Angélique Kidjo https://facebook/photo.php?v=183531305155780&set=vb.185900294860162&type=2&theater https://facebook/photo.php?v=183459648496279&set=vb.185900294860162&type=2&permPage=1 So Emancipation is here again to reflect and then and only then to celebrate. And because the structures which produced the slave trade still exist and practiced and racism against the African peoples still exist and practiced we are not in the celebration zone but rather a retreat, a reflection zone. “How can we sing in a strange place”? on another note, how can we sing when we come to realise that our worst enemy is the African people/person? So this year’s Emancipation observances guest artist Angelique Kidjo suggested on i95.5fm yesterday on the afternoon drive that we move on. This is a chant like kamla’s “let’s move on” Dear kidjo and all the African people across the globe the word ‘sankofa’ demands that the moving on has to be through the moving through the red sea reality of the past and the realities of the present in order to understand who we are and what we are capable of accomplishing as a human group. The many other ethnic groups who try to tell us to forget our story know their stories by heart. They tell us don’t go home but as you can recall, kamla was sure to use taxpayers monies to go home with an entire party including her sister. That going home process is important as one’s place of origins holds the untold stories and the corrupted stories. ‘home’ holds the truth as depicted in the sankofa documentary movie titled ‘sankofa’ I urge kidjo and all Africans to take time during this season of emancipation observances to reflect, to return as many other ethnic groups do because of the importance of doing such. How can we know where we are going if we do not know where we were kidnapped from? Around the world there are many wealthy, intelligent, materially secured African people but there is still a sense of a ‘lost people’. The Obamas reached the ‘white’ house but the very land of opportunities has a different rule and attitude for African people which the which the freeing of Zimmerman has reminded us. Who are the Obamas in the scheme of things in America? As long as efforts to maintain air route economic wars continue along with other economic efforts against collective African economic liberation. We have to work our way out of the self hatred which cause to condone economic advancement as a collective group of peoples. Reparation may not be about getting money hand outs from those responsible for the slave trade but it could mean these perpetrators putting policies in place to ensure certain just conditions. Some ideas in my head are: 1. Free education programmes especially in areas where this is still not a reality. 2. Building of schools, modern libraries (hard copies books are becoming a thing of the past for transmitting information and ideas) 3. Building of health facilities 4. No visa requirements to enter England and other Europeans countries, and America nations 5. Africans, should have automatic entry to schools and universities of their choice in America and in Europe via scholarship once they have made the grade to enter. 6. Africans should have access to free health care in America and Europe 7. Africans should have rights to live in America and Europe once they meaning to be productive citizens and law abiding 8. Direct flights to and from African from any part of the world 9. Free infrastructure development in all African countries especially in those where the slave trade had it diabolic impact. The infrastructure would include, roads, electricity, water, houses, telecommunication, building for schools, hospitals, etc. 10. Supply of professional human resources to assist in the development and implementation of the above ideas. Many more things can be added that would mean the putting in the hand money which no value in relations to the horrors of the slave trade. So it is not good enough to say no to a Eurocentric idea of reparation but to come up with much more meaningful ways of ‘repairing’ the damage done by the slave trade. The ten suggestions, are with the view that what the Americans and Europeans enjoy ought to be extended to the people whose sweet and blood built it all. Outside of this long reaching ten point petty cash in hand will soon run out and perhaps spent on things which may not equate to development and liberation for generations to come. Education and land ought to be the mantra to our children. Many of the enslaved where force to serve enjoy today privileges because of the slave trade. That baby the world was just hyping about is going to be privileged above many hard working people because his ancestors kidnapped and enslaved billions of African people. The press button into the life of the elite of elite has our blood inscribed on it. Many of these inheritors of slave wealth enjoy hundreds of hectors of estate lands, mega luxuries out of this world but they never worked for it. We died in the process at the hand of extreme out of this world brutality. It seems that now so conditioned by brutality that we only know how to be brutish to ourselves and one another. This we have to break. We have to build community, insist on education, real estate, and spirituality (different from religion) we have to find ‘God’ in ourselves before we look elsewhere for the ‘unnamed god in the centre of Athens’ we have to stop eating greedily the lies propagated by those who do not hold our interest in the best place of their being. Many which we never existed; many think we are a social curse. And many of us African buy into these ideas wholesale and hate ourselves to the max. Remember when American Africans started to enjoy some measure of ‘rights’? what did they do? Many Gerry curled their hair, men and women alike. What did that mean? Why today many Africans altered their hair and skin to the point we do not know which part of their external being is real and which part could rust or melt on contact with heat. Some put on eye lenses because there is black in their eyes. Some define lighter skin colour in favourable terms but use negative terms to describe darker coloured skin, why? The slave traders successfully strategy was to make the Africans hate themselves, divide themselves, deny themselves, right to exist free, etc. the success of the slave trade was because of our lack purpose unification. Tribes would have been warring with neighbouring tribes but the lack of continental unity caused the selling out of enemy tribes. When the slavers came we should have been able to put aside our civil and ‘in-continent’ wars to band together so as to destroy the external enemy. The success of the slave trade was largely because we did not unite as a people on the continent. The extension of this lack of unity is seen on the regional plantation up to today, we still do not have a united Caribbean region. The internal wars seem bigger than what American and England can ever do to us. So repairing the damage must include looking in the sankofa way where we failed ourselves. Return to find the answers to correct our faults. For direction let us consider the following: 1. Develop stable families. Spend quality time with family. 2. Let education be a mantra from the time our babies open their eyes 3. Develop mega businesses of all kinds, expand our businesses aggressively. We can’t have three and four generations operating from the ‘safe little one shop in the same one location for generations. We must let the business live on and expand in every new generation 4. Develop a passion for buying us real estate with the view of ‘as an investment for the next generations’ 5. Encourage wise spending; we spent too much on none valuable things, blinging with depreciable items are not wealth. The most expensive vehicle depreciates. Such items should be used for business development. Yes, yes, i want a nice vehicle too but this should not be at the expense of self and community development. 6. For those who can, adopt a child or youth whose social context is not life giving and not developing a all-round African human being. In other words ‘you who have’ use it to help the other to ‘get’ 7. Be present to your family, be present to your family, be present to you family. Invest time and effort in securing their future. 8. Learn about African foods, languages, places, religions, dances. Contextualize what you were taught in the west but seeking to appreciate the richness of Africa before slavery, during and after. Develop in the mind the importance of ‘going back’ trying and visit the continent in real and or by using google earth, youtube, etc. 9. Finally, build a passion and a love for Africa and all its children around the globe in your heart and mind. The wisdom and experience gained from these can never equate the petty cash we know ‘they’ will want to give Africa and its children as an act of reparation. The damage done cannot be repaired by the hand of the world which inflicted the curse in the first place by giving petty cash for the repair. If they are serious and if Africans are serious these are the ways to consider what is it hand. As Africa come into new untapped natural resources the outside world are already moving in, china, india, America, Europe are all moving in to exploit these new natural resource our people will be used to do the extracting as the enslaved were used. Who will be the ones to blame? The greedy Africans with selfish motive who open the door and let them in for yet another time to enslave us. To forget is to regret, to regret in to suffer when it is already too late. youtube/watch?v=j-X9JkM9Bgo A Emancipation Prayer’ Give us the lord the guts to open up our hearts and minds to do what we must for authentic life-giving change to come at the work of our hands, minds and conversion of our mentalities. Give us the guts to love ourselves passionately and fearlessly. Feed us with everything you’ve got so that our gut will be brave and strong to face the problems which keep us imprisoned. Fill us with your holy spirit to be empowered to rewrite our social, political, economical, spiritual, and family life scripts. Give us the guts to allow you to help us to break the racial curses on the African peoples. Unite us in your sacred will of life, love, peace and happiness. This we ask our you our creator, amen youtube/watch?v=_71MR8Fd6oY youtube/watch?v=_62KtFC4xMk Have a reflective, study filled emancipation observance experience Sankofa spirit to all of you When change come in retrospect you would know that it came because you actively worked for it to come God bless Yours in life Sankofa Michael francis obama tuzinde Emancipation observance 2013 youtube/watch?v=ZJg5Op5W7yw youtube/watch?v=dnFipFkWLgI note: all downloads where done on 30th july 2013 online
Posted on: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 18:49:58 +0000
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