Who told Africans that it is disrespectful not to wear a suit or a jacket to church under the blazing hot African sun? Who told our women that for them to show full submission to God they must cover their heads?
One thing I know is. It is not God or the bible, but it was the missionaries who enforced western culture onto us, the same western culture that was founded on environmental and climate conditions basis. A suit is for cold Areas, it is very warm. And it suitable for the colder areas of our Planet and not the hot African Sun. the suit was invented to keep westerners warm at church in those areas and it became an acceptable practice to wear it to church for keeping warm. Africa is hot and under this hot climate we wear a suit to church because the missionaries told our great grandfathers it was disrespectful to go to church without a suit or jacket since from their homelands it had become acceptable practice to do so, that it ended up being some sort of a status symbol or some sort of a prerequisite because of weather conditions not because God said so.
Who told our women to cover their heads at church? It’s not the devil – it’s the missionaries misunderstanding the way God made us, pressured us into being like them or hide some features that did not sit well with them.
It’s cultural for Sotho’s to wear blankets under the Hot African Sun because the queen of England once gave one of their Kings a blanket, the blanket is called Seana Marena and has now been accepted as an important cultural aspect of the Sotho culture… Should we then now classify that as our culture?
Sotho and Tswana women wear a dress called Seshweshwe and in Botswana it’s called Geremane because it originates in Germany, it has been an acceptable practice for the Tswana. Sotho women to wear this as a cultural thing. But is it our culture?
All this have made me question our culture, do we really have a culture or do we only have this things that are adopted from western culture, imposed by the west on us or fell into corruption as they are passed down from generation to generation.
Afrikaners don’t work at their farms wearing long sleeve shirts or trousers, they even wear those shorts to their in-law’s place but it is disrespectful for us to visit our in-laws place on short trouser with a short-sleeved shirt we are disrespectful and it is culturally inappropriate.
Afrikaners take their children to school barefoot, they said to our ancestors it was wrong to walk barefoot. We go to work in long sleeve work suits because it is disrespectful to wear short sleeve shirts in this hot African sun, but they wear short sleeves. So who is fooling who here? Our forefathers traded our way for the way of the westerners and they made it from one generation to another protecting western culture as sacred and not to be questioned.
Let’s open our minds and break free all this colonial nonsense, let’s not deprive people of enjoying the Presence of God because of a stupid suit, and GOD it has never prescribed a dress code for his church. So going to church without a jacket or a suit is not disrespectful to God or to the church or to our culture it’s rather disrespectful to the western culture.
I can say all these western practices and dress codes are not our culture, we lost our culture, because we don’t practice it holistically but rather selectively.
If the western cultural aspect of our culture was because of necessity and much-needed progress, why are we still stuck with some of the unprofitable and anchoring cultural practices? Why can’t we as it is needed and necessary now inject another aspect of progress into our culture?
Africans like using this excuse to look down on others or use culture as an excuse to enforce unproductive and useless ancient practices that have lost their meaning or significance as it got passed down from generation to other generations. We are left with diluted and senseless practices that do nothing for the black man.
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