Creating the “Republic of Critical Consciousness” in Africa
By Shivute Kaapanda [Think Tank Africa]
In a very socially dynamic world yet with unexplored vast areas of consciousness and critical intelligence, the world, or rather some of its social segments of human family, is yet to discover its unwavering potential of critical intelligence in order to refute some of the social constructs by humanity aimed at repressing some niches of humanity.
The art of politics has taken the majority into poverty and the minority into elite and capitalistic class with some godly powers with the rest of the population being their followers.
Religion on the other hand has taken a grip on the intelligence of the poor and rich parading superstitious elements as the most sacred creating a path for religious propaganda through the pretext of sin, faith and salvation in order to conform societies to religious principles, with Christianity taking a Pentecostal view of the world in order to create religious societies who are willing to be scared of the unknown deities and bring their hopes and aspirations into the religious context of heaven and resurrection, keeping the intelligence of the masses at a freezing point so as to keep them far from revolting.
Having known all these repressing forces, the generation of critical thinkers and writers has realized the urgent need to revolt against all these forces of human oppression; we have chosen the revolutionary path in the words of a Cuban leader of Marxist revolution Ernesto Che Guevara who once said “The revolution is not an apple that falls when it’s ripe; you have to make it fall.”
The fall of an apple is literally the fall of oppression and by making the oppression fall we need to create a society that practices critical dialogues to counter the oppression.
It is public knowledge that politics, culture and religion have for centuries oppressed the majority; it’s therefore our responsibility as a generation of progressive thinkers to unearth this oppression and with patriotism bring it to the attention of the unsuspecting oppressed majority so that it becomes aware of the status quo of politics and religion in contemporary Africa and by extension the world.
In the spirit of radical transformation and decolonization of Mother Africa from colonial apartheid signatures, we the generation of critical thinkers has found with great passion a duty to give out a pan-African message of critical consciousness in order to birth generations of people with passion to think beyond the prescribed limits, the generation with much radical rudeness, a generation that holds all politicians to account, a generation with testicular fortitude, a generation that will never live in some sort of stagnant and unexamined life.
The pan-African message is afro-centric but it can be extended to fit in some worldviews. To produce a society of critical consciousness is to produce a free-thinking society.
The clarion call goes to all social artists such as writers, speakers, political cartoonists, musicians and journalists of African birth and decent to practice activism with critical intelligence, African blackness, pan-Africanism, African patriotism and with critical consciousness in order to promote Mother Africa with her customs as it is without the influence of the foreigners.
We call for the abolishment of Eurocentricism in all African schools of thoughts which should include the de-officialization of foreign languages.
What perhaps is more urgent is the call to scrutinize religion, especially Christianity, in order to preserve African religions or to an extent to explore the possibility of atheism as a new practice – that is to produce a non-religious society in Africa.
There is a general understanding among some scholars that in philosophy nothing is sacrosanct or holy; everything is subject to critical scrutiny, even the ideas of other philosophers – this is what we are implementing by scrutinizing the religion and politics of today.
The conscious republic is the sunrise in creating radical consciousness and social activism by a young villager in Namibia, Africa and presumably the world.
With the spirit of Thomas Sankara, Steve Biko, Amilcar Cabral and Frantz Fanon, we have taken a first step as conscious raisers of our Generation in order to awaken the masses from the tyranny of oppression.
It has been noted with conscience that a society that lives an unexamined life is a society characterized by oppression with no room for social transformation; it is therefore in the interest of the African humanity to transform society using a critical school of tradition to emancipate society from mental slavery as it begins to create the republic full of wisdom, radical, and critical consciousness to effect such social transformation.
* Shivute Kaapanda is a critical thinker and Pan-Africanist writer from Eyanda village in Omusati Region.
