Letter of consciousness to a black African child
By Shivute Kaapanda [Think Tank Africa]
Dear African Black Child,
First let me make time to say I owe my being to the blood, the very endemic blood that precedes my existence and carried responsibility for me, my ancestors, the blood that instructs my consciousness in writing this noble piece to the upcoming blood of the bloods.
An African child is the new blood of the same blood in which critical consciousness shall find fertility and homage. Despite everything that the sour ages taught the negro which amounts to slavery and or servitude, an African child shall never be intimidated but continue to, with critical consciousness, believe and defend what belongs to mother Africa endlessly.
African son, African daughter, the concept of Ubuntu shall lead you in every aspect of your life for it’s the mother of unity, strength and progress; it heals the wounds of poverty and hopelessness and provide solid meaningfulness to living in Africa as elsewhere.
A person is a person because of other people; unity, friendliness, peace and revolution shall find solace in your consciousness. A happy person is the one that makes right decisions rightly.
Dear African child, you do live in a country dominated by foreign influence. But nevertheless you must respect your indigenous environment, respect nature, respect humanity and above all respect your language and culture at all cost and preserve them.
If a foreigner comes to learn of your language, welcome him or her and if need be learn his or her language too but don’t hate your own for it’s through your own hate that things begin to work out of your favor. Do not do self-hate, but love your skin, love your hair and the whole structure of your body.
Don’t let anyone to define you the way they want because that will be the end of your consciousness. Your beauty is final and nobody can change or modify it. Embrace the fact that there are in existence other races than your own; treat them as equal as your own. The world may not allow you to do so but do not feel inferior at all; by nature no race is above another but it might be a different case with social construction.
I repeat, no race is superior to another; to belong to a race is to belong to nature, nature is the mother of all races.
Get your moral education at home and not at church, go to school if need be, education might be a key to the future but the key to your future is not solely in the hands of formal education as the formal education curriculum might have been manufactured elsewhere out of Africa.
Dear child, if you happen to go to university, please be vigilant so as not to be swallowed up by your learning; your culture is the foundation of yourself, your education, your morality, your religion and your humanity; do not undermine your culture for you will get lost into another culture that will undermine your own.
Despite your education, you must owe your being to your culture, and define yourself according to your culture, name things according to your culture, live by it, and be proud of it no matter the circumstances it may bring along but do not be limited by it.
You can go academically as far as your consciousness may take you but always come back home, come back to your own self; the reflection of yourself gives homage to your own consciousness and solitude.
Do not ignore your environment, do not ignore your people, be aware of the leadership around your environment, partake if need be in whichever way possible.
In the world dominated by money, do not hate yourself, your brother or your grandfather for money or lack of it, but your conscience must take you further than that. But make all time to make money for it’s almost the only way to take care of anything including yourself, but remember that man made money and money makes man mad.
Let me pen off here, until next time.
Best of revolutionary wishes
From Shivute
