The word 'tribe' is insulting. It is the European who refers to us as tribes. Such words should be banned. I would rather say I come from Kano State than say I am Fulani....

In tribal culture every person has their place and one who speaks more clearly with spirits than others is not a better person or is not in a higher position but simply performs one of many functions for the people. You and I have friends who do this daily and they make nothing of it. The woman who builds the fire is as important as the woman who guides the soul.

the words people do not speak are louder than the ones they do.

Tribalism has become trendy.

They were saying Shangaans must leave [Ekurhuleni]. The Vendas must leave. The next thing they will say the Batswanas must leave. The BaXhosa must leave. Who is going to remain? ... We must defeat the demon of tribalism.

Tribalism is now not just one force in American politics, it’s the overwhelming one, and tribalism abhors reality if it impugns the tribe. But you can’t have both tribalism and public health. When you turn wearing a simple face mask into a political and cultural symbol of leftism, when you view social distancing as a concession to your enemies, you deeply undermine the power of millions of small impediments to viral outbreak. What we are seeing is whether this tribalism can be sustained even when it costs tens of thousands of lives, even when it means exposing yourself to a deadly virus, even when it is literally more important than your own life. We are entering the Jonestown phase of the Trump cult this summer. It is not going to be pretty.

The way they talk in their little DEI Shaniqua voices, and it's just very piercing, very irritating sound. They all have, they all have the same voice. I'm talking about Kamala Harris, Letitia James, and Fani Willis. Like, all of the, like, meritless DEI Shaniquas talk the same way. It's very obnoxious the way that they talk. They're very boisterous in the way that they, you know, talk in a very racist manner about white people, about getting Donald Trump.

How fast and how loud foreigners talk ! It is a gift ; the British cannot talk so loud or so fast. They have too many centuries of fog in their throats.

Whenever you face something new, you revert to your own tribal ways. People ask me how I can live among cannibals, or tribes that practise female circumcision, and not tell them what's right or wrong. I know that's not the way to understanding. I try not to judge.

They always have big mouths. They always talk a lot. It's happened before, so it's gonna happen again. I don't really worry about that.

Who you are is speaking so loudly that I can't hear what you're saying

Have you noticed, now, the way people talk so loudly in snackbars and cinemas, how the shelved back gardens shudder with prodigies of talentlessness, drummers, penny-whistlers, vying transistors, the way you see and hear the curses and sign-language of high sexual drama at the bus-stops under ghosts of clouds, how life has come out of doors? And in the soaked pubs the old-timers wince and weather the canned rock. We talk louder to make ourselves heard. We will all be screamers soon.

They’re sure that there must be all sorts of things wrong with ever tribal way of life, and of course they’re correct—if you mean by “wrong” something you don’t like.

The tribalizing power of the new electronic media, the way in which they return to us to the unified fields of the old oral cultures, to tribal cohesion and pre-individualist patterns of thought, is little understood. Tribalism is the sense of the deep bond of family, the closed society as the norm of community.