Mbiti’s sasa concept collapses recent past and near future into a lived present.

Evidence

Mbiti proposed two Swahili words – sasa and zamani – to explain the concept of time. Sasa gives the sense of immediacy, of nearness and of momentariness. Sasa is that period which immediately touches the person and indicates what is about to occur. It is closer to the immediate future which is present in many languages. The sasa dimension is also used to explain events which have already happened, since they are part of the present, or to indicate those about to occur. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 266

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the core Swahili term sasa that anchors Mbiti’s influential time theory.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing how sasa’s use for passed events gets reconciled with western past-present-future mapping later in the analysis.