Black History Month Commemoration In Mahikeng (2019)

Black History Month Commemoration (2019)

Curated by the Rastafari Community In Mahikeng

16th February 2019: Mahikeng Museum
 23rd February 2019: Montshiao Cultural Village

Written by Obakeng Jacobs and Itumeleng Gaseitsiwe

“I’ve got to where I am in Life not because of something I brought to the world but through something I found- the wealth of African culture (and history)”

-Nana Hugh Masekela

Background of the Black History Month Commemoration

The global Afrikan community as well as the  Rastafari communities and its sub structures have been commemorating Black History Month Events for many years since its inception, through organizing Festivals,  Socio-economic and Cultural gatherings, in order to create awareness of Afrikan Ourstory and achievements  among the public.

 It is within this premise that the individuals within the Rastafari community of Mahikeng with the assistance of dedicated Afrikan Warriors were able to successfully host the 9th annual Black History Month Commemoration Events at the doorsteps of Barolong Ba Rra-Tshidi on the 16th and 23rd of February respectively.

 Past Black History Month commemorations events have been attracting people, artists, musicians, poets and scholars from around the province and nearby provinces such as Northern Cape, Gauteng as well as neighbouring Brothers and Sisters from Botswana and Zimbabwe to the events.

Black History Month as an idea was conceived by Carter G, Woodson who was dismayed in the 19th century when he started to practice as an educator that there was no lessons on history of Black Americans and their contribution to civilization.  He found the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History to unearth, educate and document the accomplishments of the Afrikan people in the diaspora and Afrikan continent.  On the 19th February 1926 Woodson established "Negro History Week". The "Negro History Week" was launched on a serious platform in 1926 to neutralize the apparent ignorance and deliberate distortion of Black History (Sipuye, 2019).

It is quite evident Mr Woodson was determined and committed to prove a point to the wholly white racist world that was hell-bent to erase and deny any innovation or contribution by Afrikans in world history.  His efforts and Kuumba House work in the celebration or observance of this important event set the tone for generations to come. It has assisted many Afrikans to appreciate and recognize their valuable contributions in art, science, economics, sociology, technology and many other disciplines. The fundamental significance of the latter is that it retained the confidence and hope of Afrikan people who have been often battered by brute white racist world. A world that physically and mentally chained people of darker shade, continuously denied their humaneness and stole their accomplishments.

 Black History Month Celebrations in Mahikeng gorged often held rudimentary backward views on black people and shook the master-servant arrangement. This annual events presented to the world a space that enables Afrikan people to breath, regroup and appreciate their existence in a rugged space.

The Black History Month Commemoration Events for 2019 kick started with a robust, interaction as well as thought provoking public lecture and delivered by Warrior scholar Ras Thando Sipuye at Mahikeng Museum on the 16th of February 2019.

Brother Thando Sipuye is the executive member of The Ankh Foundation, and the Africentrik Study Group based at the University of Sobukwe (Fort Hare). He is a community activist, an Afrikan-centred historian, poet, a researcher and a writer. The lecture was themed as Children of Afrika: The State of the Black Race in the 21st Century and covered a series of critical topics and discussions.

It is within the history and tradition of Afrikans to begin every ceremony, program or activity by inviting and invoking the Ancestors and Divinities through drumming, the chanting of Afrikan Liberation Chants as well as performing the sacred ritual of Libations. Professor Griffs reminds us that a libation is performed to acknowledge the ancestors, the living and yet unborn in the pouring of water in a pot plant because through this symbol ritual, we all come together at once the Sacred Time and Space.

 The libation was performed by our guest speaker, Ras Thando Sipuye and thereafter proceeded to play his short poem called Children of Afrika, which evoked and stirred conflicting emotions such as righteous rage, pain, bitterness, feelings of vengeance and most importantly remembrance of the past and current atrocities committed against Afrikan people during the so called Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (Maafa) by “yurugu, the pale fox”

We are often told that “we should forget”. They tell us we should forget about our homeland and our ancestors.  They would have us believe that the brutalities we face are no worse than those faced by other people before.  They say digging up those memories is truly a waste of good time and energy. We are warned that delving into the past creates unnecessary pain and suffering and instigates a rage better off left dead. However, none of that really makes any sense because there is no Afrikan Power in a minority mentality. We must move backwards into knowing to gain remembrance. This movement begins as we walk with our ancestors as they crossed the tempestuous waters that separate this place (Europe) from home (Baruti, 2005: xii).

Hence, the poem Children of Afrika, was an attempt to take us back in our minds, bodies and spirits to those traumatic experiences and memories encoded in your genes and DNA, and the devilish conditions that Afrikan people were forced to endure during the so called “Middle Passage”, which is nothing but a misnomer!
Black History Month Public Lecture: Children of Black Afrika; the State of the Black Race in the 21st Century.

The Black History Month Lecture (Mahikeng) 2019 was by far the most thrilling public lecture delivered since the Rastafari Community in Mahikeng have been hosting and organising such lecturers.

The guest speaker for the day, Ras Thando Sipuye began the lecture by invoking the names of all the Afrikan Warrior Ancestors whose shoulders we stand on; “such as Onkgopotse Tiro, who was brutally assassinated by a letter bomb on the 1st February 1971 while exiled in Botswana 1971, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, leader of the Pan Afrikanist Congress (PAC) of Azania who died on the 28th February 1978 after being poisoned while incarcerated on Robben Island and Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey who entered federal prison in Atlanta on the 08th February 1925 after being accused of mail fraud following his orchestrated arrest by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI amongst many others”( Sipuye, 2019).

The guest speaker began the lecture by laying out a historical background of Black History Month and the importance of studying it. Many Afrikan people often ask, why study History?  What is the importance of studying History? Will one benefit economically from studying history? Such questions and many more are the result of the lie we’ve been fed that history is an irrelevant field of study. These questions were elaborately answered by Brother Thando as he took us on Ourstorical journey from when Afrikans build the most sophisticated civilisations which our Ancestors carried with them to civilize and enlighten Asia, Europe and the rest of the world with science, mathematics and medicine. However, we cannot become delusional and get stuck in our past history and civilisation without any restorative plan of action to change our current conditions and without examining and studying how our Ancestors past civilizations were collapsed from power and then strategise on rebuilding those passed civilisations that will endure for centuries.

“The study of history cannot be a mere celebration of those who struggled on our behalf. We must be instructed by that history and should transform history into concrete reality, into planning and development, into the construction of power and the ability to ensure our survival as a people” (Wilson, 1993: 13)

The following are some of the sub-themes that Ras Thando Sipuye discussed during the lecture:

The Black Race in current world affairs:

The current reality of Afrikan people collectively in the world is one of servants, poverty stricken, suffering and dying from diseases, most deprived, oppressed and downtrodden race in the world. “The outlook is grim. For the Black people of the world there is no bright tomorrow. (Williams, 1987: 319). “Afrikan people since the ‘ destruction of Afrikan civilisations’ are still the footstool of other the white man, Arab man and now the Chinese man, objects of white pity and police brutality in the hands racist Ku-Klux-Klan hypocrites disguised as police and the subjects of shame and ridicule “(Sipuye, 2019).

The Black Race in Education: The Mis-education of the Negro written by Woodson is still relevant even today.

 All systems of education which Afrikan people receive and put their children through, from pre-school, primary and high school and even the institutions of learning are nothing more but ‘mentacide camps’ . None of them were designed to advance the interest of Afrikan people. Instead, the schooling Afrikan people have received has done nothing more than to train Afrikan people to consciously and unconsciously advance the socio-economic and political interests of white people and their terror and deceit. Afrikan people are taught to value European values, ideologies, worldviews and philosophies as the superior form of knowledge, whilst Indigenous Knowledge is regarded as unscientific and therefore not worthy of being taught and studied in all universities. There is an urgent plea and call for the re-establishment of Afrikan centered learning spaces for our children and us as Afrikan people. All sane people educate their own children, not for degrees but to be able to maintain our own biological survival on earth.

The Black Race in World Religions: Since the evangelisation of Black people in Afrika and the world, the majority are trapped and subscribe to foreign religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) which spiritually castrated us from our Spiritual and Cultural Incubator (NTU). When the white invaders came to Afrika, they sought to destroy our source of power by demonising our Afrikan Spiritual System in order to impose their western religions. All Western religions which were imposed on Afrikans “were all handmaidens of conquerors, the Europeans had no illusions about Christianity, the Arabs had no illusions about Islam. We, Afrikan people were the only one with the illusions” (Clarke, 1994).

 In North of Afrika, the desert dwellers used their paedophilic religion, Islam to rape and enslave Afrikans in the name of Muhammad and Allah. In other parts of Afrika, the European used Christianity, to steal and rob Afrikans of their minds, lands and resources in the name of Jesus and White God. All these foreign religions imposed on us were all carbon copies of the origin Afrikan Spirituality Science, which taught and trained humans throughout the world to become living embodiments for the Supreme Being to manifest and employ on earth, called Ausar/Obatala (Ra Un Amen Nefer,). Western scholars and anthropologists who studied the ancient Kemetic texts, the ancient text in Kush, Nubia were all falsified, copied and perverted to help facilitate European domination of the world. None of them is an exception. 

The Black Race in Economics: As in all other areas of life, Black people are at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Black people remain as the primary consumers of products produced by their oppressors. Black people are still fully dependent on white business corporations for everything. We own nothing. We produce nothing. All we do is consume our enemies’ products and build their economic power by giving them the little money we have. In concluding the lecture, Ras Thando wrapped it up with a unique form of therapy, called “Shock Therapy’, whereby he exhibited large pictures of Afrikan people being lynched, hunted, raped and killed by Europeans.

 The graphic nature of these pictures shocked the audience and incited fear, hatred and anger among other feelings and emotions. This righteous rage, pain and bitterness are the emotions that we need to harness and channel towards doing the work to fix that which has gone terribly wrong. Those conflicting emotions are meant to mend us broken Spirits, to heal us from the Self-destruction we perpetuate as a result of not knowing what our ‘ bitter and everlasting enemies’ have done and continue to do to us.

Black History Month Reggae Concert and Arts/Craft and Cultural Fair
The annual Black History Month Celebration (2019) held in Montshioa Cultural Village brought throngs of people from all kinds of taste, shade and rhythm.

This celebration of Afrikans’ contribution to world history and humanity was a performance of craftsmanship and innovation; it wasn’t your usual panel, debate and symposium like event.  It interwove dance, music and poetry, epitomized spiritual awakening and defined the essence of what it means to be an Afrikan.

The event was designed in such a way that all kinds of cultural and creative mediums find space in the activities of the day. There where books stalls, hand crafts, delicious cuisines, clothes and herbs stall; a melting pot of African culture.

It is interesting to note, how Afrikan Literature was a pivotal part of the event. On the day of the event, a Black owned book store from Jan Kempdorp, called ‘Black Ink Books Saloon’ in collaboration with local educational radio show program; book promotion and distribution called ‘Decolonising Corner’ joined hands to set up an interesting Afrikan centered literature stall that intrigued the audience, and engaged in brief conversations about the necessity of reading, especially Afrikan literature.

This august cultural event that is often purported to be an effort by Afrikans to assert themselves in a world filled with coordinated hate and malice to themselves, brought out a different kind of Afrikan in the 21st century. An Afrikan, who reorganize, mobilize, decolonize and imagine her own world beyond the limited European spectrum of what it means to be human. Thus TswansHall sound dominated the celebrations, it is a dancehall variant found in Southern Africa which is done in Afrikan languages such as Setswana, Isizulu, IsiXhosa and many languages..

The idea behind TswansHall is to reconfigure dancehall to speak in a language people can understand and relate to. In fact it’s a break-away from being a caricature of the Jamaican world renowned sound, an effort to define ourselves and reconnect with the intimate meaning of music. It involved artists such as Red I Scotch from Lichtenburg, award-winning artist, Ragga Damdee and Lioness and Social Cohesion and Peace Activist,  Empress Mafee Gee from Kimberly, to mention a few artist.
Furthermore, it involved the hip hop genre called Motswako, which is a Setswana rap music and saw the legendary Mo’ Molemi grace the stage.

 It was not coincidence that the two Setswana genres in hip hop and dancehall lit up the Black History Month, it was a well-coordinated effort to celebrate and demonstrate the beauty of our Afrikan languages. To showcase, embed, preserve cultural memory, language, unity, literature and spirituality in performance arts.  UNESCO declared, this year (2019) as the international year of indigenous languages, thus Rastafari Community in Mahikeng saw it important to premise the Black History Month activities on indigenous languages and music.

 Mbaegbu (2015) argued that music is intimately intertwined with the very being of African and society she forms part of. Mbaegbu (2015) contends that “African music is another area Africa’s greatest contribution to world civilization” Thus this contribution was diligently curated by Ras Pablo Mogotsi at the annual Black History Month event where he says the intention was “to celebrate our innovation and excellence in art as African people with a focus in reggae music which is called TswansHall and hip hop genre Motswako which are done in Setswana, this year attracted high number of people from all works of life, Rastas and non-Rastas; the response was overwhelming positive. In fact they requested this kind of cultural events should be held more often”.

The Black History Month event this year can only be described a necessary rupture in the conventional mould of memorialization, celebration and commemorations of Africans contribution to world civilization!

References

Baruti, M.K.B., 2005. Kebuka!: Remembering the Middle Passage Through the Eyes of Our Ancestors. Akoben House.

Amen, R.U.N., 1990. Metu Neter vol. 1. Bronx NY: Khamit Corp, p.56.

Mbaegbu, C.C., 2015. The Effective Power of Music in Africa.

Wilson, A.N., 1993. The falsification of Afrikan consciousness: Eurocentric history, psychiatry, and the politics of white supremacy. Afrikan World InfoSystems.

Williams, C., 1987. The destruction of black civilization: Great issues of a race from 4500 BC to 2000 AD. Chicago: Third World Press.