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Abstract
The main task of this article is to interrogate the meaning and content of the concept of culture as a phenomenological and ideological concept in human history, and to demonstrate how it is linked to the development or nondevelopment of the marginalized communities within the African continent. Equally important, the article identifies the processes of alienation and the marginalization of African cultural heritage by the ideological designs and practices of colonialism and the apartheid ideology. It highlights the importance of the African Renaissance call as a socio-cultural, political and economic strategy for transformation in post-1994 South Africa, and a movement to motivate Africa into moving forward and realising its true potential in the context of globalization and its marginalizing tendencies.
1 Introduction
Thus in taking a look at cultural aspects of the African people, one inevitably finds himself having to compare. This is primarily because of the contempt that the 'superior' culture shows towards the indigenous culture. To justify its exploitative basis, the Anglo-Boer culture has at all times been directed at bestowing an inferior status to all cultural aspects of the indigenous people (Biko 2004)
Generally, the concept of culture refers to any aspect of life that relates to the survival, death, progress and lack of of humankind. This comprises not only physical factors like artefacts and implements, but also psychological and sociological factors. The psychological factors comprise all non-material interests such as religious institutions, ritual observances, to mention a few, and the sociological factors are manifested in the way a certain society behaves and through various institutions such as mahadi/lobola (an African custom by which a bridegroom's family makes a payment in cattle or cash to the bride's family before the marriage) and lebollo/isuthwini (circumcision and traditional initiation school). In this article, culture is regarded as that which encompasses the sum total of African thought patterns, behaviour, ideas, and artefacts.
However, the observation by Cabral (1973: 53) that, "in some respects, culture is very much a source of obstacles and difficulties of erroneous conceptions about reality," is not totally dismissed but considered constructive criticism based on what has been experienced in some communities. In the whole, culture can be used to intensify the course of advancement of a society, while in...