Being an African | A lesson narrated from the love and the importance of history
The year is 2005, I am in Grade 10 and I decided to take history classes, this was not willingly so but simply because I was running away from Geography. — It was either that or history, and personally the maps troubled me enough in Grade 9 so I decided I don’t ever want to see GPS coordinates, longitudes and attitudes what what again. When I reflect on it now it wasn’t a bad move actually.
To that I must also point out that one of many flaws in our education system is that it does not justify the “reasons” or motives for our subjects: the questions why we solve for X to why we studied the French revolution and the history of the Nazi remains silently ignored because they question high level authority’s very own intelligence for they do not know themselves.
There is so much to what we do not know, and equally as much, there is so much we are are not exposed to and I guess to the curious me this was merely the beginning of my intellectual uprising if you may. From that point on, I wanted to further my understand of history and its importance before I could just do it but obviously asking that in high school would be asking for a very hot klap.
But over time I learnt, through inquiry, reading, analysis and everything that the history of history is based on knowledge of the past and nothing more.
So here then was a question I always wondered about: according to this history of knowledge, what does it mean to be an African?
You’d think you know better but truly speaking, you can’t define an African in the best way an Englishman, an Arab, or an Indian would define their origins, their “ownness” or inheritance. Some may try to define an African but truly speaking it will lack depth.
I’m going to help answer this by simply showing you the importance of history and why you too should care about it, history that is.
These are extracts from my “upcoming” book, The Foundational Theory which is an analysis of how the foundation of anything gives form to the systems that govern us today. One of those forms being history.
But what is history?
History refers to the generic collection of past events and social movements that have given rise to great social, political and economic impact. These are movements then converted into theories and then get packaged as history that serves as a memory, a referential landmark that we refer the current reality or state of affairs to.
FYI — This is not a classical definition you will find in a dictionary.
So this means when you lack knowledge of history, you potentially lack knowledge of whatever the subject may be at hand. So then if you lack history of yourself or certain “events” that might have occurred in your life then you don’t know yourself or the past “better” and as a result there is a slight potential and a high probability margin that you’re bound to “re-do” these things (the past) — overtime because you have no recollection, a history, a memory of the self, your past whatsoever.
Let me rephrase in another context.
Actions lead to events and events lead to history being the last “destination”. Actions then serve as a guide to how history will be and so in knowing your history, the final destination, you’d know where and how each action would lead you, i.e. to a particular place, because of history.
But what about the lack of this?
Introducing “The lack thereof theory”
Say now then, you are given a moment, a chance to flash back on your past and see how things were that lead to a circumstance you are in right now.
If it is bad, you’d want to know what went wrong. If not, if it is good, you will want to reminisce and re-do the very things you did; to make things right. Be it relationship, business, friends, career and so forth.
You’d want to think better about things won’t you?
You’d want to inquire more about the past version of you, and assess how things came to be.
And when you begin to realise these things about you, you then start to become “one” with the self. Things start to fall into place. You get to understand yourself better.
We call this a coming of age story, when your identity is finally revealed right before you — your character changes.
In the film Tsosti (2005) directed by Gavin Hood, the main character Tsotsi is a violent character who has no real identity of himself. In one scene, when his team were having drinks. One friend, or gang member Mothusi Magano as Boston, starts questioning who Tsotsi is, and where he’s from, in front of everyone. Tsotsi having no idea of his own identity gets infuriated and beats up boston. As the story went, Tsotsi hijacks a car with a baby, which then helps him mirror his character, he then, or accidentally so starts to get flashbacks of himself as a kid, a mere reflection of who he is — or was, triggered by his attachment to the baby and Terry Pheto as Miriam’s humming when breast feeding the hijacked baby. The baby situation makes him realize that he too was once a cute little boy, and surprisingly less violent.
At this point he starts to resent what he has become, and you could tell from this point on, he resents who he has become, a Tsotsi.
Where am I going with this though?
Let’s back up a bit, what does it mean to be an African, a black man, a “melanated” dark brown skinned individual?
At this point you may not want to answer this… I know.
This one thing happened and it led to this, the lack of history or a definition of an African.
Demolition!
The First Wave of Demolition (Demolition of Physical Memories)
I guess this is rather tricky. Let’s throwback. As the arrival of colonial masters, the settlers — the first sure thing they did was to wipe out African history, a memory. They cleared out and bankrupted African knowledge bank. Memories of the past. A history of history that is based on knowledge of the past.
I never got to understand why they destroyed cities, monuments and anything that Africans built until this point. Books, literary works, museums all wiped out, gone!
They destroyed history, and in history lies memories. In memories lies the truest form of self knowledge that gives rise to the self. This is the kind of knowledge that if Africans had to master in their quest, they’d be as powerful.
They pretty much knew exactly what were doing.
And so I asked, do you know what being an African is?
“Self-knowledge is the stepping stone to self-mastery”. R. Sharma
It is no wonder that generations later, Africans are still a little more confused. This was the situation with Tsotsi, confused and idea-less about who he is, pretty much the same thing I am wondering about right now.
As I sit writing this, wondering at African mother nature, the cities, the birds and the mountains I can’t help but notice that African cultures too are slowly diminishing, fading because we lack knowledge that would justify the value and the significance of these things “Cultures”, the kind of knowledge that would justify their inheritance — inheritance beyond and over everything; our food, our clothes our music.
The Second Wave Demolition (Demolition of Critical Thinking)
The second wave of the demolition of an African man of course crept up and went past us without notice. This demolition resides in the corridors of our education system and found its roots in our schools. So we began studying the history of the very men who enslaved African people instead of searching for our own, lost bits of history.
And so the demolition began, in the name of education and the French Revolution.
We studied the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, Hitler, The Settlers, The Dutch East India companies and forgot our own history of the Zulus, the Great Shaka Zulu Warrior, the Sekhukhune kings, le Bakwena. “Forgot” is even a nice word for this loss, I remember the one page in one of our history text book that summarized the life of King Moshoeshoe. ONE PAGE! But the french revolution was divided into chapters.
I felt hacked. But the demolition never stopped.
To this day. We study their food, their English breakfast, their wine, their 18 year old cognac and forgot our own traditional African beer. We study and put on their clothes, their Louis Vuitton, Versace, Nike, and forgot our own traditional inJobo, ibeshu, lekgeswa, the bloody word document does not even recognize ibeshu but recognizes Vuitton.
The third wave slayed in too (Demolition in the intellect of an African mind)
When we entered varsity, in an African world state of the art University, the first philosophy class started with the introduction to Plato and ended with Wittgenstein. I was never introduced to Frantz Omar Fanon a Martiniquais-French psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer whose works are influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, Dr Chika Onyeani’s mastery writing, and Steve Biko’s rhetoric vision of black consciousness.
Bloody hell!
All that is history in Africa, was wiped out, demolished and slowly replaced with foreignness.
All that is African is wiped out, demolished and replaced with foreign knowledge that functions as a tool for oppression, because — it stands in the way of advancing an African, in Africa. Not only its purpose is to serve such illusions but it blinds the African, intellectually, making it almost impossible to navigate out of such ‘non-reality’.
So I retreat, in confession — I did not know better. I can’t unlearn all that I have learnt, Plato’s ID, The Ego, Friedrich Nietzsche’s theories, The French Revolution, The Dutch East India Company and of course Wittgenstein’s theory on language forms.
The best thing I can do is learn from all of this.
What was the point?
I guess I can tell you the simple truth that it is easy to study and worship foreign gods, cultures, food, music when you find that yours were destroyed.
Even then, how can you not study what’s theirs when you have nothing to look at in your very own backyard, you’re forced to worship these but all this is not happening at gun point. It is systematic, and thus problematic and invisible.
The answers are never straight up but the colonial masters knew one thing: the glass is better half full than half empty. It was better to know a thing about them than to know a thing about us. So the history lessons began at Grade 10, throughout until I got my degree. The demolition began, from Grade 10, right through until now.
I studied the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, Hitler, The Settlers, The Dutch East India companies and never our own history of the Great Shaka, Zulu Warriors, Sekhukhune and bakwena . I study their food, the English breakfast, their wine and not our own traditional African beer.
That, alone was enough to chain our thoughts and institutionalize them, so that “these thoughts” ponder on this and that of “theirs” and not of “ours”, until generations later when someone asks: but don’t we too have our own Plato, Own Nietzsche, and Own Hitler to have thoughts that are institutionalized to ponder on such — that which is ours?
At this point, as I write this — pondering on that, and this — I can’t help but confess that my thoughts too have been chained, institutionalized to ponder on this and that, of theirs and not of ours, and here I stand, making you ponder on this, and that, of theirs, their history, their Nazi, their French revolution and their bloody Plato.
Somehow I need to chain myself out, but how can I do that when I don’t know my own history?
How do I do that when I don’t have my own Plato, Wittgenstein and Nietzche or my own history of history?
How do I do that when I don’t have a memory of the self, an African — as it was destroyed and so is my mind to this day?
I am then confronted with a big task before me.
I shall then and, I must see to it that, I appreciate every bit of what is a history of an African.
I must now start to ponder on Steve Biko’s theories. Wonder on Nelson Mandela’s speeches and read Frantz Fanon’s great philosophy since I can’t go a 100 decades back.
I shall now study and appreciate the Marula trees of the great north, eat the brown porridge with beans stew and wear our traditional attire with big pride, as I do with the Nike’s, the Louis Vuitton’s, and the Polo’s.
All I have right here shall do.
For now.
