the notion of personal responsibility. Although the
Akan, like many other people around the world,
wrestle painfully with the issue of destiny and fatal-
ity, people clearly maintain that character can be
changed (suban wotumi sesa no) and that human
beings are not born virtuous or vicious, as the
proverb puts it so clearly: “One is not born with a
bad head, One takes it on the earth” (ti bone wofa
no fam,womfa nnwo). What this proverb highlights
is that, among the Akan, like many other African
societies, freedom is the engine of morality. No one
is evil because she or he is pushed by God or the
ancestors or evil spirits, but because one is free to
make choices about her or his behavior. It is also
because people are free to act as they please that
each person can be blamed for wrongdoing. For the
Akan as for other Africans, God did not create evil
and does not push any one to do evil. But what does
the wordsubanexactly entail? To understand the
content ofsubanis to grasp the Akan moral code,
so to speak. Here, like in many other African reli-
gions, the catalogue of good and evil is not limited to
10 commandments. It is much broader. Among things
regarded as praiseworthy, we find Mmobrohunu
(compassion), Ayamyie (kindness, generosity),
Nokwaredi(truthfulness, honesty),AhooyeorAdoe
(hospitality),Ahomeka(dignity), andanuonyam ne
obuo ba(that which brings respect). This list can be
completed by various attributes of God, such as
love, justice, forgiveness, and so on. Evil is distin-
guished into two categories:bone, which encom-
passes “ordinary evils” such as theft, adultery,
lying, backbiting (kooknsa), and so on; andmusuo,
or “indelible evil”(ade a woye a wompepa da)
viewed with particular abhorrence and revulsion.
This type of evil is so disgusting and rare that it is
remembered and referred to by people even several
years after the death of the doer. These “extraordi-
nary” evils, according to the Akan worldview, are
so horrible that they provoke the wrath of super-
natural beings and are considered “taboos” (akyi-
wade, “abominations”). They include rape, incest,
and murder.
It should be noted, however, that the African
religious ethic is holistic because it is extended to
the animals and the whole cosmos precisely
because the first principle of African cosmology is
not the concept of Muntu, but rather that of
Ntanda(the world). God created first the world,
the whole universe, and then humans. God did
not create only one village, butntanda yonso, the
whole world, and all its contents. All human
beings have but one single source of existence, and
not only human beings, but all other creatures.
Indeed, as the Mashi expression clarifies, God is
Ishe Wabantu n’ebintu(“father of human beings
and things”). The natural world is the extension
of the human’s body and being as the Yoruba
orishatradition makes it clear. This interconnect-
edness with nature marks the specificity of the
African conception of both God and the human.
Indeed, for the Baluba, as for other Africans, reli-
gion is cosmotheandric. God’s nature, as well as
human’s nature, includes animals and trees
because the whole cosmos is the home of the
divinity. It is also the home of human beings—
hence, the general solidarity that the Bantu feel
with nature. Thus, a genuine human being, a per-
son ofBumuntu, is the one who has a good heart
(Mucima Muyampe), the one who extends her or
his goodness to all human beings and to animals
and the natural world. This Bumuntu, as we
pointed out, is manifested in four basic ways:
good thought and good heart (mucima muya),
good speech (ludimi luya), good actions (bilongwa
biya), and good way of looking at people and
at the whole world. Such is the art of becoming
human as defined by African religion, according
to the will of the ancestors and the will of
Shakapanga Vidye Mukulu, the Great spirit and
supreme creator. It may be necessary to note that
this vision of personhood reflects well the funda-
mental spiritual and moral values found in ancient
Egypt in the Maatic charter (e.g., Chapter 125 of
theEgyptian Book of Coming Forth to Light).Mutombo Nkulu-N’SenghaSee alsoAkan; Iwa; Ontology; YorubaFurther Readings
Gyekye, K. (1995).African Philosophical Thought:The
Akan Conceptual Scheme. Philadelphia, PA: Temple
University Press.
Jahn, J. (1961).Muntu. New York: Faber & Faber.
Mbiti, J. (1990).African Religions and Philosophy.
London & Nairobi: Heinemann.Bumuntu 147