Black Consciousness Stalwart, Ntate Kgalushi 'Drake' Koka Speaks to RasTafari Community

A speech by Ntate Kgalushi 'Drake' Koka delivered on the 07th November 1996 during the celebrations of the Anniversary of the Coronation of His & Her Imperial Majesties, Haile Selassie I & Itegu Menen of Ethiopia.

This was also during the historic visit to Azania by Ancient Elder Congo Watu (Ras Boanerges) to Marcus Garvey RasTafari Community in 1996.

Ntate Koka spoke about the Afrikan values of UBUNTU and its relationship with the Afrikan personality and the broader Afrikan liberation.

He also spoke about the significance of the RasTafari Movement, as well as the critical importance of decolonizing the education system in Azania (SA).

Decolonizing the Education System in Azania: The Case for an Africentrik Epistemic Revolution

A presentation by Thando Sipuye at the Fort Hare Centenary conference on the Enduring Legacies of Pan Africanism & African Nationalism held at the Steve Biko Centre in Ginsberg from the 28th - 30th September 2016.


The title of Thando Sipuye's talk was 'Decolonizing the Education System in Azania: The Case For An Africentrik Epistemological Revolution'.


Read the full speech here:
Full Speech by Thando Sipuye - Decolonizing the Education System in Azania

Black House Kollective - Black Talks - #FeesMustFall Activists

ONLY PRIVILEGE SPEAKS: WHITE RACISM & BLACK HYPOCRISY (AROUND HAIR POLITICS) IN SOUTH AFRICA

By Thando Sipuye

Privilege and proximity to whiteness speaks. A position of privilege and relative proximity to whiteness not only gives you a voice to speak in this country, it also provides you with an inter-national audience, ministerial interventions, public outrage, debates and dialogues. And of course, you form part of the ‘national narrative’.

The recent protest by young Black girls at the Pretoria Girls High published on (social) media is a clear case in point here. This incident exposes not only the totality of white racism in South Africa, but also the disguised hypocrisy of us Black people in dealing with it.

Yearly in South Africa children of the RasTafari community and Black children who keep dreadlocks for spiritual purpose like Intwaso or Ukuthwasa are rejected, chased away or suspended from (township & rural) schools for their dreadlock hairstyles – which forms part of their spiritual-cultural heritage and philosophical worldviews.

Yet, dololo (absolutely no) Black outrage against this clearly age-old racist practise which can be traced back to the advent of Black enslavement and the later arrival of European Missionaries, and their subsequent demonization of everything Afrikan.

The stories of rejected, chased away or suspended Rasta children and those who keep dreadlocks because of Intwaso or Ukuthwasa have been published and circulated widely on all (social) media platforms in this country; and even published in the country’s prominent newspapers, tabloids, radio and even television news.

These stories of dread exclusion and humiliation are also well recorded in some documents and reports of the Department of Education, South African Human Rights Commission, Equal Education and the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Commission).

Earlier in January this year, the Principal of SBC Serumula in Tembisa expelled Grade 9 student Palesa Mailane from school because she has dreadlocks. Palesa had been admitted to the school the previous year in September, and the principal immediately instructed her parents to cut off her hair.

Palesa’s parents replied informing the school’s Principal that Palesa was a RasTafari child and that keeping dreadlocks was part of her spiritual-cultural tradition (religion). The parents sought help from Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi’s office, which assisted in getting the girl reinstated to school.

But the Department of Education subsequently asked the parents to prove the religious significance of the teenager’s dreadlocks, and later said that Palesa’s dreadlock hairstyle did not comply with the schools code of conduct.

17 year old Anathi Marhe from Mfuleni High School also suffered the same systematic and sanctioned racism earlier this year on 13 January when his class teacher told him that boys are not allowed to have dreadlocks and he should cut them.

Consequently, when Anathi told the teacher he was RasTafari and that dreadlocks were part of his religious faith, the teacher shouted back at him: “we don’t teach RasTafarians in the school, you will bring bad influence”. This teacher literally refused to even teach the class while Anathi was in attendance.

Then there’s the stories of Odwa Sityata, Grade 8 pupil from Joe Slovo Engineering High School in Khayelitsha - suspended because of his dreadlocks; Afrika Nazo from the Alpha and Omega Christian Academy - chased away from school for wearing dreadlocks for cultural reasons; Yola Makasi Grade R learner from King’s College - denied learning because of his dreadlocks; Sikhokhele Diniso, Grade 10 pupil from Siphamandla High School in Khayelitsha - told not to come back to school because of his dreadlocks; Palesa Radebe from Leseding Technical School - routinely taken out of class and seated at the staffroom while her peers got tuition because she has dreadlocks. After Palesa was reinstated to school, the School Governing Body initiated a protest saying there would be no learning as long as Palesa Radebe attended classes.

These stories are countless and were widely published on prominent (social) media. So why was the general Black public silent about the racism and humiliation suffered by these Black children in township and rural schools?  And in turn, what is it about the recent incident at Pretoria Girls High School that warranted the kind of outrage and reactions we’ve seen on (social) media from Black people?

The only reasonable answer is that Black people are hypocrites and selective when it comes to dealing with racism-white supremacy. I’m not a Marxist, but perhaps this is a matter of class and privilege. The higher up the ladder of socio-economic privilege, and the relatively closer you are to whiteness and the status thereof, the more audible you are in a society that ensures the permanent silence and invisibility of the underprivileged and excluded Black majority.

Or perhaps, as Steve Biko once stated, this Black silence and the general non-responsiveness to these stories is an explicit manifestation of the deep-seated, internalized self-hatred Black people suffer from; a white induced psychosis of some sort.

But Christine Qunta argues in her book ‘Why We Are Not A Nation’ that the condition Black people find themselves in is much more complex than self-hatred, arguing that “self-hatred is only one part of a complex set of symptoms of a psychological disorder that has become chronic throughout the Black world”.

The general response of some Black people to these stories has been to condemn the parents of these children, vilify them for backwardness or being ‘dirty’, or try to ‘advise’ (actually instruct) them to cut off the hair of their children in order for them to access the basic human right of education. In all the above stated cases most Blacks sided with the schools, slurring at both parents and children for breaking schools ‘codes of conduct’.

What is it about Afrikan hair, Afrikan hairstyles and Afrikan culture that breaks school ‘rules’ and ‘codes of conduct; do the kinks and knots on Afrikan hair bind and incapacitate Afrikans from thinking?

Historically all Afrikan slaves, male or female, were shaved bald by the slave-master. And later, all converts to Christianity - people who had denounced their own culture, history and philosophical worldviews and accepted the concept of a white Jesus and the religion of their oppressors - were shaved bald and given new European clothes to wear, and European (Christian) names.

And history also records that the first schools in this country were colonial schools established by white missionaries for the training of the newly converted Blacks. Today, most township and rural schools continue functioning in the tradition of colonial schools and institutions, negating indigenous knowledge systems, systematically oppressive to Afrikan children and Afrikan culture.

All of this was done by Europeans as part of the process of breaking down the Afrikan, completely severing the spiritual and cultural ties that consciously bound them to their ancestral memory and identity.

Thus, many Black schools today accept, and even encourage, that Black pupils use dangerous hair-straightening chemicals called ‘relaxers’ on their hair to look ‘beautiful’. And at worst, these schools systematically force Black boys and girls to completely shave their heads bald as a rule, like prisoners really.

These schools really operate more like prisons, where Black students are treated like incarcerated inmates and the teachers are the wardens who keep them in check, ‘disciplined’. And here ‘disciplined’ means in line with and obedience to whiteness. This is the same slave-and-master relationship training which begins at a very early age, reserved strictly for Black children.

And yet, there has never been any outrage from the general Black public against these institutional and structural racist practises, ‘rules’ and ‘codes of conduct’ which are administrated and enforced by Black principals and teachers (in township and rural schools).

But when children from privileged white schools located in the lofty suburbs of Pretoria speak, when children situated in close proximity to whiteness raise their voices, the whole nation erupts in public outrage, protests, debates and dialogues about racism and aesthetics in South African schools. Why?

The RasTafari Movement has always articulated the Afrocentric position that the dreadlocks on their hair bear a spiritual and political significance – a revolutionary symbol of cultural resistance against societal imposition of Eurocentric beauty standards and styles as the basic norm.

Traditional Afrikan spirituality and people who keep dreadlocks because of Intwaso or Ukuthwasa also articulate a clear position about the spiritual significance of dreadlocks in their cultural expression and communion with Ancestors.

But these voices have remained largely marginalized, ridiculed, muted, silenced, unheard by neither the government, department of education, nor the Black public that is now erupting against what has recently happened at Pretoria Girl’s High. As though some Black people’s hair (afro) is more important or better than other Black people’s hair (dreadlocks).

Christine Qunta clarifies for us that: “if skin colour is the important signification of beauty in a white supremacist world view, the real dividing line between those who are ‘the chosen’ and those who are not is hair”.

While we support fully the struggle of the young Black girls at Pretoria Girls High in principle and solidarity, we must however realize that there is a degree to which some Black people are complicit (consciously or subconsciously) in the continued administration, enforcement, reinforcement, defence and perpetuation of structural and institutional racism, racist attitudes and racist stereotypes against other Black people in this country.

These are the kind of Blacks that Steve Biko said needed to be reminded of their complicity in the crime of allowing themselves to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of their birth.

All in the name of advancing outdated ‘progressive’ white-supremacist, colonial and neo-colonial school ‘rules’ and ‘codes of conduct’.

FEZEKILE NTSUKELA KUZWAYO ‘KWEZI’ – FACELESS, UNKNOWN & EXILED: SALUTE TO THE FOUR BRAVE BLACK WOMBMEN FOR REMINDING US

I’ve just watched the video of the four brave and courageous Black wombmen (including Simamkele Dlakavu and Naledi Chirwa – don’t know the names of the other two) who restored the memory of Zuma’s rape of sista Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo (Kwezi) about a decade ago.

More than anything, I was very disturbed by the active display of Zuma’s body-guards (old, ugly, terrifying Black men) snatching their placards, pushing and shoving the four sistaz – with anger all over their faces. For the first time, that was just a slap of patriarchy right in my face.

Something just rose up inside me and I boiled with anger seeing this bullshit. Those wombmen posed no security threat to Zuma or any of the shameful “dignitaries” there.

Why did those old, ugly, terrifying Black men (body-guards) push, shove and heckle at our sistaz when they posed no threat to Zuma’s body; what exactly were these old, ugly, terrifying body-guards protecting/concealing?

Protecting a RAPIST and concealing RAPE.

These four sistaz had a silent and non-violent protest against a violation of a Black wombman. Yet they were removed violently by men, all this happening during so-called Woman’s Month, few days before Woman’s Day.

If these four wombmen were treated with such violence infront of cameras on national television, imagine the kind of violence Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo (Kwezi) experienced at the hands of ANC cronies and members who wanted to protect Zuma at all costs.

Imagine the kind of violence that forces a wombman, a rape victim to flee her own motherland, her own country to be exiled in a foreign land. This Black wombman, forced to run from home to a whiteboy’s land, Amsterdam, to be comforted and supported by whites.

This week, in celebration of Women’s Month, the ANC will be hosting cocktails talking about wombmen this! wombmen that!

Yet, the ANC Women’s League and women leaders in the ANC, like Bathabile Dlamini, condemned these four brave Queens who reminded us of sista Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo (Kwezi), protecting the rapist pimp Zuma.

The ANC Women’s League is like the mother who refuses to listen to her daughter when she tells her that “mama, daddy raped me”, and instead lashes out at her – protecting the rapist dad.

Jacob Zuma raped Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, the daughter of his late friend Judson Kuzwayo, his fellow prisoner on Robben Island who died in exile.

It’s quite interesting to note how Fezekile’s name was changed to ‘Kwezi’ – to protect her identity - and she remains faceless, unknown, exiled in a white foreign land, Amsterdam. Comforted and supported by whites there.

Zuma and the ANC would wish that she dies in exile, just like her father, Zuma’s buddy.

Damn, my Black Sisters, I now overstand your pain better. We really need each other.

#RememberKwezi

#FezekileNtsukelaKuzwayo

ANCIENT EGYPT (KEMET) IS NOT THE LAND OF SLAVERY

By Thando Sipuye

"The history of Black Afrika will remain suspended in air and cannot be written correctly until Afrikan historians dare to connect it with the history of Egypt" - Dr Cheik Anta Diop

The Bible demonizes ancient Egypt (Kemet) as a land of slavery where the so-called Jews were supposedly enslaved for 400 years before their emancipation by Moses. As a result, many Black people today have a negative perception of Egypt as a land of slavery and a place ruled by a ruthless King named Pharaoh (this was a title of all Egyptian Kings & Queens).

Majority of our Black people think that there was one single ruler named 'Pharaoh'. They don't know that hundreds of Black Pharaohs ruled ancient Egypt (Kemet) for thousands of years before any European human or civilization ever existed.

Black people have been tricked into hating Egypt (Kemet) and loving Rome.

Yet ancient Egypt (Kemet) & Ethiopia (Kush) are the original seats and cultural base of Afrikan civilizations, just as Greece & Rome are to Europe. Europains looted artifacts from Egypt (Kemet), Ethiopia (Kush) and thorughout the continent and destroyed Afrikan civilizations.

All Europain cities, libraries, archives and museums are filled with artifacts stolen and looted from Afrika. All the architecture of all the world's parliaments, universities, courts, museums and libraries are modeled after the ancient Temples in Luxor and Karnak in Egypt (Kemet).

All Europain philosophers - from Plato, to Socrates, to Democritus, to Pythagoras, to Thales, to Herodotus, to Hippocrates etc. - were all students in ancient Egypt (Kemet) for more than a decade each. The very foundations of all the disciplines taught in all universities in the world (science, medicine, mathematics, physics, chemistry, sociology, astronomy, theology etc..) originated in ancient Egypt (Kemet) and Ethiopia (Kush).

"The history of Black Afrika will remain suspended in air and cannot be written correctly until Afrikan historians dare to connect it with the history of Egypt" - Dr Cheik Anta Diop

This call of Dr Cheik Anta Diop to Afrikan historians remains critical today.

AFRIKANS ARE THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE OF PLANET EARTH, SAYS DR JULIUS GARVEY, SON OF MARCUS GARVEY

By Thando Sipuye

Dr Julius Garvey, youngest son of the Most Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, urged Black people in Azania to pride themselves in their glorious history which predates all human civilizations, in order to deal with their many challenges today.

“Afrika is the most important continent in the history of humanity and civilization”, Garvey said.

He was speaking on Afrikan Liberation Day (25 May) during the event of the 10^th annual Robert Sobukwe Memorial Lecture at the Steve Biko Centre in Ginsberg, King William’s Town.

The event was truly a transcendental historic moment, a convergence of not only sacred bloodlines (Garvey, Sobukwe & Biko) in Afrikan history, but also a moment of critical reflection on the contemporary relevance of Pan-Afrikanism.

Dr Garvey’s Lecture, titled “Introduction to a Pan-Afrikan Worldview”, began with an acknowledgement and invocation of the names of Pan-Afrikan revolutionaries who contributed in the fight against slavery, colonialism and apartheid like Marcus Garvey, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Mangaliso Sobukwe and Bantu Biko.

These are the Afrikan freedom fighters whose zealous work culminated in the establishment of the Organization of Afrikan Unity (OAU), founded in Ethiopia to champion the cause of the continental liberation and unity of Afrikan people. Afrikan Liberation day commemorates this historic mission.

“Pan-Afrikanism links us together as Afrikan people in terms of lived experience, over thousands and thousands of years”, Garvey said.

Dr Garvey spoke about the important role of history in the development and civilization of any people, expounding significant achievements of the great Nile Valley civilizations of ancient Nubia, Ethiopia (Kush) and Egypt (Kemet) as examples of Afrikan historical greatness and cultural techno-scientific and political advancements.

“The current Monogenetic theory of human origins supported by archaeological and DNA evidence suggest that original Man was Black, born on the Afrikan continent, remained there for 150 000 years during which time he migrated within the continent and then 40 000 years ago he migrated outside the continent to Europe and Asia via the straits of Gibraltar and the Sinai Peninsula”.

In line with Cheik Anta Diop’s thesis on the Afrikan origins of humanity, Dr Garvey further explained that “Afrikans were the first people to see the light of day 200,000 years ago, began populating other continents 40,000 years ago and civilizing them 10,000 years ago”.

Dr Garvey gave a detailed account of the ontological and epistemological aspects of the early Arab and later European enslavement and colonization of the minds of Afrikan people.

This includes the persistent intellectual and political characterization by white Egyptologists of the Egyptian (Kemetic) civilization as either Arabic, European or extra-terrestrial. Not Black.

What Dr Garvey was referring to here is the tragedy of the falsification of Afrikan consciousness perpetuated through the systematized and institutionalized reinforcement of Eurocentric stereotypes and worldviews about Afrika.

He further touched on what the Afrikan historian Dr Chancellor Williams’ book calls the ‘Destruction of Black Civilization’, giving a detailed historic account of ruthless invasions, war, killings, burning of libraries and the subsequent obliteration of ancient Afrikan civilizations by foreigners - from the early invasions of Black Egypt by the Hyksos Shepherds, to the Maafa (Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade) and Leopold-Bismarck’s colonialism.

These Afrikan civilizations were destroyed as part of the overall project of white supremacy, to perpetuate the psychotic idea of black inferiority and white superiority.

“The rupture in Afrikan society was thorough and in all areas: economic, political, social, religious and philosophical. This cultural imperialism was designed to produce permanent dependency and a conviction of inferiority. The trinitarian assailants were Christianity, capitalism and culture”.

Hence even today, in the so-called ‘post-independence’ era, Afrika remains highly dependent on Eurocentric ideas, thoughts, philosophies, theologies, political and socio-economic systems. As Dr Garvey put it, “we have become incarcerated in a mindset that guarantees us a destiny of dependence and suboptimal performance”.

Fiercely decrying the deplorable state of Afrikan people in the world today, Garvey further highlighted that “the hegemony of Europe over Afrikan people has been systematized under the institutions of the U.N., the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and the international court at the Hague. This has given us neo-colonialism, globalization of the economic system and Europeanization of the consciousness of the world, i.e., domination of the world by Europe, its people and its ideas”.

Dr Julius Garvey elaborated that this systematization of European hegemony had resulted in the current state of neo-colonialism, globalization of the economic system and the Europeanization of the consciousness of the world.

He then delved into the issue of Afrikan epistemology, ontology, intuition and wisdom showing how pre-colonial Afrikans perceived themselves and their reality as interconnected with the divine universal consciousness or God. The Greeks never understood this, hence their beliefs that logic and reason were the primary functions of the intellect.

Dr Garvey dismantled the hyperbolic concept of a so-called ‘European civilization’, quoting Matthew Arnold when he said: ‘civilization is the humanising of man in society’.

He explained that “what Europe has produced is not this, but a technological civilization based on the values and philosophy of scientific materialism”.

It is this inhumane technological civilization based on scientific materialism, devoid of spirituality, coupled with the exultation of logic and reason as supreme functions of the intellect, which continuously informs the European socio-economic, cultural and political ethos.

White supremacy is thus embedded and coded in the philosophical, ideological, religious, economic, social, intellectual and techno-political constructs of Europe and its thinkers; it dehumanizes Afrikan people, legitimizes and camouflages itself under the guise of universalism, progress, development and advancement.

Dr Julius Garvey explained that “our history, the longest in the world and the most glorious…gave us the basis for civilized living”.

He explained that Afrikans of the ancient world originated civilization, writing, spirituality, culture, philosophy, sociology, mathematics and the sciences of medicine, astronomy, alchemy, physics and chemistry.

“From Kemetic Egypt and Nubia human civilization moved westward and gave rise to the Dogon, the Yoruba, the Ashanti, the Bambara, the Fon and great states such as Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Kanem-Bornu and the Hausa states”.

However, the dominant Eurocentric discourses and narratives subjugate Afrikan people, subvert Afrikan history and obliterate Afrikan consciousness – colonizing our minds.

There is nothing civilized or civilizing in any of the philosophical, ideological, religious, economic, social, intellectual and techno-political constructs of white supremacy.

Garvey concluded his powerful Lecture by urging Afrikan people not only to study their proper history, but to also return to what he calls ‘Afrikan Humanism’, an Afrikan-centred philosophical worldview projected and animated in our social relations as Ubuntu, Moyo, Maat or Ujaama.

“What is needed is a hermeneutic that comprehensively looks at our traditional time-honoured ontology, epistemology, values, cultural morays and lived historical experiences and interprets the messages and meanings that will allow us to reconstitute the dynamism of Afrikan culture in the forward flow of history”.

The ultimate battle is for the minds of our people.