Be black, be conscious, be African
By Shivute Kaapanda [Think Tank Africa]
To be aware of oneself as a black person is one dialogue that many native Africans despise; as a result of white doctrines these blacks became too attached to whiteness that they hate own selfhood and therefore they became part of the brainwashed society who submit themselves to the former colonialists that to be black is to be a slave and to be white is to be boss.
That anything white be it education, health, religion, law, literature, etc., tends to attract the attention of black men and the end result is that prosperity and ultimately black success is what they do not attempt to realize.
Like a living entity responding to the stimuli, for example a plant responding to light from a lamp by exhibiting a directional growth (phototropism) toward the stimulus of such light, that black growth should in the same sense be responding to the whiteness and their teachings when presented with an opportunity to grow by the super-capitalists – the objects are black people, the stimuli is the white men and his laws, for this is their modus operandi.
Brainwashed is the black men’s knowledge toward self-awareness, wakefulness and selfhood that teaches him about his mental and physical consciousness as a rational being.
The urgency here is: be black, be conscious and be African.
We learned from our great ancestors to be black-conscious, therefore the desire and determination to liberate the black people did not come yesterday but came long time back, we are in an advancing stage of blackness, we would champion this agenda through many struggles.
Like the political liberation struggle, that will include the struggle to suppress foreign religions, institutions of white supremacy and the dictatorship of the black elites who sold us into slavery by the whites to secure their holidays in the Bahamas.
Our African great revolutionary ancestor, Steve Bantu Biko warned us of the colonialist white’s mentality that “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
What he meant was that you’re not aware of yourself as a black and as an African and your surroundings. So you may be caged and be told to hate nobody but yourself because you lack self-awareness, you do not trust your own intuition, you are not black-conscious.
African literature taught us that black consciousness is a state, quality and awareness of oneself as a black human being. Know who you are, where you come from, your spirituality, your culture, your religion; to know how to assert yourself as African in your language, your kind and style.
Black consciousness teaches black people how to believe in no one but themselves, black consciousness seek to liberate black people from the slavery of white supremacists; black consciousness does not entertain white supremacy that many African governments are afraid of, and black consciousness confronts and undermines white arrogance and colonialist mentalities.
Black consciousness literature teaches black Africans to rise up and become independent economically, socially and intellectually.
Dear fellow Africans, the events unfolding in Africa today are the results of poor knowledge of self, ignorance of self, lack of self-awareness, lack of confidence in African-self all under the umbrella of former apartheid controlled government and colonialism.
In Africa today we see black people seeking confidence by speaking French, English, Spanish, Portuguese and now Chinese; we see black people embracing urban lifestyles rather than their own villages where their umbilical cords were buried; we see very black Africans naming themselves and their kids after Spanish and Greek names – all this happens because of poor knowledge of self and lack of confidence of self.
Be warned that if we do not have confidence of self as black Africans we will keep massaging white supremacy for generations in Africa and this will continue to undermine blackness.
So be black conscious like Bantu Biko, be resolute like Kwame Nkrumah whose words orates “I am not African because I was born in Africa but because Africa was born in me”.
Biko taught us to be black conscious, Nkrumah taught us to be Africans. So be black, be conscious and above all be a true African.
– Shivute Kaapanda is a critical pan-Africanist writer from Eyanda village. This is an excerpt from his seminal book “The Conscious Republic” published in 2020.
