We Exist Because We're Stubborn (Part 1)

On the 20th day of Januray, 2020 during the Umusamo experience while we paid homage to our ancestors in one of the return days when we were returning to different places of our Afrkan people, we had a dialogue at the residence, Wakanda Village with a number of scholars from different African enlightnment spaces. The king himself eBukhosini Solutions co-director Dr. Baba Buntu guided us through the engagements and indeed you could tell that he was from the house of royalty. 

All the kings and queens in that room were not willing to take these things lying down. They had that Garveyism in them, it was evident in their words and in all their works. 

One of the kings DR. BABUUZIBWA MUKASA LUUTU while introducing a fellow king whose lineage and belief system rotates around the cow, he referred to him as "a colleague who studied in the Soviet Union with one mind and came back with the same mind. They failed to capture him, they failed to control his mind". Those were the kinds of minds in the room. The king Prof. Babuuzibwa was referring too was pursuing his Doctorate and yet his education had done no damage to his Afrikan thinking whatsoever and this went without saying, while most of the people in the room were professors, there thinking was clear. 

Professor B.M. Luutu is the Vice-Chancellor of Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan University (MPAU) in Uganda, an Executive Director of Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Research Institute, and a Distinguished Fellow of the DST/ NRF Research Chair in Development Education based at the University of South Africa (UNISA). He has also contributed to research and work initiatives with Canadian and United Nation organization focused on issues of reconciliation, peace, post-war recovery and development in different African regions.

Professor Babuuzibwa in addressing the question of restorativity and African states independence that had been raised by Teboga Buntu, the queen and co-director at eBukhosini Solutions, he focused his answer on South Africa in particular while relating the question to the whole of Africa. 

"The question of independence in Africa is byoye byanswa. 'Wings of an ant' for most states" He stated, "Our first attempt at restorativity should be our ability to tell our story in a way that doesn't kill our confidence. Without land, what's independence in the first place?  Expropriation of land without compensation is what should be done in South Africa". 

This explains how the struggle for independence was nothing other than the struggle for land and this best explains why indeed for most African States independence is nothing more than wings of an ant. When some of those issues are addressed, it would be obvious that the Arikan governance of doing things would come into play and it would avail the Afrikan people an opportunity to  bring in what is missing. The post colonial adventure that we've is that even that that has not been taken away from us, we throw away ourselves willingly. And for most African States whose lands were not taken away and they've no settlers on them, they've settlers in their minds, in their heads. And that is the danger with Afrcan independence. For the most part Africa was never fully independent. They controlled our minds through mission school education. Even the privately owned schools are molded in relation to mission schools. 

Left to Right: Moses Nathan Muhang, Dr. Kenalemang Kgoroeadira, the Pan Afrikanist who understands the Abrahamists to the core, Papa Tommy Kgoroeadira, the good Doctor PhD in a red shirt whose belief system rotates around a cow, Tebogo Buntu, Justice Patrick Tabaro, Prof. Babuuzibwa Luutu and Siyabonga Lembede

 

Retired High Court Judge, Justice Tabaro and Chairperson of the Makerere University Staff Appeals Tribunal on explaining why we need to organise ourselves as the Afrikan people, he stated,

 "In the search of quest for justice, all humanity organises itself" 

Justice Tabaro is the Chairperson of the Makerere University Staff Appeals Tribunal. He served in the judiciary for over 36 years, he is a former Constitutional Court Judge, Acting Principal Judge and President of the High Court as well as serving as chairman of various Public Commissions of Inquiry and Specialized Courts such as the Non- performing Assets Recover Trust (NPART). Justice Tabaro is an ardent reader on Africology and is a regular contributor on the subject in the Sunday Vision Column entitled, African Heritage. He is widely published in academic and non-academic periodicals and chairs the University Council of Marcus Garvey Pan African University. He is the immediate former patron of Makerere Law Society (his Alma Mater) which honoured him with the award Order of Merit. He is also the founding chairman and now chairman of Uganda Historical Memory, an NGO that documents the country’s historical memories. He is also a decorated national hero having been bestowed the Nalubaale Medal by the H.E President Yoweri Museveni for his contribution to the struggle against dictatorship in Uganda. He farms tea, coffee, and practices horticulture in his free time.

He believes that a community without justice digs its way to anarchy and decline. 

Left to right: Moses Nathan Muhangi standing alongside Dr. Baba Buntu after a mentorship session from the good Doctor

 A number of issues came up during the engagement and questions of restorativity were sound and clear. What happens when you get occupied and how do you recover from occupation. Is it even possible to restore oneself when they're all occupied? Occupation can be physical but it can also be mental and it comes with so many other aspects of occupation. And that got me wondering,  what world would we be living in if we were incapable of seeing or judging people in racial terms. While we might have the willingness to do that, are our oppressors also willing to see us as such? And these questions make one thing clear that freedom is never a given. If we judged people as either good or bad: capitalists, socialists or communists;backward and reactionary; enlightened and progressive; never Black or white-except as straight descriptive terms. Would the world be any different if one's enemies were the people who served what one doesn't believe in and one's allies were those people who one agrees with in terms of a particular world view whether they agreed on everything or not. 

Would this be a jaundiced view of human beings or is it even possible? Would it make the world a better place or has it even ever been practiced since the history of humanity? 

Ancient Africans lived so, not as an idea but in their daily lives. While most today might have strayed from that, history tells that African culture has survived as a form of struggle, that the African people are a people who have embraced the politics of survival because tradition is the politics of survival. The African spiritual question is authentic, it is a question of sustainability. And the African idea of God is the authentic one. It is the idea of UBUNTU, I'm because you're, you're cause I'm. And this is an idea that we must carry forward for the survival of not just the African people but humanity. This should be our spiritual and our ideological nature as an authentic African expression.

Left to right: The good Doctor whose belief system rotates around a cow, Justice Patrick Tabaro and Prof. Babuuzibwa Mukasa Luutu.

One of the kings whose articulacy on African affairs would make one alert tackled a number of issues where Abrahamists played us at a game of chess through a quiet concession amongst themselves. He explained how the problem in the diet is one of the reasons there is a raise in diseases like autism. He explained how you can't reconstruct an extended family system which is the principal of a clan system without first addressing what is in peoples minds. He alerted us about how Abrahamism is not a system of compromise, but rather a system of compression and he elaborated how this system has managed to manipulate our focus through diversions.

"A right for a South African man to wear a dress is created as a diversion." He stated. He explained how one of our greatest challenges and questions today are our abilities to find common ground which is not Abrahamism and which is not modern day politicking and then not fight with them because if you don't fight them, they will try and create a fight with you through provocation. 

Dr. Baba Buntu paused to us a question, "What system can we create even when the colonial design of education is going down?"

Prof. Babuuzibwa explained, "If you have been classified as having done well in school, then it means a particular damage has been done onto you."

The Abrahamist colleague further elaborated how in the 1940's chicken eating spread and a number of Afrikan families took drastic measures like not sending their girls to school because these families didn't want a particular knowledge to be erased from the community through girl education. 

Looking back at that day, most of the Pan Afrikanists in that room on that day at wakanda village are different from most of the Pan Afrikanists that I know and those that are out there. These Pan Afrikanists do not fit no western label. These are kings and queens who have the inner resources to be themselves in a world controlled and dominated by coloniality and whiteness. These Pan Afrikanists are free of any dependence of Marxism, socialism, communism or capitalism. These Pan Afrikanists are free of any of these isms. They were no dependents of any of those  western and conceptual west ideologies. Like Dr. Baba Buntu refers to his works and those works at eBukhosini solutions, "We exist not because we have the means and the resources, we exist because we are stubborn". Indeed, these Pan Afrikanists existed because they are stubborn.