Dr. Motsoko Pheko
The meaning of the term African Renaissance now running parallel with Pan
Africanism in the corridors of the African Union must be clarified. It is
confusing to people who are rooted in the history of Africa that was before
Africas tragedy of the European slave trade in African people and
plundering of African countries by Europeans through their Berlin Act of 26
February 1885.
Lest we forget, the European Renaissance brought slavery, colonialism and
racism to Africa. It dehumanised Africans, plundered the riches of Africa
destroyed African civilisations and under-developed Africa. Africans have
suffered the worst holocaust in human history as a result of the European
Renaissance.
Pan Africanism challenged the effects of the European Renaissance
formally from 1900. The wars of national resistance against colonialism in
various parts of Africa were of course long fought in countries such as
Azania (South Africa as early as 1510).
>From the very beginning Pan Africanists spoke of liberating Africa and
restoring this Continent to its colonially lost power and glory. Pixley ka
Isaka Seme spoke of African Regeneration. He was right and wise in not
using the term African Renaissance which would look like an African
colonial imitation of a renaissance that took place in Europe.
The first renaissance in the world was African. Africa is the cradle of the
first human civilisation which was destroyed by the agents of European
Renaissance.
Africa was advanced long before she was invaded by Europe. Europeans took
advantage of the superiority of the gun over the African spear in war.
Before all this, fascinated by the greatness of Africa, in admiration of
this Continent, that famous Emperor of the Roman Empire Julius Caesar
proclaimed to the world, Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi! (Out of Africa
comes always something new).
This is not surprising when it is remembered that not long ago, Europeans
adored the Black Madona the holy family of Jesus Christ and his mother
Mary. Sir Godfrey Higgins ANCALYPSIS pages 137-138 states, The infant God
in the arms of his black mother, his eyes and drapery white, is himself
perfectly black....There is scarcely an old church in Italy where some
remains of the worship of the Black Virgin and Black Child are not to be
found.
Sir Godfrey has, however observed that lately, Very often the black figures
have given way to white ones and instead of the black ones as being held
sacred, they were put into retired places of the churches, but were not
destroyed.
This has been one of the many attempts to hide the glory of the first
renaissance on earth which was African; and to portray the barbaric and
immoral European Renaissance which produced the darkness of slavery,
colonialism and racism; as superior to the very Africa that sustained and
enlightened the world.
The truth however persists. Commenting on the peace and security of many
African states before the European Berlin Conference in 1885 which grabbed
and partitioned Africa her into British Africa, Belgian Africa, Spanish
Africa, French Africa, German Africa, Portuguese Africa, and Italian
Africa; leaving nothing for Africans except Ethiopia; Basil Davidson a
British journalist and author has written:
Only six missionaries of some 300 who had penetrated into East and Central
Africa are known to have been killed by wanton murder. What looked like
chaos was seldom anything of the kind. What seemed like danger to life was
nearly always a huge exaggeration. Life for the traveller in middle Africa
was in fact a good deal safer from wars and human killings than it
generally was in Europe; which explains of course, the gentler way in
which Africans were accustomed to receiving strangers.
For his part, the biography writer of Prophet Mohammed, ibn Hisham has
stated that this prophet so trusted black people that he instructed those
who were persecuted in Mecca to go Ethiopia [Africa]. There they will find
a king under whom none are persecuted. It is a land of righteousness where
God will give you relief from what you are suffering.
Lucian a Greek satirist who is regarded as a free thinker of the olden
days has written, The gods on occasions do not hear the prayers of mortals
[in Europe] because they are away across the ocean among the Ethiopians
[Africans/black people] with whom they dine frequently on their invitation.
Prof. Cain Hope Felder of the Howard University, Washington D.C., has
remarked, It shows the esteem in which the ancients held the African
people; that they selected them as the only fit associates for their
[European] gods.
Because many people have deliberately caused confusion about Mizraim in
Africa (which the Greeks called Egypt), it is important for me to first
clear this confusion.
An African Egyptologist, Prof. Cheikh Anta Diop has written extensively on
the early history of Africa, especially of Mizraim (ancient Egypt). He has
declared, Egypt was a Black civilisation. The history of Black Africa will
remain suspended in the air and cannot be written until African historians
dare to connect it with the problem of Egypt. The African historian, who
evades the problem of Egypt, is neither modest nor objective or unruffled;
he is ignorant, cowardly and neurotic.
Prof. Diop elaborated, Imagine if you can the uncomfortable position of
a Western historian who writes the history of Europe without referring to
Greco-Latin Antiquity, and passes off that as scientific research....The
ancient Egyptians were Black. The moral fruit of their civilisation is to be
counted among the assets of the Black World. Instead of presenting itself as
an insolvent debtor, that Black World is the very initiator of the Western
civilisation flaunted before us today.
When the African Union talks of Pan Africanism and African Renaissance,
which African Renaissance are they talking about? The first renaissance on
this planet was African. If the present African Renaissance AU is talking
about is merely to mimic the racist European Renaissance, then the Pan
African objective of total liberation of Africa; will not be achieved.
The pre-colonial Africa fascinated not only Julius Caesar, but Napoleon
Bonaparte of France. Napoleon so envied the title Pharaoh which was the
title of Black rulers of Mizraim that he also wanted to bear the title
Pharaoh. Anyway about 1820, this French Emperor sent his scientists to
carry out archaeological research in Egypt, Africa. These archaeologists
affirmed that ancient Egyptians were Black people. Abbe Emile (1850-1916), a
highly qualified Egyptologist excavated Om El Qaab. He discovered and
identified sixteen African Pharaohs more ancient than Menes who united south
and north Mizraim.
In fact, a French Egyptologist Count F. Volney has recorded that The
Egyptians were the first people to attain the physical and moral science
necessary to civilise life. A German scholar Karl Lepsius after visiting
the tomb of Pharaoh Rameses III, exclaimed, Where we expected to see an
Egyptian [white person], we are presented with an authentic Black! Also on
this subject, Sir A. E. Wallis Budge a British Egyptologist who has written
extensively about Mizraim (ancient Egypt) has declared, The prehistoric
native Egypt [Mizraim, Kemet etc], both in old and new Stone Ages was
African and there is a reason for saying the inhabitants came from the
South. Budge was a keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the
British Museum.
The view that ancient Egyptians were Black people was held by leading
ancient historians such as Pliny, Strabo, Diodorus, Tacitus and the
venerated Herodotus himself.
Africans built Memphis the capital of Mizraim in 3100 B.C. Greeks built
Athens in 1200 B.C. The Romans built Rome in 1000 B.C. Africans invented
writing. It was Hieroglyphics before 3000 B.C., Hieratic alphabet shortly
after this. Demotic writing was developed about 600 B.C.; while the Kushite
script was used in 300 B.C. Other African scripts were Merotic, Mende of
Mali, Coptic, Amharic, Sabean and Geez, Nsibidi script of Nigeria and Twi
script of the Twi people in Ghana.
Which African Renaissance is the AU talking about, the one that is just a
mimicry of the European Renaissance? If it is the latter, this would be
merely a pandering to the arrogance of the agents of cultural imperialism.
The earlier notion of Africas restoration was expressed in a Zulu/Xhosa
slogan Mayibuye! iAfrika! Many Africans were aware that Africa had been
taken away from them by Europeans through the Berlin Conference of
1884-1885. From then onward everything Africa had been colonised and
expropriated by the colonisers for themselves. Mayibuye iAfrika means
Africa must return to its rightful owners with all its resources and its
colonised African epistemology. To this notion of African restoration, Prof.
Robert Mangaliso Sobukwes Pan Africanist Congress added, Izwe Lethu!
iAfrika! (Afrika [and all its riches] is our land!
It is estimated that from the 15th century the slave trade practised by
Europe, America and others pilfered from Africa over three hundred and
seventy trillion US dollars ($370,000,000,000,000). This excludes the
colonial damage to Africa which is going on even now. Yet, Africa is
harassed for foreign debts by former practitioners of slavery in human
beings and thieves of other peoples countries and their riches. Africa was
never inferior to Europe until European terrorist militarism imposed slavery
and colonialism on Africa.
As Edem Kodjo, author of AFRICA TOMORROW who is a great researcher puts it,
It is here in Africa that history began. Far from being a gratuitous
assertion, this statement is an undeniable scientific fact for which one
finds corroboration when one roves the world in search of the remains of the
ancient civilisations. According to the present state of research on the
origins of the progress of humankind, the Mother of Mankind, Africa remains
the privileged source of the first manifestations of intense human
creativity.
END
Dr. Motsoko Pheko is a historian, political scientist, lawyer and
theologian. He is author of books such as Towards Africas Authentic
Liberation, African Renaissance Saved Christianity and Rediscovering Africa
And Her Spirituality. He is a former Member of the South African Parliament
and former Representative of the victims of apartheid and colonialism at the
United Nations in New York and at the UN Commission on Human Rights in
Geneva.
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni and Dr. Kiiza Besigye Uganda is in anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni na Dk. Kiiza Besigye Uganda ni katika machafuko"
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