Sasa and Zamani: The Backward Flow of Organizational Time

Western organizations assume time flows forward. The past is gone, the present is brief, the future is where we're headed. Strategy points forward. Planning projects forward. Progress moves forward.

But what if time flows the other way?

John Mbiti, the Kenyan philosopher and theologian, described a temporal framework common across many African cultures that inverts Western assumptions. Time doesn't flow from past through present toward future. It flows backward—from the present into an ever-deepening past.

The implications for how organizations might think about legacy, memory, and continuity are profound.

The Framework

Mbiti identified two primary temporal categories in traditional African thought:

Sasa is the "living" time—the present moment extending into the immediate past and the near future. It's the realm of direct experience: what you remember personally, what you're doing now, what you can reasonably anticipate. Sasa is vivid, concrete, inhabited.

Zamani is the "deep" time—the distant past where ancestors dwell, where myth and history merge, where events have lost their immediate relevance but gained eternal significance. Zamani isn't dead time; it's where the present eventually flows.

The critical difference from Western time: in this framework, events don't recede into an irrelevant past. They mature into Zamani—becoming more significant, not less. The ancestors aren't gone; they're ahead of us, in the time we're moving toward.

And the future? It barely exists. What hasn't happened yet has no reality. You can't plan for what isn't real. The future comes into being only as it becomes present, then flows backward into Sasa and eventually Zamani.

The Inversion

Western organizations operate on the opposite assumption:

• The future is where value lies
• Planning means projecting forward
• The past is sunk cost, lessons learned, history
• Progress means leaving the past behind

This forward orientation shapes everything: strategic planning, innovation culture, the premium on "new," the depreciation of experience, the restlessness that treats last quarter as ancient history.

Mbiti's framework suggests an alternative:

• The past is where value accumulates
• Wisdom means understanding what has matured into Zamani
• The present is a brief passage, not a destination
• Continuity means deepening connection to what came before

Neither is objectively correct. They're different temporal architectures, each making certain things visible and others invisible.

What We're Observing

When we look at organizations through the Sasa/Zamani lens, certain patterns become visible:

The amnesia problem. Organizations obsessed with forward motion often have no Zamani—no deep time, no living connection to their own history. Founders' intentions are forgotten. Origin stories are unknown. Institutional memory doesn't exist. Everything is Sasa: immediate, urgent, disconnected from depth.

The ancestor deficit. Who are the organizational ancestors—the people whose contributions still shape the present even though they're no longer there? In many organizations, no one knows. Departed employees are simply gone, their knowledge and relationships evaporated. There's no mechanism for them to enter Zamani, to become part of living tradition.

The legacy vacuum. If the future is where value lies, legacy is an afterthought—something to consider at retirement. But in Zamani-oriented thinking, legacy is primary. You're always moving toward it. The question isn't "what will I achieve?" but "what am I becoming part of?"

The depth hunger. We notice that people in organizations often hunger for connection to something larger and older than last quarter's results. They want their work to matter beyond the immediate. This is Zamani hunger—the desire for time that accumulates rather than disappears.

The Organizational Translation

What would it mean to take Zamani seriously in organizational life?

Living history. Not a museum or an archive, but active connection to organizational ancestors—their decisions, their reasoning, their presence in current practice. Some organizations do this well: they tell origin stories, they name things after founders, they maintain continuity with what came before. Most don't.

Backward planning. Instead of asking "where do we want to be in five years?", asking "what do we want to have become part of? What Zamani are we creating?" This isn't nostalgia; it's a different orientation toward significance.

Elder integration. In Zamani-oriented cultures, elders carry the connection to deep time. They're not obsolete; they're essential. Organizations that discard experienced people lose their Zamani-keepers—the ones who remember why things are the way they are.

Ritual maintenance. Rituals connect Sasa to Zamani. They're not empty tradition; they're temporal bridges. Organizations without rituals have no mechanism for time to deepen. Everything stays on the surface of Sasa.

The Tension

There's a real tension between Sasa/Zamani thinking and the forward orientation that dominates modern business:

Innovation vs. continuity. The innovation imperative assumes the new is better than the old. Zamani thinking asks: what's worth preserving? What should mature rather than be replaced?

Speed vs. depth. Fast-moving organizations stay in perpetual Sasa—everything immediate, nothing deepening. Zamani requires patience, the willingness to let time accumulate significance.

Growth vs. legacy. Growth orientation asks how to get bigger. Legacy orientation asks what you're becoming part of. These aren't the same question.

We're not suggesting organizations abandon forward planning. But we're observing that organizations with no Zamani—no depth, no ancestors, no living history—often feel hollow to the people inside them. The relentless forward motion creates its own kind of poverty.

What to Look For

In your own context, you might observe:

• Whether the organization has living connection to its own history, or whether everything older than a few years is forgotten
• Who the organizational ancestors are—and whether anyone knows their names
• Whether departed members enter a kind of Zamani (still influencing, still referenced) or simply vanish
• What rituals, if any, connect present activity to deeper time
• Whether people feel their work is becoming part of something that will outlast them
• Whether "legacy" is a live concept or an abstraction for retirement speeches

The question Sasa/Zamani raises isn't "where are we going?" It's "what are we becoming part of?"

That's a different temporal orientation—and one that most Western organizations have never considered.

Temporacy is investigating the hidden temporal structures that shape organizational life. Mbiti's Sasa/Zamani framework offers one lens for seeing what's usually invisible: the backward flow of time into deepening significance. We're exploring what this means for organizations trying to create lasting meaning.