We are not all Africans, black people are! Sentletse Diakanyo Tue 28 Dec 2010 Henry Ford once said, “You can have any colour as long as it is black”. Similarly, native inhabitants of Africa say, “You can be an African in any colour as long as he is black.” There has been a sudden demand for an African to come in a variety of colours. During days of slavery when an African was a commodity traded over the counter, there was never a demand for him in any colour but black. There is now an attempt in the 21st century to redefine the colour scheme of an African. Whites want to be classified as African. Whites have been relentless in their attempts at historical revisionism in respect of the definition of “African” since the 1994 democratic dispensation, and their efforts appeared to have intensified after the collective hoorah of reconciliation had dissipated. Historical revisionism is generally a legitimate re-evaluation of existing understanding and knowledge of particular historical aspects in order to correct any distortions; but there are also those with deliberate motives to revise history in order to mislead or reflect them in favourable light. Historically, the term “African” never had any ambiguous meaning. To Africans today it still does not have any ambiguous meaning. Africans across the continent and in the diaspora have long understood its meaning to refer to them as black people. African leaders from all walks of life who waged a relentless struggle against the thuggery of colonialism in the continent, were of one mind with regard to who Africans were. The fight against colonialism was to liberate Africans from the thuggery visited upon them by Europeans who had arrogated to themselves the power to rule with brute force and dominate vast territories of the African continent. When both Arabs and Europeans enslaved Africans and traded them as disposable commodities there was never any misunderstanding with regard to who Africans were. These were native inhabitants of Africa who were regarded as sub-human, and even “savages and barbarians”, as the British warlord Winston Churchill perceived them. These are people who in historical texts have been described as “African slaves”. Neither Arabs nor European slave-masters ever imagined themselves as Africans. When an order for an African slave arrived, it was clear that it was a commoditised black person who needed to be captured and a price put on his head. On the occasion of Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as the first democratically elected president of the Republic of South Africa, he said: “The South Africa we have struggled for, in which all our people, be they African, coloured, Indian or white, regard themselves as citizens of one nation is at hand.” Mandela, too, understood the true meaning of the term “African”. He knew that the term “African” referred to black people of this continent; that black South Africans were the Africans. When Thabo Mbeki stood before the National Assembly on the adoption of the Constitution of South Africa and proclaimed himself an African during his seminal speech, he said: “I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me. In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.” Mbeki recognised and acknowledged that other cultures and the acquired knowledge of the history of various races had shaped his being and person as an African. The speech has been misinterpreted for social expediency by some to mean that all who live on the continent are Africans. “The African is conditioned, by cultural and social institutions of centuries, to a freedom of which Europe has little conception, and it is not in his nature to accept serfdom forever.” These are the words of Jomo Kenyatta, first president of Kenya, from the conclusion to his book Facing Mount Kenya in 1938. Kenyatta, too, does not appear to have suffered from the illusion that the term “African” referred to anybody else other than native inhabitants of Africa — the black people. The rise of Pan-Africanism in the 1920s was a consequence of the need by African intellectuals to challenge white supremacy, to defeat the absurd notion that Africans were inferior to whites and to agitate the African diaspora towards unity with the rest of Africans. The fifth Pan-African Congress that was held in Manchester in 1945 was meant to galvanise Africans against colonial rule and promote self-pride among Africans.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 08:21:10 +0000
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