Our author does a wonderful of encapsulating the ethos of this Uncle
Sands website, the objective is not only to learn and teach but to build
our own African centred systems and institutions. Afrika for Afrikans.
This article takes a closer look into African philosophy and seeks to
dispel colonial myths that put in place to undermine African
philosophy… a good way to start our journey to changing mindsets
We have a responsibility to study and spread the message contained in African history,
not the history of europeans in Africa, because the vast majority of Africans are ignorant
of their own history — they have been indoctrinated by their colonial schools and
universities to believe that all advancements and achievements in human society
emanated from europeans or Arabs. This page is dedicated to uncovering the hidden
history of Africa, not to gloat or to bask in our former glory, but to imbue Black people
with pride and rekindle within them an affinity with other Africans and our heritage.
History is not limited to the text contained within the margins of your favourite literature,
nor is it merely a subject taught inside the halls of prestigious academic institutions,
history is not just a record of the past, because history happens in the present. As Kwame
Ture said:“If you say you love your people you must want to know everything there is to
know about them…” and thus begins our journey to unearth the truth and gain a more
thorough understanding of ancient and pre-colonial African people and societies. We
must study how ancient African societies functioned, so we can better understand what
went wrong and avoid making the same mistakes when we create a new system of
governance for the continent of Africa. We delve into various subjects like philosophy and
anthropology, religion and spirituality, mathematics and medicine among others, which all
have their roots in Africa’s history. Prominent African people will also be profiled, because
too many of our giants lie in obscurity while our minds are preoccupied with greek
philosophers and ancient roman emperors.
African people are one, therefore our history is shared, and as such our futures are
inextricably linked. We must be able to use the knowledge we gain from our ancestors
and forebears to liberate African people in their immediate environment, and it is our duty
because just like the African societies of times gone by, a pan Africanist like myself is
focused on “WE”. “History tells a people where they have been, what they have been,
where they are and what they are. Most importantly history tells people where they still
must go and what they still must do.” ~ John Henrik Clarke
African people are defined by their culture, but many remain uncertain about what culture
actually is. Culture is our value system, a construct that defines the parameters of our
morality, as well as the institutions that we set up to maintain and develop this particular
way of thinking and way of living. Our culture not only influences how we think, but it also
influences the things we choose to believe in, it influences the food we eat, the places we
live and the many different traditional practices and customs we perform.
On this page I endeavour to keep Africans abreast of some of the latest pop culture from
movies to documentaries and television series made by Black creators or productions
with a particular focus on issues affecting the Black race globally. As a lover of music I will
also highlight some of my favourite musical selections by featuring musicians and their
works; art exhibitions, new shows on circuit at the theatre, any fruitful work that magnifies
the modern Black experience will be placed in the spotlight. I will also be discussing
certain ‘burning’ current affairs issues from time to time, and I will share some of my
personal interests such as farming and cooking periodically. Since we are all descendants
of Ntu, it goes without saying that I will peel back some of the layers of our old traditions
that exist within the South African native community, so we can understand how they
were practiced before colonialism and how these practices have evolved since.
“Music is ours… it is us… and like us, it is always here… surrounding us… like the infinite
particles that make up life, it cannot be seen… but can only be felt… like life!” Malcolm X
wasn’t wrong, but I would like to expand on that to say our culture is everywhere, if you
consider the African influences on music, painting, food & hygiene, hell even the African
influence on language, then it goes without saying that the total liberation of Africa is
strongly linked to our ability to reconnect to our culture. We must accept the duty and
responsibility of telling our own stories, in our own time, that we may eventually cease
with this culture of glorifying our conquerors.
The centuries of forced invasions upon the lands of Africa had many dire consequences,
among the least discussed yet one of the most heinous acts committed was the sheer
magnitude of written history that was completely ravaged by a multitude of colonisers.
Africans invented writing, so it stands to reason that many of our teachings, our history
and achievements would have been documented in some written text — precolonial
Africa had several institutions of higher learning such as the Sankoré University and
library in Timbuktu which boasted up to 700 000 manuscripts.
Africans had established a culture of writing and reading and even philosophy long before
having any contact with the western or even the eastern worlds. I want to rekindle that
love for books and for reading with this page because reading has many benefits, namely,
gaining knowledge on topics and improving focus, reading can also boost communication
skills and expands vocabulary. Reading to children in particular also has myriad benefits,
it helps them perform better at school and improves memory and comprehension skills…
there really are no limits to the advantages that arise from reading. Storytelling is a
learning and teaching tool and remains a big part of our culture, and we need to
disseminate our stories far and wide to ensure that there is no further erasure of African
written and intellectual history. This page will profile new books by African authors,
academic journals that should be of interest to a Pan Africanist, newspaper articles that
piqued my curiosity as well as some of the source material I rely on when writing.
In our efforts to make education fashionable we must not lose focus on the importance of
reading. If we are to liberate ourselves as Africans it is essential that we increase our
literacy levels, it is also crucial that we read to children especially during those formative
years to help cultivate a habit of reading — about 30 minutes a day should suffice. Let us
read everything we can find about Africa, her people, her history, her contributions to
society. Chancellor Williams spoke of the second great emancipation in the 1960s, its
time we picked up the baton and layed proper foundations for the third great awakening
— BLACK UNITY.
This work illuminates the differences in ideology and approach taken by
the Africanist PAC versus the congress ANC in the struggle and
transition years
“Mentacide occurs when you willingly think and act out of someone else’s interpretation of reality to their benefit and against your survival. It is a subtle state of insanity which, over the last few hundred years, has come to characterize more and more Afrikans globally.”
I don’t disagree with the great Mwalimu K. Bomani Baruti, but if we are to truly hold ourselves accountable, then we must be able to say that modern Africans are stupid AF. How else do you explain grown men and women from the motherland making decisions about their energy future based on the whims of some home-schooled European teenager? It’s a spectacular level of mental gymnastics to speak of a “just transition” if it’s underpinned by the very same capitalist system of exploitation that has exacerbated inequality worldwide. What is just about imposing high-interest loans on South Africa through the “Just Energy Transition Plan” or JET-P while wealthy nations of the world and multinationals benefit from a multitude of tax incentives, subsidies, and gains from the installation and maintenance of these renewable energy solutions?
The “unJUST transition” is the latest iteration of a very thinly veiled imperialist agenda to keep Africa enslaved. Imperialism is the domination of a weaker nation by a stronger one militarily, economically, politically, or culturally, primarily motivated by the desire to gain more territory, access to more land, and to gain more power and influence over the dominated nations. Imperialism is the mental affliction that spawned colonialism, and both deficiencies are driven by racism in a symbiotic nexus of subjugation. Imperialists believe they are fundamentally superior to those they oppress; as such, they view others’ cultures or way of life or even their way of thinking as inferior. According to Lenin, imperialism is the highest form of capitalism, which is why Black people can never claim to be free until we have completely destroyed the capitalist monetary system.
In contemporary politics, imperialism thrives under the guise of neoliberal capitalism — that insatiable greed is what brought the imperialists to Africa after all. Capitalism is how white people enforce racism, as Kwame Ture put it, meaning we cannot possibly utilize it as Africans to liberate the continent, by extension her people. Any plan that is intended for the benefit of Africans must first and foremost be in the interest of Africans. What is in the immediate interest of African people is that Africa exploit her abundant natural resources for the sole benefit of her people… The West pillaged and plundered these very resources to develop industries and infrastructure in their ignominious nation-states — it is these same natural resources that enabled them to establish institutions such as the World Bank and the international monetary fund, IMF which they now employ unashamedly to further exploit Africa!
Blind support of the unJUST transition and much of the rest of that green-washed gibberish is anti-Black and anti-poor — and at times even anti-science! The existing consensus within the scientific community only affirms that global warming/climate change causes a rise in sea level… all the other bits and bobs are nothing but politicking. Hence they dredge out b-grade celebrities and pseudo-scientists to peddle weak propaganda and hoodwink ignorant masses. In this year’s budget speech, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana announced a plan wherein privileged individuals (who can afford to go off-grid) will be able to claim up to a 25% tax rebate on installed rooftop solar panels, and companies can claim a tax deduction of 125% of the cost of any renewable energy project that come to use for the first time in the coming tax year. The median income of a Black man in this criminal colony is R3500 while a basic rooftop solar system costs upwards of R15000,
The green-washed peanut brains touting the unJUST transition routinely neglect to mention that most of the raw materials used in the manufacture of these clean renewable energy solutions are dirty and require a ton of fossil fuels (see: carbon emissions) to mine. These same hypocrites have precious little to say about their own household emissions as they fire up their diesel-powered generators for twelve hours daily, or whenever they need a little retail therapy, not to mention all that noise pollution… but as I’ve said a million times: South Africans are consistently inconsistent.
We would do well to be wary of doublespeak of a just transition that threatens so many jobs and livelihoods — as the bulk of jobs that the JET-P initiative would create would be in the build phase — these would therefore be “job opportunities” (i.e. temporary) and the operational phase will only require a handful of skilled(code for white) staff to run effectively. According to the UN, 80 million jobs will be lost by 2030 due to global warming, this will disproportionately affect will be the poor and underpaid. We sure as hell cannot speak of a just transition that will rob native sons and daughters of even more land. We dare not mistake any initiative or program spearheaded by the West to be for our benefit. We need to awaken to the reality that our so-called ‘allies’ act in their own interest, it is only right that we begin to do the same. Any self respecting African should reject this “just transition” for the conspicuous and vacuous imperialist gobbledygook it is. Africa is for Africans, and it is Africans who Will determine and shape the energy future of Africa. Stay woke.
Peace and Black power
I am a proud Black man. My favourite part about our very brief stay within this realm is that I get to do so as a Black man, living with my Black empress, nestled firmly in the warm bosom of an over 80% Black majority of this country(colony but y’know what I mean). I can literally go for days without the displeasure that arises from encountering and having to deal with any caucasoid mess. For the most part it’s heaven, but even the best of dreams can very rapidly become our worst nightmares, because not all skin folk is kin folk. There is this new pervasive trend permeating the South African polity,a proliferation of shameless, self-loathing, self-hating Negropeans with a spectacular lack of self awareness, persistently spouting unsolicited sentiments that harken back to the supposed glory days of an oppressive regime; a strange nostalgia that can only be described as apartheid apologism. Now I don’t want to risk giving any more oxygen to this raging fire of ignorance, because we do not care about the opinions of white supremacists on white supremacy… however it is crucial that we counter these nonsensical narratives weaponised against our Black race globally, particularly in lieu of the ability that white power has to perniciously corrupt and control people who look like us. Just as bro Malcolm said; “they will pay one of us, to kill oneof us, just to say it was one of us”. Revolution happens in phases, our part in the revolution is to educate the masses to raise awareness about the existence of a system that still dictates how Africans conduct our daily affairs.
Racism is the “predication of decisions and policies on considerations of a race for the purpose of subordinating a racial group and maintaining control over that group.” Racism is rooted in an ideology of inferiority, it is this pathology that underpins the fallacious doctrine of white supremacy, which created the conditions of inequality in the economic, political and social spheres which form the lived reality of most non-white folk in ‘post colonial’ societies. Racism can be of an overt or covert nature, and may occur at an individual level or at a collective (institutional or systemic) level. Individual racism is overt, like when Vusi Thembekwayo tweets “apartheid state machinery was capable” before launching into a senseless diatribe drawing flawed inferences and conclusions — the logic was a pedestrian mishmash of bottom of the barrel dog whistle politics — the more the chap expatiated the more the existence of some sort of apartheid sanitization program became evident!
Institutional racism is a systematic set of patterns, procedures, practices and policies that operate within institutions. Unlike individual racism, systemic racism is far more covert, and can operate independent of the proclivities of individuals within the system. Therefore, institutional racism manifests in the unfair or discriminatory hiring practices that exist within organisations, disparate income levels between people of different race groups, neighbourhoods allocated for occupation by non-white persons, the quality of education and healthcare available, as well as access to clean drinking water, electricity and healthy affordable food. The structures and institutions created during colonialism were of a European nature embodying European value systems and cultures, intended for the sole benefit of European settler colonialists. Hence these systems are inappropriate and inadequate for the creation of just and effective African systems of governance and administration. Institutional and individual racism constitute what is known as structural racism. Racism is a system containing multiple moving components working in unison to achieve specific outcomes, this system resulted in South Africa being the most unequal society on earth today.
The intellectually bankrupt culture of feigning ignorance and downplaying the negative effects of racism is part of a strategy to ensure we never address systemic racism and the legacy of apartheid colonialism; driven primarily by beneficiaries of whiteness as well as those few pliable Black people (see: Uncle Ruckus) who managed to successfully integrate themselves into the white supremacist system. This is why there is little discernible difference between the reasoning capacity of a “colourblind” white racist and that of a Black person who presumes their perceived personal success is due to “hard work”. Political analysis is empirical, it is based on facts; whereas political commentary is based on opinion, as such it need not be true. These mendacious coons must be challenged wherever and whenever they spew their anti-Black racist bile — not because we are correct but because young people look up to these characters.
There is a professor at the university of Stellenbosch, fittingly this is an institution that was at the forefront of formulating racist apartheid policies, who consistently pens some truly abhorrent opinion pieces masquerading as honest academic exercises. This professor insists on comparing apartheid(a crime against humanity) with the albeit failed governance of the ANC — mind you the ANC has neither sanctioned nor censured this senile old timer to date. Black people were poorer under apartheid, had little to no access to education, healthcare and amenities, were violated and exploited in the workplace, they were both over and under policed because despite there being resources allocated to policing Black communities very few of those resources were dedicated to actual investigative police work! Doctor John Henrik Clarke said: “In a revolution you’ve got no friends and you’ve got no relatives. You’ve got the people on your side and the ones not on your side. If blood don’t see fit to come on your side then shame on blood.” The ideologues spearheading this anti-Black revisionist project are easily identifiable, most have an affinity for minimizing or erasing the brutality of the apartheid past, they profess to be apolitical but always have an underlying conservatism(rightwing politics), they tend to denounce identity politics, choosing to rather focus on class struggles while shunning racial solidarity… basically, these charlatans are what happens when a person has a glossy STEM degree but the consciousness of a five year old! Elections are around the corner, and methinks this agenda has a lot more to do with influencing the outcomes of the elections many have described as watershed… time will tell, but trust your uncle will be watching closely ready to crush the cockroaches! Peace and Black power.
