CREDO MUTWA, great African father, seer, sage, sangoma, inyanga, healer, psychic and storyteller, condemns "the strange world of separatism" in which we live and begs for a return to the values held by traditional African people who did not regard themselves as being above the animals, trees, fishes and birds. In his fascinating new book 'Isilwana - the Animal', Credo Mutwa points out that Western man is taught that he is master of all living things. "One hears the strange belief that man is superior to all other living things on Earth, and that he was especially created to be overlord and custodian of all things, animate or inanimate," he says. Under western civilization, he says, we live in a world where "things that really belong together and which ought to be seen as part of a greater whole are cruelly separated," The result is a terrible confusion.. Says Mutwa: the most dangerous and destructive view by far - one that has changed human beings into rampaging, destructive and mindless beasts - is that we compare ourselves to other living things." He says: "Until these attitudes are combatted and erased from the human mind, Westernized human beings will be a danger to all earthly life, including themselves. Throughout the world this is what human beings have become: big-bellied, insatiable, unbelievably greedy cannibals We must stop - immediately - regarding ourselves as superior and special." The people of old Africa, says Mutwa, regarded the trees and the animals with reverence and respect. "But when white people came to Africa, they had been conditioned to separate themselves spiritually and physically from wildlife. In the vast herds of animals they saw four-footed enemies to be crushed and objects of fun to be destroyed for pleasure. They slaughtered wild animals by the million. "It never occurred to white pioneers that these animals were protected by the native tribes through whose land they migrated. It never occurred to them that black people worshipped these great herds and regarded them as an integral part of their existence on Earth." Mutwa appeals for the enlightenment of the "short-sighted, arrogant and mindless modern savages" of the world.