Africa
PAINFUL NEWS: DR. MYLES MUNROE & WIFE DEAD IN PLANE CRASH.
Dr. Myles Munroe, internationally-known author, bible teacher, governmental consultant and leadership mentor, was one of nine passengers on a plane that crashed in Grand Bahama on Sunday afternoon, according to multiple news reports.
A Lear 36 executive jet left the Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA) for the Grand Bahama International Airport, the Department of Civil Aviation reports. The plane departed at 4:07 p.m. and carried nine people. The vessel crashed while making its landing approach, the Department of Civil Aviation said.
News reports indicate his wife, Ruth, and daughter were also killed in the crash.
Myles Munroe was travelling to host ‘Global Leadership Forum’ before the incident. His ministry has issued a statement on social media sites saying the meeting will hold. “…Friends, On behalf of Myles Munroe International and ITWLA. We would like to inform you that the Global Leadership Forum will continue. The Forum will be for two and a half days (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning). This is what Dr. Munroe would have wanted. Please keep his family and the ministry in prayers.” The statement read.
Myles Munroe’s teachings on leadership have impacted Africa and African leaders. Africa extends her condolences to the rest of the Myle’s family and his ministry.
EXPOSED: Obama in the eyes of a poet.
Credo Mutwa’s predictions has a history of accuracy. In this poem, he captures his prediction of America’s president.
He wrote a poem about him and he views him as “an actor upon the floodlit stage of life wearing a mask of an angel beneath a demon’s gown”.
Accordingly, he says Obama “pretends smiles upon the crowded hall of life holding much hope as much as bright as it is false. ”
In a nutshell, he says “Africa will gladly look to Obama, but the truth is that he is a son born to deceive:”
Text from the Poem.
“You are Barack, oh, son born to deceive
“The suffering hoards of Africa look up to you,
“See a black saviour where nought but a Judas strides.
“An entrapper of nations, bringer of dismal war Behind the robes and the nylon wings of hope
“Oh, may those who look upon you, see you as you are.
“May those who hope in you behold you as you be
“A prince deceitful to bring down Africa’s shrines
“A siren who leads Africa’s ships onto rocks of obliteration.
“Your rule my lord will not be one of peace
“Your reign my king will not be one of smiles
“Even as we speak in caves both dark and dank.
“Enraged fanatics plot your dark demise
“They will put around your head a bloodwet martyr’s crown.
“Oh black Kennedy following the one before
“May God forgive thee and thy fiery spouse
“As you walk in silence from the stage of life…”
The million dollar question is “What if Credo Mutwa is right? Who really is Obama? Questions and more questions!
ONE BIG QUESTION: WHO IS AN AFRICAN? WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BEFORE YOU SAY YOU’RE AFRICAN.
Sserubiri Africa Uhuru – A proper definition of any people must relate them to their ancestral land, their culture and their history. The central factor in the formation of identity is the interaction of people with their environment, especially an interaction with their land, which produces culture. At the very basis of culture are commonly held values that historically arose from the interaction between people and their ancestral land.
A people’s history is their story, the record of what they did and how they did what they did. The combination of all of these factors produces identity, which is the primary marker of origin, belonging and distinctiveness and the major factor in the proper orientation of a people in the world. An Afrikan is therefore a person who shares with others a common geographical origin and ownership of, and spiritual attachment to their ancestral land known as the continent of Afrika, certain physical characteristics, a common history, a common set of cultural values and consequently a common worldview, a common heritage and common economic, political and social interests. These core characteristics which amount to a specific identity set Afrikans apart from other peoples.
The search for an African identity began with Pan Africanism, a movement, which spread out to take different forms. The young generation, and perhaps the rural population of Africa might conceptually know little about the upsurge of the movements for promoting Pan Africanism, African personality, African Humanism, Ujamaa, Negritude, Consciencism, etc. Different disciplines, such as African Theology, African philosophy, African History, African literature, African art, to mention only a few of them, are a historical product of the search for an “African identity”, and are related to Pan Africanism. Communal and personal developments in Africa are threatened. Greed for wealth and misuse of power, individualism and so forth, could become the death-knell of our African values and identity.
The content call by African leaders that Africans ought to strive after creating a society that respects its cultural values has been heard many a time. To be able to do this, Africans must first discover themselves so as to be able to venture into the future as a respected people. Africans find themselves in turmoil, and a painful one for that matter. Africans are searching for a future, based on their traditions, but one which at the same time is open to changes and to a new worldview. The African of today is a modern person and feels the full impact, if not the blast, of modern civilization. Many Africans are torn- apart; in some sense, they are “falling apart.” The sense of being double, a split personality, of being half, is felt by many Africans who are influenced by such dualities as; two cultures, two value- systems and two worldviews, African and the Western.
The Pan- African Movement sought to find African roots and to restore African dignity and identity, which had protractedly been shattered during the slave trade and the colonial period. The different movements for promoting African socialism, African Humanism, Negritude, Black Consciousness, Ujamaa, etc. definitely have some of their roots in Pan Africanism. They form part of the inevitable search for an African identity and orientation, that earlier had been emphasized by different African leaders.
The drums and the death toll of African traditions, and African identity can be heard at a distance; hence one another have courageously declared “the death of African tradition.” Any meaningful talk about inculturation, Africanization or indigenization must, and should consider the African identity and worldview seriously, for though history has passed we can learn from it. African traditions convey certain values and some of these values could be useful for modern Africa.
The search for Africa’s contribution to world civilization has had a strong impact upon the academic and religious fields. The different disciplines which have cropped up, such as; African History, African literature, African Art, African philosophy and African Theology, to mention just a few, clearly underline the point. Such attempts need to be understood within historical contexts; the pre-independence period in Africa made it necessary to have hopes and aspirations which were in a sense expressed in the movements for promoting African Socialism, Negritude, etc.
At stake here is the survival of African values and identity. Some Africans are running away from themselves and their traditional past. This has been caused by the rapid intervention of some aspects of western culture i.e. cultural imperialism. Many Africans today believe that the Western value system and world- view are of universal validity, which, as such, must be applicable also to Africa. Many believe that Africans can catch up, and be like people of the “developed” countries. Such mental enslavement is the worst side effect of colonialism and of the uninculturated missionary activity.
A conscious corrective endeavor is required because; whilst it is necessary for us to tell Westerners to develop a less self- centered view of the world, which inevitably places them in an undue position of superiority, we Africans must struggle to come out of our negative ethnocentrism. During the period of the slave trade, colonialism and missionary activity, as well as in the earlier post- independence era, terms like; ‘savage’, ‘pagan’, ‘native’, ‘primitive’, ’tribe’, ’uncivilized’, ’underdeveloped’ were introduced and used in references above all, to Africa and Africans. Such terms, even if they might have had neutral connotation or meaning, are today regarded as being emotionally loaded and as implying a value judgment.
Today, the African continent finds itself in a challenging and critical situation. Pan Africanism, the OAU, African socialism, sensitivity to African personality, African Humanism, Ujamaa, Negritude, Consciencism, and such like, have lost something of their initial pertinence and thrust. Some Africans tend to identify themselves with their ethnic roots, others with their nations, a few with the African continent, others with their political parties, and others with ‘religious belongingness’. Many Africans get confused, when it comes to the question of loyalty; should one be loyal to the state, to the ethnic group, to African traditions, to the family, to a partial form of religion, to ‘modernism’ or to oneself?
Who is an African?
As the cradle of life and the starting journey of humanity everyone can claim to be African. Even the racist Apartheid architects called themselves and their language Afrikaan while they oppressed the black South Africans. The Arab countries of North Africa are full members of the various African continental and regional organizations, while they create exclusive, only Arab Organizations like the UMA (Union of the Maghreb Arab establishment in 1990). What about the Asians of East Africa? To what extent do the Europeans of southern Africa, the Arabs of North Africa and the Asians of East Africa feel African like the black Africans of the continent and in Diaspora do? The answer to this question differs according to which perspective one wants to underline. Some would claim that an African is a person born in or originating from Africa. Others would trace the Africa’s history to the distant past, including the era of slavery and colonialism. Others would see their Africannes in their ethnic and cultural roots; as Igbo, Akan, Ashanti, Galla, Gikuyu, Gandi, and so on.
People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations, and, at the broadest level, civilizations. … In coping with identity crisis, what counts for people are blood and belief, faith and family. People rally to those with similar ancestry, religion, language, values, and institutions and distance themselves from those with different ones.
As a first step out of that costly error, we must Afrocentrically limit the African identity to those from Africa who have, over the centuries, been singled out as targets for enslavement by the black color of our skins. Hence, whites, European as well as Arab–the very predators who decided to target blacks for racialised chattel enslavement– cannot be legitimately included with us, their prey, just because they‘ve forcibly made themselves our neighbors on the African landmass.
By the Africans, Pan Africanism can legitimately mean only the members of the indigenous populations of Africa who were, for the last 20 centuries, targeted for enslavement by Arabs and Europeans on account of their black skin color. That is the fundamental historical factor. Anybody who is not a biological descendant of these blacks cannot qualify as an African. Perhaps we could make our usage sufficiently distinctive by reserving the term Afrikaan for such indigenous populations and their descendants – until we adopt a name for ourselves from an Afrikan language. In which case, we are interested in Afrikans and after that in Afrika their homeland, and not first in Africa, the continent, and then in Africans those populations of any race whatever that are now located in the African continent, whether black or white, indigenous our exogenous, imperialist predators or their prey. Pan Africanism must therefore, with Black Consciousness rigor, limit its constituency to Afrikans, i.e. Black Africans and their global Diaspora and, provisionally, rename itself Pan Afrikanism. Black Consciousness historical considerations aside, it would be scientifically incorrect to define Afrikans without including the biological/racial factor of black color/phenotype.
Furthermore, just as it is the indigenous Chinese who define who are Chinese, and the indigenous Arabs who define who are Arabs, and the indigenous Europeans who define who are Europeans, so too do we indigenous Africans, a.k.a. Afrikans, have the right and duty to define who are Africans. And if it is in our interest to include a phenotype factor, black skin, in our definition, we must do so, regardless what anybody else thinks. In this regard, we need to note the Chinese example: To the Chinese government, people of Chinese descent, even if citizens of another country, are members of the Chinese community and hence in some measure subject to the authority of the Chinese government. Chinese identity comes to be defined in racial terms. Chinese are those of the same ―race, blood, and culture, as one PRC scholar put it. In the mid- 1990s, this theme was increasingly heard from governmental and private Chinese sources.
For Chinese and those of Chinese descent living in non-Chinese societies, the mirror test thus becomes the test of who they are: ―Go look in the mirror is the admonition of Beijing-oriented Chinese to those of Chinese descent trying to assimilate into foreign societies.
Yes indeed! Arabs and Europeans may be settled in Africa, but that doesn‘t make them Afrikans! Just because a snake has crawled into your bedroom and settled down to rear its young doesn‘t mean you should now count and embrace it as a member of your family. It would be extremely irrational and Afrocidal for Afrikans to accept a non-racial, continentalist concept of their identity.
Sserubiri Africa Uhuru is a columnist with Africa Thisday. He writes from Uganda. All correspondence to: sserubiri@africathisday.com
HOW AFRICA WILL OVERTAKE AMERICA.
Video Posted on
This video has been making rounds on the internet with several Americans hitting it hard on the preacher. What do you think? Can Africa ever overtake America in Technological advancement and development? Your comments.
SOUTH AFRICA: PRESIDENT JACOB ZUMA STARTS SECOND TERM.
PRETORIA — South African President Jacob Zuma was sworn in for a second five-year term Saturday at a pomp-filled event attended by thousands from across the country, with dozens of foreign dignitaries from around the African continent also on hand.
But on the streets, South Africans expressed mixed opinions about five more years in office for a leader who has been embroiled in corruption scandals since first taking office.
Zuma took his second oath of office during a spectacular and colorful ceremony at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, as dozens of sitting heads of state, over 100 ambassadors and thousands of South Africans observed.
A supporter of the ruling African National Congress party checks her accreditation for the inauguration in Pretoria, South Africa, May 24, 2014.A supporter of the ruling African National Congress party checks her accreditation for the inauguration in Pretoria, South Africa, May 24, 2014.
The president began his second term after his ruling African National Congress party’s decisive 62 percent win in national elections May 7.
The official ceremony began with Zuma taking the oath of office in front of the country’s chief justice, Mogoeng Mogoeng. He vowed to “be faithful to the republic of South Africa, so help me God.”
The military paid tribute with a 21-gun salute and a series of aircraft flyovers, demonstrating its readiness to protect the president and the nation at large.
In his inauguration speech, Zuma said his second term would “involve the implementation of radical social-economic transformation.”
SOURCE: VOA
MUST REAAD: THE AFRICAN RENAISSANCE AND RECLAIMING THE 21st CENTURY
Sserubiri Afrika Uhuru
(sserubiri@africathisday.com)
(Author, Poet, Africa Thisday’s Columnist from Uganda, Theorist, Political, Social, and Economic Commentator)
The Fate of the World
We are living through historic times. While the future may look bleak and uncertain, we are in our own particular way blessed to live through an era in which the very word ‘revolution’ is no longer just the abstract obsession of some fringe romantics inside the Old Left. We are living through a time in which the word capitalism no longer invokes hard work and ample reward, but the lack of work and opportunity for a growing number of people around the world. This is a time in which the very existence of revolutionary theory and practice is no longer considered just an academic or activist privilege, but a pressing global necessity and increasingly a factual reality on the ground.
We are living through a time in which the illusory sense of growth and progress that underpinned the cultural hegemony of neoliberalism and its belief that representative democracy and the self-regulating market will bring freedom and prosperity to all is dying a slow and painful death. The deceptive ideological mirror of the End of History has been shattered, and in come tumbling a whole new range of alternative futures. With the uprisings that started in the Arab world, history appears to have started anew. After a brief interlude that began with the end of the Cold War, the ongoing global financial crisis has radically shaken the foundations of the neoliberal world order. The endless struggle has recommenced, and in the process, the horizon of the possible is rapidly shifting. And the most incredible thing is that we’re watching all of it happen right in front of our very eyes.
The world has become a dangerous place and the future of humanity is threatened by the emerging world powers threatening to destroy the civilization they themselves built. We are standing at a moment in history where we are forced to agree with the Social Darwinism ideology. In all this confusion when man is threatening to destroy fellow man using the nuclear weapons which he developed through his technological advancement, Africa stands a powerless continent. The African people of the world have, therefore, come at last to destiny’s crossroads. They must make some fundamental decisions as a single people.
The African Renaissance and Regeneration
African Renaissance is a vision and mission for change and development that is premised on the understanding that the future of Africa and Africans in Africa and the Diaspora lies in fundamental process of renewal, re-invention and rebirth. These required changes need to occur in people’s mindset and world outlook, which in turn require changes in material conditions as well as in the institutions and processes of intellectual, political, economic and cultural governance. African transformation also requires a quest for fundamental changes in the historically constituted global order.
Africa and its people have been subjected to a process of disorganization, fragmentation and disintegration of their historical-cultural and civilizational achievements for the last three thousand years. These achievements, in many cases have been appropriated by other peoples and turned around their heads against the African people. In the process, the African civilization has been raped, plundered, despoiled and dehistorized.
If the expression “African Renaissance” has to mean anything all to the African masses, it has, as pointed out above, be able to mobilize African people psychologically, spiritually, and politically in order for the African continent to engage in a process of “recovery”, “re-awakening” and/or “rebirth”, that can break us out of the Eurocentric intellectual jails in which Africans find themselves caught and imprisoned.
The process of re-awakening and recovery has to be one of a historical deconstruction, “consciousness raising” and restatement not in the way the post-modernists and post-structuralist have argued, but by Africans tracing the origins and achievements of their civilizations with a view to developing new epistemologies of knowledge production based on African lived experiences in their global implications. The process must delve into the implications of this centuries old burden of domination that continues to bedevil the African personality and then on the basis of self-understanding, to organize ourselves to move forward in history. This must result from the knowledge we shall have formulated, which is based on our historical and cultural experiences throughout our history.
The African Renaissance must be suited in the cultural component, which challenges the right of Europeans to impose their cultural spiritual values on African communities. This cultural project is traced from the early 15th century when Europe sought to make Christianity a universal religion and in order to contain Islam, African religions and the Asian belief system. There is need for African people to redefine a new political and ideological agenda of Pan-Africanism in the age of globalization. The key pillars of the African renaissance are socio-cultural, political, economic regeneration and improvement of Africa’s political standing in world affairs.
The rebellion of the African masses both on the continent and in the Diaspora against enslavement and against European colonialism were in fact the reflection of the struggle for an African recovery and regeneration. This is why throughout this period; attempts were made by African intellectuals to assert African identity and achievements. These were part of the process of the struggle for an African “renaissance”. The struggle took on a Universalist approach with the aim of rehabilitating the image of the black man wherever he was an expression of black personality. Thus the essence of the call for an African renaissance is a call for a continued African resistance to western domination and exploitation of Africans, the process of Africa restating its original message and its own way that was at the same time universal.
The noun “renaissance” means “rebirth and/or renewal”, which meant the awakening of Europe from its dark, trance-like period” of the Middle Ages. It was called “rebirth” because Europe in the fifteenth century, after a long period of interruption, believed it could resume the civilization of the Greco-Romans and hence the concept “middle” signified a separation between the new Europe and its Dark period. It was a renaissance in which the “fascination with Egypt” was central to the new imagination” of European renewal. Those who glorify the European renaissance less emphasize this point about the African achievement as a spur to their “birth of civilization”.Although scholars run to the Greco-Roman heritage as Europe’s heritage, few realize its sources, which the African message carried to them through its hieroglyphic writing and artwork as well as its pyramids. Michael Rice argues; “without an awareness of Egyptian architecture and many of its decorative elements, the European Renaissance is hardly thinkable”.
Inspiration from the European Renaissance?
The fifty year period from 1482 to 1536A.D has special significance for world history. During this period the European’s world was able to synthesize various economic, political and cultural forces and lay the foundation for a global system of power, centered around materialism, capitalism and imperialism at the heart of the Western hemisphere and the enslavement of Africans. As a result, two worlds collided and left us with a legacy of genocidal institutionalized white supremacy. African and Native American humanism lost out to the system of European materialism. The seeds of the European-American system of materialism were planted during this definitive period of history from 1482-1536A.D and were nurtured by the exploitation of new lands, labour and resources. The period between 1400 and 1600 was a period in human history when Europeans freed themselves from the lethargy of the Middle Ages, the aftermath of the Crusades and the famines and plagues that had taken one-third of the population of Europe. The renewal of European nationalism and the introduction of slave trade gave Europe a new economic tease on life.
By the end of the fourteenth century, Southern Europe had gained enough strength- militarily and otherwise to challenge their African and Arab masters. By the end of the fifteenth century the Africans (also called Moors, who were black people) had lost all Spain except the kingdom of Grenada. The Europeans although they also had their internal disputes were finally united. The marriage of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella joined the formerly hostile royal houses of Aragon and Castile and together their forces blockaded the city of Grenada and after eight months of fighting the Moorish governor finally surrendered. In 1492, the Jewish community of Spain was expelled or forced to convert. Millions of Africans suffered the same fate. The fall of Granada in 1492, ending eight centuries of Moorish sovereignty, allowed the Spanish inquisition to extend its barbaric sway. The conquerors destroyed priceless books and manuscripts with their rich record of classical learning, and demolished the civilization that had flourished under the far more tolerant and cultured African rule. The stage was set for the decline of Spain, and also for the racism and savagery of the world conquest.
In the same year Christopher Columbus representing the Spanish monarchy claimed to have discovered the New World, he set in train the long and bitter international rivalry over colonial possessions for which, after five centuries, no solution has yet been found. The discovery of America and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind. The discovery of America certainly made a most essential contribution to the state of Europe, opening up a new and inexhaustible market that led to the vast expansion of productive powers and real revenue and wealth. The conquest of the New World set off two vast demographic catastrophes unparalleled in history; the virtual destruction of the indigenous population of the Western hemisphere and the devastation of Africa as the slave trade rapidly expanded to serve the needs of the conquerors, and the continent itself was subjugated.
In order for the Europeans to justify their barbaric actions upon the non-European peoples of the world, they devised a rationale to conquer the mind of their victims through a series of racist myths. Every effort was made to wipe from the memory of the victims how they ruled a state and how they related to their spirituality before the coming of the Europeans. Most of the people of the world were forced to forget that over half of human history was over before anyone knew that a European was in the world. Non-Europeans, especially in Nile Valley civilizations, had laid the basis for the spirituality that would later be converted into the major religions of the world. They had also developed the thought pattern that would later be developed into the philosophical thought of the world. All of this had happened outside of Europe before Europeans had names, durable shoes or houses with windows.
For the Western world the values and norms, which inform their daily lives, is said to be rooted in the Greco-Judea-Christian civilizations and heritage. This self-identity has its roots in the denial of their heritage to African origins of civilization. Therefore in order to falsely assert that their civilization has its origins in Greece, it became necessary to form negative views of the African continent and its peoples in order to assert their own originality and superiority over them. Martin Bernal in his book Black Athena tells of a story of how the men of the European Enlightenment tried to undermine what the European Renaissance had tried to unearth; the superiority of African religion and philosophy over those of Europe. This struggle which led to the burning of Giordano Bruno at the stake in 1601 for asserting the primacy of African ‘natural’ religion was followed by the denunciation of Egypt by Newton who had at first accepted the superiority of Egypt over Europe.
The Western dogma which contends that Greeks gave the world rationalism effectively marginalizes those who are not European. The dogma that the Greeks gave the world rational thought is historically inaccurate and the construction of the Western notions of knowledge based on the Greek model is a relatively recent construction beginning with the European Renaissance when Cosimo de Medici of Florence asked Marsillio Ficcino to translate the Corpus Hermeticum and Plato’s Republic in that order.
The European Renaissance was not simply the freedom of Spirit and body for European men but a new freedom to destroy freedom for the rest of humanity. It was the freedom for the mercantile bourgeoisie to loot, plunder and steal from the rest of the world. In the process, the African people were “down-graded” as well not human beings, but chattels valued as so much horsepower. Thus post-renaissance Europe saw the African as a chattel for sale in an age they called “Age of Enlightenment”. The development of European philosophy centered on the hiding and obscuring of European criminality against humanity and cannot be referred to as a humanist achievement in the annals of human history.
How can Africa be inspired by a renaissance that was partly inspired by ancient Africa and turned into a robbers’ paradise? How can we, in the contest of the same paradigm call it a “renewal” and a “reawakening” unless we do not know what this historical injustice has done to us?
Unlike the European Renaissance that drew on borrowed Greco-Roman classicism that itself had drawn from an African heritage in order to get out of their darkness, Africa must foremost recover the memory of its own heritage and message. It is this “African Regeneration” that we must follow.
A regeneration of Africa lies in the tracement of human knowledge as built up by Africans from the Cradle of Humankind, interrogating the way it was interpreted in other societies and expunging it of Eurocentric prejudices and racist notions so that we can have true and usable knowledge that can emancipate Africa from the clutches of European encirclement and enslavement.
The Need for a New Global Order
The main thrust of civilization, like religion itself, was toward a more humane society, piloted and guided by the upward march of the human spirit as man slowly advanced from beast hood to a higher and higher level of mankind. Blessed with a mind that enabled him to think, analyze, discover and invent, he could now evolve education and promote the development of science and technology to further the advance of the whole human species. The medium of exchange, which in relatively recent times became money, was expanded to facilitate the spread of necessities of life for the common welfare. But somewhere back through the years the whole upward trend was reversed as aggression inspired by greed led to the easy acquisition of both wealth and political power by the daring few at the expense of the many.
Mass poverty, and the ignorance and disease which are its inseparable companions, spread as the wealth belonging to all the people came to be owned or controlled by the few in every country, no matter what system or ideology it claimed. This is not the direction civilization is supposed to take. We have what should be its reflection: advances in science, technology, great skyscraper cities, and skies filled with aircraft, moon flights improvements in everything but man himself, his murderous, greedy soul being still ages back there in the caves of his ancestors.
Africans and other non-European people must plan and strategize for a New World Order distinctly their own that will be developed by them for them. Our mission should be not to conquer Europe, but to contain Europe within its borders and let it be known that anything Europe wants from other parts of the world can be had through honorable trade. If we understand our mission, I think we will become aware of the fact that we are in a position to give the world a new humanity that will bring into being a new world of safety and respect for all people.
We have a special responsibility to ourselves to build a kind of humanity and partnership with all African people of the world that could serve as a role model for all of the people in the world. Once you put African people, their energy and their imagination together, and once they begin to feed into each other and support each other there is no need for them to conquer anybody, or threaten anybody, and they, above all other people can offer the world a whole new humanity and a new way of life. African people will improve not only the economy of the world, but the spirit of the world and the humanity of the world and the dignity of the world. But they will have to get some illusions out of their mind first. They have to develop an entirely different concept of education.
For the Africans, who are most victimized everywhere; their own situation can be radically changed in a program that regards money only as the means by which they can do the things that must be done through cooperation. The concept here is Cooperation as the humane law of life, total and actual unity, brotherhood and sisterhood throughout the organization, and not just economic cooperatives, such as stores, markets, housing, farms, etc., important as these will be. And we say this united movement toward a more humane economic system in the midst of a dog-eat-dog, money-mad, competitive society will be a movement in the direction of real civilization. The challenging question is whether Africans of the 21th century can recover enough of the vision, strength and will of their forefathers who built the great pyramids to undertake the tasks of this present.
The Renaissance of the African continent is the need to empower African peoples to deliver themselves from the legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism and to situate themselves on the global stage as equal and respected contributors to as well as beneficiaries of all the achievements of human civilizations. Just as the continent was once a cradle of humanity and an important contributor to civilization, this renaissance should empower it to help the world rediscover the oneness of the human race.
Sserubiri Afrika Uhuru is Africa Thisday’s columnist from Uganda. Forward your reviews of this article to sserubiri@africathisday.com.
LETS FACE IT AFRICA: LESSONS FROM HIMBA.
Today on Lets face it Africa, I want to tell you an ancient African story. Stop whatever you are doing and read this amazing true life African Story:
There is a tribe in Africa called the Himba tribe, where the birth date of a child is counted not from when they were born, nor from when they are conceived but from the day that the child was a thought in its mother’s mind. And when a woman decides that she will have a child, she goes off and sits under a tree, by herself, and she listens until she can hear the song of the child that wants to come. And after she’s heard the song of this child, she comes back to the man who will be the child’s father, and teaches it to him. And then, when they make love to physically conceive the child, some of that time they sing the song of the child, as a way to invite it.
And then, when the mother is pregnant, the mother teaches that child’s song to the midwives and the old women of the village, so that when the child is born, the old women and the people around her sing the child’s song to welcome it. And then, as the child grows up, the other villagers are taught the child’s song. If the child falls, or hurts its knee, someone picks it up and sings its song to it. Or perhaps the child does something wonderful, or goes through the rites of puberty, then as a way of honoring this person, the people of the village sing his or her song.
In the African tribe there is one other occasion upon which the villagers sing to the child. If at any time during his or her life, the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, the individual is called to the center of the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them.
The tribe recognizes that the correction for anti-social behavior is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity. When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt another.
And it goes this way through their life. In marriage, the songs are sung, together. And finally, when this child is lying in bed, ready to die, all the villagers know his or her song, and they sing—for the last time—the song to that person.
You may not have grown up in an African tribe that sings your song to you at crucial life transitions, but life is always reminding you when you are in tune with yourself and when you are not. When you feel good, what you are doing matches your song, and when you feel awful, it doesn’t. In the end, we shall all recognize our song and sing it well. You may feel a little warbly at the moment, but so have all the great singers. Just keep singing and you’ll find your way home.
“Been African means been Humane. Africa is the mother of humanity. It is ‘Unafrican’ to shed innocent blood.” ~First son of Africa, your humble host of Lets Face it Africa.
RACISM, PAN-AFRICANISM AND MODERN IMPERIALISM.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o has argued that the ideology of racism has become a weapon for mental and spiritual domination and subjugation of peoples, which comes wrapped up in many forms and disguises that include religion, the arts, the media, culture, values, beliefs and even feelings. He adds that racism is one of the most devastating of all ideological weapons wielded by imperialism today because it is meant to safeguard the entire system of exploitation of the many by the few within and among nations. He cites five interlinked features as being responsible for this state of affairs in which racism becomes the centre-stage.
First, racism obscures the exploitative relations of the system between the wealthy few and the majority of the poor. It also obscures the reasons behind the vast gaps of wealth that exist between the rich capitalist nations, and poor nations of Africa, Asia and South America. It creates a situation where the exploited majority who produce the wealth enjoyed by the few become subservient and ever grateful to the rich for the ‘assistance’ given to them. It also obscures the origin of this wealth, which was produced by slave trade, slave labour, and colonialism by creating a belief that Europe developed because it is exceptional and superior.
Pan-Africanism was conceived and developed as anti-imperialist ideology of the African people. It came into being when the African people in the Diaspora became conscious of themselves as Africans poised against a racist society, which had enslaved them. It was a response to the oppressive European race consciousness, which was conceived for the purposes of enslavement and exploitation. The resistance to imperialism and racism was born within the struggle to develop a Pan-African Ideology. The persistence of imperialism and its servant racism are therefore factors which need to be explored and examined in order to spell out new directions in the struggle against it in new conditions.
The concept race and its expression in the social sciences has followed the path of capitalist transformations. Over time, racism has been built into the body politic of modern imperialism. A successful struggle against the enemy must depend on how successful the Pan-African intellectuals are able to sharpen their tools of analysis to combat racist ideology in whatever forms it may appear.
Sserubiri Uhuru is Africa Thisday’s columnist from Kampala, Uhuru. Send your questions to: sserubiri@africathisday.com
SHOCKING HISTORY: UNILEVER EXPOSED.
If you have used brands like Pepsodent, Close Up, Vim, Omo detergent, Knorr, Glen Tea, Lipton, pond’s, Dove, Handy Andy, Shield deodorants, Lux soaps, Joko Tea, Vaseline, Sunlight and Robertsons then you must have patronized Africa’s secret economic colonial conspirators.
All through the 19th century, palm oil was highly sought-after by the British, for use as an industrial lubricant for machinery. Remember that Britain was the world’s first industrialised nation, so they needed resources such as palm oil to maintain that.
Palm oil of course, is a tropical plant, which is native to the Niger Delta. Malaysia’s dominance came a century later.
By 1870, palm oil had replaced slaves as the main export of the Niger Delta, the area which was once known as the Slave Coast. At first, most of the trade in the oil palm was uncoordinated, with natives selling to those who gave them the best deals. Native chiefs such as former slave, Jaja of Opobo became immensely wealthy because of oil palm. With wealth comes influence.
However, among the Europeans, there was competition for who would get preferential access to the lucrative oil palm trade. In 1879, George Goldie (1846 – 1925, pictured above) formed the United African Company, which was modeled on the former East India Company. Goldie effectively took control of the Lower Niger River. By 1884, his company had 30 trading posts along the Lower Niger. This monopoly gave the British a strong hand against the French and Germans in the 1884 Berlin Conference. The British got the area that the UAC operated in, included in their sphere of influence after the Berlin Conference.
When the Brits got the terms they wanted from other Europeans, they began to deal with the African chiefs. Within two years of 1886, Goldie had signed treaties with tribal chiefs along the Benue and Niger Rivers whilst also penetrating inland. This move inland was against the spirit of verbal agreements that had been made to restrict the organization’s activities to coastal regions.
By 1886, the company name changed to “The National Africa Company” and was granted a royal charter (incorporated). The charter authorized the company to administer the Niger Delta and all lands around the banks of the Benue and Niger Rivers. Soon after, the company was again renamed. The new name was “Royal Niger Company”, then Lever Brothers which later survives, as Unilever, till this day.
Unilever has committed several corporate crimes against Africa since the inception of its operations in Africa which includes their collaboration with oppressive regimes, promoting consumerism and environmental pollution among several others. Unilever has the least community-development agenda for its host nations.
BLACK SKIN, WHITE MIND: HOW IT STARTED with our Columnist Sserubiri.
No systematic effort toward change has been possible, for, taught the same economics, history, philosophy, literature and religion which have established the present code of morals, the African’s mind has been brought under control of his oppressor. The problem of holding the African down, therefore, is easily solved. When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his “proper place” and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. His education makes it necessary.
The same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worthwhile, depresses and crushes at the same time the spark of genius in the African by making him feel that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of other peoples. The African thus educated is a hopeless liability of the race. The difficulty is that the “educated African” is compelled to live and move among his own people whom he has taught to despise.
The “educated Africans” have the attitude of contempt toward their own people because in their own schools Africans are taught to admire the Romans, Greek and the European and to despise the African. The thought of the inferiority of the African is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies.
To handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. It kills one’s aspirations and dooms him to vagabondage and crime. It is strange, then, that the friends of truth and the promoters of freedom have not risen up against the present propaganda in the schools and crushed it. This crusade is much more important than the anti-lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom. Why not exploit, enslave, or exterminate a class that everybody is taught to regard as inferior.
Our most widely known scholars have been trained in Universities outside Africa. Most of what these Universities have offered as language, mathematics and science may have served a good purpose, but much of what they have taught as economics, history, literature, religion and philosophy is propaganda and that involved a waste of time and misdirected the Africans thus trained. When the African has finished his education in our schools, then he has been equipped to begin the life of a Europeanized man, but before he steps from the threshold of his alma mater he is told by his teachers that he must go back to his own people from whom he has been estranged by a vision of ideals which in his disillusionment he will realize that he cannot attain. The people whom he has been ordered to serve have been belittled by his teachers to the extent that he can hardly find delight in undertaking what his education has led him to think is impossible. Considering his race as blank in achievement, then, he sets out to stimulate their imitation of others. The performance is kept up a while; but like any other effort at meaningless imitation, it results in failure. Facing this undesirable result, the highly educated African often grows sour. He becomes too pessimistic to be a constructive force and usually develops into a chronic fault-finder.
In this effort to imitate, however, these “educated people” are sincere. They hope to make the African conform quickly to the standard of the whites and thus remove the pretext for the barriers between the races. They do not realize, however, that even if the Africans do successfully imitate the whites, nothing new has thereby been accomplished. You simply have a large number of persons doing what others have been doing. The unusual gifts of the race have not thereby been developed, and an unwilling world, therefore, continues to wonder what the African is good for.
These “educated” people, however, decry any such thing as African consciousness; and in some respects they are right. They do not like to hear such expressions as “African literature”, “African poetry”, “African art”, “African philosophy”, or “thinking African”. These things did not figure in the courses which they pursued in school, and why should they?
The “highly educated” contend, moreover, that when the African emphasizes these things he invites racial discrimination by recognizing such differentness of the races. These “highly educated” Africans, however fail to see that it is not the African who takes this position. The European man forces him to it. The differentness of races, moreover, is no evidence of superiority or inferiority. This merely indicates that each race has certain gifts which the others do not possess. It is by development of these gifts that every race must justify its right to exist.
The conditions of today have been determined by what has taken place in the past, and a careful study of this history we may see more clearly the great theater of events in which the African has played apart. We may understand better what his role has been and how well he has functioned in it.
From the teaching of science the African was eliminated. The beginnings of science in various parts of the orient were mentioned, but the Africans’ early advancement in this field was omitted. Students were not told that ancient Africans of the interior knew sufficient science to carry out surgery, concoct poisons for arrowheads, to mix durable colors for paintings, to extract metals from nature and refine them for development in the industrial arts, to build pyramids which are standing up to date. Very little was said about the chemistry in the method of Egyptian embalming.
In the study of language in school pupils were made to scoff at the African dialect as some peculiar possession of the African which they should despise rather than directed to study the background of the language as a broken-down African tongue-in short to understand their own linguistic history, which is certainly more important for them than the study of French Phonetics or Historical English Grammar. To the African language as such no attention was given except in case of the preparation of traders, missionaries and public functionaries to exploit the natives.
From literature the African was excluded altogether. He was not supposed to have expressed any thought worth knowing. The philosophy in the African proverbs and in the rich folklore of that continent was ignored to give preference to that developed on the distant shores of the Mediterranean. Most missionary teachers, like most men of our time had never read the interesting books of travel in Africa, and had never heard of the “Tarikh Es-Soudan.”
In the teaching of fine arts these instructors usually started with Greece by showing how that art was influenced from without, but they omitted the African influence which scientists now regarded as significant and dominant in early Hellas. They failed to teach the student the Mediterranean Melting Pot with the Africans bringing their wares, their ideas and their blood therein to influence the history of Greece, Carthage, and Rome. Making desire farther to the thought, our teachers either ignored these influences or endeavored to belittle them by working out theories to the contrary.
In history, of course, the African had no place in this curriculum. He was pictured as a human being of the lower order, unable to subject passion to reason, and therefore useful only when made the hewer of wood and the drawer of water for others. No thought was given to the history of Africa except so far as it had been a field of exploitation for the Caucasian. You might study history as it is offered in our system from elementary school throughout the university, and you would never hear Africa mentioned except in the negative.
Unlike other people then, the Africa, according to this point of view was an exception to the natural plan of things, and he had no such mission as that of an outstanding contribution to culture. The status of the African, then, was justly fixed as that of an inferior. Teachers of Africans during colonialism and after in their schools did not proclaim any such doctrine but the content of their curricula justified these inferences.
With “mis-educated Africans’” in control themselves; however, the system remained the same. The African placed in charge after independence was a product of the same system and showed no more conception of the task at hand than to do the whites who have educated them and shaped their minds as they would have them function. Taught from books of the same bias, trained by Caucasians of the same prejudices or by Africans of enslaved minds, one generation of African teachers after another have served for no higher purpose than to do what they are told to do. In other words, an African teacher instructing African children is in many respects a white teacher thus engaged, for the program in each case is about the same.
The African’s mind has been trained to think what is desired of him. The “highly educated” Africans do not like to hear anything uttered against this procedure because they make their living in this way, and they feel that they must defend the system. Few mis-educated Africans ever act otherwise; and, if they so express themselves, they are easily crushed by the large majority to the contrary.
The education of any people should begin with the people themselves, but African thus trained have been dreaming about the ancients of Europe and about those who have tried to imitate them.
SSERUBIRI AFRIKA UHURU is a columnist with Africa Thisday. He writes from KAMPALA, UGANDA. He is an author, Poet and a theorist. Every question with regards to this article should be sent to: sserubiri@africathisday.com
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