The Blackness In Me

By Sipho Malefane

Following the momentous events of the 20th century, such as the abolition of slavery, the defeat of colonialism in Asia and the African continent, the world, post the Cold War and Apartheid, is a different place, or is it? The Author, Sipho Malefane, takes us on a journey of interrogation and introspection on what does it mean to be a black in the 21st century, not only for him as a native South African, but for black folks on the continent and in the diaspora. His search for answers led him into the historical, the geographical, the philosophical and spiritual labyrinth.

 

His poetic gifting is evident in this well-articulated masterpiece that leaves the reader in no doubt that the blackness in him and others is worth understanding, embracing and certainly worth celebrating.

 

Sipho Malefane grew up in South Africa during the struggle against Apartheid. His perspectives were greatly influenced by the political and socio-economic times. He was a young political activist when the winds of change swept across the newly democratic nation, its euphoria coloring everything rosy. The similarities that lend themselves to most former colonies and persons that have lived in physical or mental captivity were not lost on him despite the distance, race group, or simply the passing of time. His curiosity took him into both chartered and uncharted waters as he sought to explore the layers of blackness. He says writing the book is far from being a destination, it is an on-going journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sipho Malefane
• Release date: May 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781990901294

Book preview

THE BLACKNESS IN ME

From an unbearable bleakness of being to a greatness of being

Deconstructing Racism. Confronting the distortions of being Black.  Agitating for Decolonisation.

Sipho Malefane

Published by:

Ssali Publishing House

www.ssalipublishing.com

Proudly Serving Africa’s Distinguished Scholars

ISBN 978-1-990901-29-4

© Sipho Malefane 2020

Editor: Rose Ssali | [e-mail]

Cell: [phone]

Printed by in South Africa

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced mechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying, nor be distributed in any form or style, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

IT IS IN THE PASSING of the night that the break of dawn beckons the sun to shine on a new day. I look not to a new day for my salvation but to the fall of dusk to usher in the dark of night for when the moon rises, the promise of a new day shall be fulfilled.

Dedicated to Dr Gomolemo Mokae

The Author

Following the momentous events of the 20th century, such as the abolition of slavery, the defeat of colonialism in Asia and the African continent, the world, post the Cold War and Apartheid, is a different place, or is it? The Author, Sipho Malefane, takes us on a journey of interrogation and introspection on what does it mean to be a black in the 21st century, not only for him as a native South African, but for black folks on the continent and in the diaspora. His search for answers led him into the historical, the geographical, the philosophical and spiritual labyrinth. 

His poetic gifting is evident in this well-articulated masterpiece that leaves the reader in no doubt that the blackness in him and others is worth understanding, embracing and certainly worth celebrating.

Sipho Malefane grew up in South Africa during the struggle against Apartheid. His perspectives were greatly influenced by the political and socio-economic times. He was a young political activist when the winds of change swept across the newly democratic nation, its euphoria coloring everything rosy. The similarities that lend themselves to most former colonies and persons that have lived in physical or mental captivity were not lost on him despite the distance, race group, or simply the passing of time. His curiosity took him into both chartered and uncharted waters as he sought to explore the layers of blackness. He says writing the book is far from being a destination, it is an on-going journey.

Table of Contents

Tribute to Alkebu-lan

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1:

THE MEANING AND ORIGINS OF RACISM

CHAPTER 2:

FORGOTTEN HISTORY, LOST HERITAGE

CHAPTER 3:

BLACK AND WHITE RELATIONS

CHAPTER 4:

THE POST COLONIAL EXPERIENCE

CHAPTER 5:

THE HISTORICAL AND STRUCTURAL DIALECTICS OF RACISM

CHAPTER 6:

SOUTH AFRICA’S POLITICAL ECONOMY

CHAPTER 7:

NEW FRONTIERS OF STRUGGLE

CHAPTER 8:

THE FALLACY OF NON-RACIALISM

CHAPTER 9:

TOWARDS A DECOLONISED SOCIETY

CHAPTER 10:

APROACHES TO DECOLONISATION

CHAPTER 11:

BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE 21ST CENTURY

CHAPTER 12:

BLACK UNITY AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY

ON REVOLUTION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Tribute to Alkebu-lan

Iam a descendant of the majestic Pangaea. My history is shrouded in mystery and mystic like the pyramids at Giza. Those who fear and misunderstand me refer to me as the Dark Continent. Mine is a story of contrasts and contradictions, of trials and tribulations, of triumphs and tragedies.

It is a tale of the Legends of the Great Civilisations of the dynasties of the Pharaohs of Egypt in the north and the Kushite Kingdoms of Nubia in the East, of the great Mali and Ashanti Empires on the West Coast, and the mystic Zimbabwe and Mapungubwe in the South.  It is a narrative of the heroic struggles of the continent’s people against colonial rule. I have bequeathed to the world a rich heritage of a renaissance era sadly interrupted and corrupted by the scourge of slavery that plunged the Asante and the Mandinka into the Dark Ages.  An era that saw man and beast traded and exchanged as common commodity.

The scholastic scripts, buried at Timbuktu, are a fragile yet indisputable testimony that links my people to this high culture you call civilisation.  It is a heritage to which the Nile crocodile and the Serengeti elephant, together with Mandela and Nkrumah, hold in joint custody with Khufu and the Queen of Sheba. The Sphinx bear a masonic testimony to the Architectural prowess of the ancients whose craftsmanship is the stuff of dreams. I am home to the mighty Nile whose adventurous spirit saw him meander through the unforgiving Sahara, as if forging a blueprint for the tenacious and brave struggles of the Maasai, the Khoi and the San.

The Kilimanjaro stands tall like a ladder to the heavens. A stubborn and imposing symbol of hope and resistance against the savagery of slavery and colonialism visited on my people.  The temperate Zambezi night is serenaded by the Owl, whose measured hoot is violently interrupted by the shrilling wails of the forest monkey, as if to signal a looming apocalypse.

My riches have inspired expeditions by the brave and adventurous, the inquisitive and the greedy, to enter my dark secrets in search of King Solomon’s mines.  I have given refuge to the menacing baboon and the marauding hyena. The Savannah grasslands have provided a picturesque background to the dramatic chase between the Cheetah and the Gazelle; a chase epitomised by the struggles of the colonised against the coloniser.

The Mapungubwe and the Zimbabwe ruins tell a story of a continent robbed of its pearls and stripped of its glory. The big hole in Kimberly and the dusty dumps of Johannesburg paint a stark picture of the aftermath of the relentless raids of centuries, yet the Maasai warriors stand tall and ever colourful. The echo of King Shaka’s fierce war cry reverberates across the rolling hills of the Zulu Kingdom, to warn us of the unfinished task of the struggle ahead.

I am a continent of contradictions.  Under my belly lies the Taung Child. I have given birth to humanity, yet Africans remain in the shadow of the human race. The heroics of Makana have given way to the tragedy of Marikana.  The beautiful scent of the Karoo flora has given way to the intoxicating and debilitating excesses of the opium of a bourgeois democratic order. The sweet sounds of the Parrot and the Crane whistle in the distance as the courageous ululating women continue to provide the soundtrack to the ebb and flow of daily strives and toils of African life.

I am buoyed by the vision of Nkrumah, the resourcefulness of the Queen of Sheba, the tenacity of the beautiful Cleopatra, the resilience of Lumumba, the intellect of Biko, the wisdom of Nyerere, the brilliance of Khufu and the irrepressible spirit of Mandela. I am inspired by the majesty of the Lion, the confidence of the eagle, the gentleness of the elephant and the agility of the fox.

I remain in awe of the mystery of the Pyramids of Egypt and Nubia, the towering heights of the Kilimanjaro and the vastness of ‘Mosi oa Tunya’ falls you have come to know as Victoria Falls.  The lightning and the thunder sound the clarinet of Fanon’s call for Decolonisation. The warm Benguela currents signal the coming of age of the vanquished. I remain steadfastly hopeful in the youth to deliver my promise of Freedom. If you seek me, I will reveal my secrets to you. I am Alkebu-lan the Black Continent.

PREFACE

There can never be respect by others without self-respect and self-appreciation; There can never be self-respect and self-appreciation without self-love; There can never be self-love without Black Consciousness

O

n a summer night in December 2013, my mind would not stop racing through stereotypes about being black; more pertinently, I could not help asking the question what it really meant to be black.  At that moment I came to a realisation that I had not previously given the question of my Blackness much thought. I stretched the horizons of my questioning and wondered what it really meant to be black in the 21st century, not only for South Africans but for black folks on the continent and the diaspora. I started scribbling my thoughts. The more I scribbled, the more my mind went racing through various aspects of black life in South Africa before and post liberation. The deeper I thought, the more incessant was my scribbling. The scribbling would inspire the writing of the book that I prefer to look at as a collection of standalone essays - there is a logical interconnectedness to the essays though.

The book has undoubtedly changed my outlook on the concept of race and the phenomenology of racism. Importantly, it has challenged me to relook my epistemological and ontological locus as a Blackman and more pertinently as an African. Essentially, it has forced me to deal with the question, what does it mean to be a Blackman? The use of ‘Blackman’ in the context of this book is not about gender but rather a general reference to Africans or black people, male or female. Where there is reference to black man and/or black woman as opposed to Blackman as in a one-word noun, it is just for purposes of emphasis and to demonstrate a pertinent point.

In some instances, the book refers to black and African interchangeably as it is the author’s view that all black people, despite their place of birth and irrespective of the citizenship they hold, whether they pledge allegiance to Africa or not, and notwithstanding their personal affinity to Africa or even lack thereof, are Africans, as Africa is the original home of the dark-skinned people the world refers to as black.

The essays that make this book are an interrogation of black life since the advent of slavery and (European) colonialism. The author posits that at the heart of the miserable lives of those that W. E. B. Du Bois, in ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ (1903), described as living under the veil, the black peoples of the world, is the problem of racism and not so much the Blackness of their skin. It is this racism that for centuries has been used as an excuse to hold black people in bondage and in subjugation to Whites for the exclusive benefit of Whites.

2017 marked sixty years since the Gold Coast attained independence from British rule in 1957 to set up the Republic of Ghana, and the first black country south of the Sahara, to be rid of colonial rule - after the Arabic African countries of Libya (1951), Egypt (1952), Tunisia and Morocco (1956).  A distinction is made to take cognisance of the artificial, yet historically and politically significant, Arab/Black Africa divide.

It is now 2019, a quarter of a century since settler colonialism in South Africa, one of the oldest colonies on the continent, was defeated to rid Blacks in South Africa of Apartheid and the African continent of the final vestiges of settler colonial rule – which lasted almost three hundred and fifty years.  It is 186 years since Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 and 156 years since Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the Emancipation Declaration in 1863, leading to the enactment of the 13th Amendment and the effective abolishment of slavery in the United States.

The events outlined were momentous not only for the meaning of their symbolism in welcoming black people into the family of humanity, but for their promise of a better life for black peoples across the face of the earth, i.e. people of African descent, whether they regard themselves as African American, Jamaican, Caribbean, Brazilian, Haitian or whatever nationality they have come to identify themselves with owing to birth. They are descendants of African slaves and therefore African, for our purpose of unfolding a black revolution, despite their varied history.

Black people, across the world, have made meaningful strides since the abolishment of slavery and the defeat of colonialism, yet, in many ways, still find themselves both metaphorically and veritably at the bottom of the pyramid of race hierarchy. Irrespective of where they find themselves on the four corners of the planet, black people are trailing far behind in the race of the artificially constructed ‘races’.

This book posits that the real reasons behind the injustices and woes suffered by black people are traceable to the system of capitalism, European colonialism and western civilisation. These three put together form the three-headed beast - the tripartite beast - that gave birth to the phenomenon that is racism. They are arsenals in the armoury of the exclusivist system of white supremacy designed for the conquest, domination and exploitation of black people.

The revival of Europe, through merchant capitalism and the industrial revolution, ushered Europeans out of the Dark Ages into their Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. The enlightenment spawned the so called ‘great philosophers’ who avowed the supremacy of reason over spirituality and regarded knowledge and philosophy as the preserve of Caucasians; along with the expansionist agenda of capitalist imperialism, and the need to conquer foreign markets and exploit resources from foreign lands through colonialism.

The racism of western philosophy as propagated by the racist Enlightenment philosophers was concocted for the justification of colonial conquest. It was purely for racist reasons, motivated by greed, that Enlightenment philosophers would appropriate reason as the exclusive preserve of the European man. They denigrated Africans as incapable of reason and philosophy and thereby denied Africans their ‘high culture’, their history, their heritage and their place at the table of humanity. It is this irrationality that gave birth to racism and white supremacy as we know it today.

Whilst the racism of the European philosophers was premised on irrationality, the three-headed beast of capitalism, European colonialism and western civilisation, has obliterated millions of African lives, brought untold misery and injustice and virtually destroyed African high culture or civilisation as we know it.  The crime capitalism and white supremacy committed, worse than the genocide of slavery and colonialism, was the virtual obliteration of the Blackman’s mind.  This book posits that Steve Biko was right after all. The antithesis to the thesis of white racism is Black Consciousness and strong black solidarity, and not Non-Racialism. Non-Racialism is the synthesis, an outcome of the negation of the thesis. It is what results after the antithetic moment has come to pass.

Non-Racialism, as a phenomenology of struggle, is in fact a fallacy, an obfuscation of the Blackman’s struggle. Black people need to unashamedly embrace Black Consciousness and reclaim the philosophy of Ubuntu/Botho if they are to come into their humanity. All black people across the world need to take up a new struggle for decolonisation if they are to defeat what Mogobe Ramose in ‘African Philosophy through Ubuntu’ (1999) calls ‘the hegemony of western philosophy’.

We need to embark on a renewed struggle for decolonisation so that we can embrace the Blackness in us and end our state of coloniality. We need to embrace the African philosophy of Ubuntu/Botho if we are to dispel the fallacy of the belief that ... ‘man is a rational animal’, was not spoken of the African.

For too long, black people have suffered the politics of localism and political correctness in the face of rampant global capitalism and the hegemony of the racist epistemology of western philosophy. For too long, black people have extended a hand of reconciliation and demonstrated patience whilst continuing to suffer unabating white domination in all spheres of their black lives.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The undermining of Black Consciousness and the engendering of Afro-pessimism, has delivered the Blackman to a cultural crossroads and left him with an identity crisis

T

his book is dedicated to and predicated on the provocative thoughts of the greatest interlocutors of black thought; those who ventured to step out of the veil to challenge conventional thinking; those who dared to tread with angels and to fly with eagles to challenge the racist paradigm of those who sought to relegate the Blackman to a common place of bleakness as the tripartite beast of capitalism, European colonialism and western civilisation had intended; those who made it their mission to liberate black people to become men and women who are not only free from the leg irons, but men and women who are mentally free to chart their path to self-determination, so that they can realise the greatness of their humanity as a people.

I owe the shaping of my thoughts to the great pioneering minds who traversed this unforgiving earth before me, starting with the pioneering brilliant writings of W. E. B. Du Bois and the industrious and visionary Marcus Garvey. I would have felt inadequate if not grounded in the knowledge that I have the rich body of work that the likes of Cheikh Anta Diop, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Dr. Yosef-Ben Jochannan and other great African scholars, to back me up. Those who took the narrow path away from conventional wisdom in the direction of truth, to dispel the myths of the universality of western civilisation, to reclaim our high cultures, our history, our philosophies, our identity and our humanity.

I am indebted to the unfettered youthful spirit that engendered the breath-taking revolutionary mind of that fantastic son of Martinique and Algeria, Frantz Fanon, the same spirit that infused life into the beautiful mind of our own Steve Bantu Biko. It would be a travesty to leave out the effervescent Malcom X, whose sharp-witted eloquence shaped my formative thoughts on Blackness in my late teens, and made me realise that I was black and living in a world dominated by the epistemology of whiteness.  I am grateful to the God that breathed life into the irrepressible philosophy of Ubuntu/Botho that Mogobe Ramose’s pen espouses so effortlessly.

Three years into the book, I had earned the title of the The typist by my wife. I am grateful for the encouragement I received from my family, my wife Baleseng, my sons Omphile and Kitso, my daughter Tshimologo, my mother, my sisters, my entire family and friends. I am grateful to the prayers from my spiritual head, Father Sikhalele Anthony Mdhluli. I am especially grateful to Father Boitumelo Molefe for his enthusiasm and for introducing me to the writings of Professor Mogobe Ramose, to whom I am immensely indebted for reawakening and refocusing my belief in Ubuntu. I wish to express gratitude to my son Kitso, for the original art concept for the book cover and to my friend Moss Mogoroe, for painting it so beautifully using oil on canvass. Thank you Ntate Alex Masango, for making this project possible. 

It has been a long and sometimes lonely slog, but the journey has been worth every day that turned into weeks, months and years. Six years later, I look back at this journey with courageous awe, as the topics and the essays that unfolded were sometimes daunting and overwhelming, as I ventured into the no man’s land of political incorrectness and rode rodeo with holy cows. Like the pioneering greats, I have chosen to take the narrow long path in search of truth and meaning, with the knowledge that I may be mistaken. I chose to take it, anyway, knowing that I may die the death of criticism, rather than die the death of immobility for fear of criticism.  I am deeply grateful to Rose Ssali and Ssali Publishers for agreeing to do this project. I could not thank her and the editing team enough for the hard work put into this book. Above all, I am grateful to God for the inspiration for this book and for the journey ahead.

INTRODUCTION

C:\Users\Moeen Boy\Desktop\New folder (3)\27-277398_line-clipart-dividing-line-design-png-transparent-png (1).png

Today Africans continue to suffer a psycho-cultural inferiority complex despite ‘independence’ and ‘freedom’. Only Black Consciousness can deliver us to our true humanity as Africans

I

t is more than two hundred years since the second slave rebellion of 1803 in Saint-Domingue, that saw the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte’s colonial forces, to set up the first Black Republic in Haiti in 1804, and mark the first decisive defeat of colonial rule by Blacks in the modern world - this following the first rebellion led by Toussaint Louverture in 1791.

It is just over two decades since Nelson Mandela, one of the world’s longest serving political prisoners, and arguably the most famous political prisoner of modern times, ascended the seat of government after the defeat of Apartheid,  as the first president of a democratic South Africa, the last country on the African continent under white colonial rule, and thereby completing the fight against European colonialism on the continent.

In 2008, one hundred and forty-five years since Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Declaration of 1863, Barak Obama achieved the unthinkable, to become the forty-fourth, and first black president, of one of the most powerful countries in the world, the United States of America (USA). These momentous events marked some of the greatest milestones in the black world, yet the spectre of racism continues to haunt Africans across the face of the globe. From Africa to Australia, from the Caribbean Islands to the Americas, black people continue to endure the wrath and humiliation of racial oppression and exploitation at the hands of white supremacists and the racist system of capitalism.

The abolition of slavery and the defeat of colonialism across the African continent, has neither freed black people from racism and economic exploitation, nor has it spared them the humiliation by white supremacists. The scars of centuries of slavery and colonial oppression run deep and continue to hold black people in the abyss of mental disrepair, with little promise of relief, to escape from the psychological damage whose effects on the minds of black people are far worse and run much deeper than the shackles and leg irons could master on the black skin.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote: -

‘The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line’

Bold in its intent, W. E. B Du Bois’ ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ is a poignant yet gentle appeal to the sense of white people, to acknowledge and to recognise the Blackman, as worthy and deserving of a seat at the table of humanity.  It is worth asking: whose problem is it anyway? The answer to the perennial conundrum of racism and white supremacy calls for the unmasking of the façade of colour, to expose an elaborate class system of capitalism and the white exclusivism on which it is anchored.

A socialist revolution was not the focus of what Du Bois was propagating, even though he rang the first alarm bells more than a century ago; yet he helped articulate the penetrating depths of racism and its impact on the lives of ‘ten thousand-thousand’ black people in America. ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ was a genuine and impassioned appeal and an attempt to ‘lift the veil’ and to show to white folks who black people really were and what lay at their hearts and their souls. But his appeal fell on ears of men and women deafened by greed, spiritually impoverished by the lust for riches, and blinded by their obsession with power and class. Du Bois was not to get through to the opaque sophistry and cunning determination of a white supremacist class society obsessed with maintaining and protecting white privilege through the proceeds derived from racist exclusivism, subjugation and exploitation of black people.

Europeans, driven by greed, conspired to shackle black people to bondage through the system of slavery. More tellingly, they stripped them of their humanity, denied them a claim to human dignity, and reduced them to a state of lesser beings. The abolishment of slavery removed the shackles from the legs and the manacles from the slave hands but left the mental straight jacket firmly rooted to ensure Blacks were perpetual slaves even in freedom.

The abolishment of slavery did not come about as a result of the defeat of the system by its black subjects. The system was morphed and continued in another guise, with the perpetual denial of civil liberties in the USA and the neo-enslavement of indigenous Africans through the balkanisation and colonisation of Africa.  In the USA, after the declaration of the abolishment of slavery, institutional racism and outright police brutality through racial profiling, has ensured that Blacks continue to play second fiddle to Whites in all areas of economic and social life.

The conspiracy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, followed by the colonisation of Africa by Europeans, is the worst holocaust committed by humans on fellow humans.  It is an open secret that historians of European descent, writing from a Eurocentric bias, used lies and distortions to sweep the history of Africans under the carpet. They conveniently expunged the true history of Africans from history literature, while text books continue to deceive the masses on all sides of the racial divide. The conspiracy denied Africans their pioneering and glorious place in the history of civilisations. Systematically, black people were denied their contribution as the architects of the Nile Valley civilization and refused their place in the annals of history. The conspiracy denied Blacks their architectural prowess as masons and craftsmen whose genius built the pyramids of Nubia and Egypt. In pursuit of preserving the ultimate lie of centuries, the lie of the origins of human civilisation, the conspiracy which unleashed tomb raiders who ran amok to rob the libraries, desecrate the pyramids and deface the sphinx and other artefacts in order to erase any trace of black origins from their creation, despite overwhelming evidence from the pyramid walls, the obelisks adorning the temples, as well as stolen papyri. To make good on the lie, the conspirators of white supremacy raided, plundered and razed the great universities of Timbuktu and Alexandria and removed tons of scholastic works which they reproduced as their own works of new knowledge, even contradicting their own historians. African scholastic excellence was plundered, muzzled and denied, giving birth to an illegitimate child named Greek Civilisation, the bedrock of western civilisation which is largely founded on falsehoods.

The political conspirators, acting on behalf of capitalist barons, collaborated with Christian missionaries to deride the Blackman’s methods of worship and declare them pagan and evil. Through the Bible and the gun, the missionaries pulled off the most successful and most persistent con-trick ever unleashed on the Africans. They proclaimed the message of a higher Christian God and succeeded in convincing Africans that their spirituality was not only inferior, but also evil. It is a tragedy to see that black people across the world continue to believe the lie and continue to live under the spell of Christianity. Black people are the original people whose spiritualism and methods of worship brought them in closer contact to the creator than any fervent worshiper could ever hope for. Yet, black people today, despise and frown upon their own spiritual worship as voodoo mambo jumbo, just as their oppressors had done in expressing their contempt for African practices of worship. In denying Blacks their spiritual practices, the colonisers denied them a connection to their creator and their creative spirit, thereby leaving them spiritually impoverished. It left them distant and alienated from their souls.

It is a great irony, that Africans have thrown in their lot with Christianity, that borrowed from the ancient African spiritual practices and beliefs, including the concept of the Immaculate Conception, and the Holy Trinity, the foundational doctrine upon which Christianity as a religion is premised.  Others have sought refuge in other foreign religions such as Islam.

Once the conspiracy had succeeded in denying the African his humanity, and stripping the Blackman of his rich and glorious culture and history, it had succeeded in rendering him psychologically inferior and continued in its design to strip him of his land, his minerals and his livestock to make him the perpetual dependent sub-human. There is no doubt that despite decades of self-rule, Blacks generally continue to suffer an inferiority complex even if they may vehemently deny it as they wallow in their new found national liberation, civil liberties and pseudo-independence.

Black people, around the world, did not take the onslaught of slavery, colonialism, racism and white supremacy lying down. They did not simply take it on the chin and offer the other cheek. They fought heroic battles and waged epic life and death struggles to resist slavery and colonialism, even at the cost of paying the ultimate price, through loss of life. As brutal and repugnant as the horror story of slavery and colonialism could be, it was no match for the gallant and enchanting narrative of the black struggle for emancipation.

Wherever black people have met with the brutal force and crude cruelty of white supremacy, and racial domination, be it in Africa or the Americas, they have clubbed together in revolt.  Faced with certain separation from the motherland during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, some braved the icy cold waters of the Atlantic and opted for freedom in death and plunged to