Page 128 - A People Called Afrika

A PEOPLE CALLED AFRIKA

The honor code guided and informed people’s ability to
engage in barter trade in Afrika, where unrelated items and
quantities were exchanged on the basis of value, without any
concern that one party would lose out. There are commu-
nities in Afrika that still employ the use of the honor code
in their dealings in today’s Afrika, such as the Somali com-
munity, where transacting parties believe that God is be-
tween them and that one’s failure to meet their obligations
means that they have failed to keep their word before God.

As illustrated in the example of the Somali community, it is
easy to understand why many of these communities were able
to conduct transactions on the basis of honor, because, again,
the traditional Afrikan’s realm goes beyond the merely physi-
cal to encompass the spiritual and - again - balance and disci-
pline was maintained because the people believed in the pres-
ence of a supernatural authority that was greater than all and
that was able to bring correction and consequences if one’s
hidden actions caused harm to others in one way or another.

As in the example about banking in the previous chapter,
mans’ abilities to legislate human behavior and relation-
ships are limited and have gaps contained within them that
allow people with devious intentions to escape through, but
a culture that is based on an unwritten set of social guide-
lines that demand of each party to honor the other party
in the agreement is one that, we strongly believe, can en-
dure. Obviously, this was balanced by the belief, accep-
tance and understanding of a person of who they are and
what they represent to the larger society as well as to God,
much of which has been lost in modern society and culture.

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