Abstract
The African is psychologically, fully equipped and motivated to promote the delicate balance and equilibrium believed to exist in the universe through ensuring harmony in his relationship with the invisible world and among members of the community. The work focuses on death, afterlife and modernity in traditional Africa: the eye bird’s view. The work discusses the meaning of death, death as an event, death as a condition, death as a state of existence or non-existence, death as conceived by ethnic groups, the causes of death in African traditional concept, death resulting from the gods/divinities, the concept of afterlife, notions of afterlife: clues from mortuary and funerary rituals, the living dead: corporate identity and the destiny of the individual, the living and the dead: the status and role of ancestors, the relationship of the human to the divine, continued existence of spirit and it ends with factors of radical change and concluding remarks. The work reveals among others that the ancestors or the living dead as John Mbiti refers to them are believed to be disembodied spirits of people who lived upright lives here on earth, died ‘good’ and natural death, that is, they died at ripe old age, and received the acknowledged funerary rites. They could be men or women. But more over often than not, male ancestors are prominent since patrilineage is the dominant system of family and social integration in most African societies. For matrilineal groups like the Ashanti of Ghana and the Ndembu of Zambia, both male and female ancestors are duly acknowledged. With the completion of prescribed funeral rites, a deceased person is believed to transform into an ancestor. The funeral rites in this case, serve as some kind of ‘rites du passage’. The disembodied spirit joins the esteemed ranks of fully achieved ancestors in the spirit world. The work recommends that the good side of African traditional Religion/Culture should be allowed to have its way thereby promoting African cultural heritage.