Beyond the rhetoric of African time ideation and western propaganda: An Appraisal of J.P. Clark's The Raft

Abstract

This article examines the scathing ideology of ‘African time’ and dominant discourse surrounding it, using Igbo of south eastern Nigeria, as its focal point. ‘African time’ has become a popular concept perpetuated as a stereotype, especially by the West, to demean African value for punctuality and to mean or indicate that Africans are not capable or cannot keep to time or act on an appointed time. Leaning on content analysis and historicocritical exploration as methodologies, the paper interrogates the concept of `African time` from pre-colonial to post-colonial modern Igbo, tracing how the terminology originated, using J. P Clark’s The Raft. The paper adopts Franz Boas’ Cultural Relativism as its theoretical framework and argues that ‘African time’ is the real time and that Africans are conscious and capable of being punctual, contrary to Western notion. Findings show that the compression of knowledge of time through mere mechanical
devices like clock or watch is rather too parochial and negates the African colossal worldview of time as a natural phenomenon. The paper concludes that the term ‘African time’ is a Western construct to further demonstrate ethnocentrism and it is disingenuous to label or identify a people with such terminology, because African Igbo have not completely jettisoned herideological conception of time. By deconstructing the stereotypes of African time, the diversity of timekeeping practices across cultures will begin to be appreciated and in so doing, challenge other dominant western narratives.