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RETHINKING THE PEDIGREES OF AFRICAN CULTURAL 
WATERSHED: A POST-COLONIAL INQUEST NTO 

CHINUA ACHEBE’S ARROW OF GOD 
                       Malesela Edward Montle 

University of Limpopo  
Department of Languages (English Studies)  

         School of Languages and Communication Studies 
           Faculty of Humanities 

                                                           edward.montle@ul.ac.za 

 
ABSTRACT 

The African cultural identities have undergone earth-shattering shifts from the pre-
colonial epoch to the colonial and post-colonial periods. It is the colonial empire that 
advented in the African continent in the 15th century and attempted to erode and 
stigmatise African cultural practices as part of its mission to take control of Africa. 
Despite Africa being under a democratic administration today, African cultural 
identities are still marginalised, chiefly, by colonial remnants that have not yet been 
successfully uprooted. Thus, this paper aims to re-anatomise the African cultural 
identity-crisis in the present day from the onset of colonialism in the continent. It 
utilises a qualitative method to crystallise this African cultural watershed from a 
literary perspective. This noted, Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God is purposively 
sampled for this paper as a primary reference point by dint of its conformity to the 
main theme of the study. The paper, comprehensively, blames the enduring colonial 
fragments in the present day for the African cultural identity-crisis as they hinder 
decolonisation and peril African cultures. The colonial legacies in Africa today, like 
in the colonial times, are found to be championing Western identities at the expense 
of African cultural identities, hence, the latter is still menaced. 
Keywords: African identities, Colonialism, Culture, Western identities 

INTRODUCTION 

The pre-colonial antiquity of Africa depicts the continent as an institution of 
civilisation that richly embraced cultural belief systems. According to Montle (2021), 
these cultural norms served as guiding principles in all spheres of African 
endeavour.  They were, inter alia, utilised to assert gender roles, educate, 
communicate, convey meaning and maintain peace and discipline. Essentially, 
cultural conventions served as an educational device in the pre-colonial African 
context where the culturally-driven tuition was and is still dubbed oral literature. 
This encompasses an engagement with riddles, proverbs, folktales, songs, myths, 
idioms, legends and epic poems for a particular objective such as to have fun, guide 
and educate. Rodney (1972, 70) notes that “the colonisers did not introduce 
education into Africa; they introduced a new set of formal educational institutions 
which partly supplemented and partly replaced those which were there before.” It is 
the colonisers that arrived in the African continent and perceived Africans as being 
in possession of “no cultural traditions of their own, no religious, economic or 
political background worthy of serious attention” (Roscoe 1970, 1). As a result, the 

coloniser imposed Western cultures, religions and ideas upon the African natives 



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and this affected the aboriginal African cultural belief systems. The coloniser’s 
attempt to enforce Western identities upon Africans waged a clash of identities that 
resulted in a crisis that is still prevailing today. Several studies such as Montle 
(2021), Mogoboya & Montle (2020), Asma (2015) and Afisi (2008) have sought to 
explore the catalysts of African cultural identity-crisis in the modern day but have 
not anatomised the pretexts of this crisis from its foundational roots and the 
circuitous manner in which it has warmed its way into the post-independence 
dispensation. The study identifies this as the gap and employs Achebe’s Arrow of 
God to relay an image of the dawn of African cultural identity-crisis and its constant 
development. This noted, the study would endeavour to respond to the research 
questions that it is premised on such as what are the pretexts of African cultural 
watershed, why are colonial remnants are still enduring and how can African 
cultural identities be re-essentialised. 
 
THEORETICAL LENS OF THE STUDY 

The paper hinges on Post-colonial theory to dichotomise the pedigrees of African 
cultural watershed. Africa, like other continents around the globe, was colonised by 
European powers, hence, Post-colonial theory is germane to undergird this study as 
it ordinarily centres on previously colonised states. The antique scholars of post-
colonial theory such as Lye and Waldron (1998, 10) assert that “Post-colonial theory 
deals with the reading and writing of literature written in previously or currently 
colonised countries, or literature written in colonising countries, which deals with 
colonisation or colonised peoples.” This is also maintained by the contemporary 
sages of post-colonial studies like Ashcroft (2017, 1) who state that “Post-colonial 
theory deals with the effects of colonisation on cultures and societies and those 
societies' responses.” Furthermore, due to Post-colonial theory’s comprehensive 
approach to colonially rooted maladies, the researcher observed the essence of 
including the theory of Afrocentricity to enhance the study’s focus, which is post-
colonial Africa. According to Monteiro-Ferreira (2009), Afrocentricity is a theoretical 
approach that aims to hub the experiences of Africans in the continent and diaspora 
within their socio-historical and cultural perspectives. As the study’s focal point of 
inquest is the post-colonial context of Africa, Afrocentricity becomes a pertinent aid 
of the Post-colonial theory to underpin the study and crystallise the pedigrees of 
African cultural watershed in the post-colonial period through the lens of Chinua 
Achebe’s Arrow of God, in which, the writer “bears witness to the foundational and 

historical wound of post-colonial Nigeria and Africa” (Msiska 2018, 48).  The post-
colonial setting of most African societies exudes colonial maladies that are still 
virtually at their prime. Various scholars have explored these ills and their impact on 
socio-economic and development of Africa. For stance, Sall (2018) points out the 
appalling levels of racial tension and debasement of standards in some African 
societies as legacies of colonialism that are still rearing their ugly heads in the 
continent. Furthermore, other scholars of post-coloniality such as Dlova, Hamed, 
and Tsoka‐Gwegweni, J (2015) are concerned about the lethargic resuscitation of 
African identities, which are so outpaced Eurocentric identities in today’s Africa. 
These researchers conducted a study in which they explored the role of the colonial 
past in the preference of a skin stone. The scholars found that Africa has not yet been 
de-westernised or emancipated from colonial identities as many Africans still 
subscribe to the colonial notion that the black skin tone is ugly and the white one is 



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beautiful. Moreover, participants (black women) in Gwaravanda (2011, 1) confessed 
to resorting to the use of skin whitening products as a dark skin tone is 
“embarrassing and humiliating”. This vindicates the extent to which African 
identities are ostracised in the modern day. 
 

METHODS  

Research method and Design 

This paper sets out to rethink the pedigrees of the African cultural watershed in the 
post-colonial context through the prism of Achebe’s literary text, Arrow of God. By 

virtue of its literariness, the study utilises a qualitative research method, which is 
usually non-empirical and is employed to aid the researcher to comprehend the 
characteristics, attitudes and reactions of the phenomenon being studied (Babbie 
2014). Furthermore, as the study is literary in nature, it adopts textual analysis as its 
design, which is mainly employed “for the close readings of literary texts, these 
methods also rely on literary theory and background information to support the 
reading” (Mauer & Venecek 2021, 205).  
Data collection  

The study is purely text-based and collects its primary data from Achebe’s selected 
novel, Arrow of God. The data from the chosen literary text is supplemented by data 
collected from other secondary sources such as the internet, journal articles and 
academic books. 
Sampling 

The researcher uses a purposive sampling method to choose Achebe’s Arrow of God 

as a case in point for this study amongst other post-colonial African novels because 
of its outstanding depiction of the focal theme of the paper. According to Lucas 
(2014), a purposive sampling technique qualifies the researcher to choose a sample 
on the basis of its characteristics that are believed to be applicable to the study. Thus, 
the researcher selected Achebe’s Arrow of God due to its delineation of the colonial 
influence on African cultural identity-crisis. 
Data analysis 

The data collected for this study is analysed, presented and discussed through 
relevant themes that are aligned to the main objective of the study, which is to unveil 
the pretexts of African cultural identity-crisis in the post-colonial setting. To effect 
this, the researcher employs a qualitative thematic content analysis method, which is 
“the process of identifying patterns or themes within qualitative data” (Maguire & 

Delahun 2017, 3352). 
 
FINDING AND DISCUSSION 

 
This section of the paper presents and discusses the findings from Achebe’s Arrow of 
God, which is the primary reference point to fulfil the main objective of the study. 

The findings are presented and categorised according to these themes: The 
aboriginal African cultural identity, The genesis of African cultural watershed and 
The interface between African culture and Christianity. 
The aboriginal African cultural identity 
Achebe’s Arrow of God brilliantly provides an image of the aboriginal African 
cultural identity. This is the earliest African cultural identity that had no foreign 
contact. The novel sets in Nigeria and its opening scenes depict this aboriginal 
African cultural identity before the crisis emerged. This utterance: “then the new 



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moon sometimes hid itself for many days behind rain clouds so that when it finally 
came out it was already half-grown. And while it played its game the Chief Priest sat 
up every evening waiting,” (Achebe 1964, 1) exudes fanatical belief in cultural 
doctrines. The aforementioned point is confirmed by the mentioning of a Chief priest 
and reaction to the moon. In the African context, particularly the Nigerian kinfolk, 
chief priests serve as “mediators between the people and the deities and consciously 
offer reasonable guidance and assistance to the people in their dealings with the 
spiritual forces” (Oloidi 2020, 1).  The comportment of the moon, in the African 
culture, is also associated with various meanings depending on the tribe concerned. 
Vannier (2020, 70) notes that in the context of Umuaro in South Nigeria where 
Achebe’s Arrow of God sets in, “the moon informs the timing and regulation of 
numerous social activities and its regular presence and absence in the night sky is 
part of a matrix that connects people, communities, nature, the heavens, spirits, and 
God.” The cultural traits in the opening of the novel substantiate that Africa was 
opulently framed by cultural belief systems. This could be further braced by the 
chief priest, Ezeulu’s belief in ancestral worship, blood sacrifice and the construction 
of a shrine:  

“Ulu, I thank you for making me see another new moon. May I see it 
again and again. May this household be healthy and prosperous. As 
this is the moon of planting may the six villages plant with profit. May 
we escape danger in the farm—the bite of a snake or the sting of the 
scorpion, the mighty one of the scrubland. May we not cut our 
shinbone with the matchet or the hoe. May our wives bear male 
children. May we increase in numbers at the next counting of the 
villages so that we shall sacrifice a cow and not a chicken as we did 
after the last New Yam feast. May children put their fathers into the 
earth and not fathers their children. May good meet the face of every 
man and every woman. May good come to the land of the riverain folk 
and to the land of the forest peoples” (Achebe 1964, 3). 
 

The ancient African cultural kingdoms relied on appeasing their ancestors for 
success, protection, healing, wisdom and guidance. These ancestors were the only 
source of the African natives’ spiritual contentment and they would perform rituals 
and blood sacrifices to earn their favour. Thus, the predominant setting of the novel, 
the Umuaro area was very cultural and rituals were performed in this vicinity for 
various reasons. One of the captivating ritual nuances in the novel is the allusion to 
the symbol known as Ikenga: 
Figure 1: Ikenga 

 
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikenga 



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According to Klemm, Zucker and Sanyal (2022, i), “when an Igbo male comes of age, 
he may ritually be offered an ikenga, which becomes not only his proud possession to 

be preserved and honoured for the rest of his life, but is also an integral part of his 
identity as a unique individual.” This is substantiated by the narrator’s remark in the 
novel: “I may explain that ikenga is the most important fetish in the Ibo man’s 
arsenal, so to speak. It represents his ancestors to whom he must make a daily 
sacrifice. When he dies it is split in two; one half is buried with him and the other 
half is thrown away” (Achebe 1964, 15). 
The genesis of African cultural watershed 
Achebe’s Arrow of God, subsequent to delineating the aboriginal African cultural 
identity, set out to portray the genesis of African cultural identity-crisis and its 
development until the post-colonial day. The novel pinpoints the arrival of 
colonialists in the African continent as the inception of a cultural crisis. The 
colonialists, who hail from the European world, advented in Africa with their 
identities that clashed with those of Africans. It is these European forces’ 
intervention in African affairs that eroded the African understanding of life and 
engendered a cultural crisis (Montle, 2020). This is portrayed in Achebe’s Arrow of 
God where the arrival of colonialists in the ancient Nigeria brought about alterations 

to the cultural systems that Africans had embraced. This was driven by the 
Europeans’ stereotypical attitudes against African culture:  
 

“His (Winterbottom) bedclothes were sodden and his head formed a 
waterlogged basin on the pillow. After the first stretch of unrestful sleep 
he would lie awake, tossing about until he was caught in the distant 
throb of drums. He would wonder what unspeakable rites went on in the 
forests at night, or was it the heart-beat of the African darkness? Then 
one night he was terrified when it suddenly occurred to him that no 
matter where he lay awake at night in Nigeria the beating of the drums 
came with the same constancy and from the same elusive distance. 
Could it be that the throbbing came from his own heat-stricken brain?” 
(Achebe 1964, 13). 

The colonialists found the African cultural identity too diverse from theirs and 
perceived it as dark, savage, backward and unsophisticated and theirs as light, pure, 
innocent and refined. This colonial perception is still enduring today as modern-day 
researchers such as Kanuma (2011, i) comment that “there are reasons why Africa is 
such a backward place: why it is the beggar continent that perpetually lives off 
handouts called 'foreign aid' even as it sits on an abundance of natural resources; 
why most of its countries are lands of broken down infrastructure, stratospheric 
jobless rates, ramshackle government institutions, education systems.” Equally 
important, Achebe’s Arrow of God also points out that the colonialists depicted 
themselves as cultured and one of their mission included bringing the light to the 

African continent, which they deemed as dark:  
“Fifteen years ago Winterbottom might have been so depressed by the 
climate and the food as to have doubts about service in Nigeria. But he 
was now a hardened coaster, and although the climate still made him 
irritable and limp, he would not now exchange the hard life for the 
comfort of Europe. His strong belief in the value of the British mission in 
Africa was, strangely enough, strengthened during the Cameroon 
campaign of 1916 when he fought against the Germans. That was how he 



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had got the title of captain. Unlike many other colonial administrators 
who also saw active service in the Cameroon he carried his title into 
peacetime” (Achebe 1964, 13). 
 

The excerpt above substantiates the colonialists’ stereotypical perception of Africa 
being ‘backward’. These discriminatory words from the excerpt, “…depressed by the 
climate and the food as to have doubts about service in Nigeria…. he would not now 
exchange the hard life for the comfort of Europe,” denote that Africa is inferior to 
Europe.  Moreover, Plous and Willians (1995, 795) assert that “this view of blacks 
was so widely accepted that the entry for Negro in the ninth edition of the Atteridge 
(1884: 316) stated authoritatively that the African race occupied the lowest position of 
the evolutionary scale, thus affording the best material for the comparative study of 
the highest anthropoids and the human species.” This noted, it is the colonialists that 
engineered the inequality based on race. 
 
 
 
The interface between African culture and Christianity 

The colonialists, in an effort to Westernise and sophisticate the African continent as 
part of their mission, overran the continent with Christian missionaries. Geering 
(2002, 21) notes that the term, ‘Christianity’ “is derived from the Medieval 
Latin Christianitas. It was originally a synonym for Christendom, meaning the 
geographical domain where Christ ruled ...” Scholars and other political activists 
postulate that the missionaries played a major in the conquest of Africa. One of the 
late South African Archbishop, Desmond Tutu’s popular quotes orates, “When the 
missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let 
us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had 
the land” (Tutu, 1990). Religion became one of the artilleries that the colonialists 
utilised to astutely conquer the African land. These missionaries preached a gospel 
that depicted the African cultural practices as evil, thus, a clash between the two 
identities. Missionaries such as Mr Goodcountry in Achebe’s Arrow of God 

encouraged the African natives to turn against their cultural practices, which are 
deemed evil: 

Mr Goodcountry told the converts of Umuaro about the early 
Christians of the Niger Delta who fought the bad customs of their 
people, destroyed shrines and killed the sacred iguana. He told them of 
Joshua Hart, his kinsman who suffered martyrdom in Bonny. “If we are 
Christians, we must be ready to die for the faith,” he said. “You must be 
ready to kill the python as the people of the rivers killed the iguana. 
You address the python as Father. It is nothing but a snake, the snake 
that deceived our first mother, Eve. If you are afraid to kill it do not 
count yourself a Christian” (Achebe 1964, 20). 

 
According to Manala (2013), Christianity perceived African customs such as the 
above-mentioned ones as pagan and evil, and ultimately eroded them. This scholar 
and others point out the colonialists’ Christianity as an enduring pretext for African 
cultural watershed. As life progresses, many people, including Africans, buy into the 
notion that religion is a better guide in life and this poses a menace to the value of 



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African culture. Katongole (2001, 179) asserts that “according to 1990 estimates, 41 
percent of Africa's 550 million people were Christians ... The percentage is much 
higher in countries south of the Sahara: Over 60 percent of Ghana's 19 million people 
are Christian; 65 percent of Cameroonians are Christians.; 75 percent of Zambians 
are Christians, and 78 percent of Uganda's 20 million people are Christians.” African 
cultural subscribers such as the former South African president, Jacob Zuma find the 
expansion of Christianity in the present day as concerning. He is cited in Smith 
(2021) stating, “Christianity - introduced by European missionaries mainly in the 
nineteenth century - had destroyed the safety net for orphans, elderly people and the 
poor” and also said, “As Africans, long before the arrival of religion and [the] 
gospel, we had our own ways of doing things. Those were times that the religious 
people refer to as dark days but we know that during those times, there were no 
orphan[age]s or old-age homes. Christianity has brought along these things” (Smith 
2011). The scholars and activists above appear to share a common view regarding 
the erosion of African cultural systems where colonialism and its canons such as 
Christianity are blamed. 
 
As portrayed in Achebe’s Arrow of God, the colonialists persuaded many African 

natives into believing that the African culture is wicked. It is stated, “The first 
Umuaro man to kill and eat a python was Josiah Madu of Umuagu. But the story did 
not spread outside the little group of Christians, most of whom refused, however, to 
follow Josiah’s example. They were led by Moses Unachukwu, the first and the most 
famous convert in Umuaro” (Achebe 1964, 20). The missionaries’ success in having 
African natives such as Unachukwu convert to Christianity emanates from concrete 
allusions to some of the agonising cultural obligations such as blood sacrifices, ritual 
deaths and other decrees: 
 

“I see you are one of the progressive ones. When you’ve been here as 
long as Allen was and understood the native a little more you might 
modify some of your new theories. If you saw, as I did, a man buried 
alive up to his neck with a piece of roast yam on his head to attract 
vultures you might have second thoughts. We British are a curious 
people, doing everything half-heartedly. Look at the French. They are 
not ashamed to teach their culture to backward races under their 
charge. Their attitude to the native ruler is clear. They say to him: ‘This 
land has belonged to you because you have been strong enough to hold 
it. By the same token it now belongs to us. If you are not satisfied come 
out and fight us.’ What do we British do? We flounder from one 
expedient to its opposite. We do not only promise to secure old savage 
tyrants on their thrones—or more likely filthy animal skins—we not 
only do that, but we now go out of our way to invent chiefs where there 
were none before. They make me sick” (Achebe 1964, 15). 

 
Utterance such as the above quote had many African natives proselytised into 
Christianity and this worked in the favour of the colonialists. Mills (2011, 2) notes 
that “most missionaries for a long time pursued the idea of separation of converts 
from traditional society and encouraged their converts not to participate in many 
national customs and rites [and] this problem was exacerbated when the 
missionaries urged their converts to remain neutral in the wars, many others urged 



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their converts not participate in wars.” The aforementioned point explicates the 
manner in which the colonialists used religion to emerge victorious against the 
African natives. This is also demonstrated in Achebe’s Arrow of God where Africans 
were divided as some of them embraced the Christian missionaries whereas others 
denounced them. This worked to the benefit of the colonialists who joined forces 
with some African natives to take control of Africa: 

“Those guns have a long and interesting history. The people of Okperi 
and their neighbours, Umuaro, are great enemies. Or they were before I 
came into the story. A big savage war had broken out between them 
over a piece of land. This feud was made worse by the fact that Okperi 
welcomed missionaries and government while Umuaro, on the other 
hand, has remained backward. It was only in the last four or five years 
that any kind of impression has been made there. I think I can say with 
all modesty that the change came after I had gathered and publicly 
destroyed all firearms in the place except, of course, this collection here. 
You will be going there frequently on tour. If you hear anyone talking 
about Otiji-Egbe, you know they are talking about me. Otiji-Egbe 
means Breaker of Guns” (Achebe 1964, 15). 

The colonialists as mirrored in Achebe’s Arrow of God triumphed over African 

natives and imposed Western identities such as Christianity upon the Africans.  
Franz (1998, i) affirms that “colonialism disrupted not only the political organization 
and economic production of the many African political entities, it also brought forms 
of cultural alienation, invasion, and disorientation.” The colonialists’ victory over 
Africans resulted in the erosion of African cultural systems despite the dispensation 
of independence where the democratic leadership of the continent, which dethroned 
the colonial administration, at large set out to re-essentialise African cultural 
identities. Montle (2022) asserts that the contact between African and Western 
identities engendered a cultural upheaval that still vexes Africa in the present. In the 
post-colonial period, the Christian religion is persistently expanding and becoming 
more predominant that African cultural systems. Maxwell (1997, 141) substantiates 
the aforementioned point: 

The expansion of Christianity in twentieth-century Africa has been so 
dramatic that it has been called ‘the fourth great age of Christian 
expansion’. According to much-quoted, if somewhat unreliable, 
statistics, there were 10 million African Christians in 1900, 143 million 
in 1970, and there will be 393 million in the year 2000, which would 
mean that 1 in 5 of all Christians would be an African. 
 

Equally important, the aboriginal African cultural identities have been eroded by 
colonial fragments such as Christianity and the democratic African leadership is yet 
to satisfactorily rehabilitate them. This could be evidenced by a recent case of 
discrimination against African cultures in South Africa, which was reported on 
several media platforms. Sibanyoni (2021) on Sowetan live newspaper reported, “a 
casual trip to a Midrand mall on Wednesday turned into a nightmare when Ndebele 
activist and author Thando Mahlangu was allegedly hounded out of the shopping 
complex by a man who described himself as the mall owner. His sin, apparently, 
was that he went into the Boulders Mall wearing a Ndebele traditional attire.”  It 
was further reported that Mahlangu said, “You are telling me I'm not supposed to 
wear African [clothes] in Africa,” and the centre manager told him, “I'm saying this 



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is a public place... I'm not allowing that here, this is my mall... right of admission is 
reserved,” (Sibanyoni 2021). This incident was condemned by many South Africans 
who deemed it a legacy of colonialism. Kwena Moabelo in a CNN Newsletter by 
Princewill (2021) states, “The manager was wrong to deny an African entry to a mall 
in Africa while wearing African clothes. It speaks more to a colonised mind where 
an African cannot even take pride in their African cultural attire.” This occurrence 
affirms that African cultural systems are still affected by the colonial past and more 
still needs to be done to rehabilitate and reessentialise them. 
 
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION 

The problems relating to the quintessence of African cultures in the modern day are 
deeply rooted in colonialism as this paper has reasoned through Achebe’s Arrow of 
God.  The paper has aimed to uproot the pretexts of African cultural watershed and 
utilised Achebe’s Arrow of God to trace this problem from the genesis of the 
colonisation of Africa. The findings revealed that the colonialists have engendered 
this African cultural identity-crisis by imposing Western ethos such as the Christian 
religion, Eurocentric medicine, clothing and leadership upon African natives. This 
could imply that Africa needs to address and re-address that above mentioned 
Western identities, which are prevailing today in an effort to re-essentialise African 
cultural identities. The colonialists have laid a concrete foundation of Eurocentric 
identities in the African continent and these identities are mostly responsible for the 
corrosion of African cultures (Montle 2021). Therefore, this paper suggests that 
African cultures be restored, validated and acclimatised by, first, addressing the 
foundational Western identities and other colonial remnants in Africa. Future 
research could centre on mechanisms that could be employed to embrace African 
cultures and restore their pride. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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