A CRITICAL EXPOSITION OF TEMPEL’S BANTU ETHICS

Abstract

This paper critically explores Placid Temple’s work to unearth ethical principles embedded in the cultures and traditions of the Bantu-speaking peoples of Central and Southern Africa. Against the vestiges of Eurocentrism and White supremacy which presuppose that ancient Africans were savages and as a result lacked the sense of morality, this paper argues that the sense of right and wrong is replete in the ways of life and structure of the societies of ancient Africans. It is in fact inconceivable to suppose that people who governed themselves and maintained non-chaotic societies prior to their first contact with Europeans have no sense of right and wrong. If so, how then were they able to keep the kind of societies they lived in?