- is hateful in the sight of your Lord."