by Shivute Kaapanda
‘Olufuko’ is an Oshiwambo word describing a traditional initiation ceremony for women. It defines, restores and explains away all the colonial irregularities that African people witnessed under the period of absolute oppression by white colonialists.
Olufuko is an African traditional initiation practice whereby young girls are trained to become fully responsible adults; therefore it is a transformation of young girls from childhood to adulthood in order to prepare them for future marriage in an absolute African traditional way.
Aawambo people are part of the then nomadic pastoralists, who originated and migrated from the Great Lakes region of today’s Kenya, Burundi, DRC, Tanzania and Rwanda and Uganda in the East African region before settling in the then South West of Africa, today’s Namibia.
African Aawambo ethnical segmentation began in an era unknown to the writer. Like others, Aambalanhu became significant in Oshiwambo practices, such as Olufuko, a formal traditional and ceremonial initiation that was undermined by the former apartheid
government in an attempt to achieve black oppression, disunity, and segregation, which they achieved brutally anyway.
So what is Olufuko? By simple definition and logical explanation we refer to the sister article: “Omufima omukulu kaufufilwa; wanyenga Shongola-Olufuko mOmbaanhu” in Oshimbaanhu for good understanding and epistemological digestion of what really constitutes Olufuko as a sacred ceremony in the history of Aawambo people, particulary in the Ombaanhu kingdom.
By similar interpretation, Aambaanhu are the people of the bows (Aanakatati). Like other Aawambo, the people of Ombandja and Ombaanhu adhere to a very strong ancestral heritage and practices and Olufuko is not an exemption. For us, this is the
true veneration of ancestral heritage, spirituality and tradition of ‘the dark continent’.
We manifest our beings as humans through these sacred practices which are an ancestral heritage. Olufuko re-unites us with our culture from colonialism, as these practices were and still being undermined by white people and the generation of black people
born after colonialism.
Africa is culturally rich; the fact the Olufuko is restoring black
people’s dignity by speaking to their minds of being black and reminding them of who they are, where they were before the intervention of white missionaries and black genocides. This suggests loudly that white Africans want to advance their tactics to sabotage blackness through bibles of Christianity and other evil tools of oppression.
Africa is a black polity, and it is defined by the way it lives. Culture is the grassroots economy about which Africans can boast and invite other continents to come watch and learn through necessary tourism activities.
Olufuko festival in the Outapi Constituency is a mass economic tool today rather than a cultural tool. It looks deeper on the economic side of the coin, rather than purely teaching black people of the true celebration of blackness and Africanism. This is because of poverty eradication strategies, which looked at poverty as a priority before black consciousness.
One has to realise him/herself before anything else that will teach him of the past and the future in his present image.
Let’s take an example of Ovahimba people as a case. These are the only people who know how to be themselves today as Africans in Namibia, because they refuse to be exploited culturally by the colonial masters.
That’s the reason the Ovahimba people are subjected to serious economic hardship, because the whole system is monopolised by whites, the ideologies are monopolised, where thinking must be pro-white. They really cannot be monopolized, hence they suffer as they do today.
The importance that Olufuko holds for Aawambo people signifies a stronger sense of morality than what many a politician or supposed civilized people do. We need to establish more events of this nature in African cities and towns, the events that will see black people having confidence in their being and start digging down more in search of black knowledge of self.
In the absolute context, Olufuko festival closes a gap of African humanity, a gap between the past and the future. Olufuko is a
phenomenal event of African dignity renovation that, if advanced in terms of a black-consciousness perspective, will ultimately give the absolute definition of African practices and their ancestral heritage, despite the white ideologies that obstruct and undermine African dignity.
* Shivute Kaapanda is an African Leftist writer from Eyanda village.