Of losing at the conference table
Get moving. That's the message from Onitaset Kumat on how to revive Africa. 'We must communicate to cooperate to elevate and we should have started years ago.'
On 30 June 1960, the great martyr Patrice Lumumba spoke toward cooperating with the very same people who chopped off hands when rubber quotas were not met, who made Africans disrespect Africans in their basic grammar and who reduced his compatriots to sitting at their feet in trolleys.
He stood before an audience and reprimanded ‘tribal quarrels’ and uplifted the European view on things, all while declaring ‘victory’ for ‘the struggle’. A little more than five months later, he would be captured and killed. European business continued as usual. Some ‘victory’.
This story of the cooperating Negro replays in Nkrumah, Toussaint, Malcolm X, Vasco Homem and so on. All of our stories are instructive, but Toussaint's (leader of the Haitian revolution) shall instruct here. In ‘modern history’, the only ‘successful’ slave revolt was the Haitian revolution. When the Anglos were slaves, they waited for Christianity. When the Romans were slaves, Spartacus rose and fell. But when we were slaves, we fought the world over, and in Haiti, Toussaint won against England, Spain and Napoleon’s France.
Haiti was the richest colony in the Americas; Haiti is the poorest nation in the Americas. Toussaint cried ‘for the people’ while Dessalines (first leader of an independent Haiti) corrected him ‘for the wretched’. Toussaint was captured and killed. Shortly after, Dessalines was replaced. Despite the heroism in Haiti, it suffers and suffers greatly.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said ‘Those who do not stand for something, will fall for anything.’ He speaks toward us. Without a Pan-African philosophy, a cry ‘for the wretched’, we will lose and lose greatly.
It is a surprise that we are put in the position of always losing at negotiations, for no people on the planet are more innately intelligent than Africans. We try to avoid statements dealing with racial superiority, but it is better to express oneself truthfully than it is to lie for the sake of the same ‘political correctness’ that oppresses us.
The so-called ruling Europeans, the Masons, are an emulation of African intellect. Almost every civilisation on the planet descends from African genius. Our accomplishments are endless. Even in modern times, we have accomplished the distinction of ‘great debaters.’ Yet again, we always lose at negotiations.
We stopped educating ourselves. To re-use Lumumba, how can we expect a successful African uprising from one educated in the slave religion, culture and education system of Europe? Many rural Africans have retained our ancient cultures and religions, but many more Africans have not and - worse - oppose them. We mostly seem to struggle without self-knowledge. Who are we? Where are the governments in Africa that are financing this self-exploration? Why are theologians leading movements rather than lawyers, architects, and most importantly philosophers?
We need to break from this enslaving system. Our governments need to finance explorations into our self-identity. So many of us carry our ancient traditions, but so many more of us are carrying modern degeneracy. Africa, it is costing us. We need to get moving.
The Nile civilisations were the greatest in the world and only made possible through African genius. Without understanding this, we cannot unleash this. A step toward our revival is dialogue. We must communicate to cooperate to elevate and we should have started years ago.
BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.