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 10th
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.
